Mesmer Lab » WordPress

Digging into Wordpress: Book Released

Jason — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:05:49 +0000

The much-anticipated book about the ins and outs of Wordpress is finally here. Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr released Digging into Wordpress today. Currently, the PDF version is available for immediate download for $27.

I suggest you pick up this book if you’re new to Wordpress or if you’ve been using it for a while. Chris is great at explaining how web-related concepts work at CSS Tricks. He joins Jeff Star in this project, and the professionalism in the product is stunning.

Features

Listed on the book’s site are the following features:

How to get things set up right
Building themes and how they work
Keeping sites secure and optimized
Using WordPress as a CMS
Integrate things like Twitter and Delicious
Making the most out of WordPress

Peek Inside!

From CSS Tricks, Chris offers a peek inside the book. I really like how much color and engaging images they’ve included. This is a welcome change from all the black-and-white instructional books I know you’re used to.

Buy the Book

You can buy the PDF now and get the print version at a discount later. You will also have access to updated versions via a download link in your email when they’re released. Free upgrades for life are always awesome.

So go on over and pick up Digging into Wordpress now!

Wordpress Plugin: WP-Table Reloaded

Jason — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:51:46 +0000

So I wanted to have a table with zebra stripes in a Wordpress installation. I found a quick and full-featured plugin that allows the stripes, plus so much more.

WP-Table Reloaded will let you import a table from a CSV, HTML or XML file. You can enter the cell data directly into the admin page. You can swap column or row order with minimal effort. You can hide or show columns or rows.

Extra Features

But then there are extra features that really make this plugin shine.

Alternating row colors: Every second row will have an alternating background color.
Use Table Headline: The first row of your table will use the tag.
Print Table Name: The Table Name will be written above the table in a
tag.
Print Table Description: The Table Description will be written under the table.
Use Tablesorter: You may sort a table using the Tablesorter-jQuery-Plugin.

I’m currently using this plugin on a website for a sprinkler company in Houston, Texas. Everything you see on the page is pretty much stock settings. There is one table for the service fees, since I didn’t want zebra stripes on a 2-row table. Then another table for the rest of the services.

I just wanted to give a quick nod to this well-rounded and very functional Wordpress plugin for implementing HTML tables. Thanks go to the author of this plugin. (Apparently this is his first WP plugin!)

Related Blogs

Google’s New Sandbox Search – Caffeine

Jason — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:31:44 +0000

It seems the search engine market is becoming competitive again. In response to the recent release of Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’ Bing, Google is stepping up their game.

Competition breeds innovation, proof that capitalism works.

This week, Google released their new sandbox search engine, nicknamed ‘Caffeine’. In my initial tests, it seems Caffeine results are focused more on articles and web pages, not video or news results. Youtube and news items are typically still on the first page, but they are further down instead of always sticking to the top.

It seems you can’t saturate your Youtube video description with keywords anymore. Content is king.

I have had pretty good results on SERPs by using the Wordpress platform, which in cooperation with the All-In-One SEO plugin, makes META info maintenance a breeze. You have control of each page’s data, as well as the overall site’s META keywords and description. And well, content is king. Write a good article and you should see good results.

My best performing article here at Mesmer Lab is about how I add custom fonts to my Wordpress installation. I wanted an easy solution for having a unique look, but flexible enough to only require regular text, not opening Photoshop every time I need a new header image.

So to that end, when you search for ‘add custom font wordpress’ right now you’ll find the following results:

Google (current): http://tr.im/wi30
Google Sandbox: http://tr.im/wi2Q
Bing: http://tr.im/wi53

First off, let me explain how good tr.im is as a URL shortener. Create an account with them and you can track clicks. That alone should give you enough incentive to use them exclusively. Add that they use unique URLs and you’ll never use another URL shortener again.

Now there are some interesting differences here. The current Google SERP has my article at #4, including an indented link for a related article on my site. Indented results are a function of Google’s algorithm and are typically seen as having more authority. I was pretty jazzed when I noticed I had one.

The Caffeine SERP shows the same article at #3, pushing ahead of the result from Digg. Hmm, what does that mean? Google is giving less weight to bookmarking sites? I never really got into Digg, but I use Del.icio.us pretty regularly. And although I see their merit, I’d rather find actual articles in my SERPs rather than a middleman.

And well, Microsoft hates my site it seems. Where’s Mesmer Lab on Bing? Not sure. I went through the first 10 pages and couldn’t find a trace. I gave up digging deeper into the SERP pages when I started seeing results that weren’t even related to Wordpress or fonts.

So what does this mean to you? Well if you’re a typical web user you should start seeing more direct links rather than having to click through a bookmark aggregator. Less clicks, less bandwidth, more efficiency. If you’re a web developer, your SEO prowess should shine through much easier. Using Caffeine could possibly give your expertise a 10% boost in authority. Content writers should also see similar results. Just keep writing good content and your analytics and AdSense results should validate your worth.

The people over at Facesaerch have developed a side-by-side comparison of the current Google engine and Caffeine. Test it out at http://www.facesaerch.com/caffeine/.

Update: WordPress Plugin Tweet This

Jason — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:46:47 +0000

I recently added Tweet This to my site, a plugin for WordPress that enables your visitors to easily post a link to your article in their Twitter stream. The key point here, easier is better. One-click goodness will surely get your articles into the Twitterverse.

The plugin was updated yesterday with many more admin features along with options for Digg This, Plunk This and Ping This links. You can see all four at the bottom of this article.

A very welcome addition is customization of how the text is sent to Twitter. The default is ‘[URL] [TITLE]‘ but I followed John Chow’s lead and modified mine to ‘Reading @mesmerlab [TITLE] [URL]‘. I had to modify the plugin code itself when I first installed it.

Thanks go out to Richard X. Thripp for this great upgrade!

Updating Prototype in a DreamHost 1-Click Install

Jason — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:39:32 +0000

I’ve used DreamHost for years with very little, if any trouble. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a hosting solution. While developing this site, I came across Xavin’s List Subpages plugin for WordPress that allows me to show a submenu based on the ID number of a page.

Trouble Ahead

One small problem came up when I was clicking on the submenu items. It seemed Firebug showed an error once I clicked, yet it went away when the page moved on. Ok, so this is a very tiny flaw that would only be visible to a quick eye and only bother perfectionists like me. So I dove right in. A quick punch of the stop button snared the error for further investigation. Off to Google with…

'^=': function(nv, v) { return nv.startsWith(v); },

A Lighthouse in the Distance

Most of the hits were versions of the Prototype script itself. But a post on the Ruby On Rails development site had exactly what I was looking for. Prototype Element.match returns TypeError nv: null when selecting for an attribute that is not present. It seems that they had found and fixed the bug back in March of 2008.

Moving into Port

So I go back to the prototype.js that is installed here and find the outdated 1.6.0 version. I got the latest 1.6.0.3 version from the source and updated the file on my server. Now the fleeting error notice is gone and everything works perfectly.

Safely Ashore

To ensure the safety and sanity of other hunters of minuscule bugs, I posted a request to update Prototype on the DreamHost suggestion tracker. Waves of euphoria are rushing right now; similar to when I make a spelling correction on Wikipedia.