WordPress

John Pratt recently published a guest post on HackWordPress.com entitled, 10 ways to improve the navigation within WordPress. Some of the tips include: Adding breadcrumbs, bold pagination on single pages, multi paged navigation, and related posts. The list even includes links to plugins which you can use to put some of the tips in action.

On my own WordPress blog, I am using tips 2, variation of 3, 4, and 6. Have you worked on improving your WordPress blog navigation lately?

Don’t forget about the Exclude Pages plugin as that can help you improve navigation as well.

Speckyboy who is always good for creating linkbait has created a list of 18 different WordPress plugins that give WordPress that professional feel. Among the list of plugins are:

• Business Directory
• Disclosure
• Google Maps In Posts
• WP List Files
• List Pages Plus

To see the entire list, be sure to check out speckyboy.com.

Remember back in early July when I described how change was on the horizon for Performancing? Well, not much has changed since then but I am trying to take steps to bring most of your ideas as well as mine to the forefront. One of the ideas I proposed was something called Project Launchpad. Here is what Project Launchpad is all about. The Hive is filled with an abundant amount of talent, so much so that most of the members are launching their own projects. As a way of saying thanks to them for being a part of this wonderful community, I will be featuring projects from time to time from these individuals. These projects may consist of services, new websites, software, ebooks, etc. If you are interested in having your project seen by almost 10,000 RSS subscribers and thousands more unique visitors, join the Hive and become part of the collective.

With that said, I want to congratulate Lachy (pronounced Locky) better known as eversuns on the hive for being the first one to be featured on project launchpad.

Lachy has recently launched a PSD to WordPress design service which takes a user given PSD design mock up and then slices it up into a WordPress theme. Although the domain name threw me for a loop (PSDtoWordPress.com, thought he was making WordPress.com themes) Lachy was quick to note that the themes are for the stand alone version of WordPress. I recently interviewed Lachy to get a sense of what this service is all about. Truthfully, there are many services just like his but I wanted to find out what makes his different than the rest.

JeffC – First off, who designed PSD To WordPress because the design is beautiful?

Lachy – A wonderful designer by the name of Chris Rowe. You can see his portfolio over at Onvo.co.uk.

JeffC – Considering there are a number of PSD to Website services available, what are some points of difference that you offer?

Lachy – That’s true, there are a whole load of PSD to Website services available, but how many are dedicated to WordPress? Not many. The PSD to Website services might have some guy that learned how to code for wordpress that afternoon because they have a client that needs it, but we are dedicated to WordPress!

JeffC – How much demand have you seen for a service such as yours. Considering that if someone has the skills to create a PSD sketch of a particular design, don’t they already have the skills to create it into a usable design?

Lachy – The demand is huge! I’ve worked with a few other PSD to Website services and the percentage of WordPress clients is very high. Some of the PSD to Website services are companies that make their living off these sites. Hopefully, that will be me in a few years. A designer can design a wonderful PSD, but a high percentage of them don’t even know what xHTML stands for!

There is a big difference between knowing how to code xHTML / CSS and slicing it in Photoshop and telling it to save you an HTML file.

JeffC – I noticed that the checkout system for your service has a variable rate depending on the circumstances selected by the customer. What is the cheapest price available for customers and if I wanted the bells and whistles, how much are we talking?

Lachy – If you are just after a basic WordPress package, with 4 pages or less (Homepage, Blog, Single, Page template) and a 10 day turnaround you can get that price down to $230. If you need it done in 1 day it’s $400. But we keep the default on 3 with $300. This quote is quite basic, if you need a lot more pages, an options page, plugin integration the price starts to go up a bit, but we discuss that in email and try to give the client the best deal for their budget.

Two examples of Lachy’s work. CastleAccess.com and Georanking.com

JeffC – So lets say I pay you the amount listed on your website for the project. What happens if I am not satisfied with the work? Do you offer any type of guarantees or money back offers?

Lachy – I think an excerpt from the About Us page summarizes that. “We rest assured on our ability to turn your design into your dream WordPress theme so much, that we are willing to give your money back if you aren’t satisfied with it for any reason. If for some reason we can’t do the order, or you need to cancel the order before we’ve started, you’ll get every last penny back with no questions asked.”

We will do our very best to satisfy you, and if you’re not, we will try fix the problem. But if worst comes to worst, we will refund you, but you will not get the completed project files.

JeffC – Seems fair enough. Out of curiosity, I know Automattic is not too keen with people using WordPress as part of their domain name. Have they approached you about possible trademark issues?

Lachy – I came across that just after launch. Extremely disappointed! They have not approached me, but with the amount of WordPress related websites out there, with WordPress in the domain, I don’t think they will have too much of a problem. If they email me, we will sort it out there.

JeffC – You obviously know a bit about design, coding etc. What sort of tips can you provide to the readers of Performancing that relate to WordPress or the use of Photoshop?

Lachy – Read read read! I recommend heading down, going through the WordPress codex, downloading themes from quality makers like “Smashing Magazine” and looking at their code. Then just practice, practice and practice a little more.

