WordPress Hosting Theme

January 3rd, 2010 by Keith from shrewdies | 2 Comments | Filed in Form
“Where can I get a good WordPress hosting theme?” asked Fred.

It is a question that crops up time and again. As questions go, it seems straightforward, but you have to wonder why anyone would ask a question like this.

I am assuming that Fred is starting a web business related to WordPress Hosting, and not planning a hobby site to explore and discuss the finer points of WordPress Hosting themes. In that case, we have yet another example of failure to build the foundations of a web business.

It is no use simply deciding to set up a WordPress Hosting business without being clear about the purpose and objectives of that business. People familiar with my PROSPRA method know that WordPress hosting is not a suitable purpose. Brief examples of suitable purpose are “to advise students about finding WordPress hosts that will help their research and presentation” or “to supply a website hosting service that provides new website owners with a ready-to-run WordPress site”.

Those purpose statements would be longer in the real world, but the point is they are specific to the type of customer you are seeking. Fred’s question gives us no clue about his target customer base – a common situation implying he has not defined it. If you do not define your target, then how do you find it?

It may well be, for technical guys, concerned with installing and configuring server software, that you have no part to play in defining the purpose of the web business. That is fine, but you must get your client or boss to explain the purpose in clear terms. You cannot be expected to install or design an appropriate theme if you are unsure about it’s purpose.

Wrong Way To WordPress Hosting Theme


WordPress Hosting Search.
Just type themes in this box.
There is no need to type WordPress Hosting.

Search for one, and you will find sites that list any number of generic WordPress themes, made to look like the ideal hosting theme by the addition of pictures of servers.

Follow this route, and you have a generic looking site offering a generic service. You compete directly with thousands of others, and your theme will never be memorable.

How To Choose A WordPress Hosting Theme

Accept that if you want to cover your site with pictures of servers, it is extremely easy to amend any theme to do that. So, you can start with any theme, and you need to think what other properties are important. I suggest that speed is the most important issue for a hosting business. Better still, if your purpose is to aim at a specific section of the market, you can differentiate yourself with a theme that appeals to photographers or students, or…

If you are hosting several WordPress sites, or if you will be helping clients configure their own sites, it is good to use a theme with comprehensive customization options.

Install a good, fast, flexible theme and adapt it to your needs. You will get better results than by installing a generic WordPress hosting theme.

WordPress Hosting Theme: Next Steps

You’ve seen how important purpose and objectives are, so if these are not clear, your next step is to apply some PROSPRA techniques.

If you need more help with themes, look at related articles in the Form Section, or ask your questions below.

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Simple:Press Forum Simplified

January 1st, 2010 by Keith from shrewdies | 1 Comment | Filed in Function
I’ve simplified the Simple:Press forum today – by deleting it!

A drastic measure, but a timely one.

Don’t be misled – it is a fantastic plugin. In fact more than a plugin, it is a very special application. But sometimes, you have to take a hard decision to ensure you efficiently fulfil your purpose.

Community websites are the best way to explore, expand, and exploit your web business opportunities. A forum emphasizes that sense of community, so am I mad to get rid of it?

To understand, you need to be clear about the purpose of your forum, and clear about your alternatives.

I chose the forum route because I was unhappy with the limitations of commenting. My research told me that Simple:Press Forum was the best option for a WordPress site. However, I did not want to stop WordPress comments as they are popular with many people.

Moderating comments and a forum becomes tedious as conversations become fragmented and spam control is totally different. Keeping web pages “on-topic” with a clear keyword driven focus is as important to visitors as it is to search engines, and having two separate conversation streams makes that focus difficult.

Though the Simple:Press forum offers excellent member management, none of my sites is a true membership site. I encourage contributors to maintain good debates, but membership really equates simply to access rights. In my case, these are simple – visitors either contribute, or they read.

Despite it’s name, Simple:Press is quite complicated. Both from it’s extensive feature list, and ‘under the hood’ it is far from simple.

I realized I could get what I need by enhancing WordPress comments, plus a few other tweaks. I will describe these in more detail later.

For now, it’s goodbye Simple:Press. Nice knowing ya, and when I need a membership site, I know where to look.

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WordPress Plugins – Beginners Nightmare

December 22nd, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Function

WordPress plugins are vital for efficiently functioning websites.

WordPress Plugins Structure Nightmare

WordPress Plugins Structure Nightmare

Given their importance, I would expect much more effort going into helping new plugin developers get to grips with plugin structure.
 

The WordPress development team resist adding features to the core if they are not universal requirements and can be dealt with by plugins. This is a good thing, and they have recently announced plans to develop “canonical” (i.e. official) plugins to “address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution”[1].

Significantly, these will be “the best possible example of coding standards”[1]. But just what are these coding standards that are deemed so important?

The first thing I want to do when I write a plugin is adopt a structure that:

  • Is the most efficient in terms of performance (i.e. no redundant code, especially admin code loaded for all users)
  • Uses core WordPress functions and methods instead of home-grown alternatives.
  • Uses latest functionality and best practice, avoiding deprecated functions and methods.
  • Is familiar to the majority of plugin developers.

It’s the last point that induces the biggest nightmare. Official coding standards[2] focus heavily on inline documentation and formatting[3][4]. This is all very well, but we need good examples that clearly show best practice in how to organize code in modules. Which bits are best in separate modules, and how should they be organized in sub-folders?

It speaks volumes to me that Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress Upgrade 2.9

December 22nd, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | 1 Comment | Filed in Foundation

WordPress upgrade is now so easy, there is almost nothing to it.

The new upgrade to WordPress 2.9 is typical of the inbuilt update routine. It simply updates itself, but there are a couple of points to watch out for.

WordPress Upgrade Fatal Error

WordPress Upgrade Fatal Error

First, the usual warning – backup your database and files.

