I*net Systems

WordPress – Facebook integration

I*net Admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:13:54 +0000

I’ve just spent too much time tracking down the problem where Facebook shares of WordPress posts appear in Facebook without an accompanying thumbnail. This problem is easy to avoid if you set everything up correctly.

1) Install any one of the many WordPress plugins that insert OG meta-information into your single post pages. I am currently using Fix Facebook Like which is straightforward to configure and seems to include all necessary OG tags.

2) Make sure all posts have featured images that are at least 200x in each direction. (The size restriction was the last piece of the puzzle!)

3) Verify that your page is correct by using Facebook’s (crappy) debugger: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. You may have to refresh the debugger page a whole lotta times (or resubmit again and again and again) to get past Facebook timeouts and parsing errors.

If everything is ok and the stars line up properly, then when you share your WordPress blog post, you’ll see a thumbnail in your Facebook feed.

Useful WordPress Plugins Redux

I*net Admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:05:15 +0000

I’m revisiting my list of WordPress plugins to update and correct. For starters, I always stick with TinyMCE because there are a few key plugins that add icons to the visual editor. To be without TinyMCE means to be without those icons. While this is acceptible for me, it adds a burden to those clients who are willing to take on content editing. Also, I have flip-flop-flip-flop-flipped on the best way to get PHP into pages and widgets. Will I stick with my current recommendation? (Time will tell.)

Advanced Text Widget

This tried and true plugin allows insertion of PHP into widgets but it also addes a key feature – to display a widget on specific pages and posts. I also add in Widget Logic (see below) to support more complex logic.

Akismet

Keeps on helping with the spam problem. Can’t we just make spam a capital offense. Spam has been and continues to ruin the Internet, so why do we allow a few to hurt the many? Anyway, Akismet helps mitigate the problem of spam comments.

Better Delete Revisions

I always add this, even when revisions aren’t going to be a problem. Even when I limit the number of revisions. Even when the site doesn’t have revisions. This great plugin adds an easy way to clean flotsam out of the database. What’s wrong with that?

cformsII

I used to use a simpler contact plugin for smaller sites but now I just add cformsII. It allows multple styled forms and archives submissions in the database. No more submissions lost in a sea of spam. You can always check the database to ensure you’ve seen all your requests. Don’t forget to put your custom styling in to a separate direction (cforms-custom) in the plugins directory to allow care-free upgrading.

DBC Backup

This is a new one for me but it seems to do the trick to ensure that the database backups are current.

Duplicate Post

Here is another plugin that I install regardless of whether its needed. You never know when you will want to create a duplicate of a post to shorten the writing & editing of a new post.

Google Analyticator

Should I change to a new Google Analytics integrator? This one just keeps on keeping on for me.

Google XML Sitemaps

This is the last plugin I configure just before launching a new site.

Hackadelic Sliding Notes

I tried everything under the sun to create sliders and accordians. In the end, Sliding Notes gives me what I need to put a lot of content into a small space. I can’t wait until version 2 ships with URL-expandable tabs.

jQuery Colorbox

This colorbox is reasonable. Reasonaby lean. Reasonably configurable. Reasonably lightweight.

Links Shortcode

On my links pages, there are Sliding Notes, each containing a single category of links. Very elegant.

Login Logo

I set my brand on the login page, because that’s the kinda guy I am!

Maintenance Mode

This is the one I use to keep prying eyes out of work-in-progress.

My Link Order, My Page Order, My Category Order

All great.

NextGEN Gallery

I do not use the Media Library. Not for one single image. Everything goes into various NextGen Gallery galleries. This is the first plugin I install when I undertake a new site.

Post Tabs

I tried everything. Then I built my own. Then I tried Post Tabs. It is NOT GREAT but it is good enough to easily add tabs at the top of a page. I have to edit the CSS and add extra rules to get the tabs to look reasonable but this gets you far downstream with no effort.

Shortcode Exec PHP

No more PHP inserted into posts and then fighting with TinyMCE to leave it alone. Now I create Shortcodes that render PHP output and insert them into the code. Very simple. Very elegant. My PHP is never too complicated. If it were, then this solution might not work well but so far, so good.

Thickbox Content

If you combine Sliding Notes with Post Tabs and Thickbox Content, you can insert the contents of Wikipedia onto the head of a pin. This fabulous plugin allows you to place content into an overlay. You know, Web 2.0-ish. But the cool part is that you can develop the content in the visual editor, so even your clients can do it.

