WordPress

In the comments of 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress, Michael Zebold asked about #47, using WordPress to build a web directory. There are actually a few ways to use WordPress to build a web directory, and I’ll look at two. Please note that I’m only providing a light treatment; I’ve linked to a few articles if you want to learn more.

Using a WordPress Plugin

Earlier in the comments of “48 Unique Ways”, commenter Sofimi pointed out the Link Directory Plugin. (The link in the comments redirects to a page on Alec Tang’s site, so I’ve used that link instead.) This is one of two wordpress directory plugins that showed up numerous times in a Google search. (The rest of the results were articles pointing to either of the two plugins.)

Besides Alec Tang’s WP-LD (WP Link Directory) plugin, there’s also the WP-Directory plugin from Linksback.org. Neither one works in WP 2.3.2 (which is the only version I had time to test), but comments on various articles seem to indicate that both of them work (with earlier versions of WP).

The two plugins behave and display differently. If you’re interested in trying out the WP-LD plugin you may want to read Sizlopedia’s article, which expands a bit on the installation instructions. This plugin is a bit more complex than the Linksback.org’s WP-D plugin, and the web directory will reside in a subdirectory of your blog called “directory/”. (For the WP-D plugin, the directory resides on your home page.)

The result of the WP-LD plugin is more of a “link exchange” (for reciprocal linking) than a web directory, and has features that will help ensure that submitters are linking back to you. If they are not, the plugin will report their link to you.

Using a Gallery Theme

The above two plugins produce lists of links. If you’d rather take a visual approach to a web directory, so that you can include screen snapshots (and thumbnails), consider using a gallery. In my 48 Unique Ways article, I linked to two WordPress themes available at WP Designer and OS Designer that mimic CSS gallery sites.

The OS Designer theme is free but has less features than the WP Designer theme. I’ve been fiddling around with the former and it shows a lot of potential for multiple uses (which I’ll be discussing here in the near future). For example, you can co-opt it for use as a web directory.

Some things to consider about the OS Designer theme:

1. To allow visitors to submit links, there is a suggested “form” plugin to use. You need to create a WordPress “page” that displays the submission form – which can include directory categories if you want. (Or you could skip this and add links yourself.)
2. Each listing is added manually. Even if you allow visitors to submit links, if you plan to validate each link, this shouldn’t be a big deal.
3. There is no automation for adding the screenshot (and thumbnail) for each listing. So when you’re validating a site link, you can take a snapshot – either using a browser plugin (such as Fireshot for Firefox) or desktop software such as Techsmith Snagit (trial available).
4. The screenshot and thumbnail images appear thanks to WordPress custom fields for each listing. The way the code is written, it appears allows for images to be hosted elsewhere (such as Flickr), though I haven’t tested this to confirm it.
5. Each directory listing has its own permalink page, which is essentially a WP blog page. However, out of the box, an item’s listing page does not show any “blog” content that you might type in. To display such content, you need to tweak the “single post” template file (single.php). Just add the following code below the screen snapshot code in single.php (without the double quotes):

   ""

   You can see an example of the result by checking any listing at CSS Social. (Click on the name of the listing, not the thumbnail image, to get the internal listing page.) The text appears after the screenshot and before the five stars of the ranking gizmo.

6. The theme uses a “post rating” plugin that allows visitors to rank an item. I’ve used five stars at CSS Social. (CSS Social was originally using a different code platform – possibly Pligg – but due to hosting problems, it lost all its PR and traffic. So I’m reviving it with WordPress on a new host. It was originally a CSS gallery that allowed visitors to vote on listings. I’m keeping that aspect, though most web directories probably don’t offer a voting feature.) If you don’t want voting, don’t install the “post rating” plugin.
7. The theme is not configurable. There are two columns on the home page. If you want configurability, consider buying WP Designer’s gallery theme.
8. Rearranging the way the listings/ categories appear requires custom coding. One possible tweak you might consider is to order listings from most to least votes.
9. The theme does show categories but does not currently give a count of the number of listings in each. You can modify this with a code tweak.

I will be tweaking OS Designer’s theme to build several different types of sites running on WordPress. When I have template file variations completed and tested, I’ll make them available (or provide instructions as I’ve done above).

Summary

If you do decide to build a web directory, whether or not you use WordPress, just keep in mind that last year, there was talk of Google applying a “thin content” penalty. A number of high-PR web directories lost PageRank, and the common buzz seemed to be that Google deems the average directory to be a link farm (especially if you require all submitters to give your directory a reciprocal link).

