WPVerse

Speeding up your WordPress site with MaxCDN (Advanced users)

noel saw — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:36:54 +0000

In the past I’ve written about WPCDN.com and how WPVerse uses their service. I recently needed to make some changes to my account and since I was never aware of a self service control panel, I wrote to WPCDN but didn’t hear back from them so I decided it was expand my horizons. I met the MaxCDN team at WordCampLA last year so was curious to see what their system could do.

This article is meant as a quick overview for advanced users, so I’ll post more details later but here are my impressions so far of MaxCDN. If you’re familiar with setting up CDN before, you’ll be able to be on their system in less than an hour. There was a delay getting my account “welcome” email but once I was in their self service control panel, I was able to create a new pull zone in less than 15 minutes.

I think the UI could use a little bit more hand holding or help messages. For example there’s a field called “Custom CDN Domain” that is optional if you haven’t setup your own CDN sub-domain in your DNS but it’s not explained you can fill it out later. They do provide a “temporary sub-domain” for after you submit the form. I filled in the custom CDN domain name in my domain registrar’s (GoDaddy) but for whatever reason the images didn’t seem to be showing up at the URL but their “temporary” sub-domain worked fine.

I also had to switch to W3C Total Cache because the CDN feature in WP Super Cache seems to be tied into the page caching features being enabled and this particular project had a lot of Ajax related features on the home page that I didn’t want to try page caching with yet. All in all, so far I am happy with MaxCDN.

Batch Categories plugin – manipulate post categories in a pinch

noel saw — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:58:36 +0000

As mentioned a few days ago, we’re in the middle of converting 100s of PDF into HTML format using posts for our client’s new WordPress site. We’ve learned some great tools to create batch categories and posts but nothing’s perfectly smoothly.

We’re using the Bulk Post creator mentioned a few days ago but one downside to this plugin is that it doesn’t let you assign a category so it puts everything as “uncategorized” initially.

Unfortunately, If you do a bulk edit with WordPress’ post menu editor, even after assigning new categories, the posts still retain a “uncategorized” flag in addition to the new categories. We’re not sure if this has been a reported bug or intended behavior.

We couldn’t find anything in the regular WP repository so we searched the WordPress.org forums and found Rob Miller’s “Batch Categories” plugin. Since it’s not in the WP repository, we highly recommend you use the plugin on a test site first and at your own risk. Make sure you download v1.4 for WP 2.5+.

You’ll find the tool, well…under “Tools” -> “Batch Categories”. The UI is a bit whacked out with the new WP 3.x interface considering the tool was built in the WP 2.5 era.

You won’t care about the UI once you see that you’ll be able to find a bunch of posts marked with “uncategorized” and remove that setting with just a few clicks. Once you’ve set the filter to the “Uncategorized” then simply click on the “Remove from” button for matching posts and voila you’re done! You’ll have to run the filter a few times but it’s still a lot less clicking than normal.

Get it: Batch Categories

Visual WordPress Sitemap theme

noel saw — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

If you’re building a WordPress site with over 20 pages, in addition to the “bulk post creator” plugin we mentioned a few days ago, you might want to try out the Slick Mapper WordPress theme by Luke McDonald. This will allow you to get the landscape overview of how pages fit within the site and help you map out navigation bar issues more effectively. This is known as part of the information architecture portion of User Experience (UX) jargon these days.

Once it’s activated, Luke’s sitemap theme will generate a visual site map that you can see at the web site URL just like your home page. Site maps are normally often seen in Visio or other drawing program. The beauty of this theme is that the theme generates a site map using the pages saved into WordPress. The theme will structure the pages into parent and child hierarchy. Just make sure your pages are published – not saved in draft mode.

There are quite a few options available to customize such as the box background and border colors and logo upload.

If you want to keep your current theme running, simply use the old theme preview trick by adding this line of text to the end of your base URL like this:

?preview=1&template=thelukemcdonald-slickmapper-bb1ebf4&stylesheet=thelukemcdonald-slickmapper-bb1ebf4

So if your site is was domain.com, then it would look like this:

http://domain.com/?preview=1&template=thelukemcdonald-slickmapper-bb1ebf4&stylesheet=thelukemcdonald-slickmapper-bb1ebf4

The current info page for SlickMapper at ThemeGarden is down so check out the GitHub page for the download: SlickMapper

Stats for your WordPress sidebar

noel saw — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:08:57 +0000

I recently wanted to show my visitors how many posts I’ve written about WordPress on the WPVerse sidebar automatically so I wouldn’t have to manually keep updating it.

So I dug around and found WP-Statistics to give it a whirl. It has a ton of features just beyond showing number of total posts, you can also see how many comments have been published, number of visitors, page views, and much more details that you’d normally find in a true analytics package.

