Tag Archives: wordpress

Eating an elephant

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baby elephant in a bowlI have the coolest idea ever for a WordPress plugin. It serves a need that is currently somewhat served by only 2 other products. They’re established and well known in the industry, but neither actually integrates with WordPress, but rather you can insert some HTML and get an iFrame to the source site which then allows you to implement certain functions or features.

The problems with this that I see:

  • Difficult for non-tech people
  • Not brandable
  • Doesn’t look like your site
  • Your data is stored on their site
  • Requires another login to their site

Don’t get me wrong, these other 2 products are well respected and work, but on forums I often see people complaining about the appearance. One of the companies has done some really great variations on their widgets but even if they did 1000 of them, they may not fit the site you want to build. One native to WordPress either always will, or YOU the site owner will be able to make it match.

So, why is this an elephant? Because the project spans a wide range of features (I have 20 documents of features) it’s a massive project. The existing companies have built their products over a course of years, tweaking and fixing etc. I’m trying to at least catch up with them in a fairly short period of time. It’s like trying to eat an elephant. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

I’ve adapted a few strategies for this, including the above 20 documents, MindMaps, feature lists etc and I’m finding it overwhelming. But progress is being made. I’m learning a lot. I’ve taken/am taking the approach of building one feature/function at a time, depending on what’s required. I have my infrastructure defined, database wise, so that helps. Except I start researching something and discover something new. Like using custom post types, or 3 different ways to implement ajax, or how best to handle multiple user accounts and their custom data. So I have to re-think. Then WordPress brings out 3.0 and it’s got features I want to use, which would them make the plugin only available for 3.0+

One of the hardest things has been choosing a name for it. Once I get close to release, I’ll start shopping around for some smart people to get creative with a name. Which may mean changing my function names…

What I learned at WordCamp Fraser Valley

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Yesterday, Nov 20, I spent the day in Surrey – a suburb of Vancouver with a bad reputation – attending WordCamp Fraser Valley for the 2nd time. This was there 3rd year doing this event, but I missed the first one it seems.

The event had about 40 people in attendance I think, and they ranged from youngish (20s) up to pretty mature (grey hair, no guessing on their ages) and ran the gamut of experience from “I want to get a blog” to folks who have been making a living with WordPress for a long time.

I met some great people and added most of them to Twitter. It was funny to see several people taking notes on paper amid a sea of laptops. Our host/facilitator/organizer was Gary, who has organized all 3 of the WordCamps so far. Gary did a great job, even coming up with a decent presentation on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the morning of WordCamp because one of the presenters had a family emergency.

I took nearly 7 pages of notes in OpenOffice (no paper for me) that I need to review. 4 of the presentations really taught me something.

  1. John Bollwitt‘s talk on how he implemented WordPress as an intranet solution for 4 local radio stations. John detailed how developing Floyd (their name for the intranet) really improved communication, community and documentation for the entire staff of 150+ people. Even the GM now has a personal, weekly blog he posts to. It became a way to share events and photos, as well as corporate documentation. He posted his presentation here: http://sixty4media.com/2010/11/20/using-wordpress-for-an-intranet/
  2. Danny Bradbury‘s talk on how to come up with ideas for blogging. It’s challenging, but as a professional journalist he needs to stay on top of current topics, track stories and sources and be ready with ideas. He presented a number of great sites he uses for research and tracking. His presentation is online here: http://prezi.com/evjtna9a9x6l/finding-your-bloggy-muse/
  3. Lynne Robson gave a great presentation on Child Themes for WordPress. Child themes were something I’d heard about, but never understood before. Now having seen Lynne’s presentation, I get why they’re so powerful. Short version – you can override styles and add functionality that aren’t in the parent theme. AND, if the parent theme is written properly, your functions can replace theirs, so you can improve on them. The upshot? If the owner updates the parent theme, you can safely upgrade without losing ANY of your customizations. Unless they change a style name.
  4. Leah Coss’s whirlwind and problem plagued session about Vlogging (video blogging) was amazing. The technical problems prevented us from seeing her PowerPoint, but she didn’t need it. At least for me, her points were clear and well made without the visuals. She did show us some good and bad examples on YouTube though. Yikes. I may yet start posting videos here.

