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February 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

WP Austin meetup 7 Feb: Brainstorming direction for WP Austin

Meetup announcement:

The Hands-On WordPress meetups (the second meetup of the month) will move from second Tuesdays of the month to fourth Tuesdays of the month.

Tonight’s meetup:

  • Who is WordPress Austin?
  • Where are we going?
  • How can we improve things? What can we do that’s different? What do people want to see?

Who are we?

Website could be improved:

  • Allow registration on website
  • Give registered users profile pages
  • Weekly roundup of what members are writing on their blogs
  • Continue with postings of meetup summaries

Your ideas? Brainstorming…

These are some ideas that came out of our discussion, as people brought them up. It’s a rough list to be sure. Please add your own ideas or feedback on these in the comments for this post.

  • All of our ideas on the google group don’t get searched by google in a way that’s searchable outside of the group. Would be great to have the discussion archived under WP Austin. However, the google group option does allow nice functionality including search functions, email or web access. How best to handle this?
  • Videotape meetings and post on website; registered members can view. Also livestreaming. We have been livestreaming many of our meetings but some still need to be posted. We need to make sure the links to slideshows, videos etc get posted on the WP Austin site.
  • How do we generate meetup topics? Could we use the website to generate ideas/wishlists?
  • Discussion forum? Needs development time, moderation.
  • What are the goals of the organization? Maybe we need to consider this question…
  • We like the idea user/member created content. Build an audience for our topics/conversations on Facebook, Twitter etc.
  • Do we want original blog posts from members or do we link to other blogs?
  • We can build up the WP Austin group and our reputation.
  • We don’t publicize our site. Our online presences (google group, WP Austin, meetup, etc is spread apart and not connected). How do we fix these things and tie everything together? Need to bring content channels together.
  • Can we get away from Google Groups?
  • Code snippets, tips
  • Places to volunteer!!
  • Blog AND Forum
  • What is uniquely WordPress Austin? What can we offer that isn’t just reinventing the wheel?
  • Burning question list… what do we want someone to answer?
  • Resource database and Q&A
  • Voting on what topics do we want, opportunities to break away to do smaller topics; really important for the user to make decisions and steer the direction of the site, the meetups. We have a great and vital community!
  • Membership directory – put that into profiles, everyone can put their specialties in their profile; needs to be searchable
  • Don’t forget the beginners!! Beginners’ corner of website?
  • Open mic night… membership all contributes ideas on a topic, such as plugins, themes, etc. Five minute presentations on how to solve problems, etc.
  • If we bring in new content, we need to be able to index it in an effective and agreed-upon tagging system

Please use the WP Austin Google Group to discuss these ideas more! And if you weren’t at the meetup, feel free to chime in!

 

Austin WordCamp 2012 – May 19, 2012

It will take place on the AOMA campus on Westgate. Tickets will not exceed $20 and that includes a t-shirt and lunch.

We will have a general track and a bloggers’ track.

Everyone on the WP Austin meetup group will receive a message soon seeking volunteers. You will hear more details about location, signup, speakers/topics. Clark Wimberly will be doing the website which will launch in time for SxSW.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: meetup
January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Introducing WordPress 3.3.1

Welcome to the first WordPress meetup of the year!

 

Announcements

1. WordCamp

We will be having a WordCamp Austin in May. We will be contacting the group for volunteers in February and have a website up then; we will be selling tickets in March.

WordCamp will be held on May 19th, South Austin at AOMA

We will be able to have 230 attendees so a lot more people will be able to attend this year! Tickets will be in the $20 range and will include meals and a t-shirt. But to make that happen, we need sponsors! If you know of a business that might like to sponsor the group, we will be seeking that information in February as well.

