Last night I debuted a 5 minute lightning talk at the WordPress Providence Meetup in front of an enthusiastic crowd of 30-40 locals with varying WordPress interest and experience. Entitled “That’s a WordPress Site??”, the presentation is a tongue-in-cheek, rapid fire debunking of 3 pervasive myths about WordPress: that it’s just blogging software (not a CMS), that it’s not meant for big business or enterprises, and that all WordPress sites sort of look the same.
All of the lightning talks were recorded, so we’ll hopefully have video of me engaging the audience with the slides sometime soon. The raw slides really work on their own as a 3 1/2 minute showcase, so I’ve published the slide deck – animation and all – in HD quality on YouTube for all to enjoy.
Today’s release of WordPress 3.0 brings some exciting enhancements and new features that strengthen the software’s position in the realm of content management systems. For developers such as us, two sets of features in particular should prove invaluable in implementing WordPress-based solutions for our clients.
First, version 3 expands WordPress beyond the traditional blogging constructs of posts and pages by allowing users to specify custom post types. These custom types can function either like posts, organized linearly, or like pages, having a hierarchical structure. This feature builds on the custom taxonomies introduced in WordPress 2.9, which let users expand the organizational options for content beyond just categories and tags. Now, combining custom post types with custom taxonomies, users have complete control over how content is organized and displayed.
Custom post types don’t just let users segregate press releases from product pages, for example, but also simplify the addition of fields specific to each post type. A product post type could include pricing and availability, whereas a press release could hold media contact information. Following this example, separate taxonomies can be assigned to each, reaffirming a clear organization of content.
Continue reading Introducing WordPress 3, Featuring Custom Post Types, A Native Menu Editor, and More
Last weekend I debuted a new talk at WordCamp Chicago. Aimed at developers, Customizing WordPress Administration might have been a little bit dry, but the tips – many of them unique to this talk – are killer for consultants looking to tailor the other end of WordPress for their clients.
The slides are embedded below the fold, couresty SlideShare, but they won’t do you much good alone. The meat of the talk was a walk through a simple Twenty-Ten child theme, the focal point being a functions.php file loaded to the gills with hooks and functions that customize the branding and admin experience. That download is also available below the fold!
Continue reading Customizing WordPress Administration (from WordCamp Chicago)
We are proud to announce the launch of KidSpirit Online, a non-profiit magazine and online community for young teens who enjoy writing, creating, and exploring meaningful subjects such as spirituality, values, and life’s “big” questions.
KidSpirit’s new website is powered by WordPress and BuddyPress.
Using WordPress as a publishing platform, KidSpirit Online now offers a more welcoming and secure environment for kids to interact with each other. BuddyPress powers the site’s social networking features, allowing young writers and artists to create groups and chat in forums. The BuddyPress registration process has been customized to comply with child privacy laws; comments, profiles, and other aspects of the site were all customized to protect personal information.
The project included the development of a custom avatar plugin that limits profile image selection to a handful of predesigned choices. The plugin integrates with existing WordPress and BuddyPress avatar functions to seamlessly display a users’ chosen avatar across the site, overriding both the Gravatar service and avatar features built into BuddyPress. This custom functionality prevents members from uploading their own images, ensuring child privacy and an appropriate environment.
The new site’s creative was designed by Mixit Productions and features a look that is colorful, kid-friendly and true to the spirit of the magazine.
About a month ago we started to see some announcements from Ning that made us wonder whether trouble was brewing. Today Ning announced the end of their long time free online community service and a cut of nearly half of their staff. Although this bodes well for other online community platforms, there are a lot of nervous Ning customers out there today – some of our clients included.
Given today’s events, I thought I would take a moment to discuss one of the core values of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): Free. As in Libre.
Author’s Note: This is the first post in what we hope to make series: “Ask a Web Strategist”. These are intended to be relatively short, public answers to questions web technology and strategy we receive. Do you have a question? !
Question: I’m all bent out of shape about the Flash vs. HTML 5 debate. I’m interested to hear your opinion about it. Will Adobe Flash still have a place on the web in 5 years?
Answer: Generally, trying to predict where any technology in a field susceptible to rapid change will be in 5 years is a losing game. Flash will probably be around for many years to come, but we’d bet on a much smaller place.
Continue reading Will HTML 5 replace Flash in the next 5 years?
Ask any front end web developer to describe common challenges involved in converting (or “cutting”) a design. Ask a designer who’s savvy about front end web technology what the biggest creative limitation of the web “canvas” is. In both instances, you’d likely hear an earful about fonts.
For the front end web developer, it’s all about taking someone else’s creative – often designed on a highly controlled and extremely flexible canvas like Adobe Photoshop – and implementing it in the much less controlled and much less flexible world of HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Sometimes, a design that look great as a static image or storyboard just doesn’t translate well into web code, especially when not-so-design-sophisticated clients have to maintain the content and some of the imagery.
Fonts have long been a classic example. A storyboard designer can use any font they have installed on their own computer to make a beautiful design, but hacks aside, web browsers have only been able to render text with fonts installed on the visitors’ computers. Since there are only a handful of fonts that are more or less guaranteed to be on all modern computers (think Arial and Times New Roman), websites have been limited to a handful of uninteresting choices.
Continue reading Typekit: the font solution we’ve been waiting for?
Last Saturday the C. Murray Consulting team spent the day at the first ever, sold-out and not to mention “Best Ever!”, WordCamp Boston. This event was held at the very high-tech and very cool Microsoft N.E.R.D. Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
First, a huge thanks to all of the organizers and volunteers behind this awesome event. They did a great job of keeping the whole event running smoothly. The location was perfect, the swag was cool and the people were great!
The C. Murray Consulting team represented levels of WordPress expertise from across the spectrum. The conference rose to the challenge, providing sessions that catered to the beginner all the way up to the expert. Being a beginner myself, I loved the WordPress 101 session presented so well by Amanda Blum. In fact, the whole day was one invaluable lesson for me.
As for my more experienced colleagues – they too learned a thing or two. Here are a few highlights from their experiences.
Continue reading C. Murray Consulting Goes To Camp