Categories
Wordpress Development

WordPress as a CMS

It was about last year that I realised most of the projects that I do required a content management system (CMS). This both a relief and frightening prospect all at the same time. How do I use modern CMS’s? Are they easy to modify, hack, template, etc? Will this actually make my life easier?

With these questions in mind, I began my hunt for a CMS to use for a re-design of one of my larger projects (Wrestling Addix).  I had dabbled with Drupal before, but I found it to be a little complicated.  I also was having a hard time with the Drupal terminology (nodes?  You mean pages right?).  I also explored the Joomla route, but it seemed like a little more than what I needed.  Eventually, I came to rest on WordPress.  I had been keeping a WordPress blog for years (Re-Cycled Air was formerly a blog about my [mis]adventures during my undergrad) so it seemed like the natural choice.

Once I had settled on WordPress, it was time to figure out how to make it a usable CMS.  First off, I needed a static front page.  That was easily handled by going to the settings and having my blog posts go into a different page.  After that, creating a theme was next.  No problem, WordPress is easily themed, or you can choose from a large assortment at the WordPress site.  From there, I need a few extra plugins to make things work.  Here’s what I use regularly.

  • Advertising Manager – Used to rotate ads on some of my clients sites.  Allows for extreme customisation and weighted ads.
  • Akismet – Blocking spam comments has never been easier.
  • All-in-One SEO Pack – Using this Search Engine Optimisation package allows site contributors to fill out the meta information without ever having to touch a piece of code.
  • BM Custom Login – This plugin allows you to skin the WordPress Login/Registration/Password Recovery page.  It’s a nice touch that clients just love.
  • Configure SMTP – For clients without an SMTP server, this works great because it allows you to easily use a GMail account for SMTP.
  • Disable WordPress Core Update – Nothing is worse then having a client constantly bug you about updating WordPress.  Luckily, with this plugin you can disable the update notification.
  • Event Calendar – A lot of sites like to have calendars.  This plugin makes it easy to place either a larger full page calendar or a calenar widget on your site.  Managing events is easy as well.
  • Exec-PHP – This plugin allows you to execute PHP scripts in your pages, posts, or widgets.  It’s really handy if you don’t want to make a plugin for something.
  • Favicon Manager – Every site needs a favicon.  This plugin allows you to easily change your favicon so it shows up in browsers and RSS feeds.
  • Google Analytics for WordPress – This will add google analytics functionality to your WordPress site.  It accomplishes the same thing as putting analytics code directly in the header, except you don’t have to edit the template by hand.
  • Maintenance Mode – In the event that you need to do some serious site maintenance, this plugin allows you to easily throw up a maintenance splash page.  Admins are still allowed to view the site and the backend.
  • Member Access – You can easily restrict parts of your site to registered users only.  I used it to lock out authorised users from an upload area.
  • Page Links To – This allows you to make pages links go to external or internal sources.
  • PageMash – With this you can visually reorder your menu.  Much easier that the cumbersome ‘enter a number’ system that’s included by default.
  • Simple Press Forum – An easy to use integrated forum for WordPress.  Why use PHPbb or Vbulletin when you can have this with single sign on with the click of a button?

If you have any other suggestions for good CMS plugins, please leave them in the comments for all to see.

Categories
Other

Chrome OS

The Internet is a buzz today with news of the Google’s new Chrome OS.  Even the major news outlets have picked up the story, touting it as a “direct challenge” to Microsoft.  First of all, nothing Google can do in the OS realm will come anywhere near challenging Microsoft.  Google’s experience lies in maninpulating Linux to work for their backend operations.  Even if they hire some developers with practical end user OS exeperience, it’s still just going to be another flavor of Linux.  The general public doesn’t like Linux.  Not because Linux is bad in any way, but because it is different.  Chrome OS promises to be VERY different.  People don’t want extreme change, they want gradual change so that they barely notice anything has happened.

