On February 21, 2010 in Themes
Flow is an elegant WordPress theme ideally suited to people who want their content to shine. This blog style theme features a prominent image, video or quote from each post in a stylish list style. The theme is constructed like a Tubmlog, but you can use it on WordPress and instead of Tumblr.
Flow has even more to offer than these features. Buy it now and start using Flow on your site (or your client’s) today.
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On February 21, 2010 in Documentation
After activating the theme, the settings can be configured in the theme options page. You can find this under the appearance menu. There you can choose from the built in theme styles. Just choose the one you’d like from the drop down menu, save your changes and you instantly have a new style. You can also choose to use your own logo or a text logo generated dynamically by the site. To use your own logo, go to the media menu and then add new. Upload your logo and copy the URL that appears in the successful upload box. Next paste that URL into the URL box in the control panel, save your changes and you will now have your logo on the site. Follow these same directions to add a favicon to the site.
You can also choose from three shadow styles for your thumbnails. That way the site can further reflect your style. Categories can be included in the navigation as well. If you select to include categories, a drop down of your blog’s categories will be dynamically generated for your menu.
The last options are to include a sidebar for ads. There are up to 4 125 by 125 pixel ads available in a sidebar that is fixed to the right hand side of the screen. You can use the widgets menu to control the ad graphics and links. You can also choose to include a sidebar on the left hand side of the screen. That wraps up the options from the theme control panel.
The final part of the instructions deals with posts. When you create a new post, you will notice a new box below the area where you write your copy. You are given the option to add a thumbnail. All you need to do for an image thumbnail is upload an image (sized greater than 700 pixels wide and generally less than 1,500 wide) and paste the URL into the thumbnail box. If you’d like to use a video, just copy the embed code from the video site of your choice into the box for video. When creating the video code, size the viewer to be 700 pixels wide.
If you’d rather have text, you don’t need to do anything and an excerpt from your post will be displayed in the home list. So you have the choice with every post to display a thumbnail, a video or an excerpt.
That wraps up Flow Theme. If you have any questions, please visit our support page.
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On February 2, 2010 in News
I’ve been working with small groups for the last 10 years and one of the challenges has always been to provide good ways for people to sign up. Recently I started making online sign ups an option at a2 Church and thought some of you could benefit from our experience.
To start out I would make a new post for each small group. For the title of the post I would use the name of the small group. Then I would use custom fields for information that I would need on each group (childcare provided, leader’s name, location, day and time and so on). Custom fields may seem tricky at first, but they are really easy to use. You can find them on every page or post write screen, just below the main content box. Each one has a name and a value. The name is the type of information and the value is the specific information. For our example the name would be “leader” and the value would be “Bill Robbins.”
The first thing to do is to decide what information you’d like to display for every group. In my example, I use group leaders, day & time, location, group focus, and childcare. You may have others. Once you know the details you’d like to list for every group, here is the code you will need to call it.
<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=5&showposts="); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
Here’s a quick explanation of the code. We are creating a query of all WordPress posts from a particular category, in this case category number 5 (that’s the category ID number where we place our groups). This will produce a list of all posts from that category. But it will be a specific list showing the Title (the name of the group in our case), the leader plus when and where the group will meet. This will all be outputted into a list that we can easily style with css if necessary. I generally place this after the loop so that I can introduce the list without having to hard code it. Now we’re not limited to just using “leader,” “when,” and “where.” We can use any bit of information we’d like. You just need to keep track of the custom field and you could easily add topics or whatever. Well this takes care of listing the groups, but now we need to make it possible for people to sign up easily.
When I first stated this, I used the cforms plugin from Delicious Days to create the sign ups. I would create a form for the first group, copy it and make one for the next group. Each new group got their own individual sign up form. While this worked, it was a bit tedious.
Last summer Gravity Forms was released and I immediately bought a copy and have used it for all my form related needs since. One of the features they’ve added recently was the ability to do email routing. Basically this means that you can email the completed form to different addresses based on how the form is filled out. So say someone signs up for the Tuesday Morning Men’s Bible Study, that leader gets an email with the registration directly from Gravity Forms. I don’t have to be the gate keeper for all the sign up information that comes through the web site.
All you have to do is create a form with check boxes for your groups. Once you’ve completed it, you will be presented with an opportunity to set up notifications. Select routing and then enter the group leaders email address to send the registration to when their group is selected. Then fill in the rest of the notification form and you’re set. This is actually so simple, when I receive sign ups at church, I actually enter them into the website as a way of maintaining a record of the registration and notifying the group leader. Some things claim to make administrative tasks easier, this actually does.
So this is how I go about creating dynamic small group sign ups at our church. It’s a great way to leverage WordPress technologies to lighten our administrative loads and leave more time for ministry.
If you’ve discovered a great way to do sign ups on your website share it with us in the comments.
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