FOLEYO Wordpress Website Solutions

Audio file example

sharon — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:29:23 +0000

Here’s a link to an audio file:

Customize on which pages widgets display

sharon — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:30:38 +0000

When you design your site you may want to have some widgets only display on certain pages. For instance, you might have a widget that displays a particular category of post but you don’t want it to show on the Home (Front) page. You only want it to display when you are on the Category Page for that particular category.

An example of this in action can be seen on this site. When you click on one of my portfolio entries you will see a widget that displays all the Portfolio entries in the right sidebar. This widget only displays when a post entry in the Portfolio category is displayed. Pretty neat, eh?

This is done with a very cool plugin called “Widget Logic”. You can download it here.

Once installed you will see a Widget Logic field added to all of your widgets. Like this:

In this field you can enter any of Wordpress’ Conditional Tags. Some examples of conditional tags are:

‘is_home()’

‘!is_single()’

‘in_category(5)’ (which means that the widget will appear on those category pages for id=5)

For a widget to appear its widget logic statement must return “true”. You can create more complex conditions by combining conditional tags with ‘||’ (OR), ‘&&’ (AND) and ‘!’ (NOT).

All of that is just the tip of the iceberg. If this interests you, you will certainly want to go over the Conditional Tags page in the Wordpress codex and learn more about conditional tags.

PechaKucha Night – Raleigh

sharon — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:04:38 +0000

News and information site for local chapter of PechaKucha Global Foundation.

Theme: Customized Atahualpa by Bytes for All

Live site: www.pknraleigh.com

This was another Cynergie Studio collaboration.

Promotion Plus

sharon — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:28:54 +0000

News/blog/product information site for a promotional products company.

Theme: custom Atahualpa

Design: Cynergie Studio

Live site: www.promotionplus.com

Creating custom widget areas

sharon — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:55:24 +0000

One of Atahualpa’s most powerful features (See, Atahualpa: My favorite theme.) is the ability to create custom widget areas. This means that you are not restricted to just the sidebars that have been programmed into the theme. And although Atahualpa comes ’standard’ with two left and two right hand sidebar areas you may want to place widgets in other areas, perhaps the header, footer or even above or below the loop in the center column. Atahualpa lets you do all of this from within the Theme Options panel.

You do still have to ‘handle’ some PHP code. But it isn’t real coding. Just cutting and pasting with a tweak here and there for the parameters you want to use. All the information you need about what the code needs to look like is provided on the Add New Widget Areas page. This is an example of the most basic of statements that will create a simple widget area where ever you place the code:

Using this feature I created two side by side columns that appear below the loop on the homepage of the
Horseman’s Arts site. For that the code is placed on the Style & Edit Center Column page in the Content BELOW the LOOP section. And it would look something like this:

Easy!

After refreshing the site a couple times the new widget areas will appear on your Widget page in Wordpress below the ones already available with the theme. The new widget areas will have the name you assigned. So, since I created two widget areas called CenterWidget the widget area names will be CenterWidget_1 and CenterWidget_2. From there you add widgets just like with any other.

Now all of that works great. But maybe you want to go even further. You’ve seen sites that have a single wide sidebar area above two or more narrow sidebar areas. You can do this with Atahualpa, too. Although you need a plugin that lets you add PHP code to a widget. Instructions for this feat are on the Atahualpa forum. I used this technique, along with the Advanced Text plugin on the Promotion Plus website.

Customize how posts are displayed in sidebars

sharon — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:11:54 +0000

Wordpress comes with a built in widget called Recent Posts. The Recent Posts widget allows you to place a list of the titles to the most recently added posts in a sidebar. That’s cool and can be useful. But, what if you wanted to select titles from a specific category? Or what if you wanted to display excerpts instead of just titles?

Enter Query Posts by Justin Tadlock. I love this plugin! Query Posts makes it possible to do some pretty nifty navigation without any programming. The plugin developer set up 40 different options for pretty much every possible permutation of query you might think up and then some. Check out this screenshot of the widget:

You can see it in action on the Horseman’s Arts site. Look on the home page in the center column below the intro text there are two side-by-side widget areas (thanks to Atahaulpa’s custom widget area feature). For these columns I elected to display a maximum of three published post excerpts written by a particular author and ordered by descending date. I also control which posts to display by excluding some categories.

