Pixel Jar » Jeff

WordCamp Las Vegas 2011

Jeff — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:40:18 +0000

I had the honor of speaking at this year WordCamp Las Vegas. I presented on Actions and Filters which were once my arch nemeses, but are now my best friends. Hosts @sdenike and @vegasgeek did such a good job putting on this year’s event.

As always it was super sweet to see all my WordPress friends – the seeds, the mobiah contingent, the binary chaps, cody, the reno-ees, the cuban twos… And of course, I made new WordPress friends. I finally got to meet Trafton and Jason from WPEngine in person after having email, skyped and phoned with them for months. Stephanie was very sweet and diplomatic about fixing an error I had in my presentation. I met Brian and Tom at the after party and had a fun conversation about WordCamps and website designs. I had a awesome conversation about clients with The Andy Straton. Also got to discuss the all important topic of beards with Danny.

But to everyone at the event, thanks for a very positive and wonderful WordCamp!

IE9 Straight Up Ignores Cufon

Jeff — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:09:55 +0000

Today I learned that IE9 disregards Cufon font replacement completely! (This has been written about before, but just in case you are stumped and looking for solutions, I’m posting them here as well.) It’s not just that it drops out and defaults to a web safe font, it’s simple leaves an empty spot. Just when the web world was starting to make big strides away from web safe fonts IE9 wiped out an entire alternative option.

Option 1

Update your Cufon javascript. Make your script is at least up to version 1.09i. Download Cufun 1.09i here: Cufon 1.09i

Option 2

There’s also the hilarious option of telling IE9 to behave like IE8. Insert the following meta tag into the of your webpages.

Microsoft pushed pretty hard with the PR campaign leading up to the IE9 release – big promises of a better browser. So far, as a programmer, it’s just been a different headache in a long line of headaches.

bbPress 2.0 Basics

Jeff — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:37:32 +0000

bbPress 2.0 is out and I’m excited. While there is still room to grow (and JTrip will be the first to tell you this), it is a great improvement over previous versions of the plugin. Thanks John James Jacoby and the bbPress team for all your hard word; it’s greatly appreciated.

It’s easy to get up and running. Just down the plugin and activate (http://bbpress.org). It’s easy and works well. However, if you want to start customizing the layout and styles, that’s where it’s get a bit more technical and less plug-and-play. But here’s a few tips for the less obvious mechanics:

Add Forums to Navigation (2 options):

Use Custom Links to add “/forums” to a menu (this link may differ if you change the base for forums in the forum settings)
Create a page and use shortcode [bbp-forum-index]; add that page to a menu

Custom Theming

Use the default (easiest option)
Replace Styles
- Remove the bbPress styles.css
  remove_action( ‘bbp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘bbp_theme_compat_enqueue_css’ );
- Copy default styles to your theme’s stylesheet
  /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten/css/bbpress.css
- Adjust styles to your whimsy
Replace template files

Copy files from “/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten” folder into the folder of your theme, and make your own edits from there. The files to copy include the single-*, archive-*, page-*, and anything in the subfolders
Replace all files, there is no defaulting
Add add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ ); to functions.php

Shortcodes

* Forums
[bbp-forum-index] – Show the forum index/archive
[bbp-single-forum id=$forum_id] – Show a single forums topics

* Topics
[bbp-topic-index] – Show the topics index/archive
[bbp-topic-form] – Show the new topic form
[bbp-single-topic id=$topic_id] – Show a single topic

* Topic Tags
[bbp-topic-tags] – Show a tag cloud of all topic tags
[bbp-single-topic-tag] – Show the topics within a specific tag

* Replies
[bbp-reply-form] – Show the topic reply form

* Views
[bbp-single-view] – Show topics associated with a specific view

* Account
[bbp-login] – Show the login screen
[bbp-register] – Show the register screen
[bbp-lost-pass] – Show the lost password screen

If you have any other questions, check out the bbPress forums. It’s a great resource and John is particularly diligent about answering questions. I don’t know how it does it.

WordCamp Las Vegas Aftermath

Jeff — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:59:40 +0000

A thousand thanks again to the crew at 9Seeds for putting on WordCamp Las Vegas. They put on a brilliant camp; a real class act that was the model of what a WordCamp should be. Brandon and I met up with old friends and, as always, made a bevy of new ones. We traded WordPress tricks and tips and otherwise engaged in the WordPress community that we dig so much. If you missed out, kick yourself immediately, then make a point of being here next year.

