Create a Watchlist of Favourite Posts

The ‘My Favourite Posts’ plugin lets your audience save a list of their favourite posts with one click. They can then login at any time and view their list as well as add/delete items.

Download ‘My Favorite Posts’ Plugin…

When you have hundreds of tutorials, property listings, shopping cart items and other types of blog posts on your website, it becomes more and more difficult to ensure that your readers can find the post they need quickly and easily. This way people can save relevant posts and listings as they browse, then review and link to them again whenever they choose.

Screenshot below shows Watchlist link and saved posts as seen by logged in user.

View Watchlist in Action [Read more]

WordPress Theme for Real Estate

WordPress and real estate are a match made in heaven especially when you start with a WordPress theme made especially for Real Estate like the AgentPress theme from StudioPress.

View the new goodGround Real Estate website…

Multiple Categories

You can write property listings (blog posts) under as many different categories and sub categories as you like. They all fit seamlessly into the website’s navigation and can then be searched or viewed by category, sub-category or keyword. Adding the Multiple category selection widget means many categories can be searched at once. Eg. Price, Location, No. Bedrooms etc. The Agent Press theme lets you show an image and content summary for each category. Click on photo below right.

Easy Photo Uploading

Upload multiple photos to a property listing all at once and click ‘Insert Gallery’ button to add them to the post. Sizes are setup in your administration so resizing is automatic and you get a professional looking gallery on each listing in minutes. With one click you select a main photo to represent each listing and this appears on your homepage and category pages. Click on photo right.

View gallery in action here… [Read more]

Multiple Category ‘Super’ Search Box

On large websites where posts are listed under many different categories, it makes sense for readers to be able to search several categories at once to narrow down their search. The Multiple Category Selector Widget does exactly that whereas the default WordPress search widget only lets you type keywords into a box, then searches your posts and pages for these keywords.

This plugin is perfect for Real Estate websites, Car Dealer websites, shopping sites and any other website with a lot of blog posts (like mine).

See the Multiple Category widget in action at www.goodground.co.nz

Plan Your Category Hierarchy

When you add categories to your WordPress website, decide on the main (parent) categories first, then add your sub categories, each with a parent category selected. In a drop-down list in either a navigation bar or search box, the sub-categories will appear under the parent category. Here are some examples of category hierarchies:

Real Estate Website
Parent Category: Property Type    Sub-categories: Residential, Bare Land, Coastal, Lifestyle Block

Car Dealer Website
Parent Category: Make    Sub-categories: Toyota, Mazda, Ford, Holden, Volvo

Add Super Search to Your Sidebar

1. Click Plugins – add new and search for Multiple Category Selection Widget
2. Upload and activate on your plugins page
3. Go to Appearance – Widgets and drag the widget into your sidebar
4. Add the id numbers of any Parent Categories you don’t want included in the search box
5. Select the parent categories you would like readers to be able to search
6. Select ‘all’ as the default if you only want results displayed when every category selected matches
7. Select ‘any’ as the default if you want results displayed under as many as possible of the selected categories

Search Box Design

You can easily change the spacing and layout of your search box by adding a little piece of css to your theme’s style sheet. Follow these instructions from StudioPress’ Brian Gardener to add a custom heading to your search box like the one I’ve created at www.goodground.co.nz

If you love this plugin and it really changes your website for the better, consider making a donation to the plugin, author, Isaac Rowntree. Click the PayPal link on his plugin showcase website.

When I design myself a new website, this is one of the first plugins I’m adding to help you all sift through the millions of WordPress posts I’ve written.

WordPress Posts to E-Newsletter

MailChimp lets you send daily, weekly or monthly e-newsletters containing your blog posts. It is all done using their ‘RSS to Email’ function (Translation: Blog Posts to Email Newsletter).

Email Newsletters with MailChimp

Once you have setup your free MailChimp account and customised an email template with your logo etc, just create an rss campaign. Enter your website’s feed address (if you use WordPress you have one), decide whether you want to show entire posts or just summaries of each, then select how often you want your newsletter to send. Any fresh content/blog posts you’ve published since the last newsletter will slot into your branded template and send automatically every day, week or month. If there is no new content, the newsletter wont send.

How to Create an RSS to Email Campaign

Unless you want to change the frequency of your newsletter or layout at some stage, this is the one and only time you will need to do the steps below. Everything after your rss campaign is scheduled is automatic.

1. Get a free MailChimp account.
2. Design/customise an email template – Before you create your campaign, you’ll want to customise one of MailChimp’s email templates with your colours, logo, links to your website, images etc. This is all done on site and is easy to use.
3. Add a Subscriber List - Add any email subscribers you already have by importing the entire list or adding them one at a time.
4. Create a new RSS Campaign – Choose your saved template and subscriber list. Edit the content section of your template and insert an rss merge tag (you’ll see the link to this) to display either post excerpts or full posts. You can also insert your Twitter feed, Flickr photo feed and all sorts of other info and links.
5. Send Yourself a Test – You can also pay to have your campaign checked on a variety of email clients.
6. Schedule Your Campaign – Select the date you want the first one to send. Eg. Mine is monthly and sends on the 2nd of every month. [Read more]

Create WordPress Posts from Flickr

Linking your Flickr account to your WordPress blog means you can turn any Flickr image into a blog post without even leaving Flickr. Just create a photo category on your website and make it the default category, add your blog to Flickr, then click on the ‘Blog This‘ button above any of your images to create a new post.