2. Austin AIR: Accessible Internet Rally

We need teams who want to participate in the competition to build an accessible website for a non-profit organization. Part of the program includes training on how to make a website accessible. Even if you’re a freelancer or individual who doesn’t have a team already, you can recruit from other folks in WordPress Austin or contact AIR to help you find others. Many members of WordPress Austin, including Pat, Nick, Sandi and Jackie, have served on teams in the past so feel free to seek us out if you want to learn more about how it works and what you can get out of the experience.

For more information, visit AIR: Accessible Internet Rally

Austin Adobe User Group: InDesign Basics by Graphics Designer Veronica Primeaux at Friday January 13, 2012 (1:15 – 3:30)

Date: Friday January 13, 2012

Time: 1:15-3:30 p.m. Central Standard Time

Place: New Horizons Computer Learning Center (300 E Highland Mall Blvd. Suite 100) turn north onto Jonathan and park in the Visitor parking area

RSVP: To help our host New Horizons Computer Learning Center select a room that comfortably seats everyone, please RSVP to this free event

More info: http://austinadobeusergroup.com/

 

 

What’s new with WordPress 3.3.1

Quick highlights of what’s new and fun by Pat Ramsey. Presentation at http://wp3.slash25.com/

  • WordPress 3.3 has been downloaded over 4.5 million times already! That’s a LOT of websites!
  • 3.3 is the major release; 3.3.1 is a patch update.

1. Uploading media

  • Single upload button on the editor
  • file-type detection
  • drag and drop upload

2. Dashboard design

  • Flyout menus: keeps you from having to scroll a lot
  • Persistent toolbar (combines admin bar and header)
  • Responsive design: the admin area is more responsive for varying screen sizes
  • The toolbar has links to make new posts, pages, etc., link to visit site, and other goodies

3. New feature pointer: boxes that open up announcing new features with the option to get more info or dismiss

4. New Welcome/About WordPress splash screen that loads when you update your version

5. Better co-editing: releases post-locks immediately when one person finishes editing so another can access the page etc.

6. Widgets get saved if you switch between themes – y0u no longer have to reset them if you swap out themes

7. Tumblr import

  • Correctly handles post formats
  • WP-Cron based background importing: start it up, then come back to see how far it’s gotten
  • Duplicate checking, will not create duplicate imported posts
  • Imports posts, drafts, pages
  • Media sideloading (for audio, video and image posts)

8. %postname% permalinks

  • Using just  /%postname%/ used to cause a performance hit but no longer! We recommend leaving this alone for existing sites unless you redirect your links.

9. WP_Editor

10. Help and screen API changes

11. is_main_query()

  • Enables someone to hook into pre_get_posts and modify only the main query. Conditional function that will allow you to do one thing and ignore the others. Allows you are only modifying the part of the site you want. Simplifies life for developers.

12. More 3.3 dev goodness

 

Questions:
Does 3.3.1 work with all browsers? Yes, other than IE 6
Backups: VaultPress, Backup Buddy are good paid backup services. Many of the major hosting companies like HostMonster, HostGator, and BlueHost will either do backups for you or will allow you to do global backups yourself.

 

Filed Under: meetup, WordPress News
November 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

Informal WordPress Q&A Gathering

Announcement:

Austin WordCamp -  tentatively to happen on a Saturday during the last two weeks in May. We are currently seeking a venue for 300 people that would allow us to split into two tracks, would be low-cost, have internet access and would allow us to cater our own food. If you have any good leads, please contact Sandi at sbatik@pleiadesservices.com.

 

 

Tonight we’re taking questions from the group.

 

What’s a good theme to start with?

Each major release of WordPress comes with a default theme that has the most up-to-date code. Right now the default theme is Twenty-Eleven, and it’s a great place to start and get used to the way WordPress works.

 

How do you create a child theme?

When you want to make changes to the way a theme works, it’s a good idea to make a child theme first.