Not to short change the other presenters, but these 4 really taught me something new. Tris Hussey, Kulpreet Singh and Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega all gave great talks, and inspired me in other ways, but I didn’t learn as much “new” information from them. Kulpreet’s talk has me wanting to look at eCommerce again. Something I both appreciate and hate him for doing. LOL.

Overall, it was a great day, full of interesting topics and interesting people. If you went, be sure to say hi. If you didn’t but are interested, be sure to check out other WordCamps, possibly in a city near you. I hope next year I don’t miss WordCamp Vancouver again.

Drafts Scheduler updated

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Today I released version 1.3 of my WordPress plugin, Drafts Scheduler. I had initially numbered it 1.2 and added an Undo feature that was noted as missing by BlueFur in his review. Seemed like a good idea. I had noted that there was no undo feature in the notes and of course it caused people some issues.

So in v1.2, I added the ability to undo the most recent set of scheduled posts. If any of those posts were already published, the plugin doesn’t reset their status. It was simple. I’d started out making harder than it needed to be, but after ignoring it for a week, I found the solution.

In v1.3, I added 2 new features to Drafts Scheduler, both suggested by users who sent feedback.

  1. Check for the existence of drafts before showing the options.
  2. Schedule an exact number of posts per day in “Surprise Me” mode.

I also moved the menu option from the TOOLS area up into the POSTS area where it makes more sense.

Anyway, I hope these features work for everyone and I look forward to more feedback.

My new plugin – Drafts Scheduler

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This started last year as a simple project. I needed a way to bulk-schedule a whole bunch of posts in WordPress over a period of time. WordPress doesn’t have an easy way to do this, so I started writing my own.

I got stuck, then busy and it got left behind. Well, the other day, I picked it up, dusted it off and decided to finish it.

It’s now available in the WordPress Extend repository – meaning it can be downloaded from WordPress.org or installed directly inside your WordPress install. You can download it here: http;//www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/drafts-scheduler

It does just one thing – lets you scheduler ALL of your drafts in one go.

Options? Yeah, we got options.

  1. You can schedule the drafts sequentially or randomly at an arbitrary interval of your choosing (3h 9m for example) starting at a set date.
  2. You can schedule drafts ENTIRELY randomly. Sort of. You still pick the starting date, the maximum number of posts per day, and also the start and end times within the day to confine your posts. After that, all bets are off. So you could schedule your posts to post up to 5 times a day, and only between 9am and 5pm if you wanted. Or between 10pm and 11:47pm if that makes you happy.
  3. That’s it. There is no 3.

I’m anxious for feedback. This was a fairly simple plugin that I should have created FIRST before my other, more complicated projects, but didn’t. Anyway, enjoy and leave me your comments here or on my development site: http://www.installedforyou.com/wordpress/new-plugin-drafts-scheduler/393/

What a weekend…

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John Chow
Image by John Bollwitt via Flickr

It wasn’t the best weekend, mostly because Chris was super sick all weekend. It didn’t entirely stop us but slowed us down. It’s now Monday and he’s not 100% better, but improving. Poor guy.

I spent the majority of the weekend working on my WordPress plugin. Standout Comments runs the comment system on this blog and many of my other personal blogs. My partners in this, Alex Shalman and local marketer John Chow hope to launch this to the public on March 25.

I’ve been struggling with Tweetbacks, a system for tracking tweets about your blog across the Twittersphere. I think I finally nailed it 100% this weekend, but it cost me about 8 hours of tracking, testing and coding to get it. The main problem was that it sent thousands of requests and Twitter would rate-limit me. When Twitter rate-limits you, they send back an error that says “Enhance your chill.” Cute, but not helpful.

We had to cancel some plans with friends and the weather wasn’t great for getting out or having the windows open too much either, it seemed like I was opening and closing windows every 5 minutes, or turning the heat on or off too.

Combine that with “Spring Forward” and the new early morning darkness and it was a little confusing. Oh well, now it’s Monday. Which can only mean one thing…

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