You can now see it in action on the sidebar to your right. I wish it would have a simple notes section below your stats so you could add some disclaimer or extra notes without having to drag text widget below it.

I am not giving up Google Analytics anytime soon so for now I am not turning on the page view stats/analytics tracking for now but if you’re not a fun of sticking a bunch of javascript onto your pages this might be an alternative.

So far so good and as of now, they’e had 11 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars so they’re off to a good start!

Download: WP-Statistics

WP Plugin of the Week: Bulk Post Creator – Revisited

noel saw — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:37:51 +0000

Update: We just started a new project where we need to copy/paste over 100 articles from PDFs so this is where a plugin like this shines. This plugin will let you bulk create posts or pages by simply typing or pasting each new line as a page.

We noticed this plugin disappeared from the WordPress repository but managed to track down a new version written by Mochammad Masbuchin who’s updated the original version written by Sarah@HowdyBlog.com. His version adds the ability to create the posts in draft mode if needed.

Here’s the new download: bulk-post-creator-plus1

Note: We can’t guarantee the compatibility of the plugin with your particular WordPress site. Make sure to install and test this first on non-critical WordPress site. Use at your own risk.

Original article follows…

One of the less fun things to do when setting up a new WP site is to create new posts or pages. Short of having a “go-to” set of XML content that you can always import onto the site, then you would be pressing a bunch of “Add New” Pages or “Posts” button.

This is where Bulk Page Post Creator plugin can make life easier. It lets you quickly create a bunch or batch of page or post names quickly. Simply open up the plugin, and type the titles of your posts or pages and click “Create Now.”
The toughest thing to figure out about this plugin is that it shows up as a new option under the “Posts” menu called “Create Bulk Posts” instead of under “Tools.”

If your needs are a bit more sophisticated and need to assign categories, hierarchies, and post time/date stamps to posts and pages, check out the more powerful ~~Mass Page Maker~~ plugin.

As of January 21, 20112, Mass Page Maker has been removed from the WP.org repository but it may not be a bad thing as that plugin’s user interface and instructions were difficult to grasp.

Thus I am going to give Bulk Page Creator (4 stars with 9 ratings) a try instead.

New QuickLaunch Theme – free! (1.1 update)

noel saw — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:38:03 +0000

It’s been ages, since I’ve posted something here at WPVerse. I’ve been quite busy working on unique and interesting WordPress themes that hopefully I’ll be able to share in the next few weeks.

In the past I’ve looked for a “coming soon” WordPress theme but I could find something that was “generic” or easy to edit. A lot of them had a count down timer but not everyone needs it. I also liked the idea of the LaunchEffectApp.com theme by my friends at Barrel NYC but I ultimately found it was too hard to use. So I decided to make a cool WordPress theme for free. It’s not going to kill LaunchRock.com anytime soon but it’s free!

So here’s a screenshot of my new theme with the admin tool palette turned on:

Instructions: Download the theme ZIP file and upload to your WordPress site using WP admin and activate theme as usual.

Then look on the bottom of the WP admin bar and select “QuickLaunch” -> “Launch Designer”. The screen will switch to the preview edit mode. From that point you can edit the site name, tagline, and body text by clicking on those preview areas directly and start typing. When you see the pencil icon that means you’re ready to edit the text and do “live” or inline editing.

One of the easiest things you can do with QuickLaunch is to upload a background image or specify a solid background color.There are fields to specify your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Linkedin user profiles. You can also specify the color of the “Submit” button of the email collection box. With v1.1, you can increase the padding of the center content module. Note the preview is slightly different then what you’ll see if you look at the actual saved site. And you can see submitted email addresses by clicking on the “Email List” option in “QuickLaunch” on the WP admin menu bar.

We hope you enjoy this theme! Please drop us a line if you use our theme as your splash/landing/squeeze page!

Download: QuickLaunch-1.1b.zip (Updated Feb. 27th) | Demo Site

Sequential Foundation Photo Gallery plugin

noel saw — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:09:29 +0000

A client recently asked me if they could upload a bunch of photos onto a page or post and have WordPress automatically lay them out sequentially right next to each other without any gaps or spaces. Our first thought was that WordPress should already do this by default but we checked and yikes it doesn’t have that feature yet.

So our friend Wok at Thinkademic wrote this custom plugin for us that will let you upload a bunch of pictures for you neatly lined up in a row next to each other. There’s no fancy schmancy JQuery slider effects or transitions. The plugin just generates a plain old grid of pictures lined up next to each other.

Once you have the plugin uploaded and activated, simply click on photo media upload button built into the post/page editor to batch upload a bunch of pictures. You’ll have a choice of how many columns across and how you want the pictures sorted by.

