One of the biggest challenges for folks new to building a website with WordPress is that it feels very much like writing/blogging software out of the box. Yes, you can create pages, but as soon as you want to structure information in columns or do anything more complex than images and text you will quickly find you need to find a theme or a handful of plugins to get the job done (and if you don't know what you don't know, that's a huge hurdle). "Site Builder" plugins are becoming more and more popular and you even see more themes integrating them into their frameworks these days. Some are pretty good, some suck really badly. One I really like and wanted to demonstrate as a way to quickly get up and running with a WordPress site is Elementor which is both free (there's a Pro version that has more features I'll discuss in a bit) and incredibly user-friendly with a lot of great options.
While I know more than the average WordPress bear, I’ve never really seen the value of any of these site builders myself.
I am curious how some of these site builders will do with the upcoming release of Gutenberg, however.
A1. Personally I have multiple Wordpress sites, and I'm working on a stand-alone domain for my higher-end, highest-value #content .. all are candidates to aggregate relevant insights, yes? Pros/Cons? #smchat #contentseries
tl;dr: Having fewer sites to deal with seemed like a stronger idea. I still wanted to feature the richer content over the smaller tidbits while also not overwhelming people who had subscribed in the past. I also took into account trying to make it relatively easy for people to subscribe to the particular data they want/need out of my website. My home page has a list of various post kinds available which may be useful to think about as well.
@mrkrndvs has played around in this area of aggregation as well with a few different websites and may have some insight too.
Whatever you decide, be sure to have some fun along the way.
For improved UI, is there a code snippet that could be created (or which already exists?) that could be added to a custom page to allow the creation for a simple search for such things the way Kartik has done? I’m thinking of something along the lines of <?php get_search_form(); ?> which can be added to 404 page templates to allow the addition of a search box on such a page to get the user moving in the right direction.
This type of original-of search functionality could also be added to a simple widget as well so that one doesn’t need an entire page for it. Suggested verbiage: “Have a social media permalink for a piece of content? Use it here to search for the original version on this site.”
@mrkrndvs I've really been interested in the collection/curation I see from you &
@chrisaldrich - I'm in the process of figuring out how to build up a WordPress site to serve as the "commonplace book" on the WordPress site, keep it simple, and have it pump into my weekly newsletter. Any links/guidance/plugins on how to make this happen is definitely appreciated.
I want to keep this as simple/lightweight as possible. :)
My favorite piece of the puzzle is using the Post Kinds Plugin for WordPress which has some useful browser bookmarklets for quickly saving what I read, bookmark, and interact with online. Having the ability to add categories, tags, and other behind-the-scenes metadata also helps a lot.
You can then turn around and add all this to a newsletter at your leisure.
Happy to share more, but this should be a good start.
BookmarkedCall for Speakers(WPCampus 2018 Conference: Where WordPress Meets Higher Education)
WPCampus is looking for stories, how-tos, hypotheticals, demos, case studies and more for our third annual in-person conference focused on WordPress in higher education. This year’s event will take place July 12-14, 2018, at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The call for speakers will close at midnight PDT on April 7, 2018.
The planning committee will begin their selection process and be in touch shortly thereafter.
Oh man! 2018! Welcome!!!!
Who'd a thunk it? We made it out of 2017!! 2018 is another chance to see if we can ply our knowledge in the ever changing world of web tech.
We're back at it again for our monthly WordPress user meetup. Come curious with your wonderful questions.
My Fall/Winter math class is over and I’m free to catch up with the gang again.
This week, using the magic of open web standards, I was able to write an issue post on my own website, automatically syndicate a copy of it to GitHub, and later automatically receive a reply to the copy on GitHub back to my original post as a comment there. This gives my personal website a means of doing two way communication with GitHub.
This functionality is another in a long line of content types my website is able to support so that I’m able to own my own content, yet still be able to interact with people on other websites and social media services. Given the number of social sites I’ve seen disappear over the years (often taking my content with them), this functionality gives me a tremendously larger amount of control and ownership over my web presence and identity while still allowing me to easily communicate with others.
In this post I wanted to briefly sketch what I’ve done to enable this functionality, so others who are so inclined can follow along to do the same thing.
Setting up WordPress to syndicate to GitHub
I’ll presume as a first step that one has both a GitHub account and a self-hosted WordPress website, though the details will also broadly apply to just about any content management system out there that supports the web standards mentioned.
Register your GitHub account and your website with Bridgy
Ryan Barrett runs a fantastic free open sourced service called Bridgy. To use it you’ll need the microformat rel=“me” links on both your GitHub account and your website’s homepage that point at each other. GitHub will do most of the work on its side for you simply by adding the URL of your website to the URL field for your GitHub account at https://github.com/settings/profile. Next on your website’s homepage, you’ll want to add a corresponding rel=“me” link from your website to your GitHub account.
In my case, I have a simple widget on my homepage with roughly the following link: <a href="https://github.com/username">GitHub</a>
in which I’ve replaced ‘username’ with my own GitHub username. There are a variety of other ways to add a rel=“me” link to your webpage, some of which are documented on the IndieWeb wiki.
