by Data Wrangler on February 17, 2010
This is probably the funniest story I have seen lately* — Philly city leaders blaming Facebook, Twitter and MySpace for a snowball fight. They suggest suing Facebook, et. al., because the social media was used to organize the group that eventually is alleged to have gotten out of hand.
Should Facebook, et. al., be suing Philly for raising such poor citizens and allowing them to ruin the good name of this social media? (The only one happy with any of this should be mySpace … as they have been relegated to AOL like irrelevance for the most part.)
The issue isn’t social media, it’s people and their behavior.
*There is nothing funny about damaging behavior — I’m talking about the notion of blaming it on the social media sites.
by Data Wrangler on February 9, 2010
One of the nicest things I have seen lately … use a variable at the top of your css and then when you need to change all references to it, just change it at the top.
I cannot tell you how many times a client will change all link colors five times during a project and then you have to carefully search and replace them if you code css more or less by hand (which is my personal preference). No more, use variables in the body and then simply change them.
I’ll be looking into LessCSS immediately.
by Data Wrangler on January 4, 2010
Have you considered your 404 page design and functionality? Clients often appreciate when we add a little zing and extra functionality to 404 pages. If you would like some help on yours, feel free to give us a holler.
Before we get into the design and functionality, let’s review what a 404 page actually is:
In our words, “It is a page returned by the server that says the sought after content does not exist at the location given” or in the words of Wikipedia on 404 pages, it “is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but the server could not find what was requested.”
What a 404 page is not:
It is not a a way to show content was moved.
If you structure your site properly, visitors should not be served a 404 page just because you relocate content. You should thoughtfully craft your site so that moved or relocated pages are redirected to the new content location with either a 302 (temporary redirect) or 301 (permanent redirect) server response code.
One of Many Creative 404 Error Pages
We use 301 temporary redirects most often for blog moves where old links are changing to new links. They also are used when several related or duplicative pages are being merged or consolidated. A 302 temporary redirect might be used when a page is under construction but will return to service soon.
In WordPress we appreciate the benefits of using the Redirection Plugin for 301 and 302 redirection work. We often create direct queries to load redirects into the Redirection Plugin, especially when doing a complete migration from another platform to WordPress.
A sign that you are imperfect.
Websites and blogs are actively altered on a regular basis. Occasionally these changes inadvertently break links in the navigation. It happens, it’s okay. How you get them back on path is the real issue here.
How to Improve your 404 page:
While we work with many blog and CMS platforms, we find that WordPress is our most popular, especially with the improvements in the recent 2.8.x and 2.9 revisions to the core coding. Here are some ideas on how to improve your 404 pages and some ideas how to implement them in WordPress.
What a 404 Page should do:
- First and foremost it MUST tell the visitor that something is amiss. What they are seeking cannot be found in the manner sought. We have seen people try very creative methods to convey that message with some great graphics. Here are a few interesting examples of 404 images. Don’t get so creative that you miss conveying this important message.
- It should give the visitor effective tools to get where they intended to go in the first place.
- The first and the most basic offering is to simply have a home link. From there they can start over.
- Providing a search function so that they can re-orient themselves is helpful.
- Providing a list of suggested pages or posts can also be helpful.
- Design your 404 page to resemble your other pages rather than using the default blank white error page which can really disorient the visitor. However also make it clear that what it is delivering is not the intended content and serve a 404 header for search engines to avoid indexing a 404 page.
- Minimize the imposition. This is a favorite improvement for clients — and even more importantly for their visitors! Some solutions simply pick the most likely post or page and send them there directly. This can be a mistake for several reasons –
- The visitor will never know that there was a 404 error. They simply see that they landed somewhere and don’t really know why.
- The relatedness of the page or post they are automatically sent to compared to the intended content to may not be high enough and could confuse them.
- We prefer to give them a list of most likely links, and then let them choose, along with the other choices offered above.
We prefer to keep it simple by providing a list of most likely links, and then let them choose.