You’ll want to pre-size your pictures with Photoshop or another image editor so they’re at least the same height. Depending on the width of the page, the plugin will show as many images that can fit into a row.

If you specify imagesize="thumbnail" in the gallery shortcode parameters, it will use whatever thubmnail value you have setup in your media settings.

Here’s some CSS that you can add to your theme or “My Custom CSS” plugin to help style the layout :
.thefoundation-gallery img { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; float: left;}

See the example at the bottom of this page…

The usual fine print…
As always with any open source software, use the plugin at your own risk. The plugin is offered “as-is” without any warranties. We recommend installing this on a test site and thoroughly trying it out before you apply it to your live site. We’ll try to answer any questions you have here in the comments but can’t guarantee a timely response.

Get it: SequentialGallery-1.0

Example gallery – images from InterfaceLift.com:

Adding Social Media to WordPress

noel saw — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:25:05 +0000

What are the different ways that you can hook up WordPress and social media networks? Take a look at this presentation deck that I’ve uploaded to SlideShare that shows the various Social Media plugins and 3rd party apps that show how you can integrate social media networks with your WordPress site. Make sure you download the PDF and flip through each page to see the progressive steps.

WordPress social media tools

View more presentations from Noel Saw

Round up of Three Google+1 Plugins for WordPress

noel saw — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:45:32 +0000

Yesterday we showed you how to add a Google+ profile widget to your site. Now let’s take a look at two new to us sharing plugins with Google+1 integration. The important thing to point out is the term “Google+” usually refers to the social network that in my (humble) opinion is a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. Considering that Google’s has had two years to dissect their competitors and figure out the best of both worlds, they’ve managed to make something…”magical.”

Then moving on, there’s the “Google+1″ button you see on a lot of websites (including our site) is a component of “Google+”. Think of “+1″ as something similar to the Facebook like button. But this button keeps your history that just happens to have “+1″ navigation button on your Google+ profile page that shows everyone all the pages you have “liked” by clicking on the “+1″ buttons. I am sure there’s some privacy control for it but I haven’t dived into it.

The particular button I am using on this site is simply called “Google +1” by Yatko. If you do a search for “Google +1″ on the WordPress plugin repository you’ll see quite a few choices. We tried quite a few plugins and this one seems to be the most compatible with different themes so make sure you find the plugin by the author Yatko.

Once it’s installed and activated, just drag the widget onto your sidebar to have it appear.

So what if you want to have a Google+1 button that appears as part of your social sharing button suite? Unfortunately our favorites Sharedaddy or Share and Follow have not been updated with it.

But we just found a new player in town called Digg Digg that happens to have a lot of the same features of Sharedaddy but throws in “+1″ button.

As you can see in the admin below there are a ton of choices, maybe too many choices.

Like Share and Follow you can have it appear at the top of posts with different position options like floating (wrapping) with the content. Depending on your theme CSS you’ll have mixed luck with this. The fail-safe option is to select to have it appear at the bottom of the post so it avoids any mashups. The plugin also offers a “lazy loading” option so your post or page content loads before the javascript needed to render the sharing buttons. That way your page isn’t blank white while it’s waiting for the sharing assets and APIs to load.

The next plugin we’ll take a quick look at is called “Twitter Facebook Social Share” by Kunal Chichkar. This plugin also now features the Google+1 button in addition to the usual Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, etc. services. It’s unique in that the sharing buttons sit stationary on the side of your pages regardless of what position you are on the page. The advantage to this is that it a visitor doesn’t have to scroll up or down to share the post. Here’s a screenshot of how it looks like on a demo site:

The plugin settings offer quite a few customization options including the ability for the plugin to load the script at the bottom of the page similar to lazy loading. You can also define the background color and turn on rounded corners for the box too. Here’s a screenshot of the options:

So give these a try of either one of these Google+1 plugins for WordPress and let us know what think!

Get it: Google +1 | Digg Digg | Twitter Facebook Social Share

Our Google+ Profile plugin – widget download

noel saw — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:27:48 +0000

Have you jumped on the Google+ band wagon yet? We have! So in the last week or so we’ve been trying to get a popular but somewhat broken Google+ profile WordPress plugin called Google Cards. For whatever reason many WordPress users couldn’t get it to work on their sites.

So we ran across a website offering a generic standalone widget at WidgetsPlus.com that seemed to work at least on a static HTML page. We tried to use the HTML Javascript Adder plugin that allows you to paste in JS code but that didn’t work. So we hired one of our WordPress developers to incorporate the functionality of that script into a self contained WordPress widget. You can download a beta of it here: Google+ Profile Widget 1.0a

Please let us know what you think. Make sure you delete your WordPress cache and minified files first.