Category Archives: Blogging

EditFlow and CPT management through a workflow

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EditFlow [http://editflow.org/] is a great plugin if you only have one content type and need to pass the content across several people. Unfortunately for me it does not support the creation of different workflows for different content types. That is why I found it a bit limiting. Interestingly, the guys developing PikList [http://wordpress.org/plugins/piklist/] and PODs [http://wordpress.org/plugins/pods/] approached the problem by suppressing the existing publishing meta-box and supplying their own. It seems that each framework (Piklist, PODs, and even ACF - Advanced Custom Fields) might have its benefits. But they are all vying for the same market place - the developer's time and the plugin folder on your WordPress install. I am not sure which I like most right now, ACF has it on admin UI/UX but PODs is really powerful. If WordPRess core added some management features for the existing capability in its APIs then we might not have this marketplace...

Plugin Abandonment

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In the open source development world there is a lot of emphases on developing software to solve specific problems, there is much less emphasis on solving those problems well. That is, solving those problems so the most people are serviced, or so that users of software have the flexibility they need (there is also often a lack of commitment to User Experience Design but this is a shameless side plug). And there is often a real lack of collaboration around competing solutions. This is evident in the software which is created for use by linguists (usually also coded by linguists for solving the linguists’ challenges) but this is also evidenced in a different sphere of programing in the WordPress eco-system. In the WordPress eco-system there is a plethora of plugins which are abandoned. WordPress is GPL’d and so these plugins are GPL’d too. However, the repository – the human visual interface to the repository – allows for coders to grab code, and modify it for their ends, but it doesn’t allow for merging once the plugin has been “updated”. (It is true that not all changes are “updates”, sometimes people need one-off solutions.) But the net result is that early 1/3rd of all plugins for wordpress are abandoned. Their developer has been paid and has now ended their relationship with the commissioning client, or the WordPress eco-system no-longer requires the service options provided by that plugin. Matt Jones created an info-graphic to illustrate this point and to bring awareness to the problem. My comments below are my reply to him, with some minor corrections .
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Help with some WP theming

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I have created several custom taxonomies. I have even gotten them to display in the post single page (generally following this tutorial) using my child theme.

Theme Question

Theme Example or see it in a screenshot here: http://d.pr/i/EghK.

But:

  1. Not every post contains a term from one of my custom taxonomies.
  2. And some posts contain more than one term from one of my custom taxonomies. So I would like to have "and" inserted before the last term of the list if the list is greater than 1 term. eg. term1, term2, and term3

So, I need to do some magic with an if{ elseif{ kind of stuff but I am not sure exactly what the syntax should be or how to get it there.

Currently I have: Continue reading →

Email Befuddling

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So, the common concern is:

If I put my email address "out there" on the web that spammers will get it and start sending me spam messages.

Well, that is a valid concern. There are scripts and crawlers which go around and look for email addresses. (And lets suppose that they also do not check for a robots.txt file.) These generally work by focusing on the syntax of the email addresses using Regular Expressions or finding the mailto: term in the HTML code. There are some things which can be done to prevent this from happening.

  • The best way is to use contact forms.
  • The second best way is to use JavaScript hiding. (Go here to read how to do this if you are running your own HTML pages, or here if you want a site which will create a JavaScript for you.)
  • The third best way is to use HTML characters for your email addresses.
  • One way that I severely dislike is to spell out the email address or phone number like (you see a lot of this on sites like craigslist and after a few spam text messages one understands why it is done): seven-one-seven or hugh dot paterson at.

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Permanently accessible? to whom?

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Photo of the Bush House


Bush house: the BBC World Service is leaving its home after 71 years
Photo: Paul Grover via The Telegraph

There has recently been some discussion on the about the BBC selling its production facilities and moving from the Bush House to somewhere else. [1]Christopher Middleton. 7:30 am BST 10 Jul 2012. For sale: Bush House, a landmark of BBC World Service history. The Telegraph on-line. … Continue reading [2]Jonathan Prynn. 11 July 2012. Buy a bit of BBC radio history… or an entire studio. London Evening Standard on-line. … Continue reading [3]Paul Ridden. 12:41 pm 12 July 2012. Updated: BBC World Service equipment and memorabilia to go under the auctioneer's hammer. gizmag online. … Continue reading The BBC world service has been a major player in radio and oral culture in Great Britain and around the world for 71 years. A lot of history has been reported by the service. And the BBC's records (including its archive) have oral histories of a variety of world events for the last 71 years in a variety of languages (Wikipedia has a brief description of the collections at the BBC.). Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Christopher Middleton. 7:30 am BST 10 Jul 2012. For sale: Bush House, a landmark of BBC World Service history. The Telegraph on-line. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9386848/For-sale-Bush-House-a-landmark-of-BBC-World-Service-history.html [Link] [Accessed: 19 July 2012]
↑2 Jonathan Prynn. 11 July 2012. Buy a bit of BBC radio history… or an entire studio. London Evening Standard on-line. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/buy-a-bit-of-bbc-radio-history-or-an-entire-studio-7935734.html [Link] [Accessed: 19 July 2012]
↑3 Paul Ridden. 12:41 pm 12 July 2012. Updated: BBC World Service equipment and memorabilia to go under the auctioneer's hammer. gizmag online. http://www.gizmag.com/bbc-world-service-bush-house-auction/23292/ [Link] [Accessed: 19 July 2012]