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Helpful WordPress links and tips

Monday, November 21st, 2011

WordPress Code snippets

This site has an extensive list of code snippets for WordPress. a great place to begin if your looking at extensively customising a WordPress installation WP-Snippets

And here are my latest favorite Music themes. They aren’t free but I think what the developers are charging for them is fair

http://www.press75.com/themes/soundcheck/

http://wordpressthemes.oscaralcala.com/magzimus/

http://gorillathemes.com/demo/tribal/
http://www.mojo-themes.com/item/fuse-music-wordpress-theme/demo/

 

 

 

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Custom WordPress themes

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

This is a great Custom wordpress theme from Web Designer wall http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/building-custom-wordpress-theme

I have created a printable version of it and here is a link to download the tutorial example files.

Posted in My stuff, wordpress | No Comments »

WordPress Widgets vs Plugins

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

What’s the difference between WordPress Widget and Plugin?

There is some confusion as to what a widget and a plugin is and the difference of both of them.  WordPress has many 3rd party developers who create widgets and plugins for download.  Most, if not all, are free of use for anyone using the WordPress platform.  Most of the widgets and plugins are compatible with the newest version of WordPress.  You can flawlessly upgrade the plugins inside the WordPress Admin panel.  There are thousands of plugins and widgets available but what is the difference and what should you be looking for?

A WordPress plugin allows you to add a function to WordPress by downloading a software script.  Some of the popular plugins allow for better SEO, Adsense placement, sharing of posts, contact form generator and much more.  There are literally thousands of plugins you can download for free that will make your WordPress installation more powerful.  Some plugins are visible to the viewer of your WordPress while others are for the back-end where only you can see they are present.

A WordPress widget is an object you can add to your sidebar usually derived from a plugin.  Under “Appearance” is the “Widgets” section, you can simply drag and drop objects into your sidebar.  When you upload WordPress onto your server you will have some widgets that are already available such as a search box and category section.  A widget is very important for your WordPress installation because the sidebar is where the action is other than your content.  A well-organized sidebar is essential for reader interaction, advertising placement and an area for your readers to explore other content on your WordPress.

The short answer: A widget is a plugin that you can drag and drop in your sidebar.  A plugin is a script that you download that improves the function of your blog in your front-end or back-end. Widgets are always plugins but plugins are not always widgets J

Planning process for a WordPress site

Once you have done your required analyse to identify the functions and features of the proposed WordPress based site you need to identify the plugins/widgets you will required and the theme that you could base the design on.

You may already have identified the required layout but unless you are going to create a theme from scratch you need to identify one that is suitable to begin from.

Think about your proposed sites- what widgets/plugins would they require?

 

Posted in wordpress | 1 Comment »

Great SEO Master class video from WordCamp 2011

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Corey Eulas: SEO Master Class.

Posted in Cert 4 Web Design, Web Diploma, wordpress | 1 Comment »

1 Intro to WordPress

Monday, February 7th, 2011
What is wordpress week 1

View more presentations from hapy.

Posted in Web Diploma, wordpress | 1 Comment »

Testing WordPress install

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

So you’ve installed WordPress- what next? -I think you should thoroughly test it especially if you have set it up for some one else to use. You want to be sure that on hand over everything is working as you expect.

Therefore based on the idea of actually testing which I know is a foreign concept to some :) below is my list of the essential WordPress post install testing tasks based on Ross Mckillops -Wordpress complete post install checklist

  1. Edit your blog title, add email address
  2. If you let WordPress generate your password then now is a good time to change it to something strong that you will remember
  3. Add users if others will be contributing
  4. Change the tagline
  5. Set a date and time format
  6. Modify Reading and Writing settings
  7. Edit Discussion settings
  8. Edit permalink settings
  9. Add a test post and check that you can upload images and other multimedia elements- You may need to modify the folder permissions to allow WordPress to upload images.
  10. Edit or add a page
  11. Add some categories
  12. Edit blogroll
  13. Install plugins (Next post will have a plugin essentials list)
  14. Check blog and test plugins
  15. Pick a theme
  16. upload your theme
  17. Customize your theme
  18. Check blog and test plugins again

Ok so this post wasn’t strictly about only post install checking but more about what to do next after you’ve install WordPress and depending on how you installed it (manually or through your control panel) the tasks will be slightly different but you get the idea.