I haven’t done enough research to talk about this so called “thin content penalty” with any authority, but that reason seems to make sense. So for safety, I prefer using a gallery setup for a web directory, where I can add a screen snapshot and a synopsis of the site. That’s a bit more content than just a link, a site name, and the typical sentence or so about the site.

[UPDATED: Please see my first comment before reading.]

In 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress, the Prologue WP theme figured very significantly in the examples. Prologue, if you’re not familiar with it, gives WordPress users (both wordpress.com and self-hosted) Twitter-like microbloggging functionality. But out of the box, the theme has a very plain edit area (see image below), and adding links, images, etc., is tedious.

Fortunately, there’s a really easy fix to this problem: TinyMCE editor. TinyMCE is a Javascript-based freeware editor. If you have a recent version of WordPress, it’s the default “visual” editor that you get in the admin panel. Thanks to its easy integration features, we can use this as a replacement to the default HTML message editor in the Prologue theme. And you won’t believe how incredibly easy it is to hack it. I think it took me about 2 minutes, not including download and installation. I’m actually surprised that Automattic didn’t do it themselves.

How to Install TinyMCE

Installing TinyMCE takes three simple steps:

1. Download the TinyMCE .zip from Moxiecode. (There is also a .gz file, if that suits you better.)
2. Unzip the .ZIP file. You’ll get a directory called tinymce/.
3. Upload this directory pretty much anywhere you want on your web server. I used the root. So as an example, I now have the directory http://filmscenic.com/tinymce/ on my FilmScenic site. Below that is the scripts/ directory, where the important code lives.

How to Hack the Prologue Theme to Use TinyMCE

It’s really quite easy to hack your Prologue WP theme installation to incorporate the TinyMCE editor on the home page of your site.

1. Insert two lines of “script” code into your Prologue header.php file, just above the </head> tag:

   <script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js”></script>
   <script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript”>
   tinyMCE.init({
       mode : “textareas”
   });
   </script>

2. Change the src parameter’s URL value to point to the right path. In the code above, I’ve already changed the URL to be relative to the server root.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, just download this copy of the header.php file (for Prologue theme), change the extension from .phps to .php, and replace the original in your Prologue theme directory. That’s it, you’re done. Please note that this header.php uses the “Advanced” mode TinyMCE editor, as discussed somewhere below.

How to Use TinyMCE From Your Prologue-Based WordPress Blog

Believe it or not, that’s it. TinyMCE should work now. Refresh your Prologue site’s home page in your browser. If necesary, use F5 in Windows, or the equivalent for other systems, to do a “hard refresh”. You should see the simple default editor, as shown in the screenshot below.

How to Enable the Advanced Features of TinyMCE

Of course, you’ve probably seen all the great extra features of TinyMCE from within your WordPress admin panel’s editor page. You can get the same features and more for your Prologue site. The simple editor form that you’ll get from the steps above doesn’t even have a way to add a hyperlink to text, so that’s the least you’d want. Here’s how to activate the extra features.

Modify the code snippet within one of the script lines, as indicated in this Advanced Theme example.

tinyMCE.init({
    mode : “textareas”,
    theme : “advanced”
});

You’ll get something like the screenshot below:

If you need even more advanced features, there are additional examples accessible from the drop-down menu at the top right of the Moxiecode TinyMCE example page. I’ve used the “All buttons and plugins” mode at Filmscenic.com, as seen in the screenshot below. It probably has far more features than necessary, but I can always tone it down if there are too many options. In fact, if you study the Javascript code snippet for one of the more advanced modes, you’ll see that there are a number of TinyMCE “plugins” enabled. Just start removing plugin names and play around until you have the configuration you want. (Or you could actually read the TinyMCE wiki.)

Caveats

Some of the advanced TinyMCE modes take up more space horizontally than the Prologue theme is set up for. This may cause problems in browsers other than Firefox (the only one I use for development and blogging, but not for browsing). The edit area is sizable, thanks to the grippy in the bottom right corner, but you cannot make the editor less wide. So you’ll have to tweak your Prologue installation’s stylesheet(s) to fix the width of the blue background area – provided you don’t like the appearance. On the other hand, since only registered authors will ever see the editor area, it might not be a big deal.

Note

If you do any film blogging and want an account on Filmscenic, to build links to your site(s) or to that of friends, please drop me a Perf PM with your full name and other details (desired WP username, email address, site URL).