You can also add your Twitter account for tweets directly from Flickr. If you take lots of photos but aren’t much into writing blog posts, this could be the perfect way to keep your blog fresh and up to date. It is also a great way to bring your readers attention to your images.

Step #1 – Create a Photo Category

1. Login to your WordPress website/blog
2. Create a new post category for photo posts
3. Go to Settings/Writing and select this category as the dafault post category
4. Further down the page, tick the XML-RPC remote publishing
5. Save Settings

[Read more]

Flexible Homepage Layouts with Genesis

With most WordPress themes, the homepage layout is usually the least flexible part of the design process. In many cases unless you use ftp and know some css and php, you wont be able to customise (yes, this is how we spell customise in NZ!) the layout homepage at all.

Widgets are the Answer!

The new Genesis theme framework from StudioPress has widgetised not only the sidebar but also the entire homepage and even the right hand side of the header. This means that you create your homepage layout by dragging a combination of different widgets into the various homepage sections in the Presentation section of your website admin. For example, if the theme’s homepage layout is split into top left, top right and bottom, you just drag widgets into each of these areas.

Not Just Any Widgets

It gets even better. StudioPress has created a series of special widgets which make customisation even easier and quicker. Here’s quick run down…

• Featured Page Widget – Select one of your pages from the dropdown, choose to show with an image, align the image, decide how much text to show
• Featured Post Widget - Select one of your categories from the dropdown, select number of posts to show, choose to show with an image, align the image, decide how much text to show
• User Profile Widget - choose an author from the dropdown, choose whether to show avatar, link to bio or add custom text
• Twitter Updates Widget – Add your twitter name, select number of tweets to show [Read more]

Change Your Website for a Promotion

These days, there’s a whole generation of people (including myself) who visit a website to find products and services or just to check things out before they ever visit a shop or purchase a product.

If you’re spending time and money on catalogues, sale flyers and print advertising, don’t forget to add promotions, sales, events and new products to your website too.  Adding graphics or changing colours on your homepage, header or sidebars wont take you or your web designer long. Make sure you write a post too for search engines.

Promotions on Your Website

Here’s a screenshot of what we changed on the Evergreen Garden Centre website to promote their annual plant sale. Visit www.egn.co.nz for a live demo (until end of March).

Web Versions of Your Graphics

By getting web versions of your promotional graphics when you get your print graphics done you will save heaps of time and money. Ask your graphic designer, web designer or printer for the following:

1. PDF versions of all catalogues and flyers (these can be viewed in Acrobat)
2. A 72dpi screenshot of all catalogues and flyers (include on your blog post or homepage as a teaser and link to downloadable file)
3. A square graphic for your sidebar (72dpi, either 125 pixels x 125 pixels or 250 pixels x 250 pixels depending on the size of your sidebar)
4. A banner graphic for your header (72dpi, approx 400 pixels x 100 pixels depending on the space on your website header not taken up by your logo) [Read more]

Integrating WordPress & Twitter

To keep your website really fresh and your readers/followers up to date, use the Twitter Tools Plugin to completely integrate your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Some of the best features of Twitter Tools are:

• New blog posts automatically tweeted on your twitter account
• Add your latest tweets to your website sidebar or a page of your choice
• Automatic weekly digest post of all your tweets
• Send tweets to your Twitter account from inside WordPress

Download the Twitter Tools Plugin…

My Latest Tweets

Create a Latest Tweets Page

Once twitter tools is activated and your Twitter account details are entered on the settings page,  show your latest 5 tweets on any page or post on your WordPress website (like mine above)  just add this code where you want the tweets to display. Just change the 5 to show a different number of tweets.

[Read more]

Screenshots + Notes = Blog Visuals

Jing is a really easy way to capture an image on your computer screen and write your own notes and visual cues on it. Add coloured boxes, text and arrows to explain or enhance your screenshot, then email it, tweet it, post to Flickr or on your website.

A blog adds personality to your website content, Jing adds personality to the images you post.

Ways to Use Screencasts

Use Jing for Instructions -You will see from the screenshot below that it is a great way for me to show you an aspect of WordPress,then explain visually how to use it. This took me 3 minutes to create and save. You can also view here – http://www.screencast.com/users/CreativeWebIdeas/folders/Jing/media/74c805d0-8eb0-4027-8924-2a3093abae31 on screencast.com.

• Add notes to a design project (multiple users can add to same file)
• Show customers how to use your software
• Share a snapshot of a document
• Add comments to your holiday photos
• Turn your blog photos into cartoon-style images
• Comment on employees/contributors/syudents work
• Post visuals of things you like on Twitter & Facebook [Read more]

Add Subscribe to Comments Option

Everytime you write a WordPress post, you have the potential to turn it into a discussion by allowing people to comment/ask questions then reponding or replying yourself. Your comments and readers comments you have approved appear on your website below the post they relate to. The dilema is always whether you should email the commenter with the answer to their question as well as posting the answer in your comments or just hope they will return to your post to check if you have answered.

Keep Readers Up to Date on Posts of Interest

The Subscribe to Comments plugin solves this problem by adding an option to your comments form so that readers can receive email notification of any comments added to a post they are interested in. From the reader point of view… you write your comment/question below a post and tick the subscribe button if you want to be emailed the answer.

Why Use Your Comments Form

The comments you receive on your posts and the answers you give go a long way to building your website’s credibility and establishing yourself as the expert. In addition to this relevant comments can attract search engine listings in their own right. I often use the comments form myself to add updates and additional info to my WordPress posts.  Readers can then keep up to date with changes to a plugin, a better technique or a link to another relevant article by subscibing to comments. [Read more]

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