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WordPress for Genealogy

October 13, 2009 in Did you know ..., Site Development, Web Developer by admin | 1 comment

For those of you out there interested in seeing a genealogy site built using ‘mostly’ WordPress, please visit ManyRoads.  Obviously the site is one of mine (my family genealogy).  However, I think it provides a pretty decent example of what you can do to slice and dice a ‘bunch’ of information into a ‘pretty useful’ format.

I have tried to use a plugin for the genealogy database backend (TNG).  Security remains a problem for that plugin, in that it does not work for me.  However I do have a single set of logins between the two systems and databases when used in the manner seen on the site. As is likely obvious, the ManyRoads site uses a large number of plugins including (Revised list as of 29 January 2010):

  • Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
  • All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist
  • AStickyPostOrderER - AStickyPostOrderER lets you customize the order in which posts are displayed per category, per tag, or over-all, in WordPress 2.3+ blog. Useful when using WordPress as a Content Management System. Now with pagination of post lists.
  • AVH First Defense Against Spam - This plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before content is served.
  • Bad Behavior - Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.
  • Category Order- The Category Order plugin allows you to easily reorder your categories the way you want via drag and drop.
  • cforms- cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see ____HISTORY.txt for what’s new and current bugfixes.
  • Collapsing Blogroll- Output the built-in blogroll where the shortcode [collroll] is placed in the post/page. The categories can be collapsed.
  • Count Per Day- Counter, shows reads per page; today, yesterday, last week, last months … on dashboard and widget.
  • Dagon Design Sitemap Generator- Generates a fully customizable sitemap
  • EG-Series- Better organize and highlight your posts by grouping them into series.
  • Enhanced Links- Allows to get better control over the links listing. Also provides a widget view of the links. Please make a donation if you are satisfied.
  • Enhanced Recent Posts- A plugin for wordpress which enhances the built-in “Recent Posts” widget. Please make a donation if you are satisfied.
  • Exclude Pages from Navigation- Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
  • Flexi Pages Widget- A highly configurable WordPress sidebar widget to list pages and sub-pages. User friendly widget control comes with various options.
  • Global Post Password- Enables you to define a global password for all password-protected posts. Click here to change the password.
  • Google XML Sitemaps- This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
  • Hana Flv Player- The best way to embed Flash Player and Flash movie in your WordPress Blog. Includes GPL Flowplayer and OS FLV player. Usage: [hana-flv-player video='/source_video.flv' /]
  • Hungred Feature Post List- This plugin is design for hungred.com and people who face the same problem! Please visit the plugin page for more information.
  • Just One Category- On a category’s archive page do not show posts from that category’s children categories unless those posts are also a member of the original category in question. Based on Front Page Categories by Ryan Boren.
  • List category posts- List Category Posts allows you to list posts from a category into a post/page using the [catlist] shortcode. This shortcode accepts a category name or id, the order in which you want the posts to display, and the number of posts to display. You can use [catlist] as many times as needed with different arguments. Usage: [catlist argument1=value1 argument2=value2].
  • My Page Order- My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.
  • NextGEN Gallery- A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0.
  • OpenBook- Displays a book’s cover image, title, author, and other book data from Open Library.
  • p2pConverter- This plugin allows you to easily convert a post to a page and vice versa through an easy to use interface. You may either click on your Manage tab in Administration, and you will see a Convert option under Posts and Pages sub-tabs, or click Convert while editing a post or page in the bottom right side bar. A p2pConverter role capability prevents unwanted users from converting pages (i.e. only Administrators and Editors have this ability), which can be adjusted by using a Role Manager plugin.
  • Page Links To- Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.
  • pageMash- Manage your multitude of pages with pageMash’s slick drag-and-drop style, ajax interface. Allows quick sorting, hiding and organising of parenting.
  • PollDaddy Polls- Create and manage PollDaddy polls and ratings in WordPress
  • RB Internal Links- Link to other blog posts and pages without specifying the full URL. Uses a UI to ease finding the post or page you want to link to.
  • Redirection- Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors
  • Secure WordPress- Little basics for secure your WordPress-installation.
  • SEO Smart Links- SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
  • SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam- Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress on the comment form, registration form, login, or all. This prevents spam from automated bots. Also is WPMU and BuddyPress compatible. Settings | Donate
  • SidebarTabs- sidebarTabs allows you to easily widgets into Tabs
  • Simple Tags- Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.8 and 2.9 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags !
  • Snazzy Archives- Snazzy Archives is a visualization plugin for your WordPress site which creates completely unique archive pages.
  • Social Bookmarks- Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites. Use the plugin options under Dashboard > Social to configure it.
  • Subpage Listing- Displays a directory-like listing of subpages where <!–%subpages%–> exists in the content of pages. It will be displayed if a page is blank. txfx_wp_subpages() can be used to display subpages in the sidebar. See this plugin’s site for details.
  • TNG WordPress Integration- Integrates TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy) with WordPress.
  • Topsy Retweet Button- Provides a Twitter retweet button powered by Topsy.
  • TreeMagic-Cypress- Way of making Internet and Intranet information easily accessible
  • Visitor Maps and Who’s Online- Displays Visitor Maps with location pins, city, and country. Includes a Who’s Online Sidebar to show how many users are online. Includes a Who’s Online admin dashboard to view visitor details. The visitor details include: what page the visitor is on, IP address, host lookup, online time, city, state, country, geolocation maps and more. No API key needed. Settings | Donate
  • WordPress Download Monitor- Manage downloads on your site, view and show hits, and output in posts. If you are upgrading Download Monitor it is a good idea to back-up your database first just in case. You may need to re-save your permalink settings after upgrading if your downloads stop working.
  • WP-phpMyAdmin- Provides phpMyAdmin from the WordPress admin console
  • WP-PostViews- Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.
  • WP-Print- Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
  • wp-scanner activator- This Plugin adds <!- wpscanner -> to enable wp-scanner to scan your blog.
  • WP-SpamFree- An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.
  • WP Render Blogroll Links- Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your WordPress links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with CSS. Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”.
  • WP to Twitter- Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.
  • YD Zoomify- This WordPress plugin allows for simple insertion of a Zoomify zoomable web image in a post content, page or template.

