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WordPress Index

Posted on August 5th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

The following is an index of posts for this catagory many of these are plugins click the title to read the description, my impression and the instructions for use:

0 comments.

Index

Posted on August 5th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

The following is an index of posts for this catagory many of these are plugins click the title to read the description, my impression and the instructions for use:

0 comments.

Feed Copyrighter

Posted on September 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview
If you are providing RSS feeds that you wish to copyright. This plugin automatically adds a copyright message to your posts.

Instructions
Download the plugin from here rename “copyrightfeed.phps” to “copyrightfeed.php” and upload to your WordPress plugin folder. Visit the admin/plugins page and activate the plugin.

Under the Admin/Options page there is a new tab “©Feed” to configure the copyright message. The below graphic links to a copy of the screenshot of the admin page (it is in German but it shouldn’t give you too much of a problem.)

The Plugin home page is here

0 comments.

First RSS

Posted on August 6th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

Another easy to use plugin to place news feeds on your site within posts or pages

Instructions

Download unzip and upload to your plugins folder, activate the plugin, add the following to a page or post:

Insert “[rsspara:URL]” or “[rsslist:URL]” into the post for paragraph or list format respectively. Replace “URL” with the URL of the RSS feed.

See here for further details

0 comments.

Adhesive

Posted on August 5th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Adhesive isa simple to use plugin which adds a check box to the "write Post" page to make a post sticky, i.e. a post that is always on the top of the list

0 comments.

List Posts in Catagory

Posted on August 5th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

List Posts in catagory, a very simple plugin useful for creating an index of posts in a single catagory, either in the sidebar, your pages or any posts

Instructions

Add the following to where you want the list to appear:

[postsincategory#cat_ID]

replacing "cat_ID" with the catagory ID e.g. "4" will give you a list of posts in that catagory.If you intend to make this index in a post then it would make sense to make that post sticky with a plugin like "Adhesive" I would show the exact example in here but you would then get a list of that catagory right here!

0 comments.

Email Notifier

Posted on August 3rd, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

wp-email-notification. This is a great little program to send out notification when you publish a new post. Although you can’t set it to autonotify based on a single catagory, you can turn off auto notify and notify on a post by post basis.

Instructions

Download the zipfile.
There are two folders to upload after unzipping the zipfile. The first is the plugin folder labelled "wp-email-notification" to be loaded in to the plugins folder. The second is the mailing list folder labelled "maillist" which needs to be placed in the root of your blog, if your blog is not the root of your site then put the folder in your root, i.e. "yoursite.com/maillist/"
Visit "/maillist/install.php" and install the script filling in the database details.

Activate the plugin then delete the install script.

Put the following form code in your template. I’ve placed it in the sidebar on my forum:

<form method="post" action="maillist/index.php">
    Enter your e-mail address to receive notifications when there are new posts<br /><br />
    <input type="text" name="email" size="12" maxlength="50" />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="sign up" />
    </form>

Put the following line in your header template:

<?php email_notification_future_send(); ?>

The admin options can be found under Manage > Email Notification.

In the write post page you'll see a notify drop down in the Write area to allow you to select whether you notify for this post.

0 comments.

Homepage Template

Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

This is a description of a customised WordPress homepage template for a static home page with the static text at the top and a dynamic section underneath with excerpts of the latest 3 news posts.

