Category Archives: Business

Widget Area in WordPress Admin

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I run a website, wycliffe.me, for redirecting traffic (URL redirector). But I need it to have a CRM sort of component to it. So I added some custom fields to the Posts using Just Custom Fields. (I am using Posts, but I could just as well use a custom post type Custom Post Type UI.) But now I want a summary of some of those fields in a special panel on the back-end. So I have collected some links to read and start hacking.
First I need to create an options page in the admin area: http://buildinternet.com/2010/01/create-custom-option-panels-with-wordpress-2-9/.
Next I need a way to collect the data. So I look for a plugin which can search my database and return fields…. sorta like views for Drupal. And wala there is such a plugin: Query Wrangler. (Query Posts might be another option, but I did not try it.) However, this plugin is not powerful enough. I can not search all the fields created by my other plugins, only my custom fields and content types. More power would be ideal.

Next I need to be able to see the widget in my admin area… so I need to widgetize my options panel. Here is where the Reading is a little fuzzy, ’cause I am not sure if many people do this. (Possibly indicating that there is a better way.)
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-create-new-widget-area?replies=5
http://www.webfroze.com/wordpress/creating-multiple-dynamic-widget-areas-in-wordpress/
http://www.themelab.com/2008/04/18/see-how-easy-it-is-to-widgetize-wordpress-themes/
http://wpengineer.com/307/add-wordpress-dashboard-widgets/
http://wpmu.org/how-to-widgetize-a-page-post-header-or-any-other-template-in-wordpress/

Open Scholar

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Last year I wrote about Selected Works™ & BePress because I was looking at how SIL International might best display the professional abilities of their personnel. This means putting their CV’s and past project activity in an accessible portfolio. I have also been looking at apps like Bibapp, which pulls info from DSpace. Since sil.org is looking at Drupal as a CMS I recently ran across Open Scholar, with an example by harvard.

Finding your inner Zachman

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The last couple of weeks I have been working on applying the Zachman's framework for enterprise architecture to two projects. I have been struggling through the first row and then skipped around a bit. I think I have found the part of the project (any project) I am most passionate about.... Working with Human Interface Architecture and explaining it as a designer to the builder of the Presentation Architecture. In my mind this level needs to be closely related to the Business Process Model and to the List of Business Goals/Strategies. [1] John Zachman. 2008. Diagram of: A framework for enterprise architecture. http://zachmaninternational.com/2/Zachman_Framework.asp. [Accessed: 2 December 2011] [PDF] [Link]

Where do I see myself most helpful in the large project...

References

References
↑1 John Zachman. 2008. Diagram of: A framework for enterprise architecture. http://zachmaninternational.com/2/Zachman_Framework.asp. [Accessed: 2 December 2011] [PDF] [Link]

TM in the URL for WordPress

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I like my URLs to be semantic, it helps with SEO and it helps users to know what a page is about based on the URL. Today I was looking over one of my old posts and found that the TM is added to the URL. In the admin UI the title looks like this:

Title

Title in the Admin UI

Notice that I have used the & in html in the tiled. This is stripped out by the automatic URL generating engine of WordPress. However the ™ as a unicode character is not removed. Some languages with non-roman scripts need Unicode in the titles, so not all unicode characters should be disallowed in the titles. In fact, all Unicode characters should be allowed in the title field. Sometimes unicode in the URL is allowed, however it is not always best practice (unicode above the ASCII range). I in this case it should not be allowed by WordPress. I have my permalink settings set to custom. I do /%year%/%postname%/.

permalink settings

permalink settings

However, when a unicode character is put into the postname, it is not necessarily striped out. My contention is that some characters should be, or that more characters should be. The problem for users is that the unicode character gets processed to the browser’s URL bar and looks like the following:
https://hugh.thejourneyler.org/2010/selected-works™-bepress/ .
However, when the user selects the url to copy it they do not get a URL which is paste able the same as when they saw it in the URL bar, they get something like the following:
https://hugh.thejourneyler.org/2010/selected-works%E2%84%A2-bepress/ .

One solution might be for authors to use the following HTML markup in the title:

  • ™
  • ™

But this is not user intuitive or presenting a “thoughtless process for end users/authors”.

Metadata for Educational Materials

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I have been following Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), a collaborative effort between Creative Commons and the Association of Educational Publishers[1]Creative Commons. 7 June 2011. Creative Commons & the Association of Educational Publishers to establish a common learning resources framework. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27603 . … Continue reading , with some interest as I start to look at SIL.org and potential services and resources offered through SIL.org are merged with the larger world of well described data.

https://youtu.be/-1QEkA9qbwA

SIL has a long tradition of providing linguistic training. With the digital revolution, it only seems right that these training resources would be described appropriately in the educational arena. It will be interesting to look at LRMI as it develops over the next few months. And then to think about applying it in the context of Drupal.

References

References
↑1 Creative Commons. 7 June 2011. Creative Commons & the Association of Educational Publishers to establish a common learning resources framework. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27603 . [Accessed: 27 November 2011] [Link]

Apple App Store

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I know I am bit late to the party, but I just updated to OS X 10.6.6. I have been resisting the App Store for ages. (I am doing a slide scanning project with Nikon CoolScan scanners, whose drivers require OS X 10.6 and lower.) But I needed to re-install Developer Tools and my OS disk was scratched. – A real pain. So I had to download 10.6.6 to get the new development tools to work. And a part of the package I get the App Store. So I might as well check it out. It is a real pain to use.

  1. There is no way to save an app I am interested in purchasing but am not going to purchase right now. – This is a feature in the iTunes store.