In my followup research after posting 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress, I came across Jason Schuller’s new WP Elements blog. Jason has some very cool WordPress plugins, an excellent free magazine theme, Massive News, and another theme for a video gallery on the way.

Two things caught my eye on Jason’s blog: the Fancy Zoom plugin and the Featured Content Gallery plugin. The latter is a plugin version of the gallery box that appears in his Massive News WP theme.

Both plugins can really jazz up your WP blog’s images.

Fancy Zoom

Fancy Zoom is a sexy variation to other “lightboxed” image plugins. The basic principle is this: show a relatively small image on a post and link it to a larger version. With Fancy Zoom installed, you’ll see an animated “zoom” to the larger version without a browser refresh. When you close the lightboxed image, you’ll see an animated close. (Watch out; clicking can be addictive.) Here’s a screen grab after a click, but to see the full animated effect, go visit Jason’s 32Eighteen site and click on one of the images in the middle column.

Featured Content Gallery

Have several feature articles on your site and want to make them prominent? Jason’s Featured Content Gallery plugin lets you set up a sequence of images, each one linked to a feature article. The result is visually stunning. Here’s a screengrab, below, which doesn’t do it justice. So go visit the plugin page for an example.

The gallery, while very attractive, has a drawback: updating the gallery is awkward. That is, if you intend to add new images and remove older ones on a regular basis, it’s a tedious process. Increasing the number of images in the gallery set is probably less work, but you have to manually tweak the plugin files – which cannot be done from within the WP admin panel.

Notes:
(1) You do not have to link the showcase images to articles. You can simply showcase images.

(2) Showcase images can very likely be linked to off-site pages, though I haven’t tried. If you own/run multiple blogs, this could be a nice way to use a “hub site” to showcase feature articles on your other sites.

WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms (if not the most), is capable of being more than just a blog platform. It’s capable of being a full-blown CMS (Content Management System). As someone who has both written small, custom CMSes from scratch as well as evaluated million-dollar professional CMSes for large corporations, WordPress‘ robustness never ceases to amaze me.

The key to many of the unique uses can be attributed to any or all of the following components:

1. Custom theme.
2. Custom code tweaks
3. Custom or widely-available plugins.
4. Custom fields per post.
5. Custom code to use the custom fields.

Why Use WordPress?

Not everyone is for the idea of WordPress as a CMS. Some bloggers point out a variety of technical issues (which I’m not getting into here). True, WP is not a high-end CMS, but it can get the job done, especially for low-volume use. The point is that with WP, you don’t always need to pay $50,000+ for a proprietary, difficult to learn CMS. And that’s for starters. Many of high-end CMSes require “seat” licenses. That is, a fee for each person that MIGHT use the software. Add maintenances/ upgrade fees, support licenses, training, etc., and most small businesses or online publishers are spending more than they have/ is necessary.

WordPress can do the job, and as has been discussed here and elsewhere many times, has a lot of community support, free themes and plugins, and is relatively easy to customize or to find someone who can for a fair price. Below are some ways that WP can be used.

Basic WordPress Uses

The uses in this section require the minimum amount of customization, often involving only additional available plugins.

1. Basic CMS for a traditional site or web magazine. One of the most common alternate uses for WordPress is to build a traditional website with no focus on chronological posts (blog) – that is, to use WP as a basic CMS. More recently, this approach is being integrated with a blog as well, particularly using “magazine” themes.

   Some of the best visual examples I’ve come across are Twist’n’Shout and Simms Furniture Warehouse both designed by Charlene of Essentially Keystrokes, and Camacho Cigars. The latter integrates WordPress and Flash to produce a traditional site that you’d probably never know was built on WordPress if you didn’t check the source code. Another nice example is Ford’s Autoshow site. (This is not an endorsement of any of these sites, just simply an observation.)

   There are reasons not to use WP as a CMS, but there are also reasons to use WP and many tutorials on how to do so. The fact is, you can use a Caching plugin to speed up the rendering of pages on your web server. If you prefer more traditional URLs, you can use an .HTML or .PHP extension.

2. City guide or geocoded news site. The Thunderbird, a college journalism site built in WordPress, has an excellent example of what I mean by geocoded news. News stories on the site (which uses one of Brian Gardner’s Revolution magazine themes) are represented by colored icons on an embedded Google MyMap map. Clicking on an icon displays an excerpt bubble, complete with a “Read more” that, when clicked, opens a new browser tab/ window with the story in question.

