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WordPress for Genealogy

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:39:05 +0000

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 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 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 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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WebMaster Tools

mark — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:12:08 +0000

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

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CSS Guides

mark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:38:15 +0000

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:

Style Master CSS Tutorial

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Online Guides

mark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:39:20 +0000

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

Dynamic Drive- Scripts and add-ons
Cleanup your CSS
CSS Menus & More (Stu Nichols)
CSS Page Layouts
Morgue File- Free Open Source photos
Rounded Box Generator
Spiffy Corners- generate nice css boxes
Stock Xchange- Free Open Source photos
WebSite Audit
WebSite Grader

Tutorials

Ajax Tutorials
CSS Listmania
Fix IE Bugs- Explorer Exposed
w3schools Tutorials (html, css, and more)
Web Style Guide
W3c compliant Site Listings

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alpha Criteria

mark — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:20:05 +0000

Suggested alpha Standards

alpha Review is final internal review of a website for the purpose of internal quality inspection
all local coding is completed and local developer reviews are completed
the developer believes that the product will meet call client requirements and will pass management examination and sign-off
alpha sites still run on development servers and have not been published to the internet

alpha Readiness Checklist

Please note that all the below criteria, in the checklist, must be met before considering the site as being ready for alpha Review.

Checklist for main page of web site

Does the page have the following?

a name of index.html or equivalent (ie. home.php for WordPress) ? By naming your main home page index.html, users will be able to access your site without supplying a filename at the end of the address.
a title which contains the name of your web site followed by “, CompanyName LLC “. For example: CompanyName LLC
the CompanyName brands used correctly!
the full name of the person to contact regarding your web site .
an email link behind the name of the contact person with an ” @ mail.com ” email address. For example, in the link Sue Jones, the code ” mailto: sjones @ mail.com ” is stored behind the Sue Jones link. If you need an alias for your email contact, contact: webmaster @ CompanyName.com.
META Tags to identify your web site to search engines. We recommend that you use the author, keyword and description META Tags

Checklist for each page of web site

tables

Use sparingly and with caution! Avoid table use in documents whenever possible.
Table use in CSS or base html should be prohibited!

animated images

Design an animated image so that it stops animating after a few seconds and doesn ‘ t loop continuously. Images that flicker (with a repetitive strobe) should be designed so that the frame rate is not faster than two frames per second. This is especially important for larger flickering images or images which flicker between highly contrasting colors.

To check a web page for accessibility issues, use a tool like the free tool named A-Prompt Toolkit.

Checklist for your entire web site

Have you changed all link references to www.CompanyName.com?
Remember any copied links must be reachable.

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Web Specifications

mark — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:16:21 +0000

For the future, to add presentational effects and Web page style, validate documents at the HTML 4.0 level (for the cleanest possible markup), so pages contain little or no HTML 3.2 presentational markup or proprietary stylistic hacks, and use the World Wide Web Consortium ‘ s Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language to add stylistic effects to your pages.

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Web Standards Checklist

mark — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:10:25 +0000

From the original article by:
Russ Weakley
13-August-04

Web standards – more than just ‘ table-free sites ‘

The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is ‘ table-free sites ‘, for others it is ‘ using valid code ‘. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).

In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly .

About the checklist

This is not an uber-checklist. There are probably many items that could be added. More importantly, it should not be seen as a list of items that must be addressed on every site that you develop. It is simply a Guide that can be used:

to show the breadth of web standards
as a handy tool for developers during the production phase of websites
as an aid for developers who are interested in moving towards web standards

The checklist

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Drop-down menu

mark — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:54:45 +0000

Earlier I made some modifications to a WP-plugin for Drop-Down Menus.Â I have placed the cleaned up code on this site for any/all to use. You should find it in the Downloads are.