Conclusion:

As mentioned previously, there are plenty of individuals as well as design firms that specialize in turning PSD files into usable websites. Some of these firms claim they can do PSD to XHTML in 24 hours or less. Lachy has a beautiful website and a very simple order form on his side of the coin. From all of us here at Performancing, we wish him the best of luck on his endeavor.

Before you go, Lachy has provided a special discount code for Performancing.com readers. This coupon code is available to whom ever wants to use it. When checking out, use the code PERF01. This code will net you 10% off your total.

If you end up being one of Lachy’s customers, don’t forget to come back to this post and tell us about your experience.

One of the annoying things that I dislike about WordPress is the inability to exclude certain pages that I create from showing up in the navigation area of my theme. Granted, I could manually exclude these pages via the wp_list_pages template tag but that is a bit mundane.

Introducing Exclude Pages. This plugin written by Simon Wheatley is exactly what the doctor ordered. Once installed, a check box is added to the page creation/editing panel. If selected, the page will be included in the navigation and other user menus. If unchecked, the page is excluded from not only the navigation menus, but on other menus you may have such as in the sidebar. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to hard link to those items for sidebar usage.

Although the official plugin page states that the plugin is compatible up to version 2.5, I gave it a try on my local install of WordPress 2.6.2 and it worked without a hitch. Perhaps at some point in the future, we’ll be able to create specific navigation links or separate navigation from actual pages without the need to exclude page IDs.

Let me know in the comments if this tip helped you out and if you would like to see more posts like these in the future.

After browsing through a ton of free themes that are released for WordPress every month, it is easy to see that the same styles, layouts, etc, are usually the norm. However, I came across a cool looking theme that doesn’t have the greatest source code but will provide a unique look for your blog.

The theme is called Under Water. Under Water is a two column theme sporting a blue, white, purple, grey and black color scheme. It’s fixed width and widget ready.

There are a couple of things I really enjoy about this theme. The first is the navigation. The navigation reminds me of those banners you see hanging from the rafters inside of arenas. The search box is not your normal rectangle but instead is a stylish graphic that blends in with the navigation graphics. One thing that should pop out at you is the post layout. The date of the post is presented in a curvy graphic to the left of the post while the bottom right section of the post has a ‘page turning‘ type of look to it. The sidebar is styled with graphics with one of the corners being curved. In total, this theme has many graphical elements that most other WordPress themes don’t have. Even the footer looks good.

If you’d like to see a live demo of this theme, click here. To download this theme, visit the themes homepage.

Out of cruiosities sake, I browsed to the WordPress release archive and picked out the oldest version available which is 0.71 released on May 27th, 2003. I use WampServer on my PC which lets me turn my machine into a local web server. Because this version of WordPress is so old, I ended up having to install an older version of Apache (2.0.63) along side an older version of PHP (4.4.8). Come along for the ride as we look at WordPress when it was just a baby.

My initial reaction to seeing the WordPress administration area was filled with amusement. In this archaic version of the software, there is no dashboard, no fancy boxes and no area dedicated for news from within the WordPress community. Upon entering the administration area, the first thing that is loaded is the Post/Edit screens allowing you to get right to work on creating content. The following screenshot is what the write panel looks like.

For those of you wondering what the editor formatting buttons looked like, here you go.

Configuring this version of WordPress is of course much simpler than todays version. To highlight just how simple configuring WordPress was, look at the configuration options in the following screenshot.

Next up is category configuration. The interface provides a quick and easy way to add or delete categories. In today’s version of WordPress, categories that are deleted which contain posts within them are moved to a category called Uncategorized. In WordPress 0.71, posts were moved to a General category. Also, there is no way to configure a category slug or various other options we take for granted today.

Editing templates in WordPress 0.71 is a rudimentary process but it’s nice to see that the live template editor in .71 is still available in todays version of WordPress. For the developers out their or for those curious, here is some of the code that appears in the live template editor.

Next up is the link manager. Even the old link manager had support for importing blog rolls. Also worthy of note is that WordPress .71 also had a Link This bookmarklet to easily add links to your blogroll. There is a somewhat humorous message at the bottom when describing the bookmarklet: “You can drag link this to your toolbar and when you click it a window will pop up that will allow you to add whatever site you’re on to your links! Right now this only works on Mozilla or Netscape, but we’re working on it.”

Interestingly, the next link in the administration panel is called My Profile. Clicking it actually opens a new window and doesn’t load the configuration options within the admin panel. In fact, the window now opens up in a static sized FireFox window that is really annoying. Thankfully, that is not the case in todays version of WordPress. Here is what the profile manager looked like.

The next two links in the administration panel are View Site and Logout. In this screenshot, you can get a glimpse as to the administration navigation.

Conclusion:

I was not aware of WordPress or in this case, B2 at the time. I was still caught up in the PostNuke, PHP-Nuke and e107 content management systems. I never became aware of WordPress until 2007. I always find it interesting to dive into the WordPress Codex to see articles for versions of WordPress that are 3-4 years old to see the thought process of that time period. As you can tell, WordPress has evolved significantly in the past 5 years in all aspects. Bits and pieces of .71 are still in 2.6.2 in some way or another and I believe WordPress will continue to blow us away in the months and years to come.