My biggest take-aways this camp were HookPress and Event Espresso. Colin Loretz of the Reno Collective used HookPress during his presentation on turning a WordPress site into a Web App. I know he didn’t intend HookPress to be the crux of his talk, but that nugget shined for me. (See a demo from the creator here.) I’d never seen it before, and I definitely should have. From the repository, “HookPress turns all of your WordPress-internal hooks into webhooks. Possible uses include generating push notifications or using non-PHP web technologies.” If you’ve ever tried hooking outside technologies into your WordPress site, this is the ticket.

The kind gentlemen from Event Espresso also gave me the deluxe tour of their plugin. Event Espresso does event management and registration for a WordPress site. This plugin is rife with options without being overly bulky. If you have a specialized event need, it’s probably already in the feature set. And if not, they are probably already working on it for a future release.

Thanks again everyone for a great WordCamp. Hope to see you all again soon.

Keep and eye out for the presentation videos on to appear on WordPress.tv and John will post the speakers slides on the WCLV speaker page near the speakers site and Twitter links.

Backing Up Your WordPress Site for OC WordPress Meetup

Jeff — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:02:18 +0000

Hope everyone was able to take something useful from the WordPress Back Up talk. Quick disclaimer: we are not endorsing any of these, just using them as examples. Do your research before committing you backup to any methodology. Here are links to plugins and other materials we mentioned during the presentation:

Twitter Link

http://twitter.com/pixel_jar/status/25722612431

Plugins

WP-DBManager: “Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.”

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/

WordPress EZ Backup: “WordPress EZ Backup is A Administrators Plugin to allow the easiest most feature rich method for creating Backup Archives of your entire Site (not just WP Installations but Any part of your site or webspace) & allows backup archives of any MySQL Database you choose & More.”

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-ez-backup/

Backup Services

VaultPress: “VaultPress is a subscription-based protection, security and backup service for WordPress blogs and sites. Built on the same Automattic grid that serves over 12.5 million WordPress.com blogs and 270 million monthly visitors, VaultPress secures your site.”
http://vaultpress.com/

Amazon S3 (Automatic WordPress Backup): “Using this plugin, you can easily and automatically backup important parts of your WordPress install to Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is an extremely cheap service that is easy to set up. For pennies a month, you can make sure that your important files will be kept safe.”
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/

BackupBuddy: “BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration. Back up to your server, Amazon S3, a FTP/FTPS account, or an email.”
http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/

WordPress Hosting

Page.ly: “We got your back on the important stuff. Hosting your WordPress site with page.ly is hassle free. Automatic nightly backups, and Automatic WP Core updates keep your site safe and secure.”
http://page.ly/wordpress/hosting

Blog on Cloud 9: “WordPress users deserve a host that is not only reliable and secure, but who can do what it takes to keep them up and running. We do nightly backups of your WordPress files, uploads, and database, minimizing any data loss and/or downtime due to any unforeseen technical issues.”
http://www.blogoncloud9.com/

WP Engine: “We make WordPress fast, secure, and scalable by hosting your site on our rock solid platform.”
http://wpengine.com/

Remember: Back up everything and back up often!

WordCamp LA Was Awesome

Jeff — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:00:21 +0000

WordCamps are always fun. We get to see some old friend; we get to meet some new friends. We get to meet up with people you’ve only known virtually. We get to pass on knowledge and learn from our peers.

WordCamp LA 2010 was no different. We had a blast! Austin and crew did a great job putting an exciting camp together with great speakers and topics and we were proud to sponsor the event.

I think everyone from n00bs to veterans took away some new ideas. I think my favorite think about WordCamps is the way it always re-ignites my WordPress fire. I get to see what other people are doing with WordPress, share ideas and see things from a new perspective. Sometimes I can get so set in my ways and patterns that a good kick in the pants keeps me from getting stale. WordCamps always provide that kick. Thanks to everyone who attended.

And if you had fun at WordCamp LA, remember WordCamp Las Vegas is right around the corner on October 23. We’ll be sponsoring and speaking there as well. Hope to see you!

Photo by Linda Sherman

WordCamp LA Fever!

Jeff — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:07:22 +0000

Brandon and I are proud to sponsor WordCamp LA 2010! As with all WordCamps we attend, I’m becoming more and more excited as the camp approaches. It’s like waiting for Christmas to arrive. If you are planning on attending as well, be sure to say hello if you see either of wandering about. Looking forward to seeing all my WordPress friends and attending what is looking like a rockin’ developer’s track. (And I’m not just saying that because Brandon is speaking, though I know his talk will be awesome too.)

