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We are back! And this week we catch up with Ryan Imel. The Editor-in-Chief of WP Candy, he transformed what was once a tutorial site for the past years into a fast-paced breaking WordPress news site. Ryan is a serial entrepreneur having created projects like COMMENTbits and others.
To kick things off this week we talk shop with Ryan as he tells us about the brand new iPhone app – WPCandy WordPress News – wpcandy.com’s first venture into the App Store and is available right now. This is one of the means by which the community can support wpcandy.com, and as such we open the discussion on different monetization methods outside of ads on your site.
Joost and Ryan talk about interesting news and developments that have caught their eye over the past couple of weeks such as:
- The WordPress SEO Plugin on Yoast.com – Joost talks about the work he has been doing on this and how it is developing
- Joost does a live launch of the brand new them Frederick and the W3 Edge team have built for Yoast.com. Joost talks about exactly how he plans for this new theme to improve conversion rates
- Tip from Joost: have a look at a great Theme Tester plugin by donncha that he has been using recently
- Theme frameworks: we open the debate on what a framework is and how it should behave. Will an ideal framework emerge? And should there be one theme framework to rule them all?
- Should SEO functions reside in a theme or a plugin? Those in our live chat room ask the question ‘are there any conflicts between SEO and frameworks?’
Joost asks Ryan when wpcandy.com plan to launch a new theme design, and the pair discuss what could be changed within its current site design – with an SEO perspective on things from Joost.
Picks of the week
- wpcandy.com’s shiny new iPhone app – WPCandy WordPress News
- The Edit Flow plugin is incredibly useful for managing and assigning on a multi author site and comes highly recommended by Ryan who himself runs a multi author blog on wpcandy.com.
- WordPress SEO Plugin on Yoast.com
- Theme Tester plugin by donncha allows a blog administrator to test out a new theme before launch whilst your old theme is still live
- SEO Data Transporter plugin which allows you to easily transfer your inputs SEO data from one theme/plugin to another.
- Here is the alternative to having to write code when you need to regenerate your thumbnails: the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin. Bookmark this one!
Joost calls for someone out there to build a replacement plugin for a slider on a front page. There seems to be no single plugin that allows you to determine the order of the slides and that does the simple things really well. Go to wp-community.org and tell Joost what plugin you think he should be using!
Hi Joost,
I have a plugin available which I use on my own site (http://pixopoint.com/) for adding featured content galleries. I haven’t released it for download yet as I want to get some sweet looking designs built into it first, but in the mean time feel free to email me if you would like a copy and I’ll happily send it on through.
The plugin utilizes a custom post-type for the slider gallery by default, which allows you poke whatever you want into the slider, but you can also make it use standard WP posts, pages, static content or anything else you care to use.
It’s quite extensible in that you can include pretty much any sort of WP content you may want, ie: add thumbnail images, titles, excerpts or anything else you may like, all via the admin panel. All those features are available in an “advanced” section of the plugins admin page as you do need to know a little WP code to make use of it, but you are technically proficient enough that it should all make complete sense once you see it.
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Joost, you the man..you always do good work and I have being using your Google analytic plugin over a year and love it..keep up the good work.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Hi Joost,
Well done on your latest theme makeover, I think you will convert more business with it as it looks more like a business site now than a developers help desk it kind of felt like before.
I have checked out the plugin Ryan from http://pixopoint.com mentioned and it is a great tool. I also have find the dynamic content gallery a pain at times to work with other plugins like nextgen gallery etc.
I also use the display buddy plugins from ithemes http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/displaybuddy/ really user friendly and look awesome on the main content area and as a widget in the sidebar.
Keep those podcasts coming they help us all a great deal, thank you.
Kind regards
Tony
I share yours and Ryan’s frustrations with theme frameworks. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point of one killer framework, but it would be nice if there was more standardization like consistent hooks and filters.
I also share your frustration with the different slider plugins, I’ve tried and abandoned all those same ones.
So I built my own plugin called Meteor Slides. I think it is easier to use than most of the alternatives but also has some features others don’t, like support for multiple slideshows.
Drag and drop slide sorting hasn’t been added yet but can be expected in a future release. The slides are a custom post type though, so this functionality can easily be added with another plugin like Post Types Order.
Hi JLeuze
Can one configure the widget to open the link in blank page?
Regards
D
Hi Dale, yes you can setup the slide links to open in a new tab or window using a custom slideshow template.
Please help with this >
************
ID, “slide_url_value”, $single = true ) != “” ): ?>
<a href="ID, “slide_url_value”, $single = true ); ?>” title=”">
**********
What needs to change in the template file
Updating your forum with this issue would be of great too. Thx
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-meteor-slides-target-_blank
Replace line 95 of meteor-slideshow.php with this code to add a blank target to the links:
<a href="ID, "slide_url_value", $single = true ); ?>" title="" target="_blank">I’ll add this to the documentation for future reference!
Ah, my code got truncated. I updated the documentation with this info.
Hey man. Great podcast on Theme Frameworks and I couldn’t agree more. Most of them have far too much “bloat” for a developer.
After much looking a few years back, the best “Framework” I found is “WP Framework’ at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/wp-framework.
For developing client websites where a final design has already been determined, I find it ideal since it doesn’t have a lot of wacky features that would let a user to screw up the site up too much. It also has some brilliant css class entities added to the basic WordPress output that make it super fast and easy for a developer to style and add features to. I use it for pretty well every site I create.
It’s getting a bit long in the tooth at the moment but the developer is working on the next version, which looks pretty good so far as it adds in all the WP3+ goodness.
It really is a true “Framework” in my opinion. Check it out.
The Parkdale Hookers site isn’t created with WP Frameworks, it’s actually done with a really old framework called “WPRemix” – it had an interesting approach to a framework, but not that practical in the end. ‘Thought I should use it for something since I purchased the developer version of it – live and learn!
I love frameworks for WP. While I haven’t found one perfect framework they allow faster development and some consistency for the sites I build and maintain. Making updates and maintenance more efficient as well.
For sliders Featured Content Gallery (featuredcontentgallery.com) supports ordered slides if you use the post/page ID option instead of the Category Name option. Just list post ID’s in the order which you want them displayed.
I too was looking for a simple slider plugin for a site that would allow me to reorder the images easily. The best one I’ve found is the Slideshow plugin from the guys at PluginBuddy (iThemes). Take a look, I think you’ll like it. http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/displaybuddy/ It allows you to reorder with up and down arrows.
I am using Grou Random Image. Works fine except there is no slider arrow buttons. The plugin rotates through an image folder. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/grou-random-image-widget/