css cleaned up and validated by Mark Rabideau — 26 Nov 2007

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TreeMagic Cypress

Richard — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:14:30 +0000

TreeMagic Cypress is a new lightweight browser plugin for WordPress. Install, configure, then double click any word, or select a group of words on the page. On mouse-up a small popup appears adjacent to the selected text that gives you instant access to define, expand and explore related resources. It does not replace or interfere with existing hyperlinks, but adds an instant and powerful reference compliment to all your texts, regardless of formatting and styles.
The plugin can be configured to any external Internet website, as well as connecting to your own data, or network. TreeMagic Cypress is available as a free download from the downloads section of this site

The popup has a list of links that is configurable from the plugin administration section. The idea is that when you double click or select a group of words on a page, the popup is invoked adjacent to the word(s) allowing you to rapidly select a web site from the list. Typical examples of this are search engines, Wikipedia, Refdesk and similar knowledge-base sites. After selecting a site, the word(s) you have selected become part of a search string that returns results in a smaller separate popup window. You can of course keep your query results ‘on site’ such as searching your own content, help files or related resources. Because the query URLs are completely configurable in administration, you have total control over the searches, including opening the results page in a resized new window or using the existing target.

TreeMagic Cypress is not new technology and utilizes a small javascript and css to provide the fastest possible way to show extended meaning, content and relationship for text on a page. Once installed every text word on your site, that is not a hyperlink is potentially active. It does not interfere with any other mouse click functions and is totally unintrusive in use. Installation is simple, via a standard WordPress plugin. There are no database changes and the plugin adds negligible overhead to your HTML.

The broad concept is to provide the visitor greater freedom to take diversions from interesting cues in the text, but not taking them from your site in the process. Too many turns in the road and too many temptations to explore, can take your focus away from the content on a page. Most of us have come to realize that it is all too easy to be a ‘browser butterfly’ taking detours from hyperlinks and searches that often leave you marooned and lost in hyperspace. TreeMagic Cypress addresses the need to explore and supplement page content from other resources, but keeps your visitors safely focused on your website.

Searches can be configured for anything from a dictionary definition, translations, image searches to a full blown encyclopedia expositions. Following further links within the results ‘new window’ allows readers to explore in a separate browser page, while keeping your website in view when they want to return. Because we use a new window to display content, all your usual browser tools are available such as page saves and bookmarking your excursions for future returns.

As a web master, you have a simple administration interface that gives options for adding and deleting your website search strings, also the results window target and size. We have included a few samples to get you started, but the choice is up to you to provide the most suitable supplementary content for your website. There are numerous types of applications available for this tool and because you can manage your own reference links, you can offer a variety of offsite or internal content. All you need to do is track down your reference site and discover the correct query string.

Some typical examples of sites are as follows:

Google search
–Images
–News
–Maps
Wikipedia search
Currency converter
whois /IP lookup
answers.com
dictionary.com
Clusty.com
Translation
–en-fr
–en-ge
–en-it
Currency conversions
–Â£-$
–$-Â£
Navigation
–Home
–Contact us
–Help!
–Site map
–Site search

Do you need TreeMagic Cypress?

One of the main considerations with WordPress is choosing carefully which plugins to use. Too many and your website can suffer with decreased performance. Because of the tiny script footprint, this plugin will not add any significant processing burden to the database or page loads. It’s simple to use and will add some great features to your web page texts with the minimum of setup. The features and benefits are only limited by your imagination.

Download here …

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Licence.

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WordPressHelp.org features

Richard — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:36:10 +0000

WordPressHelp offers several handy features to authors and readers. We have selected a few plugins that help to create increased readability and connectivity within the post contents. Here is a brief summary of plugins used, what they do and how to use them

1- aLinks. This plugin automatically links keywords both systematically and automatically. It’s a complex plugin that uses algorithms to search and match kewords you input to relevancy on the page. Thats the automatic part, once you enter a keyword in the admin section of the plugin. This ‘search and match’ is based on a scoring method and the top match is used in the link. This match changes, as posts get added, because it’s a dynamic action that gets passed to the database as the page is being rendered. The actual links, don’t exist, until the page is displayed. Additionally, the ‘search and match’ is restricted to a maximum of 30 days previous posts, to make the process as fast as possible in the database scans.

