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.
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.
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.
Today I’ve released an update to my free Cross Gate Church theme for WordPress. You can find it in my themes section for you to enjoy. It has a new control panel and has had lots of small tweaks while keeping the basic appearance that so many people enjoy. After all it is my theme that has been downloaded the most. If you have any questions about using it, please let me know.
My second screencast is ready to go. This time we look at how to implement my Gallery Church Theme. If you don’t have this theme yet, you can find it and all of my themes here.
Gallery 2.0 Screencast from Organized Themes on Vimeo.
It’s been seven months since I last shared some great plugins to help your church website. In that time WordPress has added over 1,000 new plugins into its database brining the total to 4,245 and counting. That’s a lot of extra features people are adding to WordPress every day. Many of these are wonderful, many don’t work very well and some are downright harmful. Here are a few that I use in sites that I design for clients as well as my church’s website.
Events Calendar: I’ve looked at lots of event calendar possibilities for WordPress. Right now I am recommending Events Calendar by Luke Howell. I have recently used the Events Manager plugin and I really do like it’s feature set, but it is rather complicated to deploy. There are lots of code variables to adjust in order to make the information you want to display to show up like you want it to. If you are comfortable with php or you’d like to learn, this might be a great plugin for you. My other issue with it, is that it creates information outside of the post system within WordPress.
What I like so much about the Events Calendar plugin is that you can easily create events and choose if they become posts or not. If you’ve ever had to move a WordPress site, you know that it’s not that hard to do if all your data is inside WordPress’ posts and pages. These can be exported. There is nothing you can do for the data stored by Events Manager, but the data from Events Calendar goes with you. Plus if you use posts for events you can then use other plugins or theme features to refer to the events. On my Mountain View theme as well as the a2 website, I use a new ticker to let visitors know about coming events. If I were to run the Events Manager, then I would have to create a separate post to use in the ticker. Duplicate data is generally a bad idea.
You can use either of these plugins, plus many others. My sites, I’m going with Events Calendar for now.
Simple:Press Forum: Many churches would like to have a forum where people can ask questions, engage in discussions or do all kinds of community things. Really it’s not a bad idea, but going about it can be tough. I have plans to add a forum to Organized Themes and I plan to use phpBB because it is very powerful and stable. But it is a challenge to integrate into a WordPress site. If you’d like to see how to go about this I recommend a screencast from CSS-Tricks to learn how. It requires a pretty hefty understanding of WordPress, plus CSS and XHTML. There is an alternative called Simple:Press Forum which is a plugin for WordPress that takes care of the form for us. They have comprehensive directions for how to use this plugin on their site. If you are looking for a plugin this would be a great way to go.
Podcasting: I used to recommend the PodPress plugin, but the author has stopped developing it further. So now I’m using the Podcasting plugin on my church sites as well as for the screencast here at Organized Themes. I like this one because it is simple to use and deploy. It allows your user to download the file as well as listen to it in your post if you choose. Plus, it has an easy to use way to submit the podcast to iTunes. It’s hard to beat simple and effective.
TinyMCE Advanced: As a developer it’s easy for me to forget that people still have to create lots of content after they get the theme up and running. For most of us this means lots of time in the post and page write panels creating copy and uploading images. To make that task easier, the TinyMCE Advanced adds many features that probably should be included with WordPress by default. With this plugin you can easily pick a new CSS style for parts of your post, have more control over images, choose different web safe fonts, create tables and much more.
CForms II: This contact form is really flexible. It allows you to do everything from simple contact forms to complicated multi-page questionnaires and sign-ups. In its basic form it is easy to use and style, but it can get a bit complicated with the more advanced features. Fortunately there is lots of help on the CForms website. I now only use this plugin for contact forms on all my personal sites as well as client sites. One note, this plugin is updated often. That’s great in a way, but if you are obsessive about keeping your plugins updated, this one may drive you nutty.
Have you discovered any great plugins? If so leave a comment and share them with the community!
One of my favorite WordPress plugins is the Featured Content Gallery. I have included it into many of the themes I have released as well as several of the custom sites I have designed. It works great because it allows you to display dynamic content and images cleanly and easily while conserving screen real estate.
While it is an important tool, I don’t think it is for every site or blog. Most churches use it as an announcement rotator. You can see how this works at Vineyard Community Church’s website here. I included FCG here because they have someone who is gifted at design on staff. If they did not have someone who could create quality announcement images, then I would have had to do something else for their homepage.
If you are unable to create eye catching designs to use, then going with a quality static image is the better choice. It is always perferable to go with the highest quality images you can legally use on your site.
So what do you do if you want to use FCG but you don’t know how to make these images that you will need? Simple, learn how to make them yourself. You can get started doing this yourself right away with the tools and resources listed below.
I do believe that most churches and organizations can make use of FCG. Try out the resources that I’ve listed above. If you like someone to professionally create your images, I can help you with that. Please visit my portfolio site and contact me for further details.
