Upgrading and maintaining a WordPress installation has recently become a lot less time-consuming thanks to the automatic upgrade feature for both the main WordPress installation and the plugins. It is ideal, though, if you’re managing multiple installations for multiple clients, that these clients are running off of one installation of WordPress. This makes upgrades and maintenance a lot less painful. Read the rest of this entry »
WP-Hive: a painless WordPress multi-site manager
June 22nd, 2009Adding a Forum to WordPress
April 17th, 2009The default comment feature on WordPress is good for generating discussion on topics that you start, but what if your visitors want to create their own topics? A forum is the best format for this type of discussion. I have worked with two different forum softwares for WordPress. One is a project of the WordPress folks (Automattic) called bbPress. And the other is a plugin for WordPress called Simple:Press. Read the rest of this entry »
Amazon S3 for hosting site downloads
March 19th, 2009Girlebooks.com was one of the first sites I set up in WordPress. The site is not only a hobby for me but also a great playground to see what I can do with WordPress. It also is a great site to point prospective clients to when they want to see examples of what we’ve done with WordPress.
The site’s main focus is hosting free ebooks. Since we have our own hosting space for our web development work, I have been using the extra space on that account for Girlebooks. Lately, due the the increasing popularity of the site, Girlebooks has been hogging all of our extra bandwidth and disc space so that we have none left for hosting new clients or upgrading existing accounts. It was either buy more space on our hosting account or seek out an alternative for Girlebooks’ growing needs. Read the rest of this entry »
From Our Portfolio: Cardiopump Fitness
December 9th, 2008
Our latest client is Cardiopump Fitness of Dallas, TX. This site launch coincides with the release of their DVD, Kettlebell: Butts & Guts. The design was made to the client specifications, using their existing logo. On the home page visitors can watch a short clip of the DVD and purchase it through PayPal. Our content management system provides the client an ultra simple interface for editing her site content.
A Subscription Website Using WordPress
November 25th, 2008Note 2010/06/09: Since I wrote this post, our client has sold her site to Morningstar, which has replaced the subscription area we developed with their own, Windows-based subscription service.
Our latest work involves development of a subscription system using WordPress on the popular financial blog, Footnoted.org. The requirements of the system were as follows:
- A subscriber registration and payment processing interface
- System tracking of subscription expiration dates
- Download management allowing the administrator to easily upload files as well as restricting file downloads to paying subscribers only
- An email notification sent to paying subscribers when a new publication is available
WordPress Plugin: PHP Code Widget
October 23rd, 2008This post is a continuation of posts about WordPress plugins we’ve worked with. I just installed a plugin called the PHP Code Widget for a client today. This plugin takes the basic function of a text widget and lets you place PHP code in it. Very useful if you’re using a widgitized sidebar and need to place some PHP code in a widget. In this particular example, I needed a links widget that would display only one link category. The default WordPress links widget displays all categories and has no options. What do I do? Well, I download the PHP Code Widget and insert my PHP widget with the code to display one category only (assuming a category number 2):
<?php wp_list_bookmarks('category=2'); ?>
Beautiful!
Free Website Designs
September 4th, 2008
As a website designer, many prospective clients ask if there is a cheap way to get a professional design for their website. Not only is there a cheap way, there is a free way. But just like Goodwill clothes shopping, be prepared to do a lot of searching if you have something particular in mind.