I recently received an email asking for some Wordpress advice on making posts show up in columns just like on 9antivirus.com and thought I’d share one way of doing this.

I’ve set up a demo blog showing how it looks after the code is implemented.

There are two theme files to be edited: index.php and style.css. I have just edited the default Kubrick theme, so adjust this to suit your own theme.

The basic idea is to add a “switch” so Wordpress knows if you’re looking at a post which will appear in the first or second column.

View How to organize posts into two side-by-side columns in Wordpress

Wordpress Reports - Google Analytics and Feeburner

This is a brilliant plugin. Quite simple really - it tracks your Google Analytics and Feedburner reports without you having to login. They are contained within your Wordpress install. Makes the whole thing so easy to view. Thanks Jo.

From his site:

WordPress by default doesn’t come with any sort of web site reporting tools (and it really shouldn’t). So if you want to know how many people visited your site, which pages they viewed, or where they came from, you’ll need to either rely on your raw web logs or use an online tracking service provided by a third party. There are many different third party web tracking services out there, but the two free and popular third party solutions that I highly recommend are Google Analytics (for web traffic) and Feedburner (for syndicated traffic).

I have always wondered how to get an extra column into wp. I normally just call the sidebar and footer from index.php as usual and then if I want a three column layout, put the two columns in the sidebar. e.g.

[/div][!-- end of id content--]
[/div][!--end of id wrapper--]
[!--index.php end--]

[!--include sidebar--]
[?php get_sidebar(); ?]
In the sidebar.php I have two divs, one called leftcol and float this left and the second say rightcol and float it right. (It is a little bit more complicated than that but for ease this is how I will leave it).

Now we finish the index.php by telling it to call the footer:
[!--include footer--]
[?php get_footer(); ?]

However, if I add this line after the call to the sidebar:
[!--include extra.php--]
[?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/extra.php'); ?]
Then I can add an extra column without resorting to having in sidebar.php.

Why is this important? Well maybe the opening page is a three column layout which upon opening a post goes to a two column structure. Using the above will help that process.

By the way I have changed the <> brackets for [] just so it doesn’t break the site.

Does anyone know of any good sites or tutorials on this subject. I don’t want to use a template or anyone else’s theme or CSS style. Any thoughts?

Take a look at:
Urban Giraffe
How to design your own wp theme
Blank wp Theme
Four blank wp themes

And for completeness:
How to write a wp plugin

Nothing about templating in there but if you get that far give me a shout and help then.

Q: Hi, I need some help with this. I am using Wordpress and I would like to get a dotted border around the different categories on the sidebar.

A: Apply the border style to the outer elements, the uo and ol, not to the li’s. The following will get you started.
#sidebar ul, #sidebar ul ol {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 2px dotted #ccc;
}

If you want the border only on the inner lists, try this instead:
#sidebar ul ul, #sidebar ul ol {
margin: 5px 0 0 10px;
border: 2px dotted #ccc;
}

One important area that I believe needs consideration is the tools for adding text and images.

Allow me to expand a bit. Currently in an online text editor if I place an image or a piece of text they get allocated a value of img… or p. This means to do anything creative with that data I have to style the img or p tag with css. But it stops there. Unless of course I apply a containing div to my post. We also don’t often have the chance of deciding which elements to apply. For instance to create a post I could substitute the img and p tags with dl tags.

Having read this you might be wondering what planet I am on! Well, Wordpress and many cms’ have been developed to encompass a wide range of layouts through the use of plugins. A couple of things could be an online shop and a gallery. If there was someway of hard coding markup into the template that a developer could hang things onto we could make it very easy to create a huge variety of plugins. I am not sure how it would work or whether it is possible - I am not a developer, but is it possible to create a php tag that allows images to be given tags in certain post/categories. Similarly would it be possible to do the same with p tags. You could then tell your template to allocate 5 tags to the category called shop. The tags could be title, description, price, image, thumbnail. I don’t know how you would translate this to the post and category but I hope you guys are beginning to pick up what I am thinking about. If this was possible, we could create a piece of software that could be developed and deployed very easily for a number of apps!

Any thoughts please?

I have always wanted a list of tags that could be used in a template. Well here they are. If you know of any more please send them in this direction. Thanks


[?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?]
[?php the_date('','[h2]‘,’[/h2]‘); ?”
[div class="post" id="post-[?php the_ID(); ?]“]
[h3 class="storytitle"]
[a href="[?php the_permalink() ?]” rel=”bookmark”][?php the_title(); ?][/a][/h3]
[div class="meta"]
[?php _e("Filed under:"); ?] [?php the_category(',') ?] —
[?php the_author() ?] @ [?php the_time() ?] [?php edit_post_link(__('Edit This')); ?]
[/div]
[div class="storycontent"]
[?php the_content(__('(more...)')); ?]
[/div]
[div class="feedback"]
[?php wp_link_pages(); ?]
[?php comments_popup_link(__('Comments (0)'), __('Comments (1)'), __('Comments (%)')); ?]
[/div]
[/div] [!--closing .post --]
[?php comments_template(); // Get wp-comments.php template ?]
[?php endwhile; else: ?]
[p]
[?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?]
[/p]
[?php endif; ?]
[?php posts_nav_link(' — ', __('« Previous Page'), __('Next Page »')); ?]

Tony’s Cafe

This is a plugin that satisfies a simple need in WordPress. A function that returns text from one post (the most recent) for one category. That’s it! :) Save the Get Recent Post plugin to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory, then remove the .txt extension.

Wordpress is the software that Cregy uses to build its content management sites or cms. Wordpress is a blogging software that also allows pages and plugins to be added.

To explain further. A cms is a site that allows you the customer to add, edit or delete content as you require. This frees you from having to deal with site design etc and allows you to freely add content. A blog is a specialised (but becoming highly popular) cms. The best way to describe the software is as an online diary. For example. Your company might sell bicycles. So you develop an online shop that sells bikes and accessories. However as a company you can enhance this site with a blog. You might have a weekly blog that offers specialised tips on maintaining your bike. Additionally you could also be offering a blog on cycle events or even a review of the cycle team that races as part of your shop!

The beauty of Wordpress as software is that you can add plugins. Plugins are vital for the development of your site and allow you to build your site in stages or even in one go. For example at Cregy we have developed a shop plugin. You could therefore build your site, the content, design and start a blog to attract visitors. Then six months down the road you decide to build an online shop. It is simple to activate the plugin, style the shop, add content and you have an online shop. It really is that simple. Although there is work involved in uploading content and taking pictures!

I have listed below some additional plugins that I have found useful:
Contact Form
Some adaptions designed and built by Cregy
Contact Form Download
Prayer Form Download
Forum
Google Sitemap Generator
Static front page
Subscribe Me
Adhesive
Jerome’s Keywords
Admin Menu Dropdown
Search and Replace
CG PowerPack

There are many more. The list above will continue to get updated as I find more useful plugins!

To get a more detailed understanding of Wordpress I would suggest a visit to the Wordpress site:
Wordpress
For support visit:
Wordpress Forums
site managed by Podz
Of course Cregy can offer specialised help in using Wordpress.

Looks like an incredibly useful site!

31 Days