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Highlight (spotlight) your content

April 22, 2009 in Plugins, Web Developer by admin | No comments

One of the handy items worth doing with a website is highlighting specific content.  It turns out that there are a number of WordPress plugins available capable of doing the work, to one degree or another. However, for me there is one that stands above the crowd:

=== d13slideshow ===

The beauty of this tool is that it does what most of the others can but it does not conflict with the plugins I use.  If you want to see the plugin in action you may view it on two of my personal sites:

Each site provides a slight variation on use of the plugin… but you’ll get the idea. It is worth noting that the plugin does require a small addition to your theme code. But the change is truly small and not very hard to accomodate; plus accurate instructions are provided with the plugin.

This is a real winner.

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Update Services

January 4, 2009 in Did you know ..., Guides, Web Developer by admin | No comments

Because most of us post to BLOGs in order to be read, having a good and complete list of update services is essential. As I was surfing the web I came across a rather complete, current, and thoughtful listing. This list is maintained and located at:

http://elliottback.com/wp/a-list-of-rpc-and-rpc2-to-ping/

Many thanks to Elliot C. Back.

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Database Admin Tool

August 24, 2008 in Did you know ..., Site Development, Web Developer by admin | No comments

I don’t know how many folks, like me, have had troubles using phpMyAdmin to perform large MySQL database restores, but if you have, then perhaps this little set of pointers will help you out. I know this process has made my life easier.

As most of you probably already know, phpMyAdmin is a wonderful toolset. It makes database management and editting both simple and straightforward. However, one of the major drawbacks to the phpMyAdmin toolset is that it is VERY slow to upload large amounts of SQL or perform Database restores using the Import function. For those of us with large and very large MySQL databases this presents a major issue. So what can be done to get around the problem?

The obvious conclusion is that a tool other than phpMyAdmin is needed. MySQL Administrator is the tool I have discovered that works best for me. The tool is starightforward, secure, and fast. The process I have found to work is as follows:

  • Download and install MySQL Administrator (and set it up so that it is able to log directly into your database server). This is easy to do; the only gotcha I encountered is: remember not to use http:// in your url address.
  • “Connect” MySQL Administrator to the system where you keep your MySQL DB.
  • Using the Backup function, create a backup of the DB and store it somewhere easy to locate.
  • When you need to do a restore (or ‘yes’ even a copy) all you need do is log into MySQL Administrator, connect to your database system and access Restore Backup. Interestingly this backup need not have been generated via MySQL Administrator; I have used phpMyAdmin generated files successfully.
  • If you are performing a simple restore, all you need to do is point the restore to the target DB and wait. In my expereince, it takes about 5 minutes to restore a 25MB database.

If this were all that we could do the tool, that would be enough, however, there are other useful functions that you can employ with a couple of small ‘tricks’. For example, if you want to create a new DB and freeze an old one, all you need to do is:

  • create the new database per your usual process (remember the name you give to this new DB).
  • backup the database you want to clone
  • open a copy of the ‘backed up’ database in your favorite editor (I use geany)
  • do a gloabl search and replace of the old database name with the new one- per the name you created in the first step above
  • restore this editted file into your blank database using the functions within MySQL Administrator
  • point your application to the database of your choosing– now that you have at least two.

I find this process to be extremely helpful in upgrading and testing systems.

I hope this little tutorial helpful. I wish I had figured this out years ago, myself.