If you are a DIY WordPress user you might enjoy reading this article over at Yoast which gives some specific coding examples to spiff up a 404 Page Not Found Error Page. We often use a few of those techniques and even a few others. One of the methods that we do like is the use of “intelligent coding” which include tests to determine whether something useful was found and then react accordingly:
if (count($posts) == 0).
The 404 Error Page is worth giving some thought to. We hope this helps you get your 404 page in shape. Or, if that is not your thing give us a holler so that we can help you.
Happy Blogging Trails,
Don and Jim
by Data Wrangler on December 27, 2009
Wanted: Membership Directory via WordPress!
Why: Thought I would take a few minutes this morning and follow a project I have been putting off since August — they best kind of project to put off, one you aren’t getting paid for. I have an organization that is non-profit in nature and I am on the board. We have a members’ only wordpress install, so it may only make sense to extend it to cover our membership directory. In the past, we have done our directory in print … so it is outdated quickly and expensive to re-publish annually. My copy that is now two years old is heavily annotated with updated email addresses and so forth.
Why Now: We are about to send out dues notices, wouldn’t it be great if we had this in place at the same time and emailed people a notice about this at the same time.
So here goes nothing — and what the heck I’ll take you along for the ride (like so many rides this one has a surprise ending if you want to skip the flow and jump ahead … but this makes for a great example of project flow and research leading to conclusions) — this is a pretty typical project for us as we are VERY comfortable working in wordpress even though we have never bothered/had need for this particular project before. I will try to give you the “mental” sense of the flow of a project like this including the various side shoots a project typically takes. This is simply part of the process of most “new” types of projects.
Research:
- Like all good projects, let us start with a google search. For the briefest of time I tried Bing as a replacement … it just didn’t do it for me — so here we are, back to google.
- First hit looks like a fairly decent solution … “How to Use Wordpress as a Membership Directory” however it also raises a few new questions …
- of course this is an older install of wordpress — I just told you it is an unpaid volunteer situation, so I probably have to update to the newest version first — shouldn’t take too long I suppose
- The tutorial only talks about 2.5x and of course as of today we are in the second or third week of 2.9 (hallelujah for quick update buttons [and self-installing plug-ins] but still make your backups before doing so or you may be calling us in a panic to save your wordpress install … and we would rather work with you under different circumstances) so we need to wonder will it work okay with the current rendition and are the plug-ins still working well with the current version?
- The posts end mysteriously in June (with the last three being unanswered) … always of concern when a thread stops suddenly … maybe it’s the post above that says if you want help hire me, which I can appreciate … but on the other hand he doesn’t update the post when someone proposes a better plug-in for one of the the two required functions at the bottom.
- The second hit is another place he wrote the same article … kind of funny to read through … someone offers to translate it to their language … but of course it’s a site offering adult advertisements … the things you put up with on the internet … but I figure I should at a minimum read the comments for a while to see what other discussion exists … and I come onto an interesting idea … “What do you think about using wordpress as a invoice manager? Each post could be an invoice that prints to pdf. possibly have it mail the pdf directly to clients. i’ve been toying around with the idea, but im not a savy enough programmer. i realize it would require modifying the WP core.” I think you could do that and what if you future published next invoices (I often invoice quarterly for example … ) and subscribe myself to the thread. Like the dogs in the movie UP — “squirrel!!” Good nugget there, but ignore it I have a project at hand. So back to reading the comments.
- So far most of those posts at WPDesigner border on inane, however the author in a response suggests a third plug-in to use for author photos: user photo. I see a different discussion on his site regarding photos and numbering them to match author id’s (that would be a project keeping them straight perhaps …). So file this one away on the main flow … three plug in’s now needed:
- WP User Manager plugin from Dealsway to add new fields to the user profiles. >> now replaced perhaps with: Register Plus a plugin that is represented as being cleaner and easier to work with for this purpose.
- The famous Role Manager plugin which restricts what your members can do once they are logged into your site.
- User Photo to allow upload of pictures. The author did this manually and then refers briefly to this plug in (that came into being after his initial install in his blog and he simply refers to it in comments at WPDesigner … so I presume it will work fine with a minor edit perhaps to the display pages.