   You could expand on this idea to build City Guides. Instead of news stories, publish reviews/ profiles of restaurants, nightclubs, businesses, as well as interviews of local celebrities. Then geocode each post into an icon on a Google map. (I’ll cover Google Maps and geocoding here on Performancing starting in the near future.)

3. History/ timeline site. Timeline from MIT is a visualization widget for time-based info. Event items are draggable, and clicking on one pops up a dialog with more detail, including links. Freshlabs offers a WP plugin that allows you to embed SIMILE Timeline windows into your posts. You could combine this with maps, video, images, and articles in order to create a history site. (E.g., a religion or dinosaur timeline.)
4. Image gallery or photoblog. There are a number of ways that you can use WP to create a Photoblog (such as by using the Photopress theme) or an image gallery. For the latter, there are lightbox-style WP plugins and widgets, or regular image gallery plugins.
5. Intranet. Intranets, in a nutshell, are websites that are internal to an organization, typically firewalled off so that only employees/ members have access. WP can be used for an Intranet that combines blogs, traditional sites, or pretty much any of the other uses described in this article.
6. Movie poster and trailer site. Sprout Builder
   is a new web service (still in beta) that allows fast creation of Flash media content. You can use its image and video components to build movie Sprouts. Each Sprout would simply be embedded in a WordPress post, possibly accompanied by a review and/or ratings area. The reason for taking this approach is because Sprout Builder allows you to build in interactivity.

7. Network hub/ feed aggregator. Many bloggers have multiple web properties forming a blog network. Some also like to have a hub site that offers snippets of posts from across the network. A simple way to do this is to use an RSS feed importer plugin (such as the very cool WP-o-matic, which uses SimplePie) that automatically produces a new WP post snippet for each feed item. Hart’s Battling for Health hub site is an example of this.
8. Polling site. There are numerous WP polling plugins (such as Democracy AJAX Poll and WP-Polls) that can be used to produce a polling site. This could be a standalone site, or combined with a blog.
9. Real estate listings or guide. Take the idea of a city guide, mentioned above, and tweak it to build a real estate guide – possibly using a custom real estate WP theme (not free). Add maps, exterior 3/4 pics of a property, video, details and contact info.
10. Web Chat. Embed one of web-based chat services into your home page or the nav bar. There’s even a new one that will “ping” your AIM chat client. So site visitors can chat with you without having to download and install AIM. Something like this could even be used to give web-based advice by church ministers, on a church website.
11. Webcasting station. Imagine a main page with a single, large media player, with member “twittering” to the side. The best example of this used to be Evil Backwards, which used to use the very robust Splashcast Media player where the current video window is now. They’ve ditched the Splashcast player, so you’ll have to imagine it’s there. Splashcast offers embedded “channels” for video, audio and documents in a borderless player. A theme similar to Evil Backwards’ home page can be produced in WordPress using the Blueprint CSS framework (discussed below in the Techmeme clone item, in the next section). Of course, you can use a media player similar to Splashcast, but to my knowledge no other player offers embedded channels.

Website/ Web Services Clones and Alternatives

The uses in this section are visual or functional mimics of popular web sites/ services. Several can be done with a combo of a special, available theme and plugins. Some might require a bit of custom coding.

12. Feedburner alternative. Feedburner, a web service that Google recently purchased, offers multiple functionality, but mostly the republishing of site RSS feeds and monitoring. Many bloggers say they don’t want to use Feedburner because Google tends to give the latter the search juice for an article. (There are feed direction plugins to get around that.) I like Feedburner because I don’t have to worry about server resources, and I can monitor my stats. But there is a WordPress alternative to Feedburner that uses a simple set of plugins to accomplish similar functionality (though not a visual clone).
13. Popurls clone. Popurls is a popular site that lets you get a bird’s eye view of several popular sites. This format is very handy and can be used to monitor the blogs in a niche or even several niches. Ericulous offers a handy free WP Popurls clone theme. (There are a few plugins necessary, but they’re included in the ZIP file.) While it’s not robust enough yet to handle non-RSS format feeds, it’s still an excellent launch point.
14. Techmeme clone. Techmeme is in my blogger’s toolbox as handy way to monitor the tech niche. It’s not as “bird’s eye view” as a Popurls clone, and it algorithmically follows a set of RSS feeds. If you blog is in the tech niche, it might be included one day in Techmeme’s stream and not the next (or ever again). You can solve that with your own Techmeme clone using WordPress and various plugins. Though there are two things to point out:
    1. I haven’t come across a ready-made WP solution to Techmeme. The closest clone to Techmeme is Megite, which I understand is available for licensing at $15,000+.
    2. Techmeme and Megite use “topic clustering” algorithms that are the core driver to how the story items are presented on both sites. I haven’t deciphered this yet, but I’m working on it.

