Category: Web

On User Experience..

“But it wasn’t until we’d invested an additional 400 hours improving the user interface — fully two thirds of the overall development cost — that we felt we had a minimum viable product — i.e. a product that delivered the core functionality, and within an experience so delightful that the users would want to tell others about it.”

http://makaluinc.com/blog/2011/07/minimum-viable-product.html

Getting your Google+ Updates Into Your WordPress Blog

1. On Google+ get your user id from the URL (the large number):

2. Go to http://plusfeed.appspot.com/ and add the Google+ user id at the end of it’s URL, e.g. http://plusfeed.appspot.com/111520209329163687335

This will provide you with an instant RSS feed of your public Google+ updates.

3. In your WordPress blog go to Appearance > Widgets > RSS Feed and paste the feed URL.

That’s it :-)

Update: 

Apparently the default frequency with which the RSS widget updates is every 12 hours. If you want to change you can add something like this to your theme’s functions.php:

add_filter( 'wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime', create_function('$a', 'return 1800;') );

Skeleton Custom Post Type for Week 4

Last week’s assignment on my P2PU WordPress development course was all about exploring custom post types, that nifty feature that 3.x brought us and that has made everyone talking about using WordPress as a CMS more seriously.

Unfortunately its not so easy to get into custom post types, especially if you’re coming from a non-programmer background. As a way to ease that pain I decided to share a skeleton of the custom post type so instead of starting from scratch you can start from a working version.

As I was planning to do this, @dannygsmith beat me to it and provided the following code. Use it and abuse it, this is your chance to get the assignment done ;)

Custom post type ‘gallery’: download

Also Núria Ramoneda decided to share some links to help you in the process:

http://thinkvitamin.com/code/create-your-first-wordpress-custom-post-type/

http://shibashake.com/wordpress-theme/add-custom-post-type-columns/

http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/wordpress-custom-post-types-guide/

Thanks to both of them and get to work everyone. Time is running down! But don’t forget.. Enjoy!

Week 4 – Exploring Custom Post Types

This week’s assignment:

If you got to this point you call honestly call yourself a self-learner. Most folks have quitted or fallen behind. If you’re still with us, congratulations, you are part of the top. However, before you can call your status you’ll have two final assignments. This week and the final next week. For this week assignment read on…

Client Y loved your work and asked if you could provide a full site, based on WordPress,  besides a blog. This would involve having a WordPress installation with a blog page (where blog posts will go) but also a page where photos will appear with some  information. He would like the ability to enter photo information via the admin panel.

Suppose he wants to add a photo. He should have the admin panel option ‘New Photo’. Within this menu he can add:

– Photo’s Title
– Photo’s Description

And as extra fields:

– Location where the photo was taken
– Year the photo was taken
– Camera used

The photo itself will be added via the ‘Featured Image’ metabox.

Can you do it?

Hint: Custom Post Types are ideal for this kind of job.

Stuff that can help:

– Provide a link to my e-mail for approval on this assignment with the subject: “your_p2pu_user/assignment4”. Results will be posted on-line afterwords.
Update: For your changes to take effect on the frontend, meaning in the appearance of your site, you will need also to update the theme files in order to retrieve the extra fields and display them.
I would like to take the opportunity to say that I will personally raffle a WordCamp Lisbon ticket (http://central.wordcamp.org/) to the students that finish all the assignments. This is a great opportunity to visit Portugal and learn more about WordPress and the community behind it :-)
Enjoy!

Week 3 Assignment

This week’s assignment:

Assignment #3 – P2PU WordPress Development Course

This week you’re sick of doing client work so you’ve decided to explore some WordPress things by yourself and learn by doing.
You’re especially inclined to try different hooks (actions and filters) and how to use them. As a goal you’ve decided to do a plugin that your clients can install on their blogs and that will add a Help button (in the admin) that they can click to message you (send you an e-mail).

– Provide a link to my e-mail with the subject ”p2pu_username/assignment3″  for approval on this assignment. Results will be posted on-line afterwords.

– Be sure to drop by today (Wednesday) on Campfire (https://alforreca.campfirenow.com/c300e), we’re here to help you!