TinyMCE Valid Elements

This is really the first plugin I install. Then I add

, ,

, and stop worrying about getting my in-line styles stripped. I add a few other TinyMCE adjustors but I do NOT add “TinyMCE Advanced” because it strips the icon for Thickbox Content from the visual editor.

w3 Total Cache

I work hard to set up W3 Total Cache at the end of a project. Specifically, I work on page caching, minifying, and using the browser cache. Hey! I’m not sure if YSlow is the greatest thing since sliced bread but why not try to get an “A”. Can’t hurt, can it? Well it can if you try to minify jQuery, so I always move JS one-by-one, checking carefully the site still works.

Widget Logic

I used to use other plugins to assign specific widgets to specific pages but they were big and clunky. This one is lean and mean. It is totally out of the way unless you try to use it. And its not terribly easy to use but once the logic is correct, the plugin works flawlessly.

Optional Widgets – depending on site requirements

AJAX Calendar

Category Page

Configurable Tag Cloud

Datafeedr Random Ads V2

Mailpress - templated newsletters. oy vey they’re complex.

smush.it - optimize graphics in the (gasp!) media library

Spectacu.la Page Widget – let your clients create pages in the visual editor and display them in a widget.

Taxonomy List Shortcode – for sites with custom taxonomies

WP-Table Reloaded – style tables and add data in the backend

Other Notes

Menus - I used to use several different menu plugins but now I don’t. I use native WordPress menus. I like ‘em. I can style them with just a few lines of CSS and, thank goodness, you have to add pages manually. No more adding to the exceptions list for each new page. Also, you can add external links, so not more “Page Links To” nonsense!

Multisite on a Netbook

I*net Admin — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 14:16:19 +0000

I recently purchased a netbook (Samsung N210) to display my work on the road with propective clients. It took a bit of doing but I know have a configurationand workflow that works for me. During the transition, I ran into two problems:

1. Difficulties maintaining a stable httpd

I experienced a problem which others reported: httpd would shut down immediately after startup. This problem crept in and was spurious. I came to conclude that this occured because I was running XAMPP directly off a USB stick. I tried to resolve it but ultimately worked around it by removing XAMPP from the stick and installed it directly on the hard disk of the netbook. I now use drive letters in my XAMPP configuration and run apache and mysql as services.

The web site source code, on the other hand, continues to reside on the USB stick.

In my office, the USB stick lives in my workstation and serves as the local site for my WordPress. I modify the files on the USB stick and test with XAMPP which is installed on the workstation with a configuration similar to the one on the netbook. When sources are okay, they get uploaeded to the production site.

When I go on the road, I pop the USB stick out and boot up the netbook, where (with the help of a modified hosts file) I can run the entire package without net connectivity – great for showing off existing work to prospective clients.

2. Mutlisite configuration

I suppose it is dangerous to try to outthink the experts. When I first moved a production multisite WordPress installation run locally, I tried to make selection database changes to update the sitename (DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE). This was an utter failure. I arrived at a configuration where I received the error: Unable to Establish a Database Connection

When I commented out the single line in wp_config.php that defined MULTISITE, then the error resolved so I could access the primary site.

In the end, I accepted that I had to perform a broad stroke change to the use of domain names in the database. My workflow to sync my netbook now goes as follows:

1st: Move USB stick containing source code from workstation to netbook

2nd: Export contents of production database to an SQL text file on the netbook, remembering to add DROP TABLE

3rd: Edit the SQL text file, replacing all instances of the product domain name (www.mysite.com) with the domain name of the local site (mysite.localhost).

4th: Import run the SQL file

5th: Test changes on the netbook at http://mysite.localhost

Breaking up long forms

Mark Levine — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:24:37 +0000

Recently I had a long form to display on a membership website. I wanted a visitor to be able to leave the form incomplete and then to return to finish it later. My approach with CForms was to break the long form up into a series of very short forms, each to be filled out once. For this explanation, suppose I broke the long form into four short forms. If the visitor completed the first two, I wanted the controlling page to look like:

Form 1: the beginning COMPLETE

Form 2: the next bit COMPLETE

Form 3: rounding the bend

Form 4: the end

To accomplish this, I began by adding one hidden field to each form, called Your ID with the default value {CurUserID}. Because this field is included in all forms, I could use it to determine if the current user had previously submitted a form.