    2. No feature for saving interesting apps.

  2. The search algorithm for apps does not help me get the apps I want. – I thought I would try a search for a metadata editing tool. Some apps which I know are in the Apple App Store, and this is their primary function are not showing up. Disappointing.

Diving into the UX World

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For the past few weeks I have been working with a team on redoing a large corporate website (almost two large corporate websites).

Word Cloud for UX

Word Cloud for UX

During the course of the project I have had several people, who are unfamiliar (and familiar) with web technology talk with me about UX and UI, but in terms of Design. They might say: "We need a re-design. Our branding is not displayed well." or the might say " Oh, but it was designed to do that, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do!" So, most of the people (I am encountering) talking in terms of design, are talk about the business design or the function of a website at a very high level. Not the UX and UI level of design. I have tried to explain it in the following terms

The words Usability and Design each suffer from a very unfortunate ambiguity. Usability in a very raw sense means is a tool usable. Just because every tool can be a hammer, does not mean that every tool should be shaped like a hammer. Design in computing also suffers a similar fate. If some computer tool does something, it does so because it was designed to do so. This does not mean that the computer tool is esthetically pleasing or that it creates a good impression on its user. An impression of such a nature that the user might want to come back to the site and use it again. The following diagram contrast the words, functional, reliable, usable, convenient, pleasurable, and meaningful.

User Experience model

User Experience model

Because images show so much more than words I looked around for some images to describe the difference I have been trying to communicate. This has resulted in the following collection of images. In the process of linking to these pictures I hope to introduce my readers to some of the ongoing discussion of professional UX design and development.

Layering the Design

Layering the Design

This image is from a PDF called: The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garret. [1] Jesse James Garret. 30 March 2000. The Elements of User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf [PDF]

Layering the Design

Explaining the Layers

This Image comes from a write up about UX: UX Design Defined [2]Michael Commings. 16 August 2010. UX Design Defined. Uxdesign.com [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined [Link] In it is perhaps the best definition of UX I have come across is:

User Experience Design is the art and science of integrating all the various elements that comprise an interactive system so that:

  1. The user's needs, limitations, goals, desires, expectations, are served
  2. The publishing organization's objectives are served as a result of serving the user's (#1)
  3. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
Peter Morville's Facets of the User Experience

Peter Morville's Facets of the User Experience

This image was take from Peter Morville's article on User Experience Design. [3] Peter Morville. 21 June 2004. User Experience Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php [Link]

Flickr user Model

Flickr User Model

This Diagram of the Flickr user experience model has been attributed to Bryce Glass by Kenny Chen on 5 April 2008, at http://www.kennychen.net/blog/2008/04/05/flickr-user-model-diagram/. [4] Bryce Glass. Diagram of the Flickr user experience model. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] [Link]

user experience design explained

User Experience Design

This image comes from What Is User Experience Design by Kimmy Paluch. [5] Kimmy Paluch. 10 October 2006. What Is User Experience Design. [Accessed:8 November 2011] http://www.montparnas.com/articles/what-is-user-experience-design [Link]

Multiple Roles in Web Strategy

Multiple Roles in Web Strategy

Finding the right fit of UX

Finding the right fit of UX

This image is taken from User Experience Strategy. [6] Luke Wroblewski. 27 July 2005. User Experience Strategy. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?203 [Link]

Additionally there some good articles:

  • UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment [7] UXPassion.com. 10 October 2009. UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxpassion.com/2009/10/ux-roi-user-experience-return-on-investment [Link].
  • User Experience vs. User Interaction [8] uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. User Experience vs. User Interaction [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/user-experience-vs-user-interaction [Link].
  • The difference between Usability and User Experience [9]uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. The difference between Usability and User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] … Continue reading
  • Strategy by Design, the second page - about Recruiting T-Shaped People, was interesting. [10] Tim Brown. 1 June 2005. Strategy by Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html [Link]

References

References
↑1 Jesse James Garret. 30 March 2000. The Elements of User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf [PDF]
↑2 Michael Commings. 16 August 2010. UX Design Defined. Uxdesign.com [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined [Link]
↑3 Peter Morville. 21 June 2004. User Experience Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php [Link]
↑4 Bryce Glass. Diagram of the Flickr user experience model. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] [Link]
↑5 Kimmy Paluch. 10 October 2006. What Is User Experience Design. [Accessed:8 November 2011] http://www.montparnas.com/articles/what-is-user-experience-design [Link]
↑6 Luke Wroblewski. 27 July 2005. User Experience Strategy. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?203 [Link]
↑7 UXPassion.com. 10 October 2009. UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxpassion.com/2009/10/ux-roi-user-experience-return-on-investment [Link].
↑8 uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. User Experience vs. User Interaction [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/user-experience-vs-user-interaction [Link].
↑9 uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. The difference between Usability and User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/the-difference-between-usability-and-user-experience/ [Link].
↑10 Tim Brown. 1 June 2005. Strategy by Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html [Link]

MAMP Helps

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I use MAMP for my local test environment. But I have recently moved beyond just PHP apps. I am also looking at using Tomcat. I would like to mess around with DSpace locally and use Solr also. But I have found a couple of helps for adding things to MAMP.

One of the problems I am facing is that I really like apps like MacPorts. But I do not want to tinker with the CORE and default setting of my OS X machine. So I find that MAMP is a good alternative, but I can not type a command in the command line and have all the dependencies download automatically. I recently found that I could do something like this with Homebrew…. Never used it before but it looks to be the tool for the job. So I have collected a few tutorials like: installing php5.3, Using an gmail as a smtp server, and setting up solr.