Your guide to the WordPress universe
WordPress 3.1 is out, if you haven’t seen the notice at the top of your WP admin, click on “Dashboard” at the top left and you’ll see “updates”, where you can start the update process. We’ll have a quick review later today.
You may have noticed this 3.1 release was originally code-named “Django” but that conflicted with the name of another open source CMS, so it’s been renamed to “Reinhardt.”
Here’s another WordPress theme finder, that’s not as visual as WP Candy’s but nevertheless may be useful for some. It’s called QualiThemes. We like it as it includes both free and commercial themes and you can rate them. Our nitpicks: the original theme developer doesn’t get listed on the page and the drop down menus to filter the themes could use some visual work and spacing.
We also noticed there’s a huge list of awesome WPshortcodes at WordPress Answers by Stack Exchange including: delay RSS posts, add excerpts to pages, customize the order of the admin menu navigation, and profile the database performance.
Get it: QualiThemes | WordPress Answers
Editor’s note: This week we have a friend and guest writer: Lori Berkowitz from Bee Dragon give us some insight as to why she thinks the Studio Press’ Genesis framework is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We reviewed Genesis from earlier this week from a content creator’s perspective, so here’s a coder’s perspective.
From a developer’s point of view, I have a huge crush on Genesis! I have become somewhat of a “Genevangelist”. The amount of time Genesis has saved me in the past year is incredible. I can build custom page templates in minutes and that is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been working with it for a little over a year now and have built quite a few sites using child themes, either completely custom or built from one of the child themes.
Genesis provides a lot of hooks, some filters, some shortcodes, and other handy developer friendly features, but my favorite function is genesis(); It allows you to make a page template by adding whatever hooks, functions, html, etc. that you want the page to have, followed by genesis(); The genesis() function will completely render the appropriate page type and follow whatever instructions you gave it in the rest of the file. For example, a page template for a custom post type could look like this:
php // Template Name: Template Name Here
remove_action('genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop');
add_action('genesis_loop', 'custom_loop');
function custom_loop() {
global $paged;
$args = array('post_type' => 'PostType'); // any wp_query args can go here
genesis_custom_loop( $args );
}
genesis();
If you are interested, I have been collecting Gensis snippets here.
The source link on some snippets leads to other sites with lots of useful Genesis info and tips.
We have reviewed WordPress plugins that help return better search results for your WordPress site like the Relevanssi plugin. But how about helping your users fix their spelling in the search box before they hit “submit” – like Google or major search engines do?
We just noticed this relatively new plugin called “Proper Spell.” We haven’t tried it yet but it’s supposed to auto suggest the correct spelling while the user is typing in something into your search box. It requires a bit of intermediate knowledge as you’ll need to plugin a code
Get it: Proper Spell
I’ve been writing for almost 20+ years now and I still have some embarrassing typos or grammatical errors pop up here and there. It’s not a big deal when it’s in your personal email but yikes (!) do you want that happening on your blog when the general public is reading it?
What to? You first step is an almost no brainer, install “After the Deadline” plugin for WordPress, it expands on WP’s built-in spell checker with a grammar checker. It works right inside of your WordPress post/page editor in the toolbar. It’s probably not going to fix and solve everything for you but it will catch things you miss.
The next step is to subscribe to a paid service called “Wordy.” It’s basically a service where you out source your editing to a virtual editing team. Their “Wordy” plugin lets you submit posts and pages to them for review. They claim very fast turnaround time. The workflow is integrated into WordPress so you shouldn’t have to leave your WordPress interface. Their WordPress plugin differs slightly from their pre-paid plans as you get an instant quote as to how much it would cost you to copy-edit this. For example, this post would cost us approximately $10.
If you want more of an all you can eat model, check out Grammarly. For $20/month you can copy/paste as much into their web app window. Unfortunately there is no WordPress integration but it maybe the best bang for the buck for now.
And if you’re on tight budget, PaperRater is similar to Grammarly but free, works quickly and efficiently. Just like Grammarly, you’ll have to copy and paste into a web browser but heck it’s free.
Get it: After the Deadline | Wordy | Grammarly | PaperRate
Check out Stack Exchange’s WordPress Answers site if you need help with WordPress and you’re not getting the answers at WordPress.org’s forums or through your usual support channels. For the majority of the questions, there’s at least 1 or two replies and best of all, it’s free.
Earlier this week we took a look at WP Mosaic, an up and coming new framework.
Today we’ll take a look at Genesis by Studio Press. It’s been around a bit longer and while it does not have as many layout options like WP Mosaic, it’s a mature product. We also bought the Corporate child theme which is a very square and grid based layout. Here’s an example of a real world site using Corporate.
In the Genesis control panel we found some neat settings like a global enable/disable comments and trackbacks. Some of the standard Genesis features would normally be part of 3rd party plugins. The ones we like are automatic bread crumbs, sorting of categories, and control of excerpts on archive pages.
On each post or page there’s strong SEO integration so you’ll need to install one less plugin.
Genesis (like Woo Themes) also had a way to import/export theme settings, something we wish more themes would have. It’s useful for moving sites from one URL to another if you’re not in the mood to move the entire database files over.
The Corporate child theme home page is built using a lot of widgets. Normally you’d have to drag text widgets over to the sections but Genesis includes custom post widgets that you can drag over the widget areas to pull in select posts from categories. Of course you can also use other widgets on the home page modules.
So what didn’t we like? The gallery slider that is shown in the demo site needs to be manually downloaded from WP.org and activated. We’re not sure why they can’t just integrate an image slider like other many WordPress themes. There is both a video and web page tutorial that’s available. We noticed certain settings like turning off the site title text in the header, require check marks to be turned off in both the Genesis main admin panel and the header control panel.
Regardless of these minor annoyances, when we had questions, the friendly and knowledgeable tech support at Genesis forums answered our newbie questions quickly.
We’re impressed with Genesis so far with its set of rich features. We also like their simple pricing model of $90 for the Genesis and child theme with life time support and updates. There’s no club monthly or developer’s fees to worry about. If you’re looking for a solid, well supported theme, Genesis is a great choice!
Looking for a simple and easy to install project management tool? We first wrote about GTD and P2 a few weeks ago. We are so enthusiastic about it that a version of that is becoming the first theme released on WPVerse.
What’s new? We’ve added the ability to send notifications of brand new topics to users.The templatic version of theme had notifications built in but only after someone replied to the original topic.
Our version lets you click which registered users to send a notification right above the post button. We’re planning on adding categories and a set of default widgets. Let us know if you have any other feature requests.
Special thanks to Valery K and Jam Studios for their work on this theme. Because the theme was originally released as GPL, you’re of course welcome to modify and distribute this theme as much as you want.
Download it: WPVerse modified GTD
This week we’re taking a quick look at a new WordPress framework called WP Mosaic. It’s still in beta but we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of granular page layout controls baked into the GUI. There are some unique features like an overlay mode which lets you take a look at what which modules you’re modifying. When we mentioned to them that the popular Dynamic Content Gallery plugin didn’t work with their theme, they fixed it very quickly amongst adding other new features.
So if you’re looking for a company that’s responsive to their customers, WP Mosaic could be a great choice. We look forward to seeing what else they have in store for us!
Get it: WP Mosaic
We’re happy to announce we’re starting a new site that’s designed to be short and sweet. A way to summarize a week’s worth of WordPress stories: WPweekly.net
This week we look at short codes, SEO, themes, and CMS plugins.