Details

The template name is at the start of the template:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Homepage
*/
?>

Get the header and sidebar:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

Use the CSS style for - div ID "contentcontainer" - then start the loop:

<div id="contentcontainer">
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

This section of code delivers the first section of text on the home page in the first text box the first line and the last line start and end the text box:

<div class="blogbefore"></div> <div class="blog"><div class="overflow: hidden;">

<h3><a xhref="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Permalink for <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<p class="headertext">

<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php if(!is_single()) { ?><p class="footertext"><?php comments_popup_link('0 comments.', '1 comment.', '% comments.' ); ?></p><? } else { ?><p class="footertext"><?php comments_number(__('0 comments.'), __('1 comment.'), __('% comments.')); ?></p><?php } ?>

</div></div>
<div class="blogafter"></div>

The next section is the code for the dynamic section which will take titles and excerpts from the first 3 posts from the general news catagorythe first line and the last line start and end the text box:

<div class="blogbefore"></div> <div class="blog"><div class="overflow: hidden;">

<h3><a xhref="http://www.markgibson.info/index.php?cat=2"> Latest News</h3><p class="headertext"></p> <?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=general-news&showposts=3'); while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID;?> <h4><a xhref="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Permalink for <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h4> <?php the_excerpt(); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

</div></div>
<div class="blogafter"></div>

The last section of code covers the end of the loop and the end of the template:

<?php comments_template(); ?>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>

<div class="blogbefore"></div>
<div class="blog">
<h3>There are no blogs relating to your query.</h3>
</div>
<div class="blogafter"></div>

<?php endif; ?>

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

0 comments.

Sidebar Sections

Posted on July 31st, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

Customising the side bar so you can reorganise the different sidebar elements can be simply a matter of rearranging the order of the code in "sidebar.php" in the theme folder of your current theme. The following example however may be a little specific to the theme I am currently using.

Instructions

Find a recognisable section of text such as something refering to your links:

<div class="menubefore"></div>
<div class="menu">
<ul id="links">
<?php get_links_list('id'); ?>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="menuafter"></div>

Everything between

<div class="menubefore"></div>

and

<div class="menuafter"></div>

is a seperate section in the sidebar

This can then be cut and paste above or below elements encapsulated by similar tags

The "menubefore" term will be specific to the stylesheet

0 comments.

Static Homepages

Posted on July 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

Creating a static homepage can be used if you want to set up WordPress as a content management system (CMS) where you need to have a front page that doesn't change everyday, this is of course also useful if you want to use WordPress as your website instead of just a subsection of it.

Instructions

Download Static Front Page unzip and upload to your plugins folder then activate it. Create a page called "home" with a tag of "home" and that will automatically become your new front page.

If you have your blog in a subfolder of your site then you will need to copy "index.php" to the root folder and set the parameters on the "Options" page as follows:

WordPress address (URI): www.yoursite.com/blog

Blog address (URI): www.yoursite.com/index.php

You can now test this by going to your site homepage.

Templates

If you want a unique template for your new home page then copy the "index.php" or "home.php in your current theme folder renaming it as something suitable add the following to the top of the file:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Home
*/
?>

To check it is available go to "Presentation" and "Theme Editor" and check it is available on the right hand side. When you go to edit yor "Home" page you should see an option to select the page template.

You can now modify that template and it will only affect pages that you have selected to use that template.

0 comments.

Sidebar Page Switcher

Posted on July 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

SPS - Sidebar Page Switcher a great little plugin which can be used to hide static subpages in the sidebar menu. The application has two options which can be used:

Hide subpages by selecting "hide" in the new option added by the plugin to the "Write Page" tab in the admin window
You can hide all none-useful pages, i.e. only the top level pages (without a parent_id) and the current tree pages up to one level down from the current page are displayed. See the "pages" section of the sidebar to the right of this article and try switching between pages to see their children.

Instructions

Get the zipfile from here. Unzip (er..unrar) and upload the plugin file "sidebar-page-switcher.php" to the plugin folder of WordPress and activate it on the plugins admin page.

Option 1

This part of the instructions covers option 1 - Hide the pages you don't want to see!

Your first task is to edit your "sidebar.php" file. I would suggest saving a copy of the original . This file is found under the "themes" folder, in the folder of the same name as your current theme. Open "sidebar.php" search for the string "wp_list_pages" and replace it with "sps_list_pages" save/upload it to your server.