(Remeber test, test, test and then test some more :)

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Posted in My stuff, wordpress | 2 Comments »

Locked out of wordpress admin

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

So you can’t login to your admin area- not as stupid as it sounds, of course if you have literally just forgotten your password then maybe you are silly but how this can happen is that you forgot your password and then decided to use the recover/reset option which will change the password in the wordpress database but then for what ever reason the new password is not emailed to you- so you still are no better off because you still don’t know the password so therefore can’t login- yes you could scream!!!!

But wait help is at hand.

Option 1: Steven has written a couple of scripts that as long as you have ftp access to your blog then you can upload his scripts and use it to reset the password or user name.  BUT read carefully his disclaimer below and remember buyer beware :)

Steven’s comment

Hey Urshula, here’s those 2 scripts I was telling you about:
change_wp_username.zip.
reset_wp_password.zip.

As advertised it’s not a good idea to leave them up on a server!
I’ve made sure the textboxes are protected against MySQL injections and stuff like that, though if your password has a single or double quotes in it, or any backslashes you may have some problems. Though who uses those characters in a password… honestly!

Option 2: This is another one from Village-idiot.org which does the same thing and works well. Luckily haven’t used it lately :) But last time I used it worked a treat.

Option 3: Now I’m going to seem like the silly one but I’ve also reset me password directly through the database so if you have access to your database this to can be an option. This site has print screens to help you through this option

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Posted in Blogs, wordpress | No Comments »

WordPress install instructions

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

Disclaimer: As most readers of this blog know I am an IT teacher so for my diploma students here is an update version of wordpress’s famous 5- minute install readme.html file.

Even though most of you don’t read the readme or all install instructions!! -Smart people know to read the readme properly first. But having said that many readme’s have a real expection of assumed knowledge so this is based on my what I know about my students assumed knowledge :)

The install instructions on wordpress are great but below is a short version of that and a better version of the readme that comes with the down load of wordpress 3.1

Updated WordPress: Famous 5-minute install

  1. Down load the latest version of WordPress from www.wordpress.org
  2. Unzip the package into an empty directory. (for my student this will be our local Dreamweaver folder so think about how you are going to work with it!!)
  3. Login into your control panel and create a new database and user for this wordpress installation (if you don’t understand this step check with your hosting provider about creating a mysql database and user with full privileges)
  4. Once you have these details
    -Open up     wp-config-sample.php on your local machine with a text editor like notepad or similar and fill in your database connection details. (my student know I will have define a site within Dreamweaver and will open wp-config-sample.php within Dreamweaver because I am about to customise wordpress to the max but any text editor will be fine)
  5. Save the file you have edited as wp-config.php
  6. Upload everything!!!!! – this begs the question to where??- do you want your domain to be the blog or do you want this blog to be a subsection of your site- think ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT- then either upload everything to the root of your domain if you want your whole site to be the blog or to a specific folder if you want your blog to be a subsection of your domain. (If that made no sense don’t hesitate to comment me – student or otherwise)
  7. Open http://yourdomainname/installfolder/wp-admin/install.php in your browser. This should setup the tables needed for your blog. If there is an error, look at the error properly – most of the time it what you entered into wp-config.php file, and try again. Note the password given to you. And comment me with full details and I’ll have a look and let you know if it was your config or upload that is wrong
  8. The install script should then send you to the login page. If you get this far WOOHOO.
  9. Sign in with the username admin and the password generated during the installation. You can then click on ‘Profile’ to change the password.

The next post next week is how to test your wordpress install.

If this post was helpful please let me know.

 

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Posted in Blogs, Dreamweaver, wordpress | 9 Comments »

WordPress VS Blogger (blogspot)

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

In the last week I have been setting up blogs for clients so I thought I’d share with you my views on WordPress vs Blogger based on my experiences this week. I must state these are just my opinions and I do have some previous experience with WordPress as this blog is my own self hosted WordPress blog-but until this week I had no experience with a blog hosted on wordpress or blogspot.
The basic requirements for the blogs were:

  • very easy for the clients to use with the image upload built in and a wysiwyg editor for formatting and adding hyperlinks
  • Quick for me to customise and brand including turning on and off options like blog rolls, comments etc
  • For one client the ability to create pages as well as posts was a definate requirement

So you can see nothing fancy was required.