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WebMaster Tools

March 4, 2008 in Guides, Site Development, Web Developer by mark | 1 comment

Most of these pointers are courtesy of: http://mywebresource.com

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CSS Guides

March 4, 2008 in Guides, Site Development, Web Developer, Web Standards by mark | No comments

CSS: Style Sheet Guidelines

Web applications should always adhere to W3C standards and validate correctly. Numerous excellent CSS style Guides are available that discuss the how-tos of achieving these objectives, below are a few:

References:

Tutorial:

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Online Guides

March 4, 2008 in Guides, Web Developer, Web Standards by mark | No comments

Over the years we have come across numerous useful websites; sites that communicate useful information on web development, standards implementation and more. A few are listed here (we’ll update this list as time goes on…)

Standards

The following sites provide detailed information on web standards. Please remember that all of sites should adhere to applicable web standards! Use these sites to ensure your code complies with the relevant standards.

Tools

Tutorials

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Web Site Analysis

March 3, 2008 in Guides, Site Development, Web Developer, Web Standards by mark | 1 comment

Goals

Establish an overall goal for your web site. Who will your audience be? What information do you want to convey to this audience?

Targets

Which of the following will your audience be using?

Design your site so that it meets the specifications of the target (s) chosen. See www.thecounter.com/stats to see current statistics regarding the most frequently used browser versions, monitor resolutions and operating systems.

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Design Pointers

March 3, 2008 in Guides, Site Development, Web Developer by mark | No comments

The most important part of your web site is the actual text content. Use the following tips regarding content:

  1. Site Navigation Scheme – Using index cards or smaller pieces of paper, write down all the items that you want included in your web site (Brainstorm here!). Now separate them into Categories, understanding that one index card may end up in more than one category. When you have something that makes sense, you have just created one navigational scheme!
    • If you need more than one level of hierarchy, create additional piles. Ensure that those items which you know your audience will want to get to are not too far down in the navigational scheme. Will your audience have to click more than two times to get to the item? If so, consider using a Quick List on higher levels of your site which will get your audience quickly to these popular items.
    • Repeat the above process until you come up with one or more navigational schemes for your site. Now decide how you want to ” label ” each of the Categories so that it is brief and yet descriptive for your audience.
  2. Static vs Dynamic – Determine which elements of your web site will be relatively static in nature, and which elements are dynamic, requiring frequent updates. You may decide in this step NOT to include something on the web site, if you will not be able to maintain it.
  3. Page Size – For large documents, decide whether you will break it into separate web pages, making each page printable on its own.
    • Your alternative is to make one large document with a table of contents or index at the top with target links to specific areas of the document.
  4. Page Identity – Make each page in a group of web pages understandable on its own. This means that you will need to title each page consistently. If your site has several layers of content, consider the usage of footprints on your pages. (Ex.Home & gt; & gt; ITS & gt; & gt; Documents).
  5. Print vs Web – Content that typically needs to be revised when converting printed media to the web include:
    • contact points (email addresses in addition to mail addresses, room numbers and telephone numbers)
    • if you include a phone number, use complete phone numbers with area codes
    • when referring to a date, spell out the month. While the US uses month / day / year, the rest of the world uses day / month / year
    • for forms to be placed online, you will need to rewrite the instructions. For example, remove / reword sentences such as ” Complete back side of this form. “
  6. Link descriptions – Part of your documents will contain links to other information. These links should alert the user to what they will see if they select the link; in other words they should be brief and yet descriptive. In some cases, it is also appropriate to describe the ” where ” in the link. For example, if a link will take the user to another web site, convey that information in the link text. Avoid terminology like ” click here ” or ” press the right arrow “; browser methods of choosing links vary.
    • provide ” return to ” statements on pages of your web site to help users get back on track.
  7. Stale content – Tell users, in words, how often a page is updated.
  8. Original content -
    • Make the content of your home page original. Do not duplicate documents that appear elsewhere on the Internet. Instead, link to them
    • Be aware of copyright regulations that apply to existing Web sites.
  9. In development – Avoid under Construction pages. If you intend to eventually include an additional page or section on your web site, you may say so on a completed page of your web site, but do not put up a page which only states Under Construction.
  10. Spelling errors – Spell check and proofread your pages as you would any other publication.

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Special Tips

March 3, 2008 in Guides, Site Development, Web Developer by mark | No comments

Special Tips

Be aware of the pitfalls of character sets . (Here comes a pound sign £ what did you get?) Currency signs are a real danger. It might be safer to write the currency in full. It is not just the signs that fail in some way; even those that do display may be misinterpreted. Let ‘ s say you are in the USA and write $25.00 without qualification. How much does that look like to a browser in Australia, Canada, or Hong Kong? If the local $ is worth more than the US$ then you risk someone dismissing a product as overpriced. If the local $ is less, your strangely eager customer may suddenly turn sour when she or he thinks you have been deliberately misleading.

  • ISO 8859-1 Character Set Overview
  • If you specify a background color or image, but don ‘ t specify text and link colors, the user ‘ s text and link colors will be used against your background. In some cases, there won ‘ t be contrast between the user ‘ s text and link colors and your background color or image, so your text and links will disappear. The rule of thumb is that if you set one color, then you need to set them all .

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