Well we just pulled the switch here and upgraded to WordPress 3.2. It’s a pretty hefty upgrade, and our Media Temple DV server is always a bit finicky when I run WordPress upgrades, however all went pretty well (You can feel free to contact us if you need help upgrading your WordPress system). The new dashboard is quite a big change, and a few things to note with this upgrade.
The WordPress team has officially dropped support for IE6 (hooray I say) and they now include a little browser check right there in the dashboard to help give you a little poke if your browser is in need of an update (you’ll see in the screenshot my version of Firefox is outdated…yes I know, shame on me, I was waiting for a 1Password update). Next thing of import, your server will now need php5 AND mySQL 5. This will require those of you running older Media Temple Gridservers to upgrade. I’m sure MT support phones have been ringing off the hook, and they have already been addressing the issue diligently. As a matter of fact they just posted a video to Facebook which should help you on your way.
Last bit of advice should always be the first bit of advice. BACK SHIT UP! You’ll feel better about the whole process.
Here is a screenshot of the new Admin Dashboard, pretty slick!
Google is everywhere…it’s true, they have a hungry tentacle in so many cookie jars it is hard to keep track of. One of the more recent and I say exciting evolutions in web design and development has been easier embedding of fonts! Yay! No more just relying on the 18 or so web safe fonts available (let’s face it 6 or so that get used) to all viewers across platforms. Of course you always want to be careful and make sure your cool new embedded fonts will degrade gracefully, just to be sure you have all your bases covered. This of course has opened a new can of worms, and opportunity for font makers…it is of course not legal to just use any font you have on your website.
There are TONS of free fonts out there and I’d say (being generous) about 5-10% of them are attractive and usable…it’s like web design in general these days, almost anyone can design and build a font thanks to computers, but you know there are reasons you hire a professional! We’ll save that for another post. So, moving foreward, once you have found a free font that works for you, all you need to do is head over to the Font Squirrel @fontface Generator and upload your font: convert it, download it, and add it to your CSS! Excellent. Google has made it even easier, they have 182 fonts (as of this post) for you to choose from, and they are all converted and ready to go. they even serve them up for you, all you need to do is add a simple link to your code.
Take this final piece of advice to heart. Keep it simple…don’t use embedded fonts for your content, use them for headers or emphasis, as they can cause some page load issues if you load too many styles or use them for large areas of content.
So I was just trying to update some WordPress plugins and the new automatic update system went all fubar on me. It claimed my ftp info was incorrect and sent the site into permanent “maintenence mode” which might be frightening for someone updating their site obviously as you simply get that nice message above on a blank page…no way to access the admin again. Here are the solutions. First to get the site back, look in whatever directory is your root install for a hidden file .maintenance (note you’ll need to be able to view hidden files in your ftp program). Once you find it just delete that bugger and the site should be back. I found I had to go into the wp-settings.php file and comment out line 50 which runs the function “wp_maintenance();” in order to be able to update the plugins…for some reason it kept not accepting my ftp info and adding that file…wonky.
So it’s fairly common knowledge that it’s a bad idea to put your email address in a mailto: tag unprotected on your website right? The wicked spammers have nasty little web bots that will scan the code of a page looking for that tag, or even your unlinked email address (they can tell from the formatting of it). One way to protect yourself is to use javascript to encode your address and hide it. There are a few plugins for WordPress that will automatically do this for you. One we have used for a few clients is CryptX (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cryptx/). All you need to do is install it and activate it, then it will filter through all your pages and cloak your addresses for you. Excellent work, hats off to plugin developer and spam warrior Ralf Weber.
It’s amazing how fast the world of business, and seemingly the world in general, has changed in my lifetime. This is, of course, heavily due to first the personal computer revolution, and secondly the internet boom. I graduated from Boston University in 1987 with a graphic design degree which gave me the ability to hand-paint fonts! Needless to say, it quickly became obvious to me that unless I started learning how to use computers I would be left behind as an artist and a designer.
In addition to designing and developing websites I also run a small business, which has opened up a whole other area of evolution and education for me. I interact directly with every client, and when I am approached by a potential customer some of the first questions are generally:
“Help me understand the process of building our new website.”
“How long does it take?”
“What are the costs involved in this?”
So let’s hope this post will begin to illustrate one of Bitclone’s basic processes – developing a WordPress CMS-based website. It should provide something of an overview, and help you get started in thinking about your project and some of the questions you’ll need to answer. We feel it is important to point out that every job is different, and part of our goal is to help you maintain your company’s unique identity among your competition. Having said that, there are some common points of focus we have identified through experience, and can discuss here.
So I had been writing this big post about WordPress 3.0 coming out, and how we were so sneaky as to be running a release candidate on our site…Then we got busy and by the time I came back they went and released the final version! The new version 3.0 is called “Thelonious” after the great jazzman and purveyor of awesome hats I assume. I am going to try to do some specific feature updates as I encounter them while upgrading our small fleet of WordPress clients! Some of the most noteworthy additions I have been testing include the merging of MU (multiple user version) into the standard version. That and the new custom post types alone make this a pretty huge upgrade and really push WordPress closer to being the perfect full CMS solution. My only concern is the application will get too bloated, as they continue to add to it, so I am going to also run some speed tests to compare this new version. Results to follow shortly I promise!