Create a new theme folder and add a .css file with the following at the top:

/*
Theme Name: Twenty Ten Child
Template: twentyeleven
*/
@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

(Visit my page that explains step-by-step on how to create a child theme for Twenty Ten)

 

Drupal vs WordPress

Drupal is more powerful but you really need to be willing to go into code. WordPress is easier to get started with and requires less technical skill to be successful.

As one person put it, Drupal is like a cascading brick wall, but if you can get through the hurdles it can be really powerful.

 

What’s a good slideshow?

When you’re looking for a slider or any other plugin, you may find that the WordPress plugin repository is a good place to start, though it is also sometimes hard to find what you’re looking for.

 

Social Media buttons

 

Video questions

Any good video carousels?

If you have video on your homepage, does it hurt your rankings with Google?

Probably not unless it impacts the load time significantly.

How do you generate thumbnails for videos rather than photos?

 

How do you modify more of your theme beyond the basic options using CSS & PHP?

When you’re in the admin panel, under Appearance you can go into the Editor and access the PHP and CSS files. The files also can be accessed via FTP: public_html > wp-content > themes > the theme you want modify.

 

Backing up your theme and your site

WordPress creates your site dynamically. You have your theme files (the appearance) as well as a database (all of your content).

To backup your appearance, you can download the wp-content or theme folder to your desktop. There are also some plugins that will allow you to backup your site and your database.

WordPress offers information on backing up your site.

There is also a nice plugin called BackUpWordPress that backs up both your theme files and your database.

 

How do you make your site more secure from bots randomly seeking out your site and trying to find vulnerabilities?

You may find Nick’s posts on WordPress security useful.

 

Why is my site not loading right?

Load order is important. If unstyled content loads before your stylesheet, it will display improperly. You may also want to play with where  javascript loads.

 

What is Firebug?

Firebug is an add-on for Firefox that allows you to view and play with the HTML and CSS code. Have fun with it!

Filed Under: Tips and Tools, WordPress Beginners Track
October 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

WordPress Show and Tell

Tonight we welcome a few of our regular WordPress Austin members who graciously agreed to show off their websites and tell us a little about them.

 

Debra Schmidt, Cousins Count

A blog Debra started 4 1/2 years ago. It runs using the Thesis theme. Her audience is a few hundred people in her family; Debra is one of 67 first cousins. One of her challenges was that she had to sell her mom on the site and ensure everyone’s privacy. She has to be careful of which photos get posted because her audience is “fussy.”

Every family member has a category – all cousins “count”.

Debra is the only blogger – she’s the family chronicler. She’s written about 1200 blog posts. Her goal is to keep her family connected and find each other. Although people are also on Facebook, this is a more centralized way to find things. She posts memorials, weddings, photos… and writes whatever she wants about them. Fortunately she’s only had to take down a few things! :)

She used to be on WordPress.com but switched to a self-hosted site so that she could have ads and a few other features that aren’t allowed  using the free WordPress hosted option.

 

Eric Weiss, Skeptics on the .Net

He found that there was a lot of skeptical information on the web but not any centralized source of information. He organizes information by media type, subject matter, location. He has several volunteers who help contribute to the site, from several countries. He links to blogs, podcasts and other media.

Built on Newsy by Themify. He really likes the toolbar they offer.

In category views, the Alphabetical List plugin allows the posts to show in alpha order rather than in chronological order. Display Scheduled Posts gives you a shortcode to display all scheduled posts with the date that they’re scheduled to be posted. If you put it on a private page, you can see all the posts outside of the dashboard posts view.

Twitter Tools is a good plugin to post to twitter; IFTTT allows you to redirect your RSS feed to twitter, among other things.

He uses VaultPress, a backup and security option run by Automattic for $15/month. If your site gets hacked, they will fix it for you. He uses W3 Total Cache to help speed up his site.

Runs a separate blog which is an internal conversation among his volunters running the P2 theme. It’s great if you’re working on a collaborative post.

Even with his excellent presentation, the audience remained skeptical…. (just kidding!)

