Pam Van Londen » CMS and Wordpress

Sending posts to WordPress via email

Pam Van Londen — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:22:29 +0000

Hello Bloggers.

I’ve set up a secret email address for posting to my WordPress blog (not for WordPress.com uses) so I can send my blog updates a cellphone or web mail, for times when I’m not available to login to my site.

Since I’m hosting my site with a paid host company, I set up the email via cPanel, then told my WordPress Settings->Write options to use this new email address and password.

Once I have created an email account and configured WordPress, I need to tell WordPress to check for new emails and publish them. There are two ways of doing this. First, I can do it manually by going to http://mysite.com/wordpress_folder/wp-mail.php right after I send an email to the new email account. This method is simple, but I have to do this every time I send a new email. Another way of doing this is to add an iframe to activate wp-mail.php automatically. This can be done by installing Email Post Activation plugin.

Note that if the email address you use to send out posts does not match any of the email addresses of the authorized users, the post status will be set to “Pending Review” and it will not be published on your page. The sender’s email address should be associated with one of the authorized users.

More information about blogging by email can be found here.

Uploading images, audio files, video files and documents into WordPress

jamesholladay — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:37:25 +0000

A. Use the Add Media icons on the toolbar to upload files or link to images online.

On the Editing toolbar in a Post or Page editing screen, do the following:

1. Click the Add Media icon for Add an image.
2. Use the Choose files to upload button to add files from your hard drive.
  - Or use the URL field to paste in a link to an image online somewhere else.
3. Add a description and copyright statement to the Image Caption field.
  - Example: Famous poster art of Rosie the Riveter showing an example of the might American women used during World War II. Courtesy of US National Archives. Produced by Westinghouse for the War Production. Created by J. Howard Miller. Modifications © Jone Lewis 2001.
    - Note the who, what, when description
    - Note the copyright citation which uses the © symbol, artist, and year.
      - To create the © symbol:
        
        Mac: type Option-G
        
        Windows: type Alt-0169.
4. Copy the name and copyright statement into the Image Title field.
5. Set the alignment if you want (I recommend left or right).
6. Please leave the Link to Image field blank.
7. Click the Insert into Post button to add the new image to your Post.

B. To Edit the image

Click the Image then click the Image icon on the image (whew, what a sentence).
- Or click the Media->Library menu in the sidebar.
- Click the title of the image in the list to switch to the image editing screen.
Edit the fields and click Save Changes.
Upate the address and alignment in the Advanced tab.

C. To move the image

Click on the image in the editing box.
- Cut it (Control-x)
Move the cursor to where you want it to be.
- Paste (Control-v)

Essential CMS Plugins

Pam Van Londen — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:34:35 +0000

After completing the initial WordPress installation and configuration, I recommend making these additions to add important functionality to your site.

Spam checker/eliminator
- Akismet; sign up for an API Key.
Contact forms
- cForms II
- Contact Form 7
Drop down menus
- dTabs Uses CSS 3.0 options which do not currently validate with w3.org
- Multi-level Navigation Plugins Uses CSS 3.0 options which do not currently validate with w3.org
- Or replace this function: wp_list_pages with this one wp_page_menu in the header.php file.
Email registered users
- wp-email
Instant Upgrade (for the CMS and plugins/modules)
- WordPress Instant Upgrade
Database backup
- WordPress Database Backup
Easy access to phpmyadmin
- WP-phpMyAdmin
Broken Link Checker
- WordPress Broken Link Checker

Optional content

Quick Subscribe
Customizable Post Listings
Advanced Category Excluder
Collapsing Categories
Event Calendar
Google Analyticator
Lightbox Gallery
Thumbnail for Excerpts
wp-polls
wp-tabsandslides
10 ecommerce solutions for wordpress
- Quick Shop ~ testing it now; Sidebar widget needs tweeking.
- WP Auctions. So far this works fine.
- eShop for WordPress

Configuring an installed version of WordPress

Pam Van Londen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:06:41 +0000

Basic steps to updating a WordPress installation

Most parts of the WordPress site can be edited within the Dashboard.

If you want to update styles, however, it is possibly faster to do it inside an external editor such as Dreamweaver or TextWrangler rather than doing it in the Theme editing screens in the Dashboard.

