Archive for January, 2007

The Wordpress Plugin Repository

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
wordpress plugin
WordPress is a great open-development community that encourages its users to innovate. But a few years ago, it started getting hard to keep up with those innovations. That’s when the WordPress Plugin Repository was born (currently hosted at http://WP-plugins.org).

The repository is a place where all WordPress plugins are pulled together and shared with the community of users. But more than that, it’s a place where developers can go to see what’s already out there, what they can base their new work on, and what needs to be improved. In addition to end-user utilities that anyone can download for their WordPress needs, there are plenty of development tools, including wiki-based version control and a bug tracker, that the WordPress development community is welcomed to use. Everything is licensed under GPL unless noted in the source, so almost everything is open.

If you’re new to the WordPress plugin repository but not to the WordPress support forums, you should login with your forum username and password; they are currently synced. If you have any problems, you should email the forum webmaster to ask what’s going on. Only logged-in users may edit on the Repository, though everyone is welcome to view what’s going on.

What’s Available on the WordPress Plugin Repository?

The Repository is designed to be a complete, organized, efficient method of seeing what’s in development and what has been developed for WordPress. As such, the core offerings here are the plugin directory and a robust version control mechanism. You can also use a special interface, downloadable for free, to work with the Repository more easily. The Repository is powered by Trac, a source control management and project management tool. Subversion is a wiki tool providing version control, and is also the source management tool WordPress is using today.

Developers using this directory can host all their WordPress developments for free, even organizing teamwork through the WordPress Plugin Repository. By hosting here, they have high visibility, can easily manage their code and track bugs, and develop wiki-based documentation with end users more easily than they could ever do it by themselves.

But developers without users are like stores without customers. WordPress users, too, are welcome to download plugins that are in alpha or beta form, or to download and use the plugins that are fully-functional but not integrated into WordPress yet. There are tools available for users to:

• Browse plugins and themes available at the Repository

• Download all desired plugins and themes from one stable location

• Give their own feedback and suggestions to developers by using the tracker.

• Help develop documentation and improvements by using the plugin’s wiki page.

• Know what’s going on at all times by using RSS feeds.

Anyone developing or looking for WordPress plugins and themes is encouraged to use this resource. An email will get you the hosting you need for your project, and just coming and looking around will tell you a lot about what’s going on in the WordPress development world.

What Plugins Are Available Right Now?

While plugins are changing fast, a few core plugins are available and certainly worth the time they’ll take to check out. The best ones right now include:

Main Categories for WordPress allows you select “main” categories on your blog’s navigation bar. This allows you to highlight the parts of your blog you find most important, while still displaying everything else.

The WordPress DBManager manages your WordPress database so you don’t have to. Instead of worrying about lost data, you can use this manager to optimize, back up, restore, delete backed up databases, and even run queries for specific data.

WordPress Email allow you to send your blog entries to friends, enemies, or anyone you choose.

WordPress PageNavi gives you advanced page navigation.

WordPress Polls allows you to run the ever-popular polls and make the results public when you’re ready.

WordPress PostRatings allows you to have rating systems for your blog posts.

WordPress PostViews lets you display for users and for yourself how many times a post has been viewed.

WordPress Print will display for the user a printable version of any given WordPress blog post.

WordPress RelativeDate displays a relative date beside your post or comment actual date.

WordPress Stats displays WordPress statistics you want to brag about.

WordPress UserOnline allows you to note which users are currently browsing your blogs

WordPress Wap allows you to use a Wap-enabled cell phone to brows your WordPress blog entries from anywhere.

Other projects that are in development include:

• Joystick controls

• RPMView

• A WordPress XHTML validator

• Tons of tools for Python, including MySQL tools

• Recording level monitor

• An admin themer

• A post editor enhancement

• Fix broken links

• Palm usage manager

There are always new things in development in the repository, like new themes and small fixes such as a way to make WordPress allow dashes.

Even if you’re not a developer or interested in expanding your blog beyond what it has now, it is a good idea to check out the Repository. It’s certain that many of the plugins provided or in development today will eventually be incorporated into the newer upgrades of WordPress. By keeping an eye on the Repository, you’ll know what new developments are around the corner - and by logging in and discussing them on the wiki logs, you’ll be able to give your own input regarding how things ought to be done. While there are other places to find WordPress plugins, it’s to be hoped that most people will use the Repository in the future, making life easier for everyone.