 

Lori Luza Austin No Kidding! and Austin ‘Canes

Lori wrote up details about her sites at her personal blog on loriluza.com, including the plugins she likes.

AustinChildFree.org runs on the Twenty Eleven (WordPress default) theme; AustinCanes.com runs on Weaver 2.2.4.

She uses these themes because these are non-profit organizations, and she wanted the sites to be easy to maintain and easy to change their basic look and feel even by someone who may not be very technically-inclined.

She uses AdRotate to manage her little ads on the site; they change monthly and the plugin sends a notification letting her know the ad is about to expire (in case she needed to bill someone). She recommends Events Manager for her calendars. It’s easy for people to book an event. She has noted that she’s not happy with how it displays the calendar.

Mobile Theme Switcher allows people to see the full site on an iPad.

Lori suggested doing a Creative Commons search on Flickr for free photos for your blogs. For backgrounds, she suggests bgpatterns.com as a fun toy to play with.

 

 

We discussed events calendars. Pat suggested amr events list and calendars .

Looking for themes? Themefinder from wpcandy.com

We ended the evening talking about themes and development tools. We talked about Builder, a WordPress theme framework, as well as various theme frameworks and the idea of building a custom theme.

 

Filed Under: meetup, Tips and Tools, WordPress Themes
October 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

WordPress Meetup: Q&A

Thanks to Clark Wimberly for setting up tonight’s meetup. See his notes at clarklab.net.

Look for the video online soon at Austin Tech Videos.

Using a staging server to deploy changes

Presented by Chris Lazan and Mark Kelnar of WP Engine

They demonstrated their staging system which allows you to upload plugins and themes and test them before making the changes live.

If you’re not using the WP Engine hosting, the best plan is to use phpMyAdmin to backup your site, work on the site on a localhost, and then upload it to the live site.

Bill Erickson has a great post on his site that details out the process to move a site from a local/development server to the live site.

 

What is a custom post type

Presented by Clark Wimberly

What is a post?

  • Posts – blog posts, which are the chronologically-based posts
  • Pages hierarchical organization
  • Attachments,  Revisions and Nav menus are also posts

Custom post types can add new content by allowing you to add additional types of posts.

When you register a new custom post type, it is separate from normal loops/queries. They won’t show in RSS or widgets unless you want them to.

Register a new custom post type in functions.php. You need to define just a few options but that’s it. The new post type will show up in your WP-admin immediately.

See Clark’s presentation for an explanation of how to create a custom post type. Justin Tadlock also offers a tutorial on how to set up a custom post type.

Themergency has a code generator for custom post types.

More info on custom post types at WP Beginner.

 

Keeping your HTML safe from the editor

Presented by Pat Ramsey

The problem: if you put HTML in your page/post, it can get corrupted if someone goes in to edit that page later. If you create a shortcode, you can place a marker in the page to some HTML that resides in your functions file rather than in your HTML code in the editor.

Shortcodes are text in [brackets].

He showed code for your functions.php file to create different shortcodes.

This is particularly useful for adding HTML to widgets. You can pop in a shortcode into a text widget rather than HTML code. You will have to enable this in your functions file.

You can read more about shortcodes on Bill Erickson’s site as well as the WordPress codex.

 

WordPress beyond blogging

Presented by Jo Carrington

Using WordPress as a content management system: allows us to define any arbitrary amount of content like posts and pages. Can use custom post types to create new content areas.

How to create custom post types with plugins.

Let’s pretend we have a bookstore website. We would need:

  • Posts
  • Pages
  • Books: Title, Publisher, Author, ISBN, Price (each of these is a field)
  • Staff: Name, Photo, Bio, Twitter
  • Events: Name, Time, Description

Two plugins:

Create the new custom post type with More Types. Then you can add additional fields with More Fields. You will need to edit your template file (php file) with a WordPress hook to get this information and display it. Go to the WordPress Codex for the get post meta code to add the code into your site.