Update these basics

Settings->Permalinks …get set to custom %postname%
Settings->General update Tagline …to describe your site.
Posts->Categories…Rename “uncategorized” to News or something similar.
Posts->Categories…add more categories for topics.
Pages->About…revise the text here to reflect your site.
Pages->Add New…add a contact form using this code: [contact-form] This is basic, but will do the trick until you install a plugin. MAY NOT WORK with newer versions of WordPress. Install The Contact 7 plugin.
Pages->Add more pages for other sections of your site that are not news/articles.
Posts->Add new. Add at least one new post for each category so they will show up in the menu.
Appearance->Themes. Either update the default theme to use your header and color scheme, or COPY the default theme folder (on the server and hard drive), rename it, and restyle it. OR install a new theme from the Add New Themes area.
Appearance->Widgets. Remove sidebar widgets you do not need. Leave the meta on there if you want to be able to quickly login from your WordPress home page.

Essential Plugins

Akismet
Contact 7, Easy Contact, or cForms for making forms
WP Database Backup
PHPmyAdmin
Google Analyticator
InstantUpgrade
Search & Replace (keep it off unless you are cleaning house)
WP low Profiler

Adding content to WordPress

Pam Van Londen — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:46:21 +0000

When you are logged in, you’ll see the Dashboard/Site Admin area.
- Click the Posts->Add New menu.
  - Type a descriptive title.
    - Leave out dates; they can go in the first line of the Post.
  - Type news in the main editing box.
    - Type who, what, when, where, how, and why.
    - Add more detail if needed.
    - Use the spell-check icon to improve your writing.
    - If you have lists in your writing, please use the bullet and numbered list icons to make your post easier to read.
  - Save after a few minutes of typing.
  - Choose the most appropriate category for your news.
  - Publish (if your role allows it).
    - If not, then the webmaster or a board member will publish it.
View your Post.
- Click the View Site link at the top of the editing screen.
Click the Edit link to make changes.
- When in the viewing mode, ehe Edit link is directly below the title of the article you are viewing.
Add embedded links to outside resources. For example, link to:
- Affiliations and organizations
- Articles
- Books for sale
- Other people’s web sites.
Add images.
- Optimizing Online Images.
  - You must optimize your images properly before uploading into WordPress.
- Uploading images, audio files, video files and documents into WordPress
- Making Galleries in WordPress

Create a Printable Site

Pam Van Londen — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:49:00 +0000

More than likely, your visitors will print your pages if they are full of useful content. But the design of your site may increase the number of pages printed, use a lot of ink, or cutoff content on either site.

View your website in the browser’s Print Preview. What do you notice?

Too much ink is wasted?
Too much paper is wasted due to long menus being printed or half the page being blank?
Are the right and left margins cutting off the text?

Remedies

One method to remedy print problems is to create a print style sheet with the tag set to media="print".

To remove unnecessary items, such as navigation, use display:none in those stylesheet definitions.
To keep text from getting cut off, set the body, container, or content divisions to 100% rather than a fixed width.
- This allows the content area to expand to the browser’s default width.
To reduce the use of too much ink, eliminate or swap larger banners and other images in the template with smaller, black on white images.
- One method is to set up two images; one forthe screen and one for printing.
  - For example, if your banner file is a background, by default it will not print. If printing background files is set to ON, then you can swap the screen.css file’s background definition for a different one in the print.css background definition.

Adding PayPal buttons to WordPress.com blogs

Pam Van Londen — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:25:29 +0000

To tie-in buy-now, subscription, donation, and gift certificate buttons to your wordpress.com blog, youll have to do a abit of coding. Do not be afraid; it’s just copying and paste, after all.

The basic concept uses this generic set of HTML tags to get your code working:

Links to the proper transaction.

Calls the button graphic on the PayPal server (or use your own)

Closes the tag set.

Follow these steps to get it working:

Login to PayPal and make a Buy-Now button in the Merchant Services area.
- Choose Secure merchant account ID to keep your address out of the code.
- When you get to the generated code screen, click the Email version of the provided code.
Select the code, copy it, and paste it into a plain text file.
- If the text copied and pasted to the text file turns the quote marks to smart (curly) quotes, then search and replace them all with inch marks (plain quote marks).
- Check to ensure you have not removed anything else.
Add the necessary code.
- Type in front of the code.
- Type to end the link.
Save the file for future reference.
Copy the new complete code into the HTML tab of your Post or Page in WordPress.com.
- Save a draft or Publish.
- View the site and click on the button to test it.
- If you do not see the button, then Edit your Post/Page and view the HTML code; does it look as expected?