- So on these three plugings, for now we’ll simply tuck away these three plugin’s and figure that an early step will be to see how compatible they are with 2.9 (assuming I will update before moving forward with the project … after all why do it twice, once now and once when I have to upgrade).
- Squirrel: WP needs a good nested ul/ol manager … it isn’t doing these nestings well at all … I’m manually doing them in essence … does this exist … back on task having made a mental note …
- Likoma has a version of member directories up an running in wp 2.1 and he is kind enough to offer a tutorial — he however forces you to watch a video to see how he does it — much better to describe first and then watch the video. His method used an alternate plugin. He uses the “UserExtra” plugin. I assume this is a alternate to either WP User Manager or Register Plus referenced above. I’ll make a note of it. (Squirrel: He uses something called “wink” to make his video tutorial. I often make video tutes with Jing (JingProject from http://techsmith.com). What is Wink? I love Jing, but Wink looks really really good … sorry some squirrels do get chased around here!) The UserExtra plugin appears to have a neat feature — the ability to restrict certain categories to certain levels of user.
- Next link is more questions than answers but it again references a plugin called user extra fields … same or different than above? Appears to be different based on screenshots, though may simply be a different version. Given the lack of info on whether it works with latest wordpress releases … wondering how common it’s use is these days?
I break right now to say … okay Chris … lame to write an update and not leave a message in the old thread saying … this may be obsolete because I have now written an update! Granted you don’t even have to share with us, but had I come upon your update first and read the rest historically well … it would have been smoother and perhaps saved me some time.
So now let’s start over with your update:
Gee I wish this came up higher in the google search (Squirrel: let’s try Bing just for kicks … remember my start … and remember I’m leaving my flow “as it happened” with the exception of the jump link near the top — in fact google may be better in this instance as I now see the tenth link on the first page of finds to be: WP 2.5 Update: How to Use Wordpress as a Membership Directory). Of course I more or less did the links in order … so I somehow came to the 2.7 update before the 2.5 update … but now I wonder is there a category or other way to see your whole series of posts. May I suggest that you start at the oldest and put an indexed list on the latest and a link to that list at the top of each such post? It would be good for you and for your search engine find-ability I suspect as well. Now one could argue I should have done a better job of scanning my first few google finds, but frankly the top couple of posts looked very promising — and they were great starts or I would have skipped over them entirely — but in the end you could have helped both yourself and myself with a couple of choice links forward.
So let’s now read 2.5 … to stay in order and then 2.7.
This will be a quick read … maybe even a skim because I know 2.7 is coming and 2.7 may well be sufficiently close to 2.9 so that I may be good to go … so let’s skim.
Okay in fact it was a quick read and the post actually gets us all the way to 2.7 … here is a distilled version of plugins he lists:
So after doing all the typical database backups, I started the process. I first uploaded all the new versions of the plugins that I had been using:
* Article Templates – To pre-configure my “New Member” post templates
* GeneralStats – To show the number of members
* Improved Include Page – To insert the ads
* IWG Hide Dashboard – Removed
* Role Manager – To specify which a Subscriber or a Designer could do within the dashboard
* WP User Manager – The heart of the site
He did note a couple of issues between Hide Dashboard and Role Manager. I can live without hide dashboard, but I think I’d like to not enable/disable role manager regularly to update. That issue would cause me some concern, but let’s jump forward.
Just for kicks I went to his website and viewed all of his public posts from this post going backwards to the first post I found. There are no posts in between on the subject, so I think I have it. So on to reading about 2.7 used as a membership directory.
He has decided to use these plugins:
* Register Plus
* New User Email Setup
* User Photo
* Customize Your Community
* Custom Author Permalink
* Show authors without posts
* WP-reCAPTCHA
* Audit Trail
* Role Manager
* WP Hide Dashboard
* WP Security Scan
As you can see, what started simple got complex — although I think you could get by with much less if you wished. The last five of these had to do with tightening security.
Anyway off to update my WordPress Install and then why not, I’ll give it a whirl!