 

What is the Loop?

presented by Nick Batik (our brave soul for the evening)

The WordPress loop basically does this:

 if there are posts

    while (there are posts)

    do something

end

 An example of the loop in the WordPress Codex – see the section “the World’s Simplest Index Page” for a simple example of the loop in action.

The loop is the core of every single page displayed on your website. Every page/post on your site will run the loop, even if there’s just one post.

Look at the template files for the default WordPress theme Twenty Eleven for different examples of the loop.

One suggestion from the group: the premium plugin Loop Buddy allows to modify the loop without getting into the code.

Filed Under: meetup, Tips and Tools
September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

WordPress for Bloggers

Tonight we welcome Julie Gomoll and Clark Wimberly to talk about using WordPress for blogging.

Announcements:

Getting Started with WordPress (WP 101) class: Sept. 20th, 7-9pm at Cospace.

Blogathon Austin – Oct. 1st at Link CoWorking. All-day blogging, conversations, tech support for bloggers. Join us!

Submit a question for next month’s meetup

 

 Julie Gomoll

Julie is a graphic/web designer and entrepreneur. In the 90s Julie started up Go Media, which she sold to Excite. She “rode the internet wave” going from 35 employees to 3500. She started blogging in 2004 or 2005, but when she got into WordPress she felt she could control her own destiny. She feels like she has a lot of power with WordPress without being a coder.

How to develop a content strategy

When you’re planning a blog, you need to have several ideas at hand. You should have a plan for at least a couple of months or you’ll run into trouble. Do they all have to be all long thought-out articles? Actually a mix might be ideal. A long post makes people realize you’re serious. But there’s nothing wrong with a post that’s brief and spontaneous, as in, “this is a cool thing I found today” so you are generating content on a regular basis. A blog is a living thing.

Plugin to help with this process: Editorial Calendar – allows you to plan and schedule your posts.

Reposting content

Actually reposting content is a bad idea because Google will penalize you for duplicate content, even if it’s on another website/blog. But referencing a previous article is a great idea because it will drive more traffic to your site and help with your search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is using keywords, headlines, names of categories and navigation so that when people are searching for things, they will find your blog.

Inserting a link that says “click here” isn’t useful for Google. Instead, make the links contextual, so make your links more along the lines of “see another recipe”.

Coming up with content for your blog

An opportunity for new content that helps also bring traffic to your site: interviews. The subject of your interview will tell their friends, it will add credibility to your site, and is always a good way to generate content if you’re out of ideas. You can ask someone a few questions via email and then post the answers on your blog. Keep in mind that videos are also great but they won’t help you with SEO as much unless there’s a transcription.

Don’t be afraid of controversy!

For photos: try Flickr – search for Creative Commons photos that allow for republishing

Blog design

What’s the difference between a blog and a website? A blog is a website. It just has posts in chronological order with the most recent on the top.

What are good themes? There are great premium themes (ones you have to pay for) including Thesis and Genesis. There are also a lot of great free themes, but there are also some really bad free themes.

Newsletters

Register with MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc. first; they will then have a plugin that you can add to your site. -

Meenews – lets you style your newsletter to match your blog. (Nick recommended)

WP-Instapay – Sales Processing and Order Fulfillment system (Sandi recommended)

How to monetize your blog

Lots of options.

  • Google Adsense – ads on your blog
  • Join ad networks in niche markets
  • Sell your items – ebooks, merchandise
  • Affiliate sites – Amazon Associates, , Commission Junction
     (Keep in mind that you need to state that you are receiving compensation for items. You can have a disclaimer page that states that the read can treat all links as endorsements.)
  • Free stuff (like ebooks) can generate business leads, mailing lists, etc.
  • The best way to monetize your site: If you are becoming an expert and getting traffic, you will gain credibility all over the place. You might be asked to speak at conferences or given other opportunities to consult or write guest blogs – all of which can bring you considerably more compensation than ads or affiliate links will ever achieve.

