Cool WordPress shortcode plugins to snap your blog into style |
- Cool WordPress shortcode plugins to snap your blog into style
- Prime the Traffic Pump by Preparing the Pictures in Your Posts for Pinners
- How to Use AJAX With PHP on Your WordPress Site Without a Plugin
- WordPress Themes: the Top 20 (as Used by the Top Million)
- Promote on Facebook? Yes, I think you should.
- Daily Tip: Magento WordPress Integration 2.0 Released
- 7 Signs You are a WordPress Fanatic
| Cool WordPress shortcode plugins to snap your blog into style Posted: 15 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT Do you like to style content on your WordPress blog and make it look real pretty? Are you NOT a whiz with css? Then, here are some quick and easy shortcode solutions for you! Shortcodes are, imho, one of the best things to happen to WordPress. They allow you to do all kinds of cool things on your blog with just a few mouse clicks; like create beautiful buttons, boxes, columns and tabs. Today, I’d like to share 3 of my favorite shortcode plugins to do just that, and then some… check out #3 on the list; it’s awesome! #1 – J-ShortcodesJ-Shortcodes is one of the simplest plugins available for buttons, tabs and the like.
Speaking of layouts, have you ever struggled to get your post content “just so” in nicely arranged columns or boxes? Fret no more. The J-Columns and J-Boxes shortcodes enable you to create custom layouts in your posts, pages and widgets. You can use them in divs, tables, lists… just about anywhere.
Have a lot of good content that needs to be squeezed in?
J-Shortcodes is available for download from the WordPress repository here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/j-shortcodes/ #2 – TheTheFly Shortcodes for tabs and accordions
Customization is accomplished with a whole slew of parameters you can define in the shortcode:
TheTheFly Shortcodes is available for download from the WordPress repository here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thethe-tabs-and-accordions/ #3 – Shortcodes Ultimate… for just about everything!The Shortcodes Ultimate plugin deserves its name. Pretty much anything can be accomplished with this WordPress plugin. All shortcodes and custom parameters can be defined in a modal window that pops up when you click the “Add shortcode” icon available above your post editor.
The Shortcodes Ultimate plugin also has an easy-to-use admin panel where you can load only the scripts you actually use. Custom CSS can be added too. Here’s a video demo for using the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin: Shortcodes Ultimate shortcodes plugin is available for download from the WordPress repository here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shortcodes-ultimate/ Photo credit: Plugs from Flickr.com Related posts:
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| Prime the Traffic Pump by Preparing the Pictures in Your Posts for Pinners Posted: 15 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT Pinterest is not only the latest time-suck for the 18 – 35 female demographic – it’s also proving to be a pretty good traffic driver for marketers. From funny pictures to product images, pinboards are filling up with photos linked to articles, product details and more. And, hey – who is going to argue with free traffic and viral distribution of your content? So, here are 3 rules of thumb for preparing the pictures in your posts so that they are perfect for pinners (As you’ll see below, these 3 rules helped me drive 420 visits in one month!): Rule of Thumb #1- Title Your ImagesBy default, when visitors click the “Pin It” button, Pinterest will grab the image title as the caption/description. The pinner can edit this… but, by default, humans are lazy… so most pinners don’t change the caption. This means that your title is likely to end up on Pinterest along with your image. Use the title to describe your picture, but don’t be afraid to add in some additional text to let others know that there’s more to see or read if they click on the image. For example, the title of the image above (for those of you that haven’t pinned it yet!) is “3 Rules of Thumb for Getting Pictures Pinned and Repinned”. As the photo gets repinned and liked, the caption will (in most cases) follow it – tempting everyone who sees it to wonder, “What are those 3 rules…?”
Rule of Thumb #2 – Get Creative With Your Image ChoicesIf you’ve been blogging for a while, you’re used to picking images for their SEO value. Having an image and using the image tags used to be enough. Even if you have been design-conscience in your image picks, you’ll have to get more strategic to get the repins flowing. Pinterest is like a candy store… an eye candy store. Pinners are like the kids in that candy store, visually bombarded with bright colors and interesting shapes all begging for their attention. In order to stand out, you’ve gotta have the lollipop that sticks out and says, “Pick me!” Both of these could be a featured image on a post about the benefits of blogging for avid WordPress fans. Which of these would you pin or repin? The boring blocks, or the interesting t-shirt print full of inside jokes? or Think about your audience. Pick pictures that will appeal to them and that they will want to post for all to see. Rule of Thumb #3 – Ask for a PinYour visitors aren’t thinking about your traffic… but you should be. So, while you’ve got their attention, remind them that they can impress their friends with the amazing finds they’ve uncovered on your site.