Now you can go to Brid.gy and under “Connect your accounts” click on the GitHub button. This will prompt you to sign into GitHub via oAuth if you’re not already logged into the site. If you are already signed in, Brid.gy will check that the rel=“me” links on both your site and your GitHub account reciprocally point at each other and allow you to begin using the service to pull replies to your posts on GitHub back to your website.
To allow Brid.gy to publish to GitHub on your behalf (via webmention, which we’ll set up shortly), click on the “Publish” button.
Install the Webmention Plugin
The underlying technology that allows the Bridgy service to both publish on one’s behalf as well as for the replies from GitHub to come back to one’s site is an open web standard known as Webmention. WordPress can quickly and easily support this standard with the simple Webmention plugin that can be downloaded and activated on one’s site without any additional configuration.
For replies coming back from GitHub to one’s site it’s also recommended that one also install and activate the Semantic Linkbacks Plugin which also doesn’t require any configuration. This plugin provides better integration and UI features in the comments section of one’s website.
Install Post Kinds Plugin
The Post Kinds Plugin is somewhat similar to WordPress’s Post Formats core functionality, it just goes the extra mile to support a broader array of post types with the appropriate meta data and semantic markup for interacting with Bridgy, other web parsers, and readers.
Download the plugin, activate it, and in the plugin’s settings page enable the “Issue” kind. For more details on using it, I’ve written about this plugin in relative detail in the past.
Install Bridgy Publish Plugin
One can just as easily install the Bridgy Publish Plugin for WordPress and activate it. This will add a meta box to one’s publishing dashboard that, after a quick configuration of which social media silos one wishes to support, will allow one to click a quick checkbox to automatically syndicate their posts.
Install the Syndication Links Plugin
The Syndication Links plugin is also a quick install and activate process. You can modify the settings to allow a variety of ways to display your syndication links (or not) on your website if you wish.
This plugin will provide the Bridgy Publish Plugin a place to indicate the permalink of where your syndicated content lives on GitHub. The Bridgy service will use this permalink to match up the original content on your website and the copy on GitHub so that when there are replies, it will know which post to send those replies to as comments which will then live on your own website.
Post away
You should now be ready to write your first issue on your website, cross post it to GitHub (a process known in IndieWeb parlance as POSSE), and receive any replies to your GitHub issue as comments back to your own website.
Create a new post.
In the “Kinds” meta box, choose the “Issue” option.
Kinds meta box with “Issue” option chosen.
Type in a title for the issue in the “Title” field.
In the “Response Properties” meta box, put the permalink URL of the Github repopository for which you’re creating an issue. The plugin should automatically process the URL and import the repository name and details.
The “Response Properties” meta box.
In the primary editor, type up any details for the issue as you would on GitHub in their comment box. You can include a relatively wide variety of custom symbols and raw html including
and with code samples which will cross-post and render properly.
In the GitHub meta box, select the GitHub option. You can optionally select other boxes if you’re also syndicating your content to other services as well. See the documentation for Bridgy and the plugin for how to do this.
Bridgy Publish meta box with GitHub chosen.
Optionally set any additional metadata for your post (tags, categories, etc.) as necessary.
Publish your post.
On publication, your issue should be automatically filed to the issue queue of the appropriate GitHub repo and include a link back to your original (if selected). Your post should receive the syndicated permalink of the issue on GitHub and be displayed (depending on your settings) at the bottom of your post.
Syndication Links Plugin will display the location of your syndicated copies at the bottom of your post.
When Bridgy detects future interactions with the copy of your post on GitHub, it will copy them and send them to your original post as a webmention so that they can be displayed as comments there.
An example of a comment sent via webmention from GitHub via Brid.gy. It includes a permalink to the comment as well as a link to the GitHub user’s profile and their avatar.
If you frequently create issues on GitHub like this you might want a slightly faster way of posting. Toward that end, I’ve previously sketched out how to create browser bookmarklets that will allow you one click post creation from a particular GitHub repo to speed things along. Be sure to change the base URL of your website and include the correct bookmarklet type of “issue” in the code.
The Post Kinds plugin will also conveniently provide you with an archive of all your past Issue posts at the URL http://example.com/kind/issue/, where you can replace example.com with your own website. Adding feed/ to the end of that URL provides an RSS feed link as well. Post Kinds will also let you choose the “Reply” option instead of “Issue” to create and own your own replies to GitHub issues while still syndicating them in a similar manner and receive replies back.
Other options
Given the general set up of the variety of IndieWeb-based tools, there are a multitude of other ways one can also accomplish this workflow (both on WordPress as well as with an infinity of other CMSes). The outline I’ve provided here is one of the quickest methods for beginners that will allow a relatively high level of automation and almost no manual work.
One doesn’t necessarily need to use the Post Kinds Plugin, but could manually insert all the requisite HTML into their post editor to accomplish the post side of things via webmention. (One also has the option to manually syndicate the content to GitHub by cutting and pasting it as well.) If doing things manually this way is desired, then one will need to also manually provide a link to the syndicated post on GitHub into their original so that Bridgy can match up the copy and the original to send the replies via webmention.
If you’ve followed many of these broad steps, you’ve given already given yourself an incredibly strong IndieWeb-based WordPress installation. With a minimal amount of small modifications you can also use it to dovetail your website with other social services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Google+ and many others. Why not take a quick look around on the IndieWeb wiki to see what other magic you can perform with your website!
I’ve documented many of my experiments, including this one, in a collection of posts for reference.
Help
If you have questions or problems, feel free to comment below or via webmention using your own website. You can also find a broad array of help with these plugins, services, and many other pieces of IndieWeb technology in their online chat rooms.
Adds support for responding to and interacting with other sites using the standards developed by the IndieWeb Community
Based on prior art and details in the IndieWeb Wiki for acquisitions.
I’m including some potential code below, though it will also require adding the appropriate icon and some meta data in a few places for the “Kinds” meta box as well as to the admin UI locations which are currently missing.
I’ve “cheated” a bit and defaulted to display the “wish” icon and thus some of its metadata, so the acquisition kind would need its own icon (the same shopping cart icon may be best) and some small meta data would need to be changed as well in the final.
For those who need to have this right away, the code below will “work” from a display standpoint.
Taxonomy Code template
Code snippet I’ve added to indieweb-post-kinds/includes/class-kind-taxonomy.php just under the section for the wish kind:
'acquisition' => array(
'singular_name' => __( 'Acquisition', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // Name for one instance of the kind
'name' => __( 'Acquisitions', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // General name for the kind plural
'verb' => __( 'Acquired', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // The string for the verb or action (liked this)
'property' => 'acquired-of', // microformats 2 property
'format' => 'status', // Post Format that maps to this
'description' => __( 'Purchases, gifts, found things, or objects donated to me', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ),
'description-url' => 'http://indieweb.org/acquisition',
'show' => true, // Show in Settings
),
Naturally the “true” flag for ‘show’ should be set to “false” until the code is feature complete.
A simple view for the acquisition post kind
Add the following code to the folder indieweb-post-kinds/views/ in a file named kind-acquisition.php
Future additions/improvements to this kind could include potentially adding new data fields to indicate the “location purchased” as well as the “purchase price”, the “manufacturer” and maybe the “condition” with a dropdown for selecting options like brand new, like new, very good, good, acceptable, poor, and unspecified. These could be marked up with the h-product related microformats of p-price and p-brand. These would then need to be tucked into the view as appropriate as well.
WordCamp Orange County is a great place to learn meet, talk, and immerse yourself in everything WordPress. From the absolute beginner to the hardest of hardcore developers, WordCamp Orange County will have something for you.
Putting this on my calendar to attend later this year. Waiting patiently for tickets to go on sale.
After a relatively quiet quiet writing hour where I worked on acquisition posts a bit, people began arriving just before the 6:30 pm official start time.
I kicked off the meeting with a quick overview of IndieWeb’s concepts and principles for newcomers. As a mini-case study I talked a bit about some of my work and conversations earlier today about thinking about adding acquisition posts to my website and the way in which I’m approaching the problem.
Asher Silberman was glad to be back at a meeting. He has recently been working on more content over functionality.
Micah Cambre showed off a gorgeous development version of the new theme he’s building for his site which is a super clean and pared down theme based on the Sage platform using WordPress. He’s hoping to finish it shortly so he can relaunch his personal site at http://asuh.com. He spent some time talking about the process of using David Shanske’s IndieWebified version of the Twenty Sixteen theme as a template for adding microformats and functionality to the Sage set up.
Richard Hopp, a gen2/gen3 user who is completely new to the community and interested in learning, has a personal domain at http://www.ricahardhopp.com/ on which he’s installed WordPress. He’s currently considering whether he’d like to begin blogging soon and what other functionality he’d like to have on his site. He’s relatively new to Facebook, having only joined about six months ago. On the professional side, he does some governmental related work and has some large collections of documents that he’s also doing some research for in consideration of how to best put them on the web for ease of search and use.
I wrapped up the demo portion with a quick showing of how I leveraged the power of the Post Kinds Plugin to facetiously add chicken posts to my site as a prelude to doing a tad more work to begin adding explicit follow posts.
We took a short break to take a photo of the group.
In the end of the evening we talked over a handful of broad ideas including user interface, webactions, and Twitter interactions.
We wrapped things up with a demo of how I use the URL Forwarder app on Android to post to my website via mobile. We then used some of this documentation to try to help Asher fix his previously broken browser bookmarklets to hopefully work better with the Post Kinds Plugin. I spent a few minutes to create a similar bookmarklet to add the ability to more easily add follow posts to my website since I hadn’t done it after adding them last week.
Today’s release of Jetpack 5.8 includes several features that have graduated from beta testing. We are very excited to bring them out for you to try.
Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve included in this update, and how today’s additions will help you speed up your site and deliver faster...
I like the idea of Elastic Search being added in here and that alone might make it worth the subscription price! I’m surprised that it wasn’t bundled in from the start or that Elastic Search isn’t making an smaller subscription version available via plugin for a smaller price.
wiobyrne
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