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.
Wow! they really keep upping the bar with every new release of WordPress. This new one will feature a complete overhaul of the Admin area, which is definitely welcome. It really looks slick, and they have put a lot of thought into the layout and access of everything. The navigation has moved to the sidebar, and there is a host of expandable/collapsible windows providing space for access to more tools.
When I was redesigning this site using WordPress I noticed those sneaky developers had added a class to the current page. If you notice the current page list item tag now has “current_page_item” as an additional class definition, which turns out to be really helpful when using WordPress as a CMS. What’s so cool about that you might ask? Well it allows you to target the navigation class to apply different style to it without adding your own php to the mix, so your visitor can see which page or section of your website they are on. Excellent!
I feel like such a nerd even posting this, but there are a ton of new apps coming out on the iPhone ever since they released the new version 2.0 upgrade, and here is one that even comes with a slick promotional video. The nifty app allows you to blog to your WordPress powered website directly from the iPhone! You can write a post, upload pictures from the phone, and it even lets you edit existing posts! Now I am going to go hit myself in the face with my geek punishment stick.
WordPress for iPhone promotional video-
WordPress for iPhone- Official site (with link to iTunes for download)
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).