I didn’t want to compose a new PHP function within CFORMS to select specific records. If I had, I could have directly determined if the stored forms in the Tracking section contained a record. Instead, I used an existing CFORM function

Using the EXEC-PHP plugin to add code to a page, I added the following in the page with links to the forms.

[exec]
function isn_did_this_user_submit_form($formname) {
  global $current_user;
  /* get the array of submitted forms */
  if ($results = get_cforms_entries($formname)) {
    foreach ($results as $submission) {
      if ($current_user->ID == $submission["data"]["Your ID"]) {
        return(true);
      }
    }
  }
  /* fall out the bottom without finding a submitted form */
  return(false);
}
echo '';
echo 'Fill out and submit the following four forms.  You may stop and restart at any time. ';
echo '';
echo '';
echo 'Form 1: ';
if ( $value = isn_did_this_user_submit_form('NameOfFormGoesHere') ):
  echo 'the beginning — Complete';
else:
  echo 'the beginning';
endif;
echo '';
echo '
';

Useful WordPress Plugins

Mark Levine — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:10:58 +0000

As I’m migrating my business website to WordPress, I thought I would spend a moment to list plugins that I regularly use:

Advanced Text Widget

Supports PHP in a widget. There are several similar plugins which I also use from time-to-time, including Linkable Title Html and Php Widget. When I choose a plugin for the first time, I rely heavily on user ratings and then allow the test of time to verify my choice.

Akismet

Who doesn’t use this anti-spam plugin that is included with the WordPress distribution. It is free for individual users.

All in One SEO Pack

The Atathualpa theme includes SEO options and, frankly, I waver on whether to use these. In the end, I ususally include All in One SEO Pack, as it has reliably improved Search Engine performance.

cformsII

When I build a mini-site, I use the great Contact Form 7 along with Really Simple Captcha to intrroduce customizable forms to a site. However there is one great weakness to this combination: the submitted forms are sent by email exclusively. There is no database integration. When you need to step up to a more reliable forms delivery mechanism, then cforms II is the way to go. It is at least 10X more difficult and at least 100X more useful. The primary advantage is its use of the database to store submitted forms but there are other major differentiators, including its extensive use of CSS for styling and its support of many different form types.

Dean’s FCKEditor For WordPress

WSYIWIG editors are another tricky selection. WordPress makes some simple editing decisions very difficult. Somehow I got stuck on Dean’s FCKEditor For WordPress when I started building blogs years ago and here I remain. The alternative is TinyMCE Advanced with a number of modifying plugins, including TinyMCE Excerpt, TinyMCE Options Override, TinyMCE Tabfocus Patch, and especially TinyMCE Valid Elements. In fact, inspired by this post, I’ve switched from Dean’s FCK Editor For WordPress to the enhanced TinyMCE to evaluate… If you use TinyMCE Advanced with TinyMCE Valid Elements, remember to go into the tools menu and add “style” to the valid elements list. Otherwise you can’t embed your own CSS style rules into a post or page.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Allow analytics code into your footer with no muss – no fuss.

jQuery Colorbox

I’m listing alphabetically but this plugin works hand-in-hand with NextGEN Gallery. It adds a Colorbox effect to image display and provides slideshow capability. Choosing this plugin was the most complicated decision I’ve ever made regarding WordPress plugins. There are very many excellent options – too many to list. I choose jQuery Colorbox for two key reasons: 1) I like the way it looks; and 2) it installs simply and works out of the box.

NextGEN FlashViewer

This little beauty adds the ability to integrate several excellent Flash viewers to galleries maintained with NextGEN Gallery. The viewers must be installed separately via FTP upload.

NextGEN Gallery

OK. Another difficult category – the image gallery. NextGEN Gallery is fantastic and is extendable. What more could you want? The documentation is almost non-existent, so I’ve gotten very good at googling “wordpress nextgen shortcode“.

Widget Context

By default, a “widget” (or little chunk of website place in a sidebar, header, or footer) appears on every page. This little gem allows you to define specific types of pages to display certain widgets.

WP Super Cache

to be described

Other Favorites

In addition to the plugins above which are in use at this site, I also use and love:

Add To Any
Admin Dropdown Menu
Breadcrumb Navigation XT
Google XML Sitemaps
Smart YouTube