    Nevertheless, the basic idea behind Techmeme is a “river of news”. This can be produced using RSS import plugins and a custom WP theme – best created with the Blueprint CSS Framework and related tools (something I’ll try to cover in the future). You’ll end up with something like Techmeme River as a starting point. From here, you’d have to apply clustering algorithms, which are way beyond the scope of Performancing.

15. Twitter clone. Twitter microblogging has become something of a phenomenon online, with some people even preferring this mode of communication over blogging. But it has its drawbacks – namely a 140-character message/ tweet limit, no simple inclusion of visual media, scrambled URLs, etc. Sure, there are Twitter alternatives such as Jaiku and Tumblr, but if you want to do something similar in WP, you’re in luck. Matt and Automattic (makers of WordPress) have released the Prologue theme. It has Gravatar support and loads of RSS feeds, and is ideal for group “twittering” activity. (See the section below for specific uses of Prologue.) Their download site is down at the time of this writing, and apparently doesn’t offer a ZIP, so go visit Sizlopedia instead.

Additional Uses of the Prologue Theme

The Prologue theme, mentioned in the last section for “Twitter clone”, is a versatile theme/plugin package with a lot of potential. Here are some additional ways you can use it. Keep in mind that for some of these uses, you might want to either password-protect each new posting manually, or write some custom code that automatically sets a post’s status to “private”. (That’s not covered here, but if you’re using WP 2.3+, it probably has simplified privacy options.)

16. Article assignment system. There are several ways to set up an article assignment system in WP. The simplest way is to use the Prologue theme. Each writer gets an account, and when the editor posts an available assignment, the first person to claim it by posting gets it. (Details of the assignment might be elsewhere.) The success of this approach depends on the discipline of writers not to post anything else except acceptance of an assignment. Questions can be posted as comments on the source assignment message, not as additional messages. Otherwise, the message stream will get cluttered fast.

    Now, if you want something more sophisticated that sends out reminders, etc., you’d need to write custom plugins/ code to manage that information.

17. Confession log. People love to confess private things (or hear about others’ confessions.) Set up a site with the Prologue theme. Keep registration open (but possibly with email confirmation) and let people confess whatever they like.
18. Celebrity or political microblog. If you only want to post short newsy items about a niche (such as entertainment or politics) and don’t need to upload images, Prologue is ideal for this. Thrivecore is an example used for pop culture microblogging. (Just keep in mind that to include links to other pages, you need to enter the appropriate HTML code in Prologue’s textarea.)
19. Grocery list. Use the Prologue theme and enter grocery items. When you go to the grocery store, access your list with your Apple iPhone. (You can use other devices, but from what I understand, the iPhone is the best mobile Internet device around in terms of usability and readability.) You could also write custom code to tweak the list and convert it to some other format via a web API.
20. Log book. One of the biggest pains in the behind when you run your own business is tracking expenses and/or logging meetings. Use the Prologue theme and enter items AFTER they occur. Voila, an automatic logbook. If you have a mobile phone with Internet access, use it to enter items on the go. Later, you can use a desktop computer to collate the items and record them more permanently in a spreadsheet. If you’re a codemonkey, you can write a WP plugin to export items to a private Google Spreadsheet, a web calendar, or a web to-do list service. Alternately, you can use your log book site’s RSS feed.
21. Reminders. A Reminder system is similar to a to-do list but actually sends out reminders with a service such as Retweet’s Timer. Setup a Prologue theme as usual, but rig a Twitter stream using your site’s RSS feed. Use the necessary notation for Timer, and reminder items will be sent to you. Keep in mind that this shouldn’t be used for anything but items that are at least a day ahead, as it’s hard to predict when Twitter will check your updated RSS feed.
22. Review site. Use Prologue with a group of friends to easily share brief reviews of movies, music, books, etc. Browse through JakartaBar for an interesting example. Make sure to check the comments (labelled as “reviews”.) I’m not sure what plugin they’re using for their ratings, but here are a few places that you can find review/ ratings plugins: Dan Grossman, Paul Goscicki (movie ratings – compliant with hReview microformat), Sneak, Channel-Ai.