By: Danny Wirken

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Niche Internet Marketing

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Create Professional Wordpress Themes With New Book

Sunday, January 21st, 2007
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WordPress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme’s template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live. The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress theme designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.

Whether users are working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Theme Design will give them the know-how to effectively understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system enabling them to have full control over their site’s design and branding. Users only need to be comfortable with the basics of web development and this book will take care of the rest.

What you will learn from this book



Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design

Create detailed designs and code them up

Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics

Debug and validate your theme using W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation tools

Customize and tweak your theme’s layout

Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms

Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme

Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox

Add interactivity to your themes using Flash

Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0’s template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions



Chapter 1 introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you need to be aware of regarding the WordPress theme project you’re ready to embark on. The chapter also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you’ll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.

Chapter 2 looks at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. The author explains her own ‘Rapid Design Comping’ technique and gives some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have a working XHTML and CSS based ‘comp’ or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Chapter 3 uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from Chapter 2 and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this chapter covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of the chapter, you’ll have a basic, working WordPress theme.

Chapter 4 discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should employ throughout your theme’s development. It covers the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This chapter also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons ‘good code goes bad’, especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.

Chapter 5 discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme’s CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress’s administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.

Chapter 6 covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress’s PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of “The Loop” along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this chapter is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.

Chapter 7 dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier chapters, and enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.

Chapter 8 continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by looking at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. It also gives you a complete background on AJAX and when it’s best to use those techniques or skip them. The chapter also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress theme appear ‘Ajaxy’.

Chapter 9 reviews the main tips from the previous chapters and covers some key tips for easily implementing today’s coolest CSS tricks into your theme as well as a few final SEO tips that you’ll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.

For more details on the book please visit http://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-theme-design/book.



By: Shriharsha Bhat

About the Author:

Tessa Blakeley Silver’s background is in print design and traditional illustration. She evolved over the years into web and multi-media development, where she focuses on usability and interface design. Prior to starting her consulting and development company hyper3media (pronounced hyper-cube media) http://hyper3media.com, Tessa was the VP of Interactive Technologies at eHigherEducation, an online learning and technology company developing compelling multimedia simulations, interactions, and games that met online educational requirements like 508, AICC, and SCORM. She has also worked as a consultant and freelancer for J. Walter Thompson and The Diamond Trading Company (formerly known as DeBeers) and was a Design Specialist and Senior Associate for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ East Region Marketing department. Tessa authors several design and web technology blogs. Joomla! Template Design is her first book.



Press Release Software

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Wordpress Technology – the Best Way to Create a Multi Purpose Blog

Friday, January 19th, 2007
wordpress plugin
Wordpress is the best tool for Blogging. Moreover it has become popular as Content Management System. As its functionality can be enhanced by using pluggins .Content Management is total content control. With a content management system, or CMS, you can maintain consistency across your site with a few clicks. Whether brand messaging, news, or even look and feel, a CMS makes site wide maintenance simple and quick. But there’s more to it than that.

With the many capabilities of a Wordpress, businesses can leverage this technology to meet business goals, drive demand, and create deeper user engagement.

By immediately posting news, comments, and other information, a company can respond almost instantaneously to changes in the digital marketplace. Whether this means adding, deleting, or editing live content, a wordpress is a tool that should be carried in every webmaster’s toolbox.

Wordpress is easy to customize



Pick a theme that vaguely resembles what you would like i.e. 2 column, 3 column etc. I’ve chosen to use the default template for this example.

If choosing other than one of the defaults, download and extract the file to the your wordpresswp-contentthemes directory

Either extract the same downloaded file to the same place giving it a different name or simply navigate to the themes folder and copy/paste it into same directory giving it a different name.

You now have 2 identical themes one with the correct name and one with the name you gave.

From Your Theme directory, Open up the style.css file in your favourite text editor and edit the first few lines to suit e.g. Theme Name, Theme Description, version and urls. I made the changes shown below:

That’s it, save and close the style.css file. Then, if you haven’t already, upload those two theme directories (default and MY Theme) to the themes directory online.

Login and Open up your WordPress dashboard under Presentation > Themes you should see both themes, with the correct names beside them, activate the one with your name.



 

At this point this theme is exactly the same as the original (default), and if any edits you make to your theme do not do as expected, then you can do real-time switching back to the default.

