Jerry D. Russell dot Com

If you work with WordPress or any other CMS platform there will undoubtedly come a time when you need to modify the template files to suit your own needs. Off the shelf templates are a great starting point, but there always seems to be something that could work better if it was tweaked just a little or look a lot better if just one or two little nudges were made to the layout.

If you’ve ever tried modifying the template files in the built-in WordPress theme editor, you’ve probably already run into some pretty significant issues, such as lack of error checking, wonky layouts and poor handling of php code. Editing themes in this manner is nothing short of nightmarish, even for seasoned developers. Another option is to use a decent desktop text editor such as BBEdit for Mac, CodePad for Windows based systems or Gedit or Kate for Linux, but these editors are still lacking in fundamental features that developing in php requires, such as code completion and advanced syntax checking that can keep you from accidentally causing your entire site to go offline due to a missing semicolon or open tag.

Enter Aptana Studio, the only editor you’ll ever need to download. Not only is Aptana rich in all the features that you might need to get your themes and templates up to speed, including syntax checking, code tidying and code completion, but it’s also available in versions for Mac, windows and Linux, which means that even if you work on multiple platforms as I do , you will be working in a nearly identical editing environment on each computer you use, which can increase productivity exponentially.

While Aptana is incredibly feature-rich in the area of code editing, the lack of a WYSIWG editor may be a put off for novice users. My advice in this case is really a preference, but I honestly feel that code should never be edited in a WYSIWYG environment. Visual editors have a nasty habit of reformatting your code. Even the venerable DreamWeaver does so on occasion and these changes can be a nightmare to find and repair if you haven’t noticed them very quickly. Also, if you’re developing template files for a CMS, a visual editor isn’t going to do you much good anyway, as the editor does not have the ability to actually run the code that displays the template.

Aptana shines in other areas of development as well. If you’ve ever wanted to develop an iPhone App, you can with Aptana. The iPhone plugin even supplies a virtual iPhone browser so that you can do preliminary testing in the IDE, not on your iPhone. Once you’ve gotten things working the way you’d like, just install the app. Aptana also offers full support for Adobe air development, Ruby on Rails, Python, and Nokia phones.

Forget your FTP software. Aptana’s built in project manager handles file uploads and full site syncs with ease. this feature was what set DreamWeaver above most other editors, but Aptana Studio has tackled this head on with one of the most robust remote toolkits I’ve seen.

If you’ve been looking for a good, solid, robust and reliable development IDE, Aptana might just be the one you need to look into. The professional edition does come at a cost, but unless you work as part of a large development team, i doubt you will ever need to use the features provided by Aptana studio Pro. The Free Standalone edition will work just fine for you.

But hey, I’m just a satisfied customer. I love Aptana so much that it’s installed on every one of my computers. (though it is mind numbingly slow on my micro-notebook). Everyone has their own personal preferences in a development environment. I know people who happily develop web templates using Microsoft Word, though why in the world they would do that is far beyond my capability to understand. (And their sites rarely work properly.)

Try Aptana for yourself. I really do think that you’ll fall in love with it. And just in case you’re wondering, no one is paying me to write this. I’m an Aptana evangelist and I’m on a mission to get everyone who has ever needed to work on a php file to give it a shot. The more people that use it, the better it will become, as the developers will have more motivation to build bigger, better, badder versions of the software.

That’s all for now kiddies. I’ll get back on the ball and get more posted in the next few days, now that I’ve shaken the funk that I’ve been in through most of the Holidays. There were a lot of reasons for it, but I’m back and I want o start the new year of with a bang!

Jerry Productivity, Tools of the Trade, WordPress, WordPress Themes growth, Productivity, Products, WordPress, WordPress Themes

If you’re running a WordPress powered blog and like the functionality of the flash image uploader, you might just want to wait to upgrade your Flash Player.  Flash Player 10, which is shipping now causes the flash uploader to break.  There are no fixes at this time.

On the other hand, if you’ve suddenly lost the use of your flash based uploader and the symptom is that when you click the button nothing happens at all… Then you’ve probably already got Flash 10 installed.  Don’t worry, you didn’t break anything, just sit back, use the browser based uploader for a bit and wait for WordPress 2.7, which should be shipping in a few weeks.  From what I hear, they’ve got a fix going in that will get your nice pretty multiple file upload capability back for you.

At least I hope so, because I’m tired of having to upload them manually.