    I haven’t tested any of these with Prologue yet, so I don’t know how they’ll look. (The movie ratings plugin is for the use of a post’s author, so may not suit Prologue use.) Which plugin you use depends on who will do the rating (author or reader) and what is being rated (the actual post or something referenced in the post).

23. Software bug logger. Are you testing web or desktop software with a group of developers/ testers? Setup a subdomain with WP, using the Prologue theme. Turn on “privacy” in your WP control panel so that search engines don’t know about the site. Give each tester an account and have them follow a specific notation that can be parsed into a web spreadsheet or some other bug log.
24. To-do list. Use the Prologue theme to post new tasks for yourself. It’s not elegant, but it’s easy to set up and use. It’s also available from anywhere that you have Internet access, and you can always pretty up the items later. In fact, if you can define a notation for items and use it consistently, you can send the to-do list feed through custom code (or a Yahoo Pipe) whose output works with the API of either a real web to-do list, calendar or spreadsheet service. (I.e., Google Calendar or Spreadsheet.) Check out Twittercal (and its Twitter bot) to get a better sense of this.

Note: If you’re serious about the above uses, get
yourself a personal domain (e.g., yourname.com) and create one subdomain per use. Or use a single subdomain and create a unique notation that makes clear what each posting represents. Then use a Yahoo Pipe or other code to filter the RSS feed, which then can be sent via APIs to a web spreadsheet or calendar.

Custom Sites

To my knowledge, the uses in this section are mostly speculative and thus require custom code, themes, plugins and/or web services.

(Note: Several of these ideas are taken from a blogHelper article.)

25. Article library. Set up WordPress so that the home page template displays no posts on the home page, only a static index of articles. Each article is a post with its own permalink page. An example is A-Level Econoref.
26. Calendar. You could drive your web calendar by using a Prologue-like home page (discussed indepth above), using a custom notation for items. The items would be parsed elsewhere and sent to a web calendar such as Google Calendar, or displayed on a calendar widget on your site. [This is an extension of the idea discussed for To-Do List and Reminder items above.]
27. Classifieds. Using the Edgeio Classfieds plugin, you can add paid or free classifieds to your WP site. This could be integrated with something like a real estate listings site, as discussed above.
28. Contact manager. As discussed in Pushing the Envelope of WP Functionality, Design Canopy is offering a WP-based Contact Manager theme (with plugins).
29. CSS/ Site awards gallery. There are lots of gorgeous CSS Gallery sites out there, and if you have the need to create a niche one of your own, you have several choices – including writing your own custom theme and plugins. If that’s too much work, Shabu at OS Designer offers a free WP-based CSS Gallery theme (with necessary plugins) that uses two columns. (Example: CSS Design Gallery.) If two columns are not enough, or you want some flexibility in item pages, Small Potato at WP Designer is selling a CSS Gallery WP theme. Both Shabu’s and Small Potato’s themes use a voting plugin whereby visitors can rank a site.
30. Ecommerce site. WordPress can be integrated with plugins or custom code, and PayPal, to produce online shops. An example is Filipino Artisans. (I’ve read that Moo.com also uses WP, but I think it’s for their blog, not their online store.) There are also code packs that allow you to integrate Amazon or other merchants into your own e-store.
31. Media collection manager. You’ll need custom code, but WP can be used to track your CDs, DVDs, books, software, collectibles. You’re basically using it as a database manager for a specific type of item, though you could generalize. Alternately, you can use a Prologue theme interface with a unique notation, then parse added items and send them to a web spreadsheet via its API.
32. Voting site. The CSS Gallery setup examples above use a voting plugin. You could tailor one of these for a more traditional social voting site, or you could produce a custom template like the one at N4G (News for Gamers) – though I don’t believe they are WordPress-based. But with all the components discussed in this article, a WP-based theme similar to N4G’s is possible. You could also combine the WP Prologue theme with a voting plugin to build a rudimentary voting site.
33. Web portfolio. Designers and other creative types might like to offer an online portfolio showcasing their past work. W web portfolio has elements of an image gallery and a CSS gallery but isn’t necessarily either. One example is Twist’n’Shout’s portfolio. Also, check out blogHelper’s two-part series (part 1, part 2) on how build a WP-based portfolio.

15 Additional Uses of WordPress to Explore

Here are some additional possible uses of WordPress that didn’t have time to research and write up, but wanted to share with you. Much of the technique you need to use WP this way is already discussed above in this article.