If you have not seen “Straight No Chaser” the Monk documentary directed by Eastwood…I’d recommend it.
While WordPress obviously wasn’t initially designed to be a full featured CMS, and it still has a ways to go in competing with Drupal or Concrete, this is a great trick you can use to expand your ability to add content which is editable from the admin area. WordPress Custom Fields will allow you to add data below the post area when you are creating a post (or a page which uses “post” info basically). You can create a Custom Field “Name” and “Value”, the name is basically a key that you can use to call the content in your template…which is the great part of this as it allows you to place editable content outside of the main post area on a page. Here is a screen shot where you can see I have added two Custom Fields, one for a picture (I didn’t add the picture value yet, but you can add a pict via the main content area then just copy the HTML info and paste it in) and one for a quote the client wants to change on each page (click the thumb for full size).
You need to actually edit your templates a bit, but it is fairly easy. Once you have created your Custom Field Name and added some content (value) you can use the get_post_meta() (click here for more detailed info) function as demonstrated below, just swap out Custom Field name where indicated and you can place this in your template-
<?php $key=”YOUR CUSTOM FIELD NAME”; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?>
You can play around with adding html in the custom field or your template to get styling correct. This is how it looks in my template where I want the quote to show up.
I also recently discovered a nifty plug-in which will add tinyMCE toolbar functionality to the Custom Fields! Very cool.
Here is a small app that addresses the growing problem of web distraction due in some part to all the social media apps. Are you constantly checking email, adding Tweets…or logging in to Facebook to see if you are losing that Scrabble match? Stop the madness! This app will allow you to block certain websites and email for a specified amount of time…beware it is a commitment as it will not allow you to override it until the time is up! Call it a self imposed intervention of sorts. It is only for Mac users…we must need it most…but wait, I love my distractions, they keep me sane, ah well enough of this time sucking WordPress BLOGGING, back to work.
My job occasionally requires a large amount of clipboard action. Cutting and pasting text from one document to another, mostly when formatting content to html for web development and various client website updates. I discovered this small lifesaver of an app which will keep track of recent text clippings you make, and provide access to them. This allows you to have access to more than one piece of clipped text, which can be extremely helpful. The app currently only works for text, not images, but it is free, and hopefully they will eventually offer image/graphics support as well. Once installed Jumpcut adds a scissor icon and drop down in your top toolbar from which you can access recent clippings or configure it’s preferences.
So I have been meaning to post a comparison of some of the major players in the online video publishing and sharing industry, and finally I have found time. This is some footage I shot shortly before leaving Tucson AZ of a demolition derby slash monster truck event at night. The video I am hosting and serving up with the great JW Player was compressed using the basic medium settings in the Flash encoder on2 VP6 codec. The original SD miniDV file for uploading to the online services was edited in FCP and exported using the h.264 codec, high quality, multi-pass. The file is about 2 minutes long and was 50 megs or so. FYI at the time of this post most of the Upload services will only allow you to upload 100megs. I had no problems uploading to any of these sites, the process was smooth and pretty much the same for all of them.
First off this is the source video, hosted by me, not from a flash streaming server. The .flv video source is being played using the JW Player (and a wordpress plugin FLV embed). ALSO of note I am using the embed code from each site as provided, and the window size they put in there. This code in some instances breaks standards acceptability. For a good article on that check out this post from Bernie Zimmermann and read the comments, there is some better code in there to use if you want to stay standards compliant.
Ok! let’s move on to the free hosted video options
Youtube-
They are the Google powered heavyweight, everyone knows them, and everyone has seen at least some Youtube videos. They have added some interesting options to their player recently, so you can now add multiple videos from your same account. In my opinion their compression is considerably poorer compared to these others, however they have a HUGE network of users, so if your main concern is to get your video seen…Youtube is probably the place to start.
Vimeo-
Vimeo is a newer challenger to Youtube, they have a great looking stylish player, and also offer to host and serve up higher quality HD video. Their compression looks great.
Blip.tv-
Another new challenger to Youtube is Blip.tv, they have a nice simple clean player, and their compression looks good.
Jumpcut-
Jumpcut offers the ability to do simple edits to your own video online, which may come in handy if you are away from the editing machine and need a small change made.
In conclusion there are some really good quality challengers to Youtube now, and the better quality of these players means Youtube might need to revisit their compression options. However, many people viewing videos online simply don’t care too much, and are more concerned with speed so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. As far as your choice between using a service like Youtube, or hosting your own videos? The things you need to consider are mostly branding, bandwidth and access to a social network. Youtube type sites have their own branded players, and they link off to their sites…they are “free” obviously. You might end up sending your visitor offsite, by the same token these networks have large numbers of users everyday, so you can take advantage of some built in marketing by posting your video there.
Bitclone is a small Portland, Oregon based Web Design Agency owned by these two nerds Eric Baldoni and Alex Carey (pictured above somewhere in the outdoors, clearly lost without their trusty computers).