Building traffic

  • Need really compelling content that people want to read
  • Are people who are looking for that content able to find it?
  • Comment on other blogs
  • Do you have compelling headlines?
  • Write about issues people are searching for
  • Contribute to local print media/newsletter with links to your blog
  • Follow other blogs in your field/subject matter and see what they’re writing about (and do this regularly)

Categorizing and Tagging

Categorizing is great for SEO, especially if the category is in your URL.

Tags are not useful unless you have a strategy for using them. Each tag creates new pages and it can lead to site bloat. However, if you tag effectively, it can keep people on the site as they follow the tags like breadcrumbs.

 

 

Clark Wimberly

All of the notes and links to Clark’s presentation

Clark runs the Android and Me blog.

Backup often: use import and export; back up via FTP; backup with phpMyAdmin; store offline with VP (Vault Press) or other backup plugins.

When code editing (CSS, PHP, etc.) – Edit smarter: use a real text editor; avoid the built-in editor; practice version control; run a development server.

Test smarter: use a staging area; run it locally; do it online with subdomain; find a fancy host.

Know the loop

Own your own theme: learn the template hierarchy; create custom templates; make a child or sibling theme

Google like crazy: Answers for everything; try, try again; check the date; copy and paste and tinker

Filed Under: meetup, SEO/Marketing your site, Tips and Tools, WordPress Beginners Track
September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Managing a freelance WordPress development business

Tonight’s meetup features WordPress Consultant Bill Erickson.

(Live streamed at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/wordpress-austin).

Announcements:

Bill Erickson: Tools for organizing his development business



Video streaming by Ustream

Being a WordPress developer means not just knowing WordPress but how to run a business.

Tips to waste less time communicating with clients

  • Clear communication eliminates frustration & sets expectations
  • How much does it cost – state rates and mimimum charge upfront
  • Give example of projects
  • What services do you provide
  • Stock emails for every kind of client interaction and stage of process

Managing business

  • Uses email as initial form of contact – contact form rather than phone number
  • Clear emails serve as a contract/agreement with client.
  • Once email contact has been established, all information goes into custom CRM (Customer Relationship Management tool) for prospect and project management
  • Clearly communicate scope of work, billing, timeframe
  • Once they agree, invoice is sent out for 25%; project completion at end of one week (not including changes); balance is due in 3 weeks regardless of whether or not the client has all changes in.
  • Everyone on calendar has paid 25%
  • Clear rules and deadlines – everything is organized.
  • Keeps track of time spent, budget, effective hourly rate
  • Tracks inquiries, conversion rate
  • Define time for calls – you can’t get work done if you’re always taking calls. Schedule phone calls, and be accessible by phone. For example: 8-10 am – emails; 10-12 pm – phone calls; 1-5pm – coding
  • Follow WordPress development for information on new features, code
  • WordPress is based on backwards compatibility

Bill’s CRM tool – more info (and download link): http://www.billerickson.net/wordpress-genesis-crm/

Recommends plugins to use with CRM:

When migrating sites, Bill recommends never use WordPress’ Import and Export tools – it doesn’t grab everything, sometimes breaks links. Bill has a different process – visit his post on how to move a website.

Also referenced:
Flex Slider for WP Rotator – plugin developed by Bill Erickson: Turns WP Rotator into FlexSlider, a fully responsive jQuery slider.

Toggl.com – time management/billing tool

 

Filed Under: meetup, Tips and Tools
August 9, 2011 By 1 Comment

Free WordPress Theme Frameworks

Hands-On WordPress meetup 8/9/11

What is a Theme Framework?

According to the WordPress Codex, a theme framework is:

a Theme designed to be a flexible foundation for quicker WordPress development, usually serving as a robust Parent Theme for Child Themes. Some Theme frameworks can also make theme development more accessible, removing the need for programming or design knowledge with options pages.