To enable this for individual pages you will need to go to "manage pages" press "edit " for the page you want to hide and you will notice a new option "Anzeigeeinstellungen" "Diese Seite in der Sidebar: ", with the options "Anzeigen" and "Ausblenden" to choose from. If your German isn't too great then select "Ausblenden" save the page and test it by viewing your site to see if it has disappeared.

If you would like to have your options written in English then visit the "plugins" section of the admin pages choose "plugin editor" and the SPS plugin scan down until you find the following string:

/* GERMAN - DEUTSCH */
$sps_lang = array ("DisplaySettings" => "Anzeigeeinstellungen",
    "ThisPage" => "Diese Seite in der Sidebar: ",
    "Show" => "Anzeigen",
    "Hide" => "Ausblenden"
    );

and delete it!

Option 2

This part of the instructions covers option 2 - "Hide non-useful pages"

Your first task is to edit your "sidebar.php" file. This file is found under the "themes" folder, in the folder of the same name as your current theme. Open "sidebar.php" search for the string "wp_list_pages" then replace the whole string

<?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>

with

<?php sps_list_pages('title_li=&sort_column=menu_order&page_id ='.$posts[0]->ID);?>

(you may want to copy this bit from the instructions in the plugin file itself just in case of any HTML issues) then save & upload it to your server.

This is done without hiding pages in the "Write Pages" admin page. So go straight to the front page of your site and test it out.

0 comments.

Viewlevel 2.0

Posted on July 30th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Overview

Viewlevel 2.0 associates the permission level of viewing a post with the login level of the user.

There are 5 roles possible for logged in users:

Subscriber
Contributor
Author
Editor
Admin

There are 11 levels of capability, 0-10, and they are associated with user roles as follows:

Unlogged in user = *
Subscriber = 0
Contributor = 1
Author = 2,3,4
Editor = 5,6,7
Admin = 8,9,10

This does allow a measure of control for setting permissions over viewing posts, however as this is only related to user roles it is not very flexible if you want to assign different view level permissions to subscribers as there is only one capability level assigned to that role.

For example, you only want friends to see your porn collection and only your family to see your photos of your modern dance performances and you don't want either to have a higher level of administrative access to your blog.

Instructions

Upload the files from here to the plugins folder, activate the plugin

Go to the "write post" page write your post, go to the bottom of the "write post" page to "custom fields" add a new custom field with a key (custom field name) of "viewlevel" and a value of whatever you want to select. A value of "0" means that only people who are logged in get to see the post.

The options tab on the admin page now has a sub-tag called "viewlevel" to set the default post level, this is at "*" as default so all posts can be seen by anyone as a default.

0 comments.

WordPress Themes

Posted on July 24th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Just added a new theme to WordPress , followed these basic steps:

Download the theme zipfile and extract the files it contains.
Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory. For example, a theme named skin should be in wp-content/themes/skin. Your theme probably has this directory as part of the zipfile.
Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.

To make the theme active on the site:

Log in to the WordPress Admin Panels.
Select the Presentation subpanel.
From the Select column click on Select for the theme you wish to activate.

Theselection should immediately become active.

0 comments.

WordPress Installation

Posted on July 24th, 2006 by mark.
Categories: WordPress.

Installing WordPress was very simple. All the instructions were on the site and very easy to follow.

Hosting
I am using 1and1.co.uk which offers me SQL servers and PHP support and a hosting account. I had initially decided to keep my blog in a seperate folder so I could link through from my site to my blog.

SQL Database Created an SQL database and recorded the connection info:

Database Name
Hostname
Username
Password

WordPress Files
Downloaded the WordPress files from wordpress.org unzipped them onto my PC, then renamed the folder to "myblog" so it could then be easily uploaded. Renamed the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php then opened it up in a text editor and filled in my database details. I then used filezilla to FTP the files to my website.

Configuration
I visited http://mywebsite.com/myblog/wp-admin/install.php filled in some simple details and I was up and running!

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