34. Church sermons.
35. Fark-like user-submitted links.
36. Forum. Sure, BBPress by Automattic is probably a better choice than a WP-based forum, but the fact is that you can do it.
37. Job listings site.
38. Music archives.
39. Press release site.
40. Project/ task management.
41. Resume.
42. Sales pages.
43. Social network.
44. Short film festival site.
45. Video sharing site.
46. Web command dashboard. (Private site to monitor your sites’ metrics, etc.)
47. Web directory.
48. Web soapbox.

Summary

These lists above are only a sampling of the uses for WordPress. So if you thought WP was only for blogs, hopefully you these examples stir up some ideas for your own projects. (Thanks to all the input by Hive members.) I’ll be covering a lot of these examples in more detail all this year.

There are a number of interesting developments in WordPress and I wanted to share them here, in case you’ve missed them elsewhere.

Prologue: Twitter-Like Microblogging Theme

Twitter microblogging is a growing phenomenon, despite the fact that there are actually more robust alternatives such as jaiku, tumblr. But Twitter’s popularity has probably reached enough critical mass that more new users will gravitate there. In fact, I regularly get emails saying so and so is now following me, despite the fact that I almost never Twitter. (Too much inane Twittering for my liking, and I don’t really have much… er.. little to say.)

But if you like the general functionality, there’s a new alternative that lets you build your own Twitter-like clone in WordPress: the Prologue theme. It’s clean and crisp, and you can add messages/ posts right on the home page. (Only registered users can see the textarea for entering messages.)

Each post has its own permalink page, so comments can be added if someone chooses to. There are no 140-char limits, and you can embed media (images, video) as with any WordPress posts. One awkward issue is that if you want any text with a hyperlink, you do have to enter in the necessary HTML code in the textarea. (Another problem is that the only way to get author images displaying is for authors to have a registered gravatar. It’d be nice to be able to alternately upload an image through each user’s WP control panel.)

Prologue is great for Twitter-like blogs with multiple authors, or even for groups that need to communicate with each other through short messages rather than CC’d email messages. (However, if you need for Prologue posts to be visible to members only, you’d have to tweak the theme’s WP code to automatically set every new post to “private”. You’d also have to provide a single password to all members.)

This theme just goes to show how flexible WordPress is for building non-blog content management systems.

WordPress-Based Contact Manager

WordPress, like some other blogging platforms, has always had the potential as a full-blown CMS (Content Management System). That’s being proven more often these days, what with all the “magazine themes”, Twitter-clones like Prologue (above), Popurls clones, and now Design Canopy’s WP-based Contact Manager theme.

This Contact Manager isn’t a standalone theme per se. There are a couple of plugins that must be installed for it to function. However, these are included with the download. Check out the demo to get a feel for it.

Something like this is ideal for bloggers that are bootstrapping an online publishing business. You can keep track of colleagues as well as advertisers.

[via: Automattic WP Publisher Blog]

WordPress Image Rotator Plugin

If you want to add some visual impact to your blog theme, an image rotator might be the way. CNP_Studio built an Image Rotator plugin for Sony Computer Entertainment America but were given permission to share it with the WordPress community. I have not tried it but with a bit of tweaking, it might work as an ad rotator.

[via: Automattic WP Publisher Blog]

WordPress PodPress Podcasting Plugin

The PodPress plugin is by no means new. I used it in a couple of test sites either 2006 or possibly 2005 (my memory is hazy), and it’s a relatively easy plugin to use. But it was mentioned on the WP Publisher Blog, and with all the members of the Performancing Hive who have started podcasts, I thought I’d point out PodPress. I’ve used it showcase some of my instrumental compositions. It even has support for premium (paid) content and for playing in a popup window. (Note: the demos are for WP 1.5x and 2.1. I’ve only ever used this plugin with 1.5x.)

WordPress 2.5 Coming

Personally, I’ve disliked every version of WordPress since about 2.3 onwards. I go out of my way to avoid these versions on any of my sites, depending on how much time I have to manually install, say, 2.2. But many of the new plugins and themes require 2.3 and above. WP version 2.5 will be released soon and it’s supposedly packed with lots of new features. Whether or not you can easily upgrade from pre-2.2 versions up to 2.5 remains to be seen but I’m guessing not. If you’re the type to install the latest WP version as soon as it comes out, I suggest you make sure you realize what you’re getting into.