Wordpress as a E-commerce Website

The lite version of this plugin allows you to sell products via PayPal only. Whilst it’s called ‘lite’ it’s not that simple as such. You can have your products in categories, there’s a shopping basket and it uses the PayPal IPN for instant notification. I’ve not gone through the whole process but I would assume that if you’re selling a digital product it will also then provide a download link to the buyer to download the product, as I’ve had the option to set how many times the product can be downloaded by the buyer.

WP e-Commerce is just like any other plugin for the installation. Just unzip the files and upload the directory to your plugins directory, and activate it in the WordPress admin. You then get an extra menu for it, where you can set your shop settings, other preferences, and start adding categories, brands and product information. It can deal with physical products or digital products, the latter was what I was interested in. You can also easily select which fields to have in the form on the front end, and which of these fields to send PayPal so that they’re prefilled. As I’m only looking to sell digital products I took the address details out as these are not needed.

Marketers need to remember that a wordpress gives them the ability to leverage unique pieces of content across multiple sites while providing multi-lingual support and content, a critical factor for companies with an international reach and online presence.

Wordpress as a Forum Website

WP-Forum is a WordPress plugin that enables you to have a forum directly attached to your WordPress installation. As one of the more popular forum software available today, SMF would be a good choice if you have no particular preference towards any forum solution. It’s still pretty bloated/bulky and can be difficult at times to customise (though less than many alternatives really), so I can’t say it’s my first choice solution at the moment. And while its backend integration with WordPress just requires the installation of a single WP plugin, I can’t seem to find a proper guide on layout integration yet. Here’s how you do it:

1.Install either one of two “bridge” plugins, i.e. WP SMF Bridge Plugin 1.0 or the CMS & SMF Plugin. While both provide user account integration (log into/register via WP = log into SMF/register into SMF), listing recent forum topics/messages on your blog, and etc., the latter plugin hooks WP to SMF via a portal CMS known as Enigma. This results in a more powerful setup, but also a more complicated one. So, for those who just want a forum to use with WP, I suggest using the former plugin.

2.Now that we have our backends integrated, layout is next. It’s a pity, however, that there doesn’t seem to be a step-by-step guide on how to do this. So, for now, you’re on your own on this. SMF does have documentation on how to create/edit its themes though.

More SEO For Wordpress

The Meta-Description is used by Google and other search engines to provide the description of a page. This is quite important - particularly since Wordpress by default does absolutely nothing about it. wpSEO can generate post descriptions in a variety of ways, however in most cases it makes sense to cite the actual postings - automatically. If you’d like to be more precise, you can also provide a brief summary for Meta-Description manually. The definition of used Meta-Keywords offers you more flexibility. If you are already using the plugins UT’W or STP, wpSEO can use your tags as keywords. Otherwise the keywords will be automatically generated from the article, which is not always a sound solution for efficient SEO. By default wpSEO generates keywords fully automatically, however you can let it extract text passages marked in bold or italics or in -tags. You can also use filters to ensure that only relevant data is being used

To install the plugin, it’s enough to upload it to the plugins directory (wp-content/plugins) and activate it in the Wordpress engine. You should avoid using two or more plugins (as mentioned before) at the same time. Previously installed plugins can cause conflicts, just like manual entries in your header.php file. To make sure the wpSEO is working properly, you should at least deactivate similar tools; better - delete them.

A last useful feature you might never use, but would be happy to have available once you need it: you may export all your settings as an XML-file and use them for another blogs. Therefore it’s very easy to maintain the optimal configuration and adjust it to a number of blogs.

At it’s very core, Wordpress content management is about reaching the right person, at the right time, with the right CONTENT. This creates an engaging user experience that drives demand. The dynamism of content management, and the re-purposing of relevant and engaging content, is an evolution in online strategy that will drive strong results for any organization.

 

 



By: Priyanka Kapil

About the Author:

Technoweb World, offering services for Blogs customization and Online Marketing. Various small and large organizations can greatly benefit from this wonderful technology. Technoweb world has best in class resources for Wordpress Blogs Customization that can help in leveraging the capabilities of Blog to reduce development cost and time to market.



Wordpress Membership Site

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What You Need To Know About WordPress Podcasts

Saturday, January 13th, 2007
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WordPress is a blogging platform that has podcasting support. A podcast is a pre-recorded audio program, very much like a radio program that is listened to on the computer. Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0 or atom as WordPress creates all the necessary links for the site.

