WordPress


18
Feb 12

The Cross-CMS Perception Matrix

In the spirit of the latest "What People Think I Do / What I Really Do" meme (more at http://chzb.gr/A6accB), here is how #CMS developers view other developers and their favorite system. I think each CMS has it's own purpose and use but there no harm with a little fun :) Included: #WordPress , #Drupal , #Joomla , #WIX and #Sharepoint . Matrix image via +Ana Nakamura Bonus graph on web developers ;)


4
Feb 12

Weekend WordPress reading

Just got this! http://t.co/GdRVvuWu Digging into WordPress +Chris Coyier and +Jeff Starr is 400 pages of WordPress knowledge. Just updated to cover WP 3.3 (and with a promise of free future updates forever!) this looks really good. Hopefully, I'll repost soon with a review of the book :)

Edit: just discovered the "All AJAX" theme included with the book. I always wondered if someone had done something like that. /installs now :)

Check out a free PDF sample and the full contents here http://bit.ly/xJsLHJ


2
Feb 12

Login log for your WordPress

Here is a companion #WordPress #plugin for the Limit Login Attempts one I posted about before ( http://bit.ly/z3q1gM ): Simple Login Log does exactly that. It keeps a log of all successful or not attempts to login on your site. You'll be surprised at the number of attempts (I certainly was when I found I had 600 attempts from bots in 3 days :) )

Simple Login Log can be found at WordPress.org http://bit.ly/xeA67f


31
Jan 12

Block brute-force attempts on your WordPress blog

WordPress on it's own a quite secure #CMS but this doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. A simple but effective way to make your #WordPress installation more secure is to limit the amount of attempts that can be made on your login page. This will block automated or not attempts to gain access to your site by guessing the password.

The #plugin is called Limit Login Attempts. It will log attempts to login, and will limit the amount of times an IP can fail the login process. Over a (custom) limit it will just block any further attempts. Many customizations are offered (see screenshot). You will certainly be surprise by how many attempts are being made by #spambots!

Limit Login Attempts can be found on WordPress.org http://bit.ly/we0JdW


29
Jan 12

Mail your WordPress posts with Postie

#WordPress has a "post by e-mail" feature included, but it's fairly basic: you only enter the access information of the e-mail address you are going to use and then pray it all works. #Postie http://bit.ly/yhJpi4 is the same feature on steroids. Here's what more you can do it with it:
- Test your configuration to see that WordPress can connect to your account
- Setup how often the e-mail account will be checked for new mails
- Configure who can use the feature and setup e-mail alerts (so even if your special e-mail is found, no spam ever gets posted on your blog)
- Set default category and tags
- Filter the content of the message
- Option to setup galleries or choose a template on how to display attached images
- Options for videos and other file attachments.

You can pretty much leave everything on the default option for a start. You just need to create an e-mail address that only you will know and set it up on the first tab of options. Then whatever you mail to that address will be posted, with the subject as the title and the contents of the message as the content of the post.

You can get Postie at WordPress.org http://bit.ly/wMPRiE


21
Jan 12

Location-enhanced photos in your WordPress

So you're taking photos with your mobile and posting them in your #WordPress -powered #photoblog but you find that you're missing something. While your phone has included location information in the photo, it is nowhere to be found on your site.

A solution comes with the GeotagPhoto #plugin : it will identify attached images in your post, find if they have location data and put a marker icon on it when it's displayed on the post. Clicking on it opens a Google Map with the location. It comes with several customization options and you only need a Google Maps API key to start using it.

See a live example here http://bit.ly/yxk5z2

You can get GeotagPhoto at WordPress.org http://bit.ly/xrTPSa
As the code is a little outdated, a small fix is required in you're running WordPress 3 and over, you can find it here http://bit.ly/ADSMSh

In album 2012-01-21 (4 photos)


15
Jan 12

Easy Google Maps on your WordPress

My #WordPress #plugin discovery of the day: MapPress by Chris Richardson (find it on WordPress.org http://bit.ly/zgNHrR or the developer's site http://bit.ly/zmMgHa)
You can easily add maps on your posts and pages, full with multiple markers, html descriptions, directions, all the usual Google Maps control, etc.

It's free (which covers most uses) with an affordable pro version for some more special features.


29
Dec 11

Document Management for WordPress

WP Document Revisions is a document management and version control plugin for the popular content management system, WordPress. Built for time-sensitive and mission-critical projects, teams can collaboratively edit files of any format — text documents, spreadsheets, images, sheet music… anything — all the while, seamlessly tracking the document’s progress as it moves through your organization’s existing workflow.

The plugin by Ben Balter looks quite interesting and full featured. Looking forward to a chance to try it out and in real environment!

Full details and screencast at http://ben.balter.com/2011/08/29/wp-document-revisions-document-management-version-control-wordpress/


28
Dec 11

How to add Facebook / Twitter / etc authentication on WordPress

In the old days of the internet, it was quite accepted that on each site/forum/whatever you encountered and wanted to participate in a discussion, you had to make a new account. Nowdays, both due to privacy concerns as well as getting used to be automatically logged in, we have ended up seeing that many people are turned off when they are not able to comment on a site with their Facebook login. For a small blog this means a significant loss in engagement and a chance for more visitors.

I have been looking for a solution for my #WordPress blog, initially trying a Facebook-related plugins (also with integration with Facebook pages), then trying out #Livefyre, which is a complete authentication/comment solution. Livefyre and similar solutions (which I've tried) though will ignore comments that come in from other sources, like the recent Google+ integration I've added. So comments on Google+ were imported in the WordPress database but never shown. Back to the standard WordPress comment module then, but I still needed authentication from social networks.

Which when I found the Social Connect plugin. It allows users to register and loggin via their Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo or WordPress.com account.

Installation is as easy as an WordPress #plugin. For Facebook and Twitter integration you will need to create an application on each of them and enter the related API keys in Social Connect's options page. The options page has all the links to guide you through the process.

If everything goes well you will have a the login icons on your comment forms and login page. You will also find a widget for your sidebar available. If there is a problem with your them and the icons don't appear in the comments form, you can call them just with a line of PHP like this
_ <?php do_action( 'social_connect_form' ); ?> _

Users who use the icons will also be added in your WordPress database.

You will find Social Connect at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-connect/


25
Dec 11

How to import your Google+ posts in WordPress

It's not actually any kind of magic, thanks to Google+ API and developer +Daniel Treadwell we have the the Google+Blog WordPress Plugin which you can find here http://www.minimali.se/google+blog/

The plugin is free with a backlink which can be removed for a well-worth $10 (Hi Daniel, I'm currently waiting for my download link :) ). Installation is as easy uploading any #WordPress plugin. You will need two pieces of information:
1) a Google+ API key which you can get from https://code.google.com/apis/console/ (first enable the Google+ service from the list of all Google services and then you can find your API key on the "API Access" page
2) Your Google+ ID (the number in the URL of your profile)

The plugin works like a charm, it imported 200 posts and a few hundred comments in a seconds :)

[Update] Note for the future: one thing missing from this plugin is the ability to add attached images in the WordPress media library so that they can have their own page and comments. Here is the relevant function (just need to find some time to experiment now :) )
http://wpscale.com/download-image-and-attach-into-post-programmatically-in-wordpress-3/