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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AmbientWebs is pleased to inform everyone that the following sites are now enabled with TreeMagic-Cypress or TreeMagic-Banyan:

• TreeMagic-Cypress sites:
  • http://treemagic.org
  • http://drdiab.info
  • http://ambientwebs.com
  • http://goodwines.org
• TreeMagic-Banyan sites:
  • http://wordpresshelp.org
  • http://processteam.org

Please let us know other sites that are using the plugin… oh and we are also interested in what you might want to see this plugin do next….

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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
–£-$
–$-£
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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If there are files that you wish for us to provide on WordPressHelp please contact us directly.

Currently the following WordPress Plugins are available:

1. TreeMagic-Cypress is a Creative Commons Share & Share-Alike version of AmbientWebs MetaQuery toolset (plugin) for WordPress. btw. This is the same download you will find on the WordPress plugin site.
2. Drop-Down Menu is a slightly modified version of Zoute Snor’s Drop-Down Menu plugin for WordPress. The modifications in this version focus on making the CSS a bit cleaner and validated.

Ubuntu Linux related downloads

Desktop Wallpapers (Free)

• Penguins on Beach (image from sxc.hu)
  
• Icebergs (image from Digital Blasphamy)

Screensaver(s)

• Cosmos (images from Hubble)

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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 <pre> </pre> 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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WordPress for Wiki prototype

According to Wikipedia:

A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.^[1] Wikis are being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.^[2]

Why wordpress as a wiki?
Put simply, WordPress is probably the finest Internet publication system available. It efficiently broadcasts posts to search engines and social networking services and provides excellent visibility, both in design, code structure and connectivity. To combine these well established features and the collaboration qualities of a wiki like setup produces a good combination of high visibility and group authoring requirements.

The following plugins have been chosen to emulate a wiki-like feature set. Most wiki features have been accomplished with these carefully selected plugins. We will evaluate this setup and refine/adjust as required. Most of these plugins have been selected to provide ‘connectivity’ between subjects, topics, keywords and meta information.

0. Awsom News Announcement: Allows you to post news announcements in the area above your posts on the index page (or anywhere else you want). By Harknell.
1. Audit Trail: Keep a log of exactly what is happening behind the scenes of your WordPress blog. By John Godley
2. Autolink tags for content: This plugin automatically checks out your posts to add tag links for the tag text in the posts. By Kelvin Xu.
3. Image Caption Easy: Transforms the alt text of an image into a caption which can be controlled through css. By Mark W. B. Ashcroft
4. SH-Autolink: In posts and comments, it transforms predefined words automatically into hyperlinks. By Stevie.
5. Snippet Highlight: embedd code between <pre> </pre> tags. apply code language as css class: php, css, js etc. By Roland Rust.
6. Subscribe2: Notifies an email list when new entries are posted. By Matthew Robinson.
7. TreeMagic-Cypress: Way of making Internet and Intranet information easily accessible. By Ambient Webs LLC
8. Upload+: Secure, cleaner and customized file names for uploaded files. By Pixline
9. User Permissions: Per-post user permissions By John Godley.
10 WP-DownloadManager: Adds a simple download manager to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
11 WP-Footnotes: Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post. By Simon Elvery.
12 WYSI-Wordpress: This plugin adds a more advanced WYSIWYG editor to the WordPress post editing screen. It includes advanced image handling, including on-the-fly thumbnail resizing and compression. It also includes Martin Chlupác’s excellent Iimage Manager v 1.4.1. By MudBomb.com.
13 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold. Like the tried and true Related Posts plugins—just better! By mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine).

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