Tell me again… what is Wordpress?

sharon — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:21:19 +0000

Since arriving on the scene in 2003, Wordpress has become the most popular self-hosted blogging tool in the world. Although its roots are clearly ‘blogging’ Wordpress has evolved into a very nice content management system. What does that mean to you?

Used to be websites were static. You put up a few pages and that was that.

But, now, people practically live on the internet. It is a lively and dynamic place! If you have something to say there are going to be people on the internet who want to hear what it is. To go along with that obsession we have new tools for talking and listening (writing and reading) that are incredibly easy to use. Nowadays there is simply no reason not to get your own voice out there. Enter Wordpress and blogging.

There is more! If you have surfed around the internet you probably have seen blogs. Typically, they are just a single ’stream of consciousness’ that has no structure. Once an entry ‘falls off’ the end of the page it is never heard from again. While you can go back through previous entries by date that just isn’t practical nor does it reflect the way people really want to browse a website.

Wouldn’t it be better if we could organize our blogs by topic? That way, when someone stops by your site they can go back through your previous entries in a way that makes sense to them. Voila, now you are talking “content management system”.

It is its content management capability that makes Wordpress so perfect for a dynamic website–conventional ‘blog’ or not. Let’s say your site is a portfolio. You can post an entry for each piece in your portfolio. Before publishing it online you assign it to one or more categories. These categories are defined by you. If you are a graphic designer your categories might be “Print”, “Logos”, “Websites”, “Marketing Materials”,”Illustrations”, or whatever kind of work you do. You could also set up categories for other aspects of the work (color, industry, materials?) again to make it that much easier for people to find what might interest them. There is a lot of flexibility built in. The same concepts would apply no matter what kind of content you deliver.

Still have questions? That’s what I’m here for. Contact me!

Do I really need a blog?

sharon — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:18:52 +0000

OK although it is the ‘hot’ thing, not everybody actually needs to do the blogging thing. And, while Wordpress is best known for being an outstanding blogging platform these days you actually can do pretty much anything you want with it. So, while you don’t need Wordpress to set up–shall we say–a ‘traditional’ website I still highly recommend it.

I’ve got several reasons for this recommendation. But the most important you for you is ease of updating. There is nothing worse, especially now when a fresh web presence is practically a requirement, than a website that is clearly outdated. What does this say about you and your business? So, your site needs to be updated regularly with new content. If you went with a straight HTML site updating it would require that you either hire someone to make said updates or learn how to do the HTML yourself. Enter Wordpress. With Wordpress you can add new content, once the site is up and running (and that’s my job), adding new content for you is as easy as writing an email.

The next reason I recommend Wordpress, even if blogging isn’t on your immediate horizon, is how easy it is to create a site that is rich in functionality without me having to be a programmer. Why is that good for you? Because my expertise and experience is in the space between you and the technology. I can serve as your liason–interpretor if you will–to the world of technology. Often times the good folks who do the programming aren’t as well equipped to appreciate the business person’s perspective. Whereas I have 20 years of experience in just that very role… guiding and supporting folks who are using technology to meet their business objectives.

Thirdly, I used the phrase “immediate horizon” in the last paragraph on purpose. You really can’t know what the future will hold. As your business evolves you may find yourself coming to the conclusion that you have more reason to blog than you originally thought. So, extendability is another great reason to choose Wordpress as your web site platform. Having options is good!

So, there you have it. If you have more questions, just ask.

My pick for website hosting

sharon — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:20:34 +0000

I have personally been a satisfied customer of Website Source since 2001. So, at this time, this is the only hosting company that I endorse. Their pricing is very competitive and they pride themselves on reliability. I’ve also been very pleased with their technical support when ever I’ve had questions. I especially have appreciated that they offer a Chat option which I have used with great satisfaction several times.

I have experienced other companies such as Blue Host, Go Daddy, and MacHighway and none have offered any reason for me to change. I will say that Go Daddy is my least favorite as I find their site confusing to navigate.

IIDA Georgia

sharon — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:09:42 +0000

News and information site for the Georgia chapter of the International Interior Designers Association.

Theme: Customized Atahualpa by Bytes for All

Live site: www.iidageorgia.org

I collaborated with Cynergie Studio on this project. Look here to see what the client had to say about the results.