You can read more about WordPress 2.5 and WordPress goings on over at Blog Herald, on Lorelle’s WordPress Wednesdays posts.

Performancing is glad to announce the release of its latest premium quality WordPress Theme, brought to you by the designers at the 449. The Simplicity Theme is not only clean and bright, but it also features big bold headlines that will grab your readers’ attention.

My initial impression is that the Simplicity Theme would do very well as a financial blog as well as tech and web 2.0. It would also work well for any environmental or “green” themed blog.

In addition to the beautiful design, the code is clean and highly optimized, supports widgets and also the new tag feature in the last versions of WordPress.

View a live demo of the them here.
Download the theme here.

This is a search experiment/tutorial using the term tartans. I’m basically taking the term pair tartan/tartans and leading you through the process of creating a page that might rank well for the term.

Obviously, since this is a search tutorial, it’s not going to be as semantically optimized for the term “tartan” as I’d like, but that is ok. It’s only meant as an example, and is certainly not fleshed out as thoroughly as I’d do in a real world situation. The goal is just to give you a structural overview for creating a solid resource landing page.

So, the first thing I like to do when creating a landing page for the search engines is to be liberal with my use of H2 tags. So why not get started?

Some Great Tartan Images

Now some of you American readers might be wondering what a tartan is. Well, tartans are basically plaid patterns, most commonly found on fabric. They are most commonly found in Scotland, Ireland and Britain. The most familiar use of tartans are as kilts (i.e. the guys in Braveheart)

If you look closely, you’ll notice a plaid brown pattern in Mel Gibson’s uniform for the movie.

Today, tartan’s tend to be more colorful and are used for sport, hobby and fashion:

As you can see, tartans are used in kilts for hunting, bagpipe playing and most popular of all, in celebrations like weddings. But tartans aren’t reserved for men. In fact, the tartan skirt was just featured on American Idol season 7 last night:

As you can tell, one of my strategies for nailing search on a term is using plenty of images with good descriptive alt text. But let’s not stop with tartan images. There’s lots more to do.

Various Uses For Tartans

Tartans are commonly used for vests, kilts, scarfs, table cloths, and many other fabric items. But you’d be amazed at the other uses that people have found for tartans. In fact, just the other day I came across an article that listed 10 (in my view) Crazy Uses of Tartan. From plaid limos to plaid sheep, the tartan seems to be taking over.

Some Tartan Videos

The Tartan Terrors Comedy Show

Scotland’s Tartan Day Football Match

After some fairly solid information and images, I like to throw in some semantically related video…as you can see above;-) And finally, I’ll end things by listing some authoritative and trusted resources on the topic of tartans.

Information and Resources on Tartans

What is a tartan? Ask Wikipedia.
Scottish Tartan Authority Charity
Scottish Tartans
Tartans of Scotland

Michael Gray has an excellent post about optimizing your WordPress page titles, post titles, and page slugs.

He gives his reasons for taking these titles and this slug

Page Title: Jamie Lynn Spears is Pregnant
Post Title: Jamie Lynn Spears is Pregnant
Page Slug: jamie-lynn-spears-is-pregnant

and changing them to these titles and this slug

Page Title: Jamie Lynn Spears is Pregnant and Having a Baby
Post Title: Britney Spears 16 Year Old Sister Jamie Lynn Has a Baby Bump
Page Slug: jamie-lynn-spears-baby-pregnant

Principles for WordPress Onpage Optimization

For page titles (aka title tags), the main thing to consider is adding keywords that people search for. Page titles are the most important on page SEO factor, so make sure to insert highly searched and/or low competition keywords in your page title. That’s why Michael has pregnant and having a baby in his page title even though it’s redundant. Also, you’ll need this SEO Title Plugin to change your page titles. WordPress normally takes your post title and also makes it your page title.

Post titles should be attractive and draw the reader in. These titles are shown on RSS feeds and they are the first words most visitors will notice on the page.

Optimizing the page slug is not difficult. Make sure it’s not too long because long URLs are ugly and look spammy. However, try to add as many keywords as you can while keeping it short. Most people don’t look closely at the URL so you can take out non-keywords like is, are, with, and by.

Check out Michael’s post to learn more about crafting page titles, post titles, and page slugs on your WordPress blog.

Where Can I Change My Titles and Slugs?

Here is a short video to show you where you can change your titles and slugs on WordPress.

Here is the link mentioned in the video.

Stephen Spencer’s SEO Title Plugin: http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/