Using WordPress for Podcasting

WordPress works for podcasting. It starts with the creation of a video or audio that is intended to be shared. The file is uploaded to a server and the line to the file is posted in the weblog. WordPress automatically includes a link to the file in the RSS/Atom feed. Listeners will then subscribe to the feed where new files are downloaded automatically.

Podcasting is supported by WordPress 1.5. Linking to an audio file in one of the posts will result to WordPress automatically adding the enclosure tag to the RSS2 feed to make it usable as a podcast. It is important to use a complete and absolute URL when linking to an audio file or WordPress will not be able to make an enclosure for it.

The RSS2 feed should be made available by putting a linking somewhere on the page. As of WordPress 1.5, the RSS 2.0/Atom links are located at the bottom of the page by default. This only works for posts and not for static pages. When a linked file is inaccessible upon publishing of the post, WordPress will not be able to collect the information it needs from the linked files.

A change in the linked file would require refurbishing of the posts so that WordPress can update its file size information about the file. In order for WordPress to recognize m4a and m4b files as podcast, the web server has to be configured to serve the right content type. An XML at the end of the RSS/Atom URL may occasionally be needed for it to work properly.

Dedicated podcast feeds can be made by creating a category in the Admin>Manage>Categories panel for the audio files, and a post containing an audio link must be assigned to every category. If audio file are being hosted on http://archive.org, a custom field called “enclosure” should be added and the full URL is posted for the MP3 file in the value field.

Podcasting allows anyone to create his/her own audio programming and deliver it via the web. The usual way of distributing podcasts are through RSS enclosures as it allows the reference of binary data from within the RSS feed. Podcast readers subscribe to the RSS feed and download the audio files contained in the enclosures. The downloaded audio files are then moved to a portable audio player for later consumption.

Of WordPress Plugins

There are resources that will help in getting to know the WordPress blog platform better. The WordPress podcast features easy and understandable commentaries about WordPress plus a couple of plugins. It is a great learning resource for any skill or experience level. The Diagnosis plugin presents the detailed information about the server, operating system and the database. It is presented in a way that could be understood by the least technically-inclined person using it. Most will be able to appreciate its rich tech content.

The PodPress plugin is designed to make podcasting with WordPress as easy as possible. It has several features that will make its use fruitful to the user. It has full featured and automatic feed generation as well as auto generation of enclosure tag. It provides a preview of what the podcast would look like on iTunes. The podcast is able to download stats and there is support provided for premium content for pay accounts. This plugin makes adding a podcast to a post very simple and makes possible the viewing of MP3 files’ ID3 tag information. The contents of the ID3 tags can even be copied into the post.

It likewise provides control where the player will display within the posts. Support for various formats including video podcasting is given while it facilitates support for unlimited number of media files. It has automatic media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI and others. It also includes in-line and Pop-up Windows support and provides preview image for videos.

The Mechanics of Podcasting

Podcasting’s publish/subscribe model makes use of the push technology wherein the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. As a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program which is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player, podcasting makes use of an automatic mechanism that transfers multi-media computer files from a server to a client. Podcasts are generally analogous to a recorded television or radio server.

The content provider starts by making a file available on the Internet usually by posting the file on a publicly-available web server. However, it is not technically necessary that the file be publicly accessible but it is required that it be accessible through some known URL or a general-purpose Internet address. He then acknowledges the existence of the file by referencing it in another file known as the feed.

The feed is a machine-readable list of the URLs by which episodes of the show may be accessed. One episode refers to the originally made file while the list provides other information such as publish dates, titles and accompanying text description of the series, and each of its episodes. This list can either be published in RSS format and less frequently in atom format.

Feeds may contain entries for all episodes in the series but are usually limited to a short list of the most recent episodes. A feed from one author is commonly used for standard podcasts but the practice of having multiple authors contribute episodes to a single podcast feed is fast becoming popular. The location known as the feed URI or feed URL at which the feed is posted by the content provider is expected to be permanent. This is to be made known to the intended audience.

The user enters the feed URI into a software called a podcatcher or aggregator which retrieves and processes data from the said feed. A podcatcher is a program which starts when the computer is started and runs in the background. A set of feed URIs is managed by it which is added by the user and downloaded at a specified interval. Any substantive change in the feed data from the time it was previously checked will trigger automatic downloading of the location of the most recent item to the user’s computer. Some podcatchers make the newly downloaded episodes available to a user’s portable media player. Downloaded episodes can be played, replayed, or archived like any other computer file.



By: Danny Wirken

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Book Template

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