It is easy to be complacent here, and assume that it never goes wrong. Frankly, it hardly ever fails, but if it does, it leaves you with no website, and no easy way of recovering it. If you are happy to run the risk of starting from scratch, then skip the backup – it’s what dummies do.
For us shrewdies, a quick backup is the first step in upgrading WordPress. The backup service from your web host admin panel will do it easily in one step (unless you have a very poor host).

Second, simply click the “Upgrade Automatically” button, and wait a few seconds. It is that easy – but what if it goes wrong?

Occasionally, you will see a message like:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2515174 bytes) in [your-wp-path]/wp-includes/http.php on line 1331

Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress Comment Control

December 12th, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | 1 Comment | Filed in Function
WordPress comment control is vital if you want to get the best contributions from your visitors.

The standard WordPress commenting features are very basic. I realize that does not stop thousands of great blogs getting exceptional comments from visitors. However, anything that can help encourage commenting, and make comment management easier, is A Good Thing.

 

WordPress Comment Control

I have found a WordPress plugin that does both these things very well, but why is this so important?

Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress Plugin Control

December 4th, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Function

My dreams for WordPress plugin control have been realized

After months of planning an installation script (OK – occasionally thinking about planning one!), I have found the ideal plugin to control WordPress Plugins

 

WordPress Plugin Control
If you have setup more than a couple of WordPress installations, or you want to offer an easy way for newcomers to install their own WordPress, you will know how tedious it can become repeating the installation of a list of “must-have” plugins.

Now the only “must-have” plugin is Plugin Central from Vladimir Prelovac. Install that, and anything else you want is only a couple of clicks away.

At last, I have an easy way to save time when I setup my own new WordPress blogs.

More importantly, the web traffic tool that I am currently developing needs some simple instructions for setting up a new WordPress blog. I planned to develop my own plugin to install from a list of recommended plugins, but now I do not have to. I also found an unexpected bonus, as you will see below.
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WordPress MU File Editor Revealed

October 18th, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | 1 Comment | Filed in Function
Many “authorities” will tell you there is no WordPress MU file editor, and give you complicated workrounds to let you edit plugins and themes directly.

This is no longer true.

The latest version of multiuser WordPress has the standard file editor – it just needs to be enabled.

First, a couple of warnings:

  1. Editing themes and plugins directly can render your site unusable. It is vital that you have a backup of the file you are changing, AND file access to your webserver to revert to your backup if needed.
  2. The change will affect all your users who are using the plugin or theme that you are changing

So, there are very good reasons why you should not make ad-hoc changes to plugins and themes. However, if you feel that bypassing version control is occasionally worth the risk, here is how to unveil your hidden file editor.

Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress MU

October 17th, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Foundation
I had my chance, today, to see if my perfect instructions for installing WordPress MU are still perfect.

Actually, I can see immediately that perfection falls short by lacking a screenshot.

So I’ve added one.

WordPress MU Installation

WordPress MU Installation

There are still no Fantastico or Simple Scripts that I am aware of to install automatically, so you have to copy the files to your server, then fill in the form shown above (with your own details, of course).

The choice of sub-domains or sub-directories defaults to the correct choice. I cannot think of a reason why you would want subdirectories, but this would make an interesting topic for discussion in the WordPress MU Installation Forum, if you think you need sub-directories.

The manual install routine is still extremely simple, but as with most things, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The wrong way is to leap in without planning. The right way is to follow these simple steps.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Commandeer Comments

October 15th, 2009 by Keith from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Function
WordPress comments enhance your site when managed properly.

Encourage commenting, and you add effortless content to your site.

Make it hard, and your visitors will walk away

Comment control using spam management plugins is important, but if you don’t encourage commenting you might as well just close the comments and forget the whole thing.

Don’t worry about spam comments. First, think how you can encourage visitors to contribute to your site by way of comments, then worry about weeding out the ones you do not want.

If you run a forum, you might consider doing away with comments altogether. If so, change the default settings in the discussions section, and stop reading this. My view is that the more opportunities you give for visitor contributions, the more those visitors are likely to return – so read on to learn how to commandeer comments to keep your visitors returning.

WordPress Comments Plugins

First to be installed is Quicktagzmilies from Zfen. This makes it so much easier to add HTML code to posts. Much easier than having to type <blockquote></blockquote> etc.

To install this plugin, you have to edit the comments.php file in your theme. This is a bit of a pain, especially as you have to remember to do it if you change theme, but it is worth it. One day I’ll look to see if there is a way to avoid this, but it is very easy to do, so not a priority.

Go to the editor in the Appearance section of the admin area and select comments.php. Find textarea* and add Quicktagzmilies code (it’s shown in the settings screen) as a new line above it: <?php if (function_exists('quicktagzmilies')) { quicktagzmilies(); } ? >

Next, your visitor (now contributor) may want to know if anyone else responds. Subscribe To Comments plugin has been extremely useful, but not updated for a long time. I have opted for a new version, based on the original: Gurken Subscribe to Comments from Martin Spuetz. This is a fairly basic subscription service, so if you find something better, please share it in the comments here, or in the functionality forum. I’d like to see subscribe / watch functionality for comments that gives the same benefits as the equivalent functions in the Simple:Press Forum plugin – could be another project for the future.

Finally, now that you have happy contributors, do you think it fair to deprive them of a little glory? For some reason, WordPress puts nofollow attributes on the links your contributor provides. The merits (or lack of them) for this are beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll just explain the very easy way to stop this. Install NoFollow Free from Michele Marcucci and the problem goes away.

It’s over to you now. How do you comandeer your WordPress comments to work for you? Add your coments below!

*Some themes have more than one textarea. The one you are looking for has an id of comment.

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