Jerry WordPress Blogging, Blogging Tips, Productivity, WordPress

If you’re a long time WordPress user like myself, you may have gotten used to using the  <!– more –> tag to display teaser material in your RSS feeds.  If so, the decision to remove support for this feature in the 2.5 release of WordPress may have had you a bit put off. Since WordPress 2.5, you either had to go with full feeds, (Not good in cases where traffic to your blog = money) or you had to fill in the description field for each and every post.  (Honestly, if I wanted to use Joomla! I would have been doing so already!)

Enter the Better Feed plugin from Ozh.  Not only does this bad boy return you to the stock behavior of earlier WordPress versions, but it allows you to add just about anything you ever thought of to the footer of your RSS feed. How about Post word counts, custom (Read More) text, number of comments, a nice little reminder that you’re running a contest?  You name it, this plugin will do it.

I’ve used several plugins over the past few years that added advertising to my RSS feeds, but none of those solutions was very elegant.  Better Feed makes this process simple.  Each time a new round of advertisements that I feel my readers would be interested in comes through my inbox, I simply append the best of them using the plugin interface, hit save and forget about it until next week.  No more worrying about whether I’ve fubar-ed the code for one of five rotating ad choices or mucking with a management script designed to handle far more than I will ever need on a C-list blog. (I’m working at hitting th A-List, but hey, it takes time!)

There is a bit of a learning curve to Better Feed, but It’s nothing that should send you into a fit.  The tags are pretty straightforward and the editor will be familiar to anyone who has ever edited their comments before.  Getting things to look just the way you’d like may take a bit of time, but you’ll get there, don’t worry.

In the end, I’m listing this as one of my “Must have” WordPress plugins.  I just don’t know what I’d do without it at this point!

Jerry WordPress, WordPress plugins WordPress, WordPress plugins

Grid Focus Public, by Derek Punsalan is one of the most respected magazine style themes that has been released for WordPress to date. It’s strengths lie in its extreme simplicity and elegance, not only in the way it presents information to the reader, but in the gorgeous minimal code design as well.

Grid Focus Public is definitely a theme tweaker’s dream.  The code for the template is so easy to get through that it’s almost like a vacation to modify.  It’s just that much fun. Want to add something to the sidebar?  No problem.  Change the colors, menus, layout options?  Easy. Change the header, footer or anything else about the template.  A sheer walk in the park. Unfortunately, that simplicity comes with a price.

The price is that Grid Focus Public, even though it’s been updated to work with the newest releases of WordPress without a hitch, does not have a lot of the modern features that one would expect in a theme of this type.  For example, there are no options that can be set via the admin panel. There is no widget support (Though I find this more of a blessing than a curse…  I despise widgets and almost never use them.) and things like automated menus simply don’t exist.  If you want to modify this theme, you’ll have to play with the code or hire someone that can do it for you.

That being said, this theme has gained some pretty avid supporters in the blogging world, and those who do use it are not only happy with it, they sing its praises. Among the evangelical masses are such sites as Skelliewag.org and Anywired, which at first glance appear to use slightly different themes, but the difference is only due to placement and coloration of the headers and a few sidebar items. There is also my site at ADHDFamilies.org, which is currently using a version that is far less modified than I would eventually like to see…  (I know, shameless plug for myself…  Sorry!)

My opinion currently…  If you like the look of the layout and you know your way around a theme.  DIVE IN!  You’ll be happy that you did.  Grid Focus makes life a lot easier.

Jerry Blogging, WordPress, WordPress Themes Blogging, Extending WordPress, WordPress, WordPress Themes

If you’re like me and occasionally need to post code snippets in your wordpress powered blog posts, then you absolutely adore the highlight source pro plugin by Christian Knoflach.  Gone are the days of hard to read and uncopyable code snippets.  Highlight Source pro not only displays your code as a preformatted text via the <pre> tag, but it also uses the Geshi color coding system to give your readers properly highlighted code, with no additional effort from you!  Just start a block using a <pre> tag in html view and give it the proper language attribute.  As an example, for a block of php code, you would enter the following:

     echo("This is a sample of a block of php code.");
     echo("any code will work here, from php to BASIC to bash.");
     echo("it will even make sure that the block scrolls without breaking your page template on really long lines like this one.");
     echo("though you may have to type all of the code with the WYSIWYG editor disabled.");
?>

It’s as simple as that (and yes, I’m using the plugin to show you how the plugin works!

The only drawback is that if you’re using the visual editor, you may have to go back and add your code at the end, then save the post from the code editor. This is only a minor annoyance, however, and I think that the pluses definitely outweigh the negatives.

If you’ve got code to share with your eaders, I think this little gem is more than worth the time and effort to use.

Jerry Uncategorized, WordPress, WordPress plugins WordPress, WordPress plugins