Do you have any nostalgic moments relating to WordPress? Perhaps you have memories of what things used to be like before WordPress 2.6.2? Tell me how you first came about using WordPress in the comments!

Just received my Netenberg Newsletter informing me that a new version of Fantastico De Luxe has been released (2.10.4 r20). Fantastico is a popular script installer which usually comes bundled with webhosting packages that contain cPanel. One of the upgrades in this newest version is taking WordPress from 2.6.1 to 2.6.2. Here is a list of other upgrades provided in this new release.

• Crafty Syntax Live Help: 2.14.6 -> 2.15.0
• Gallery: 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6
• Geeklog: 1.4.1 -> 1.5.1
• Joomla 1.5: 1.5.6 -> 1.5.7
• phpBB: 3.0.1 -> 3.0.2
• phpCOIN: 1.4.1 -> 1.4.4
• Soholaunch Pro Edition: 4.9.1 r10 -> 4.9.3 r14
• TYPO3: 4.1.5 -> 4.2.1
• WordPress: 2.6.1 -> 2.6.2

During one months time, there are many plugins that are released for WordPress. At the end of each month, I’ll be compiling a list of plugins that have been released during the month that have caught my eye. This compilation is for the month of September.

Apache Google 404 – AskApache Google 404 is a must-have WordPress plugin that uses some ajax and a couple tricks to display a very helpful and SEO Error Page. The default displays Google Search Results for images, news, blogs, videos, web, custom search engine, and your own site.

Search Engine Keywords – A WordPress plugin that can be used to correlate the keywords used to find your web page on the search engines to a box where you can put anything you want, for example your affiliate links.

Tweet This – A plugin that adds a Twitter icon to every post and page, so your readers can share your blog entries on their Twitter accounts with ease. Shortens URLs in advance. Tested in WordPress 2.6.2, 2.0.11, and 1.5.

Favicon Images for Comments – Favicon Images for WordPress Comments lets you add favicon images to your blog comments using the URL of your visitor’s website.

Post Ticker – Displays a scrolling list of post titles and excerpts with links to post.

TimeZoneCalculator – Calculates different times and dates in time zones with respect to daylight saving on basis of UTC.

Vipers Video Quicktags – Just simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box — easy as that. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, colors, alignment on the page) and much more. Your site will even stay (X)HTML valid unlike with the code provided by most video sites.

Insights – (I’ll be reviewing this plugin for an upcoming Performancing post) Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time the appeal of your posts.

Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on your blog. This helps reduce the amount of spam aimed at old posts.

Progressive License – Progressive license is a plugin that gives authors an opportunity to put Creative Commons or Custom Licenses on their content.

Interactive Video – Enhance your blog with both basic and advanced video capabilities. Upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix video content, enable video responses, manage and track your video content and much more.

WP125 – The WP125 plugin can help you manage your ads more efficiently, leaving you with more time to write new posts.

WP Calendar – Calendar is an events calendar for WordPress that allows you to publish a monthly breakdown of your appointments and important dates for your blog readers to view.

wpSEO – The wpSEO plugin helps you optimize your blog for SEO purposes by eliminating issues with duplicate content and specifying meta tags and page titles for the different pages of your blog. Page in German

Feed Pauser – Feed pauser, pauses a post from being made available through RSS.

MTR Podcast Recorder – MTR Podcast Recorder offers real-time recording that is saved on the same server where WordPress is installed. All recordings will be saved into the MP3 format using LAME encoder.

Find and Replacer – Find and replacer is a powerful search plugin for replacing tags and text throughout your blog installation.

Tabbed Widgets – Tabbed interfaces are the most common on newspaper type website where they can save a lot of vertical space and make it look less cluttered. This plugin allows you to create them.

WordPress S3 – This WordPress plugin allows you to use Amazon’s Simple Storage Service to host your media for your WordPress powered blog.

Smart 404 – Instead of quickly giving up when a visitor reaches a page that doesn’t exist, make an effort to guess what they were after in the first place. This plugin will perform a search of your posts, tags and categories, using keywords from the requested URL. If there’s a match, redirect to that page instead of showing the error. If there’s more than one match, the 404 template can use some template tags to provide a list of suggestions to the visitor.

wpAFFI – Simple and rapid technique to hide your affiliate links.

Terms of Use – Instead of making the user agree to the Terms of Use when they join the site this plugin makes them agree to the terms and conditions the first time they login.

WordPress Menu Creator – The Brokers Edge developed this free plugin to provide website owners with true easy to manage easy to configure menu solution for WordPress or WordPress CMS sites.

DashboardZone – This plugin will help you and your readers to keep you on track for reaching your targets. We created this wordpress plugin that monitors the various blog goals and in an effort tries to engage your readers more effectively.

Information regarding plugin releases was taken from http://weblogtoolscollection.com