Speed Up WordPress by Deactivating Unused Plugins

Jeff — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:44:21 +0000

Here’s another easy tip to help speed up the load time of your WordPress website. Deactivate any unused plugins. Simple, right? This may seem like a “no duh!” tip for WordPress users, but we can all be guilty of missing the obvious and/or being lazy. If you are diligent about keeping your plugins tidy, good for you. If not, read on.

A site’s load time is based on a browser loading up every javascript, every image, every css file, etc., so cut out anything you are not using. Don’t ask the browser to upload files you aren’t even using. More importantly, don’t ask your readers to wait any longer than they have to.

One of the greatest things about WordPress is the expandability and availability of its plugins. But sometimes we fall into a pattern of clutter due to their ease of use. We need a plugin to do X, Y and Z, so we download 6 or 7 different plugins to see what works best. But after finding that Holy Grail plugin, we sometimes forget to deactivate the other plugins we tried and decided not to use. This results in 6 or 7 sets of files are being loaded into the browser, when there is only one plugin that we are really interested in. Go through your plugins, deactivate anything you are not using.

You can even take this a step further. When you are going through the plugins, take a moment and consider the value each plugin is adding to your site. Sometimes we keep plugins because we like the idea of them, but don’t really harness their use. And sometimes we have plugins that we use frequently, but don’t really add anything to the site or user experience – deactivate it.

WP will be happier and your end user will appreciate it too.

Happy Deactivating!

More on Duplicate Pages for SEO Success

Jeff — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:14:29 +0000

Here something else to think about and take your duplicate page avoidance to the next level. (Be sure to read the previous post regarding duplicate pages first.) Even after incorporating the tips from the previous post, there is still a bit of overlap between content on the home page, the categories/tag/archive pages and post pages. When you publish a post, that content will appear on the home and category/tag/archive until it is rotated out by newer posts. So, there is still some duplicate content to address.

A trick to solving this is to truncate posts when they are on aggregate pages. Limit the amount of content displayed and add a “read more” link to take them to the full page. There are actually two benefits to this. First, you are cutting down on duplicate content (woohoo!). Second, you’ll get a better sense of how many people are reading all the way through your posts via click stats. (You have some sort of stat plugin installed, right? I prefer WordPress.com Stats myself.)

But wait, there’s more. We can minimize even more! We can use “The Excerpt” box on the post page to write tailor-made summaries of our posts. Rather than just using a truncated portion of the post, as mentioned above, we write a separate excerpt to create even more content for our sites rife with even more delicious keyword-rich content.

To display the Excerpt in lieu of the Content on the post, dig into your theme’s archive, search and home pages and replace the the_content() call for the_excerpt(). Don’t for get to include a link to the whole story! Something like this will do:

Continue reading about ‘); the_title(); _e(‘

’); ?>

There are many ways to go about putting The Excerpt into our sites, but I won’t go into that now. I mainly wanted to get you thinking about the concept of The Excerpt in general.

Happy Blogging!

Avoid Duplicate Pages for SEO Success

Jeff — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:38:17 +0000

If you are interested in improving your search engine rankings, this one is for you. One of the criteria Google and other website index engines will ding a site on is duplicate content. The trouble is, with WordPress, many of us are duplicating content without even knowing it. But the good news is, there’s an easy fix.

The issue stems from the many, many ways WordPress allows the reader to access a particular page. Let’s say we innocently publish a simple post call “Innocent Simple Post.” In doing so, we’ve likely created several different possible URLs:

http://www.yoursite.com/archive/innocent-simple-post

http://www.yoursite.com/tag/innocent-simple-post

http://www.yoursite.com/category/innocent-simple-post

Of course, this depends on how your WordPress is configured, but you get the idea. Google and other search engines will see several distinct URLs, but each with the exact same content. Then the power of one page is distributed over three pages. Better to have one strong page, then several weak pages. Essentially, all we need to do is tell Google and the others to chill out and only index one page.

First, if you are not already running the All-In-One-SEO plug-in on your site, get it and install it directly. (This is one of those core plug-ins, no blogger should be without.) Second, let’s tell Google and the others to knock off all the silliness. Log into your WordPress admin, click on Settings, then click “All in One SEO.” Near the bottom of the page there are some checkboxes for “Use noindex for Categories,” “Use noindex for Archives” and “Use noindex for Tag Archives.“ Checking one of those will tell site crawlers and spiders to ignore pages under each respective umbrella. Pick two of those three boxes and check them. Personally, I’d say leave “categories” in there as that is the most valuable keyword of the bunch, but there is some debate on that. Now “Innocent Simple Post” will only be indexed once and its content will be deemed more valuable than it would have had it been distributed between “three” pages.