Why?So, why should you go through these extra steps to get your pictures primed for Pinterest? This graph says it all: This is the monthly Pinterest-referred traffic for a client of mine from January – May of this year. There were 22 referrals in January and 450 in May. In early May, she said, “Yeah – we pin all of our posts to Pinterest, but it’s not getting us much traffic.” In just under a month, by employing the three rules of thumb above we got the Pinterest traffic pipeline running. So, you’ve got nothing to lose and a lot of potential traffic to gain. Get pinning!
Photos: Thumbs Up and My Blog from Pixmac. WP-Attitude from Flickr. Related posts:
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| How to Use AJAX With PHP on Your WordPress Site Without a Plugin Posted: 15 Jun 2012 06:30 AM PDT When using WordPress as a CMS, situations often arise where you need to display, add or update content on your WP site without turning to plugins. While bolting in some PHP alone can do the job, nothing is more seamless that the magic of jQuery’s AJAX. While there are plenty of sources on the Web that cover this topic, when I first began developing for WordPress I was left scratching my head understanding methods that made the process easy and within WordPress best practices. Fortunately once you understand a few basic resources you can tap into, AJAXifying your WP site couldn't be easier. NOTE: This article assumes you have a good understanding of jQuery and AJAX (and of course, PHP). If not, this article is a good tutorial. Step 1 – enabling the WordPress AJAX handler To utilize admin-ajax.php you need to instantiate it using WordPress' wp_localize_script() function. The best place to do this is in your theme's functions.php file. In functions.php, create a function and add the following: function your_function_name() { wp_localize_script( 'function', 'my_ajax_script', array( 'ajaxurl' => admin_url( 'admin-ajax.php' ) ) ); } You can change your_function_name(), 'function' and 'my_ajax_script' to whatever you like. We’ll cover these more in depth shortly. Step 2 – create your PHP functions $dirName = dirname(__FILE__); $baseName = basename(realpath($dirName)); require_once ("$dirName/MyFunctions.php"); Where MyFunctions.php is in the same folder as functions.php. If you're using a theme you didn't write, be sure to check if other files are being included and simply include your new PHP functions file in the same place. Your PHP functions can obviously be anything you'd like. A call to a table you've created, grabbing or adding values from the wp_options table, etc. For example: function get_my_option() { $var = get_option('my_var'); echo json_encode($var); die(); } Here I'm grabbing a value from the wp_options table then outputting it in JSON format by wrapping it in PHP's json_encode() function so jQuery can consume and display the value on my site. Notice that I've added the die() function at the end. I've done this because without this function, admin-ajax.php will append the value outputted with a "0"—obviously not something you want. This is clearly an oversimplified example. I'm sure you'll come up with something much more useful! :-) For each PHP function you create, you'll want to declare it in functions.php using WP's add_action() hook. This ensures you can call the functions via AJAX when you want to use them. For my get_my_option() function, I'll add the following: add_action("wp_ajax_nopriv_get_my_option", "get_my_option"); The first parameter tells WP I want to use AJAX to call my PHP function by first typing "wp_ajax_nopriv_" and following it with my function name. The "nopriv" part indicates that I want to make this function available for non logged-in users (on the front-end). If I want to make the function available regardless of login state or in the WP admin, add the following: add_action("wp_ajax_nopriv_get_my_option", "get_my_option"); add_action("wp_ajax_get_my_option", "get_my_option"); If you have more than one PHP function, just continue to add them using the add_action() hook. Step 3 – add your JavaScript wp_enqueue_script( 'function', get_template_directory_uri().'/my_js_stuff.js', 'jquery', true); Note in the first part 'function' needs to match the name you used when you localized admin-ajax.php. So if you changed that, used the same name here. Next, I'm using WP's get_template_directory_uri() function to get the path to my theme directory, then giving it the name of my JS file, again, being relative to the functions.php file. Lastly, I'm telling WP that this file depends on jQuery, so if jQuery isn’t already being called to my WP site, it will now. With this addition we're just about ready to go. We just need to add another action hook to initiate the function we created earlier in functions.php: add_action('template_redirect', 'your_function_name'); The ‘template_redirect’ tells WP to run this function before loading the template file and ensures the admin-ajax.php file and my_stuff.js will be properly added to the ‹head› portion of your site. You can place the action hook before or after your function. Our final code in functions.php looks like this: function your_function_ name() { wp_localize_script( 'function', 'my_ajax_script', array( 'ajaxurl' => admin_url( 'admin-ajax.php' ) ) ); wp_enqueue_script( 'function', get_template_directory_uri().'