In some cases a framework may just have robust code “under the hood” making it easier for a theme developer or designer to implement changes, but without necessarily including additional features in the admin panel. Many of these are “blank” themes with very little (to no) CSS code. These can be very powerful foundations for theme design, but are not appropriate for beginners. For others, an entire site can be designed using nothing but the options in the admin area

 

Free frameworks to help non-designers build a site:

Use the simple “check-box” interface to easily change colors, fonts, header and footer, menus, sidebars, theme width, and much more. Then, take control of your content using powerful Per Page and Per Post options, including unlimited custom widget areas. Over 15 page templates, including “Page with Posts” to show posts and content where and how you want. Easy for the newcomer, comprehensive for the expert.

Configure your custom theme: Fixed or flexible width layout, with min/max width, 0 – 4 sidebars, very browser safe (incl. IE6), create custom widget areas, import/export styles (several styles included), color pickers, over 200 options.

 

Blank frameworks:

A rich blogger friendly theme with customizable header, colors and AJAX options; and developer friendly theme with atomic templates and an elegant override hierarchy.

The ultimate in SEO-ready themes, Thematic is a highly extensible, WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, drop-down menus, grid-based layout samples, plugin integration, shortcodes for your footer, & a whole lot more. Perfect for any blog and the starting point for theme development.

Child themes built on Thematic

Starkers is a bare-bones WordPress theme created to act as a starting point for the theme designer.

Free of all style, presentational elements, and non-semantic markup, Starkers is the perfect ‘blank slate’ for your projects, as it’s a stripped-back version of the ‘Twenty Ten’ theme that ships with WordPress.

The Whiteboard framework for WordPress is built to speed up the process of designing and developing a WordPress theme. Whiteboard does so by eliminating the time spent on a website’s generic div structure and WordPress’ back-end PHP that is common to all WordPress themes. Whiteboard also includes non-intrusive code designed to improve the overal WordPress theme in many ways, including SEO, speed, usability, and mobility.

 

A few premium WordPress frameworks:

 

Also of note:

Aaron Brazell’s “Battle of the Titans: Premium Theme Framework Smackdown” (from 2010; some info is likely outdated now).

 

If you have questions about any of this information, feel free to email me or submit your question to the WordPress Austin Google group.

Filed Under: WordPress Beginners Track, WordPress Themes
July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Image Handling in WordPress

In today’s Hands-On WordPress meetup we discussed using the media library to upload and handle images.

Nick demonstrated the basics of adding an image using the upload/insert image option in your WordPress post/page editing window. You can modify your image title, add alternate text, add a caption, and then at the bottom you can choose the layout and size options and then finally, insert into the post.

He also demonstrated how you can go to Library under Media that allows you to batch upload a series of images ahead of time.

The media “Library” includes all images/media associated with a site; the “Gallery” is associated with an individual post or page.

You can manage a given gallery (or call one to a specific place) by using a gallery shortcode. This is a small piece of code included within square brackets [ ]. The details of different options available to you, including number of columns, display order, and so forth, can be viewed via the WordPress Codex. Shortcodes are good when you need to repeatedly place a given photo, because once you know the shortcode for an image, you can use it over and over again easily.

In your admin panel under Settings > Media Settings, you can choose the default size for each image setting (thumbnail, small, medium and large), as well as the location/name of the upload folder for your media. You can also choose the option to organize uploads into folders by date.

You can also upload music, video and PDFs using the media library.

Using featured images: how (or if) this is used is entirely theme-dependent. To select one, choose a photo by selecting ‘use as featured image’ in the media uploader. In Twenty-Eleven (the default theme for WordPress 3.2) it will place the featured image in the header image. In other themes it may place that image elsewhere on the page. It will not show up as part of the post itself, however. It will also be the image shown as a thumbnail on social media sites like Facebook.


