Thank You International Visitors
WordPress is a global platform. It has been localized into many languages and is easy to use all over our planet. For a long time, I’ve had visitors from various countries, but today I was shocked to realize just how many countries have visited Organized Themes since we launched last year.
As of this afternoon, we have had 105 different countries visit. I have offered free themes and support articles here since day one and I plan to continue that tradition. You may not know that anyone that is in a country served by PayPal or Google Checkout can purchase the premium themes I have for sale too. I’ve had several overseas sales which I appreciate.
If you guys have any special needs in using my WordPress themes overseas, please feel free to contact me and I’ll try to help any way I can.
As always thanks for your support.
Speed Up WordPress
I am a big fan of WordPress obviously, but one of its shortcomings is the fact that it lives on a far away sever which makes editing and writing content less snappy than it should be. When I’m developing a theme or a site for a client, I use a local copy of WordPress for development and it always amazes me how fast everything works.
What if you could have a local copy of WordPress on your computer that works with your server? Good news, you can and it’s easier than you think.
If you are using WordPress 2.7 or higher, you can use Google Gears to speed up WordPress. Click on the “turbo” link in the top right corner. WordPress will ask you if you want to use Google Gears to install some of the WordPress core files on your computer which will intern greatly speed up your admin panel. You’ll save time creating posts, editing pages and doing pretty much everything routine on your WordPress install. Not too bad.
Google Gears works with Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer (sorry Opera). You can learn more here.
Many of you know by now that I’m a Mac user. I made the switch 2 1/2 years ago and have never looked back. To further enhance my WordPress experience on my desktop, I’ve started using another free program called Fluid. This basically turns any web application (like WordPress) into one that behaves more like a desktop app. Now the two sites I work with most often live on my doc where I can access them quickly and easily. If you are a Mac user and work with web apps often be sure to check out Fluid.
Great Gallery Plugin
I have been a fan of the Featured Content Gallery plugin since I discovered it about a year ago or so. I’ve used in in multiple websites and found it to be a great way to connect posts or pages to an image. But it does have its issues. For starters it uses Moo Tools for its javascript library. Moo Tools is a great library, but many other plugins (and the WordPress backend) make use of another library called JQuery. The two are not compatible with each other and this often causes problems with either the gallery not displaying or some other error.
My other main issue with Featured Content Gallery is that all I really want it to do is show a picture and have it link to something like a post, page, or even another website. I don’t need the thumbnails, arrows or descriptions. Generally I just edit the plugin to remove these, but it can get a bit tricky.
Recently I came across another good plugin which I’m now using on Organized Themes called WP-Cycle. This plugin has a built in image uploader to get your pictures onto your site. You can then add links (or not) and make a few simple adjustments. It’s pretty simple to use. Nathan Rice, the theme author plans to make some tweaks to it for the next release. You can download it here. Go on and give it a try in your next project.