/my_js_stuff.js', 'jquery', true); } add_action('template_redirect', 'your_function_ name'); $dirName = dirname(__FILE__); $baseName = basename(realpath($dirName)); require_once ("$dirName/MyFunctions.php"); add_action("wp_ajax_nopriv_get_my_option", "get_my_option"); add_action("wp_ajax_get_my_option", "get_my_option"); Step 4 – call your PHP function using jQuery function my_js_function() { jQuery.ajax({ url: my_ajax_script.ajaxurl, data: ({action : 'get_my_option'}), success: function() { //Do stuff here } }); } Notice for "url:" we're using the function name of my_ajax_script we declared when we instantiated admin-ajax.php using WP's wp_localize_script() function. This tells WP that we want to use admin-ajax.php to process the PHP function we declare on the next line: data: ({action : ‘get_my_option’}), If your PHP function is expecting additional request variables, you'll also want to pass these in the data: line separated by commas. Like: data: ({action : 'get_my_option', id: 26, name: 'Bob'}), Obviously there's lots more you can add to your JS. For example if you're posting variables to be stored in a table, you'll probably want to add type: ‘POST’ and then handle any data your PHP functions returns in the success() function of your JS. You can always use a beforeSend() function if you want to display an AJAX spinner while your PHP function is being called. Lastly, you can call your JS function from anywhere on your WP site in your HTML. Perhaps you have a Page Template you've created specifically for this purpose. Or you can modify any of your theme files like index.php, single.php or page.php. Invoke the JS function using an onclick method, or a click function in your JS—whatever makes sense. There you have it. With a few simple steps, you'll be slinging AJAX around your WP site like a pro! Happy coding. Related posts:
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| WordPress Themes: the Top 20 (as Used by the Top Million) Posted: 15 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT
Which brings me to this article. The folks over at HackerTarget.com have been very busy analyzing the top 1 million websites (as ranked by Alexa). They uncovered some rather interesting information relating to WordPress sites and theme usage specifically, which I would like to share with you. Free vs. PremiumHackerTarget.com discovered that of the top 1 million sites as ranked by Alexa, over 160,000 (or 16%) run on WordPress. And of the top 100 themes in usage, 51% were premium. This may come as a surprise – I would certainly expect free themes to be in dominant use. However, I believe that the data may be somewhat misleading. The top 100 themes only accounts for 35,930 (or 22%) of the total number of WordPress-powered sites. I am willing to bet that the majority of sub-1oo themes are free. And therefore, by extension, I would in reality expect free themes to have the overall market share. However, there is a key takeaway from this which I expected – the top sites are far more likely to be using premium themes. The Top 5 Premium Theme DesignersOut of the top 100 themes, the Thesis theme framework was found to be the most popular by an enormous margin. The other four designers (in order of popularity) are StudioPress, WooThemes, OptimizePress and Elegant Themes. Here’s a video of Thesis in action: As remarked in the original article, it is interesting to note that OptimizePress is so popular – considering it is a pure sales-focused theme, rather than the others, that offer all-purpose theme frameworks and/or general blogging themes. I consider it no surprise that Woothemes’ Canvas is the most popular “general purpose” commercial theme. I use a customized version of Canvas on my own blog, and often receive emails from readers asking me about it. The Top 20 ThemesAs you would expect, free themes are dominant in the top 20, but premium themes do have a considerable presence. In fact, the cumulative total of sites using all three versions of Thesis listed in the top 20 makes it the most popular theme overall.
There are some very surprising exclusions from this top 20 list, such as Responsive, PageLines, and Delicate. Given that they are amongst the most downloaded on the WordPress.org themes directory, I find it puzzling that they do not feature.  Pagelines - one of a few curious omissions. Wrapping UpSo there you have it folks – analysis of the top million sites in the world reveals some rather interesting information relating to WordPress theme usage. If you’re still hungry for more information, I recommend that you check out the original article over at HackerTarget.com. No related posts. |
| Promote on Facebook? Yes, I think you should. Posted: 14 Jun 2012 06:35 PM PDT If you’re a regular WPMU reader you’ve probably gathered that we’re pretty big on our Facebook page (if you haven’t liked it already, do it now, you’ll love it, promise) so, needless to say, we’ve been watching their promotion features pretty closely over the last few months – and equally huge fans of integrating WordPress with Facebook. But today, they really got my attention by not just offering to promote the page, but telling me the exact percentage of our ‘likes’ that saw each post:  Of late the range is between 16% at the lowest and 32% at the highest And perhaps most significantly, how many I could buy with a promotion, check it out:  $31 for 8,000 views... nice! So, the question is, should we use it? And of course, will we? And my answer to both is a resounding yes. Reasons being:
And check out how it could boost our existing Facebook trafficHere’s the WPMU.org referrals from Facebook stats for the last month:  Not bad at all, but could do better!