Plugins:

  • Media Library Categories: allows you to organize your media library contents.
  • NextGEN Gallery: A very popular image plugin that allows you to organize your images into galleries not associated with posts/pages. There are also a number of plugins for NextGEN that add to its functionality by giving different slideshow/display options. One problem with NextGEN is that it creates its own media library and does not utilize the native WordPress media library, meaning you must upload all photos through NextGEN. Sandi points out that it is pretty intuitive and easy to fix mistakes, and easy to reuse images throughout your site. Also has good bulk-action options.
  • More MIME Types: allows you to specify and organize media by different file types. It will then tell the browser how to handle or display the media files.
  • Scissors Continued: expands on the WordPress media library’s functionality by allowing you to crop, rotate and resize images.


Helpful tips:

  • Add photos to media library rather than just cut and paste images into your WordPress window, and you can call up the image to use later. This will also create your thumbnail and other image sizes for additional options and functionality later.
  • Using the plugin Add from Server you can add photos and other media to your WordPress media library that have previously been uploaded via FTP.
  • Always include “alternate text” when uploading photos. This will display to anyone who doesn’t have images turned on in their browser, and will also be available to people who use screen readers to view your site. It also gives you a good boost with SEO.

For an additional resource on images, be sure to review the information provided at the WordPress Codex.

Questions? Tips you’d like to share? Suggestions for other plugins dealing with images? Please add your comments below!

Don’t forget that we have several classes coming up with Hands-On WordPress: adding and managing content; plugins; and backups and Google applications. Go to Hands-On WordPress for more information and how to sign up.

Filed Under: meetup, WordPress Beginners Track
July 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Informal WordPress Gathering

In tonight’s WordPress Austin meetup, we’re opening up the floor to questions and comments.

Announcements:
Hands-On WordPress meetup will be next Monday, July 11th. Focus of this meetup will be Image Handling with WordPress. Sign up on Meetup.com.

Hands-On WordPress will also be offering three classes: one on managing content and users; one on WordPress plugins; and one on Backing up/Google apps/additional functionality. For information on these classes, and how to sign up, go to handsonwordpress.com.

Discussion:
We then launched into a demonstration and discussion about WordPress 3.2, released yesterday.

How many people have downloaded WordPress 3.2? (Live counter; as of this post there had been 376,721 downloads since yesterday.)

Have you downloaded and installed it on your site? Did it go smoothly or did you have issues? Check your plugins, make sure your server/host has the most recent updates to PHP and mysql. Run the Health Check plugin to see if your site can run 3.2.

Beware: some (popular) plugins will run an older version of jquery, and if it loads jquery separate from WordPress, the plugin may no longer work. Apparently a NexGen Gallery slider isn’t working with 3.2,

Nick and Pat recommend backing up your site and your database before upgrading to 3.2. If you don’t have a backup and something goes wrong, you may not be able to downgrade to 3.1.

From there we started discussing the differences between WordPress multiuser and installing WordPress into subdirectories on a single domain.

Pat showed off Twenty Eleven, the new default theme for WordPress 3.2, with audible gasps of approval from the crowd. A beautiful redesign of an already very nice theme. He showed how the new theme handles header images (and showed it rotating images randomly) what is now being called “zen mode” which gets rid of all of the admin boxes so you can focus just on your writing.

Discussion drifted into conversation about site backups and SEO plugins, with a lot of recommendations. We also talked about our shared frustrations with the WordPress plugin directory.

One of our attendees had an excellent and easy tip for YouTube videos: if you grab the actual URL for the video and place it directly into your post (in HTML view only) on its own line, without the link code, WordPress will do the embed for you. (If you do it in the visual editor it will wrap it with the link code).

If you have problems with your upgrade to 3.2, are looking for a good plugin recommendation, or have other questions about WordPress, be sure to join the Austin WordPress Google Group and post your question to the collective.

Filed Under: meetup
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