Nice try Google.  I’m sure it’ll be a hit in the enthusiast / Google fan boy crowd, but as for me, I’ll stick with Ubuntu.

Categories
Other

Programmer Humor

I was walking by a Post cereal factory in Niagara Falls this weekend, and I immediately thought of this.

Post Cereal

Categories
Other

Student Loan Debt

Most people in my field have attended a 4 year university to learn their skills.  While it’s not entirely necissary to do so, it does help expedite and flush out the the things you could have learned on your own.  The only problem is money.  If you are anything like me your parents didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so you always knew that shouldering the debt of a college education would be your responsibility.  It’s only now that I’ve realised how expensive college really is.

Currently, my student loan debt is at $50,000 is government loans and $20,000 in private loans.  By the time I’ve completed grad school, I’ll have an additional $21,000 in government loans.  All in all, I’ve got $91,000 in student loans to pay off when I graduate.  With any sort of luck, I’ll get a job that starts me at $60,000 a year.

That’s great for me.  I can easily afford to make a student loan payment of $1000 a month.  Maybe less.  However, I now have to consider my fiance’s debt.  She’ll have roughly $70,000 in student loans when she’s done.  So together, we’ll need to pay $160,000 in student loans.

Sometimes I wonder if the education was worth it.

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Other

Virtual Box on Ubuntu 9.04 Host

Ever since I got my new laptop back in April, I’ve been running the latest version of Ubuntu on it.  Sometimes though, I do have the need for Windows (when I need to use Visual Studio, for example).  In those cases I have a virtual machine with Windows XP installed on it, and any of the often needed Windows utilities available.  This worked great for me in previous versions of Ubuntu, but with the new laptop came a weird problem:  The VM was transparent.  Not completely transparent, but maybe 40% transparent.

Luckily there is a quick fix for this.  With your mouse pointer inside of the guest operating system, make sure the “host key” is disabled, and then hit windows key + c.  That should remove the transparency and you’ll be good to go.

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Other

Morning

As much as I despise waking up at 6:15am every morning, there are a few things I do enjoy.  I enjoy spending an hour reading articles and catching up with the day’s news.  I enjoy the fresh feeling that the world has at that hour.  The morning dew is still clinging to everything, and the sun being low on the horizon.  Above all else, it’s quiet.  Everyone is still sleeping at that hour.  That’s probably my favorite part.  No phone calls, no talking, just the sound of the wind at my back and the birds singing.

Next time I visit the ocean, I’m making it a point to get up early and watch the sunrise.  I haven’t seen a sunrise in ages.

Categories
Other Programming

The “Project You Don’t Want to Do” Life Cycle

  • Day 1: Okay, quick and easy project.  I should at least try to have fun with it.
  • Day 2: What!? I have to do this in Visual Basic?  I don’t even have visual studio, let alone any VB knowledge.
  • Day 3: Visual Studio is installed, created a gui for this project.  Hey, this gui designer is pretty nice.
  • Day 4: Beginning to realize why I love PHP so much.  I’ve never had so much trouble connecting to a database in my life.
  • Day 5: Screw this, I could make this program in 10 minutes in Python!
  • Day 6: Crap, my Python is rusty.  Oh well, I’ve made some good progress.
  • Day 7: Man, gui programming in python is weird.  I guess making a gui in any language kind of sucks.
  • Day 8: Bleh, back to Visual Studio.
  • Day 9: Suck it up and do is VB.  Learn something new!
Categories
Other

Free ISO Mounting Tool

Every so often you need to mount an ISO file.  I generally use Linux, so I can just create a loop back interface.  On Windows though, things are a bit trickier.  If your are lucky enough to have money, you could always buy a tool to do this.  However, most of us are either poor or cheap, so that’s where this tool comes in.  Microsoft apparently created a free iso mounting tool that it doesn’t support.  I have used this with great success over the years, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

Click here to download VCDControlTool.sfx.exe