For wordpress.org installed sites, the code provided by PayPal works fine in the unecrypted mode. Install plugins that will work if you use encrypted code.

Adding links to web content

Pam Van Londen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:39:49 +0000

Three main options allow you to add links to web sites:

Add favorite sites to a Blogroll in the sidebar.
Link to another web site article, pdf file, or movie.
Embed a movie, widget, or RSS feed.

Here is how:

Add favorite sites to a Blogroll in the sidebar.

Copy the address of the link you want to add.
For WordPress, get back to the Dashboard and Write->Links.
- Click Add New.
  - Type the name of the web site in the Name field, such as ArtLex Art Dictionary.
  - Paste the link address you copied in step 1 into the Web Address field.
  - Describe the link, such as author, date, tags, etc.
  - Choose or create a category for the link so you can group like links.
  - Select Target _blank to open the link in a new window or tab.
- Save.
The end result is a link that looks like this: ArtLex when starting with an address like this: http://artlex.com.
Now view the sidebar to see if it lists the link as you expected.

Link to another web site article, pdf file, or movie.

Copy the address of the link you want to add.
For WordPress, get back to your editing screen and select the name/author/date of the article, book, journal, or web site that needs the link.
- ArtLex, for example.
- Click the Link icon on the toolbar (may not work in Safari).
  - Paste in the URL/address for the link.
  - Add a title that describes the article; such as title, author, date, and publisher.
  - Click Submit/save.
The end result is a link that looks like this: ArtLex when starting with an address like this: http://artlex.com
- An inline citation would like like this: (ArtLex , 2008).
Now view the paragraph to see if it highlights the link as you expected.

Embed a movie, widget, or RSS feed.

Go to the website where the movie, widget, or RSS feed exists.
- Find the code provided for the item and copy it.
Paste the code into the CODE editing view of your Post or Page.
- Or paste the code into a Sidebar Widget for RSS, Movies, or Text/HTML.
Save.
Now view the paragraph to see if the headlines, movie, or widget show as expected.

Understanding Really Simple Sindication (RSS) feeds

Pam Van Londen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:46:32 +0000

Really Simple Sindication (RSS) feeds allow you to read many headlines and excerpts from other web sites from these locations:

A web site post, page, or sidebar.
A browser toolbar/bookmark bar
A News aggregator program.

Offering your site visitors the option to bookmark your site as a favorite is easy. Adding the RSS feed ability to that bookmark/favorite is better! When you bookmark a site with RSS you can see the headlines before you go to that web site.

Learn how to:

Add a news feed to your WordPress sidebar.
Provide an RSS link for your visitors.
- For WordPress, click the Design->Widget tab.
- Add RSS Subscribe. Save
- Or Add Meta (this includes the login links as well). Save.

Here are some example feeds from the FireFox favorite bookmarks toolbar:

Adding audio files to WordPress sites

Pam Van Londen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:01:51 +0000

Before you add music please note:

Background music is often irritating to your visitors.
- If you visit a site with music that starts when you land on the home page, you might be startled if your speakers are up loud. The loud music may also startle others around you.
- Music files sizes are large and slow down the loading of your web site pages.
Some widgets will allow you to play music via a radio-like playlist. This allows the visitor to turn the music on and off. Try these:
- Pandora
- Odeo
Find a song that is licensed to be used on a web site. In other words, a free song with no restrictions.
- Songs from a CD or online purchase are not licensed to be used on your website.
- Try these free song sites:
  - Partners in Rhyme
Direct linking to a freely downloadable song on someone else’s web site is frowned upon; it is considered theft of bandwidth. In other words it slows down the originating web site when all of your visitors are listening their song file.
Instead of linking to a song there, save the free file to your hard drive, then upload it into WordPress using Media Manager.
- NOTE: Worpress.com does not allow the upload of audio files as of 2008 unless you upgrade (pay).
  - See WordPress’ tutorial.
- If you are using WordPress.org’s downloadable version, you can upload a file to your server and link to it from the WordPress application.
In the Design->Widgets, add a text/html widget and paste in this code and change the audio file name.
- The final result is a control bar that allows visitors to turn the music on and off.