Now, the thing to remember is that those stats are without any promotion at all - so they are being achieved with, say, and average of 25% visibility of our posts in Facebook. A visibility of an extra 8,000 (for $31) on an individual post would effectively make that 100%, thus, you would imagine, quite possibly quadrupling those stats. So, say we promote 4 posts per day, at $31 a pop, for a month, we could quite possibly expect 30,000 more visitors in a month for a spend of roughly $3844. $3844 spent on Facebook Promotion = maybe 30,000 more visitors $3844 spent on Google Adwords = around 1,000 – 1,500 more visitors So, even if my calculations are wildly inaccurate, Facebook looks like a vastly better bet than Adwords. We’ll let you know how it goes :) Related posts:
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| Daily Tip: Magento WordPress Integration 2.0 Released Posted: 14 Jun 2012 06:11 PM PDT Over the past year we’ve been following the work of James Kemp who has developed an extension for Single Sign-On For Magento And WordPress as well as a WordPress plugin for integrating the two. Magento WordPress Integration now has its own website where you can keep up with all the latest news on the project. Version 2.0 was just released with some exciting new features, including:
If you’ve ever had to work with both WordPress and Magento, you’ll find that this plugin is a lifesaver. Download the latest version of Magento WordPress Integration for free from the WordPress plugin repository. Related posts:
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| 7 Signs You are a WordPress Fanatic Posted: 14 Jun 2012 01:50 PM PDT What Are the Characteristics of a WordPress Fanatic?1. Does your work uniform consist of something sporting a great big WordPress “W” of some sort?
2. Do you look forward to using your WordPress dishware almost as much as drinking your morning coffee? Before I go to my office I go to the kitchen where my husband has kindly made a fresh pot of coffee. Reaching into the cupboard I pull out an extra-large blue and white WordPress coffee cup (a gift from my son) and fill it to the top with coffee and, caramel and white chocolate flavored creamer. I have other WordPress theme related mugs too. 3. Does the majority of your day revolve around teaching and/or learning WordPress?
4. Do you have or participate in live chats whenever you are online? Between appointments and webinars, I make myself available for WordPress Q&A on Skype chat anytime I am online (no calls please, unless you have a scheduled appointment). 5. Is the morning coffee you drank the only thing that actually reminds you that you must take a break? I often have to remind myself to take breaks and eat regularly. I completely engulf myself in my work and rarely leave my desk. I do keep an iThemes glass that I got from a live WordPress web design training event filled with green apple licorice to snack on close by. 6. Do your client’s websites always look better than your own? I have over 50 WordPress websites (over 20 of my own) that I am maintaining or am working on in one way or another. I am like a WordPress mechanic whose own site is always broken because my client’s websites are always more important than my own. 7. Does your family question the existence of any real friends because all of your friends are “virtual”. I love to meet new people and make new friends. Some of my virtual friends are as close as family. It is great to have them around to discuss WordPress ins and outs that my family has no interest in. Some people say I am a WordPress expert. I don’t see it that way. I just figure I am a WordPress fanatic that can share what I have learned with someone who knows a little bit less than me and I look to learn from those that know a little more. The Early Stages of Becoming a WordPress FanaticYou just might be a WordPress fanatic if…
Can you relate? What characteristics do you have that make you realize that you are on your way to becoming or already are a WordPress fanatic too? No related posts. |
Patrick on Google+
Every now and then I’ll come across some fascinating data relating to WordPress, such as the 
After taking my shower, combing my hair and brushing my teeth I make my way to my closet, pull out and put on my black t-shirt boldly stating “Ask me about WordPress” across the front. It really doesn’t matter which day of the week it is. I have a WordPress t-shirt for each day of the week. Seriously! WordPress T-shirts have become my work from home uniform.
The first thing I do when I arrive to my office (it is the third door on the right down the hall from the kitchen) is open my calendar to review which of my clients I have scheduled for 1-on-1 WordPress and other internet training appointments. Next, I review all the WordPress, web design or any other online webinars that I am planning to attend for my own personal training.
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