The other option of this plugin is to create a keyword with a specific URL for it to go to if the keyword is found in any post. This is more deterministic and the link to that URL remains indefinitly. My guess is there is less processing involved and no DB scans are involved.

Alinks also has an Amazon associate section, that searches amazon items according to keywords. We don’t use this function in our context.

If we DON’T like the automatic linking, via scoring of posts content, but prefer to hard link a post to a specific keyword, we should consider a simpler (with less overheads) plugin called SH-Autolink. (this is already installed) This plugin has no scoring system, but only offers a ‘keyword to specific URL option’. The only downside is that it matches EVERY occurance of a word in all posts, where as aLinks only matches the first occurrance of a keyword per post, to avoid link saturation.

Do we have a preference as to which method we prefer?

The other WPH author features are more straight forward and easy.

1- Footnotes. This is a neat plugin that lets authors add footnotes really easily to their posts. The footnote is linked (anchored) from a numbered superscript character to the actual footnote on the page. The footnotes have a ‘return’ link that takes you back. Here’s how you use it. Any text, link or content that you want to be a footnote is created inline with your page text as follows. ((This is my footnote)) yep, 2 curly braces round your content makes a numbered footnote. Make sure you leave a space between the start and end braces!

2- Snippet Highlight. Great plugin that renders code in well formatted lined snippets for easy reading and copying. Simply enclose any code snippet with

to render full html, php, etc unparsed on the page.

3- Image Caption Easy. Transforms the alt text of an image into a caption which can be controlled through css. When you insert an image into a post you can make a caption and a nice genle border round the image. To make a caption, the ALT tag must be entered and this becomes the text in the caption. No ALT tag and no caption is created. I’ve asked the developer to add an option of allowing an ALT tag, but not transforming this to a caption to make images xhtml compliant. He’s agreed. This plugin allows nice captioning for diagrams, charts, images etc.

WPH also has some other connectivity features that work in the background. These are designed to create a ‘thick website’ of interlinks and related content. These are listed as follows:

1- Simple Tags. Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3. Auto-completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags. One of the best available tagging system for 2.3 after UTW. This tagging plugin produces rich cross referencing and auto -suggests tags in posts creation.

2- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold. The list is conveniently situated below the full post. It can be configured for matching thresholds.

3- TreeMagic-Cypress. Provides instant queries against any word or phrase on the page. Query resources are configurable and provide highly focused, non-intrusive supplementary information for the user.

WPH posts management features.
1- Audit Trail. Keep a log of exactly what is happening behind the scenes of your WordPress blog. This needs to be accessed in the website admin section. Although it does not allow for conventional ‘rollback’ to a version previously, versions can be viewed and re-saved, or data salvaged.

2-WP Admin Bar Reloaded. Adds a small admin bar to the top of every page. Simple and fast access to admin sections through this discreet addition to the header of every page. Seen by logged in users only and permission based for the available links.

3- WP-DownloadManager. Adds a simple download manager to your WordPress blog.

4- User Permissions. Provides user read/ write permissions on a per post basis. Easily set from a block in the editor write page. If we trust this … it’s useful for internal posts not for public consumption

5- Subscribe to Comments. Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

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WordPressHelp » css

WordPress for Genealogy

Related Posts:

WebMaster Tools

Related Posts:

CSS Guides

CSS: Style Sheet Guidelines

Related Posts:

Online Guides

Standards

Tools

Tutorials

Related Posts:

alpha Criteria

Suggested alpha Standards

alpha Readiness Checklist

Checklist for main page of web site

Checklist for each page of web site

Checklist for your entire web site

Related Posts:

Web Specifications

Related Posts:

Web Standards Checklist

Web standards – more than just ‘ table-free sites ‘

About the checklist

The checklist

Related Posts:

Drop-down menu

Related Posts:

TreeMagic Cypress

Download here …

Related Posts:

WordPressHelp.org features

Related Posts: