WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl » Blogging

Iphone WordPress Mobile Made Easy

webchicklet — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:33:02 +0000

Thinking about making an iphone wordpress version of your wordpress site? Well, the brilliant folks over at Ithemes and their PluginBuddy division have just recently released their new PluginBuddy Mobile to help you create an iphone WordPress version of your site quickly and easily. If you haven’t been considering doing this, you may want to, given the rapidly increasing numbers of web surfers relying solely on iphones, ipod touch, android phones, and of course the new ipad, for their web surfing.

The PluginBuddy Mobile wordpress plugin helps you build an iPhone version of your site VERY quickly with it’s built-in style manager, mobile-ready themes and custom header uploader. PluginBuddy Mobile is a must for wordpress publishers wanting to maximize their readers experience, and of course maximize the monetization of their website. Not only can you quickly make an iphone wordpress version of your site, this wonderful plugin also support for Android OS, Palm, Blackberry, Windows CE/Mobile IE, Sony Playstation and Nintendo Wii and DS. PluginBuddy Mobile wordpress plugin has you covered when it comes to your smartphone readers!

The Mobile Theme Style manager allows you to easily make your mobile wordpress theme look just like your regular site theme. The Custom header uploader makes personalizing your mobile theme with your very own unique custom header. PluginBuddy Mobile also give you 3 mobile starter themes which you can totally customize to your tastes, or just use as is out of the box. And you just know Ithemes will add more interesting mobile themes in the future.

So if you’re ready to get into the mobile wordpress site game, check out PlugginBuddy Mobile from Ithemes. It’s backed by a solid company with solid support, and it’s super easy to install and setup your iphone wordpress site.

Premium WordPress Plugins from Ithemes PluginBuddy As you know I’m a big fan of Ithemes, and...
Four Must Have WordPress Plugins Most blogs out there, including Webchicklet.com, currently use the WordPress...
Apple iPhone – The Next Big Release In the technology world, there is a proverb which says...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Premium WordPress Plugins from Ithemes PluginBuddy

webchicklet — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:05:16 +0000

As you know I’m a big fan of Ithemes, and their flexible wordpress themes, so I was very happy to hear they have released their newest venture, PlugginBuddy.com! Last week they announced the launch of Pluginbuddy and their first official premium wordpress plugin, Backup Buddy. More on that new premium wordpress plugin later.

Plugin Buddy is the third distinct venture that Ithemes has launched. Ithemes was the first to come up with ultra flexible premium wordpress themes, such as the wildly popular Flexx theme. Premium WordPress theme development is their bread and butter, and they have done an outstanding job at providing the perfect wordpress theme for any niche. Then they came up with Webdesign.com which focuses on WordPress specific web design training. Given the popularity of WordPress as a web publishing platform you have to figure they are doing quite well with their Webdesign.com venture as well. And finally, Ithemes has launched their much anticipated Pluggin Buddy venture, which will provide premium wordpress plugins to WordPress users.

You’re probably asking yourself: Is there a market for premium wordpress plugins? A valid question, given the hundreds of thousands of free wordrpess plugins available from wordpress.org. However, Ithemes’ theory, and one which this webchicklet agrees with, is that there is a demand for premium wordpress plugins. Take a look at WordPress themes. There are hundreds of thousands of free themes out there, so how can premium theme developers like Itheme sell so many themes? Because there is a demand for quality themes, that are flexible, supported and upgraded on a regular basis. So many themes are of poor quality, built quickly with links added to the bottom, in the hopes that it will spread like wildfire and create thousands of backlinks to the developers main site. They are rarely upgraded or supported when you have an issue. The premium plugin market has the same situation. WordPress power users are looking for robust, quality plugins that are supported and upgraded just like the wordpress themes they use.

So have a look at PluginBuddy.com – WordPress Plugins and become a more efficient wordpress user. Next time, I’ll write about Ithemes first PluginBuddy.com Premium Plugin for WordPress, Backup Buddy. You know how I feel about backups.

Four Must Have WordPress Plugins Most blogs out there, including Webchicklet.com, currently use the WordPress...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Four Must Have WordPress Plugins

webchicklet — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:54:29 +0000

Most blogs out there, including Webchicklet.com, currently use the WordPress platform. It is by far the most popular and easy to use blogging platform today. One of the main reasons for its ease of use and popularity is the incredible number of WordPress plugins available for free (or preferably a small donation to the developer, if you are so inclined). These plugins are very easy to install and yet add a ton of additional functionality to WordPress.

Given the sheer volume of WordPress plugins in existence today, it can be difficult for the beginner blogger to figure out which plugins they need. Your first option is to head over to the WordPress Plugin Directory and you can see what is most popular, highest rated or newest, or you can do a keyword search for a plugin topic.

There are currently just under 8,000 plugins to choose from! So it can be a daunting task for the new blogger to decide what plugins will help make their job easier, and which ones will only waste their time. That being said here’s webchicklet’s favorite, can’t live without, most important WordPress Plugins, in no particular.

All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack plugin makes a bloggers life easy and ensures that each and every post will be optimized for search engines. This takes the guesswork out of the equation for the newbie blogger. All in One SEO plugin helps with optimizing your page titles and meta tags. Unfortunately it won’t tell you what keywords are the best to use in your posts to rank well in the search results! The good news with this effective plugin: it is configured ready to go upon installation. Of course you should do some research and learn how to tweak it to get even more from it.

Google XML Sitemaps

I love this plugin, and so do 3,018,548 other people! As the name implies, the Google XML sitemap plugin generates a xml sitemap, when you first install it, and then notifies all the main search engines whenever it is updated. You can also tell it to include content from outside your WordPress content!

Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator is a handy little plugin that allows you to add google anaytics to your wordpress blog pages. Google Analytics is a must for any blogger, as you need to know all the stats on your visitors and how they arrived at your wonderful blog!

WP Super Cache

I’m not going to get into the techie details on this one. In very simple terms WP Super Cache will speed up the loading of your pages for your visitors. This is always a very good thing! If you want a more technical explanation on how this is accomplished check the developers plugin page!

Obviously there are others plugins you’re going to want or need, depending on the type of blog you are running . But the key thing is to go with the most important ones for your blog, and then focus on writing the content for your blog and building traffic. Many times people get so wrapped up in adding every conceivable plugin, they never get around to writing their content! Trust me, it’s easy to fall into that trap.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How To Embed MP3 Flash Player In WordPress Post (Or Elsewhere)

webchicklet — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:20:17 +0000

Please note this code no longer works, as google has discontinued the audio player it calls. I am looking to find the best alternative method to embed mp3 in a wp post. When I do I’ll update this post again.

Want to let users play an .mp3 file you created right inside your WordPress blog post? Don’t want to try to find a plugin that works consistently? Luckily, it’s very easy. Just copy/paste this embed code and change the url to your url (plus any other options such as width and height, if you want). It’s that simple.

The player looks like this (image only, not a working player):

This code should work on any web page, not just WordPress blog posts, but it’s usually harder to find ways to handle embedding media in a blog post than it is elsewhere, so that’s why I emphasized it here.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Flexx – A Game-Changing Flexible WordPress Theme

webchicklet — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:23:08 +0000

The folks over at iThemes have created a game-changing WordPress theme that is so flexible, it can be almost anything you want it to be, and because of its flexibility, it’s been named Flexx. There are literally over a thousand possible design layouts that can be accomplished simply by clicking your mouse button a few times in the layout options screen. Flexx is easily the coolest WordPress premium theme I’ve seen. I’ll show you all the reasons below, but keep in mind that the screenshots make this a graphic-intensive page, so you might need to be a little patient to load them all. Most of the images are scaled down to fit the blog post width, so just click any of the scaled-down images to open a new window/tab to see a larger version.

The most impressive part of Flexx is the layout options screen, so let’s start there. As you can see below, the layout options are almost limitless. You decide where to place various elements.

Want a list of pages above the header?
Want categories below the header?
Both above?
Both below?
Want Featured widget blocks at the top?
How many? 1? 2? 3?
Where do you want your sidebars?
How many do you want?
Want widget blocks in the footer?

I could go on and on, but you get the point. By simply clicking on the choices in the layout options, you can create the layout YOU want – and see the results REAL TIME in the Layout Preview at the bottom. Don’t like what you see in the Layout Preview? Just click on different options and make new layouts. Check out the screenshots below to see what I mean. The first one shows a preview from options I chose at first, and the next one shows a preview from options I changed. Keep in mind that there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of possible layout configurations, not just the two I’m showing below.

First options I chose for my Flexx layout:

Options I changed to make a new Flexx layout:

Ok, now let’s look at some of the other options available.

First, there’s the Custom Header options screen. This makes it very easy to use your own header graphic. Here’s what that option screen looks like:

Oh, and at the last minute, they added the ability to have flash-like rotating header images!

Next, let’s take a look at the settings you can customize. This is pretty cool.

First, you can choose which pages and categories get shown in the menu. This gives you flexibility to include/exclude certain ones.
Next, you can paste your stats tracking code (such as Google Analytics code) into the Tracking Code box, and it will be inserted properly into the theme.
Finally, it gives a couple of SEO-related options you can customize to make the theme even more search-friendly.

Finally, let’s take a look at the Contacts Page options screen. Here you can give a Subject for your Contacts Form email and the email address to send the contact us email to.

The Flexx premium theme comes in two color options, however, you can easily upload new background images (setting every different combo with it) and set the color through a Photoshop-like color picker. Here is an example of one of the color options.

Obviously, with so many layout choices, this is only one of many possible looks. Yours would likely look much different.

To get a bit of a better birdseye view, you can watch a couple of really quick screencasts to see how it all works.

First, the Flexx Layout Options Screencast:

Then, the Flexx Contact Page tutorial:

I am crazy about this new premium theme. Flexx is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. Brilliant! Simply brilliant.

Flexx WordPress theme

*** March 9, 2010 Update: Ithemes has come out with an awesome new entity called PluginBuddy, creating new premium wordpress plugins. Be sure to read about these wordpress plugins here!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Top 5 WordPress Theme Change Gotchas

webchicklet — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:15:31 +0000

Bloggers change blog themes. It’s a fact. Some change blog themes nearly as often as they change clothes. Most only change the theme a few times over the life of a blog. A few never use a different theme. I’ve changed themes on blogs quite a few times over the years, and no matter how many times I do it, I still always stumble over a few “gotchas”. I thought I would document the top 5 gotchas here, for two reasons. 1. I could come here next time I change a blog theme and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes yet again! 2. I could possibly help a few of you avoid those gotchas as well!

Gotcha #1
You forget to re-include your analytics code in the footer template. If you are using any kind of analytics program (and if you aren’t, why not?), such as Google Analytics or my favorite, Clicky Web Analytics, you’ll probably have a bit of javascript code or something similar added to your theme (usually in footer.php). If you change themes, make sure you add it into the new theme’s template.

Gotcha #2
You forget to re-include social networks code in your sidebar or footer template. Quite often, bloggers participate in one or more social networks and they either display that network’s widget, or they agree to display some sort of banner image in exchange for participation and/or traffic. If you’ve agreed to include code, and then forget to re-include it in your new theme’s template, you may lose your social network privileges and/or traffic.

Gotcha #3
You forget to re-include an advertiser’s ad. While this doesn’t tend to happen often, because it involves money, when it does happen, it’s not pretty. The last thing you want to do is make your advertisers mad at you. Plus, your reputation is on the line, so don’t ruin future ad possibilities by making this mistake.

Gotcha #4
You move from a widgetized theme to a non-widgetized theme, and all of your sidebar information disappears. Oops. New themes almost always come pre-widgetized these days, but if you have to choose one, buy one, or create one that isn’t widget-enabled, and you are used to using widgets, you’ve got a problem. Luckily, it can be fixed. Here’s a nice tutorial to help you widgetize that theme of yours.

Gotcha #5
Your new theme doesn’t include hooks that your old theme depended upon. Plugins often depend upon hooks in the header or footer of a template for them to work properly. There are other hooks as well, but more often than not, the two hooks that are needed are wp_head and wp_footer. You can get more info about these and other hooks at the WordPress codex – scroll down the page to find the Plugin API Hooks section. Luckily, it’s very easy to re-include these hooks, so just consult that codex page for instructions.

So those are the top 5 gotchas that I always seem to stumble over when I change blog themes. What about you? Got any to add? Let us know in the comments, so we can learn from your mistakes.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.