My first instinct was to go for WordPress but for the clients are on Windows servers and I didn’t feel like risking it turning into a drama trying to get php/MYSQL based WordPress installed on the Windows server so I wimped out of tht option and decided to research some Windows based blog software for these ones that could be installed within the clients hosting accounts. But again I wimped out and decided to take the quick and dirty option of externally hosted blogs.

Hence the WordPress vs Blogger options, my first option was to signup at WordPress.com but once I was in after being used to being able to change everything in my self hosted WordPress blog I suddenly felt very restricted. Also because I tend to modify my WordPress files on my own machine and then publish them up to the public server I didn’t like the new work flow so after an hour here I thought I’d give blogger (blogspot.com) a go.

Quicker than any of the the other options I had the first customer blog ready for the client to take over – this is probably because even though blogger has only a few templates to choose from one was a good match for the client site so I only need to upload the banner and turn off a few of the side options and we were in business.

Deal Direct Fashion Club web site

DealDirectFashionClub blog on blogger

The next 2 were relatively painless as well so for these clients blogger was definately the go.

foxybabes website

Foxybabes blog on blogger

For the client who definately needed “pages” as well as posts well blogger wasn’t the go and nor was using WordPress at WordPress.com for that matter but this is probably because I want to use the blog more as a CMS than a blog so a self hosted WordPress was definately the go here.

So what is the conclusion.

Well for the quick and dirty option where not alot of customisation is actually required then blogspot is the go but one problem I foresee is if the client ever wants to move their blog elsewhere then this is definately going to be a problem and if they decide they want alot more visual customisations then it is going to be a problem. I also tried the blogspot option of hosting some of the files on our own FTP server but even after following all the instructions and all the help documentation I couldn’t get it to work properly so these aspects could become “issues” in the future.

self hosted blog

self hosted blog being used as a CMS

For blogs where complete visual control is required, the option to customise absolutely everything is neccessary and you want to use it as a quick and dirty Content Managment System then I can’t go past WordPress sure you need to use alot of plugins to get it the way you want but the fact that there are so many plugins avialable is a definate strength not to mention the available themes and support community.

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Posted in Blogs, My stuff | 3 Comments »

Blog Terms Definitions

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

Here is a list of some common blog terms. If you have any further suggestions please leave them in the comments and I will include them.

A

B

Blogger-Person who contributes to or runs a blog.

Bloggies-One of the most popular blog awards.

Blogging-the act of posting on blogs

Blogiday-blogger get fed up and takes a holiday from blogging

Blogroll-A list of blogs usually listed in the sidebar of the blog that the blog owner is associated with and recommends like a roll of honour.

Blogosphere-the blogging community. Often use in the sense that one needs to get out of the blogosphere when one doesn’t have a life outside of their blog world.

Blogstipation-writer’s block for bloggers.

Blogoholic-addicted to blogging

Blogorific/ blogtastic-something which a blogger says is terrific

Blogsit-maintaining a blog while the primary blogger is on leave

C

Categories-A collection of topic specific posts

Collaborative blog-A blog where multiple users enjoy posting permission. Also known as group blog.

Comment- A message left in direct response to a post.

Comment spam-Like e-mail spam where junk orbogus comments are left either manually or by “robot” with either advertising or links.

D

E

Entry/post-An entry published to a blog.

F

Fisking-To rebut a blog entry.

Flog-A fake blog that’s ghostwritten by someone, such as in the marketing department.

M

Moblog-A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages.

P

Permalink-Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. This is what you use when you want to link to a post on a another blog or website.

Pingback-The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Podcasting-a method of distributing multimedia files (audio / videos) online using feeds for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Podcasts are created by podcasters.

Post/entry-An entry published to a blog.

Plugins-Small files that add functionality and features. WordPress plugins can greatly improve blog usage and interactivity.

R

RSS-Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.

RSS feed-The file containing a blog’s latest posts which can be read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows automatically when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.

S

Subscribe-The term used when a blogs feed is added to a feed reader which allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.

T

Tags-labelling / attaching keywords to collect similar posts

Theme-Images and CSS files which can be uploaded to a blog to control the visual display of a blog. Often referred to as the blog design.

TrackBack-A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

V

Vlog-A video blog

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Posted in Blogs, wordpress | No Comments »

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