“Code Poet – New resource from the guys behind WordPress” plus 2 more - Speckyboy Design Magazine Feed |
- Code Poet – New resource from the guys behind WordPress
- Syndication for Articles Only: The How and Why of an Articles-Only RSS Feed
- How Developers can Take Advantage of Social Media
| Code Poet – New resource from the guys behind WordPress Posted: 25 May 2012 03:56 AM PDT Sharing has always been at the heart of Automattic, the developers of WordPress. And now those developers are looking to give back to the community – in the true spirit of open source. They have just launched a brand new resource for WordPress designers and developers called Code Poet. Code Poet aims to collect the knowledge that is scattered around the web in such a way that the large WordPress user-base can take advantage of. Pete Davies, Premium Services Lead at Automattic, spoke to us about the learning process they’ve engaged in to identify their developer and designer base. He explained, “We’ve learned a lot over the last year or so (through surveys and other data) that so much of the recent growth and success of WordPress has been driven by independent businesses and freelancers – people that are using WordPress to build sites for others: companies of all sizes, non-profits, and individuals.” Code Poet is hoping to provide solace and foster communication among professionals, especially smaller businesses and freelancers who are a growing segment in the developer community. Automattic has relied on surveys to gauge trends around WordPress’s growth and success, and their most recent survey showed that ~7,000 (out of a pool of 18,000) respondents identified themselves as independent WordPress developers. Davies explained that the site was founded with the desire to provide a venue for WordPress-based businesses to share their experiences and advice. From tips on responsive design, to free contract templates or learning about better business practices from those in the same industry, “there’s no one good place to go for help with all that right now… that’s what we hope Code Poet will become,” he added. The site also will have some e-published offerings. Currently, this is in the form of two e-books, which emphasize their small business slant, and cover developer rates and responsive web design. The site also hosts a number of articles, interviews and plenty of resources, that focus on improving anything from theme development, business issues, to design. Useful URLsCodePoet Homepage →
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| Syndication for Articles Only: The How and Why of an Articles-Only RSS Feed Posted: 25 May 2012 12:22 AM PDT There was a time, not too long ago, when blogging was only about creating full-length entry content for readers to peruse and interact with. That time has long passed, however, and has given way to the era of tweets, blogrolls and link lists, micro-entries, digests, and all kinds of other content which gets published right alongside traditional content. When it’s placed into a regular WordPress blog design, there’s actually nothing wrong with all of that additional content. It makes semantic sense in terms of its placement, the way its shown, when it is shown, and how users highlight it. However, each of the things listed above is technically a WordPress post. And every post is placed into the same broad, general RSS feed for syndication to a website’s audience via web browsers, mobile devices, and feed readers. It’s easy to see why this might cause some problems. With so much content, users will find it hard to focus on just one aspect of the website and they may become confused about the site’s mission or expertise. When full-length articles are placed next to tweets, which are themselves placed right below a list of recommended links, it becomes harder to see the blog as a content destination and more likely to view it as some sort of personal social network. That’s likely to send readers to other, competing websites — the makings of a real crisis in traffic, search engine rankings, and overall respect for any website online. Overcoming the Overload of Content: How it’s DoneIn recent years, WordPress developers have begun deploying new types of RSS feeds to separate their many types of content into separate, contextual feeds that give users only the content they wish to read. This spares them the confusion of digging through status updates to view a typical WordPress post, and it keeps things like feed readers and mobile devices free of intrusive, low-character writings which have little or no relevance to a website’s subject matter. This is done by using conditional variables within a traditional WordPress RSS feed setup and it involves creating both a new PHP template file and a new WordPress page itself. The process is relatively easy, as it uses existing WordPress syndication code with minor modifications, and it’s the number one way to retain high traffic and solid levels of respect among a diverse readership. Here is how a typical RSS feed becomes a specialized source of full-length article syndication. First, Copy the Existing WordPress RSS 2.0 Feed into a New TemplateThis trick actually doesn’t modify the structure of the WordPress RSS Feed at all, making it easy for users to simply duplicate the existing RSS 2.0 feed template’s PHP and XML code into a new document and make minor changes to the top of the file in order to only display certain groups of entries. Of course, more experienced developers might want to take this opportunity to craft an entirely new feed with new display properties but, for the vasty majority of WordPress users, the existing feed structure can be left untouched. For those new to modification of the existing RSS feeds, it’s worth noting that WordPress includes three different types of feeds (and thus templates) with every installation. Each of these feed templates can be found in a theme’s root directory, located at the following path: /home/public_html/wp-content/themes/ Within this directory, look for three distinct template files which all begin with the “feed” prefix. Those files are:
For the purposes of this tutorial, the “ Open the “ Tell WordPress Where to Locate the File, and Tell the File Which Content to LocateThe neat thing about the WordPress RSS feeds is that they can all be controlled by customizing a few variables at the top of the file, before the actual content routine begins and the fields are populated. For our purposes here, we will customize the number of entries which can be contained in the feed, as well as the categories from which the RSS feed can pull content. That will help exclude things like tweets, digest posts, links, and other information that isn’t relevant to readers who use an RSS reader application. Here’s what the top of the file will now look like: /* Template Name: Feed of Site's Main Content */ $numposts = 15; $posts = query_posts('showposts='.$numposts.'&cat=4,8,10,13,11,19,26'); $more = 1; There are three important variables to be defined in this setup. The first is the “ The second and perhaps most important variable is “ Finally, the “ When this information has been pasted into the top of the file, it’s safe to save and upload the modified PHP template. Be sure to include the commented header information that contains the template name, as this ensures that it will be seen by the Dashboard during the second step of the process when a custom page is created based on this new template file. Creating a Custom Page to Make the New Feed Accessible to the MassesNow that the actual PHP template file has been produced and the special, article-only RSS feed has been established, it’s time to create a custom WordPress page which will allow this new feed to be accessed using a “friendly” permalink. This is done simply by creating a new page in the Dashboard and assigning it a default template, rather than filling in the “body” text area with page content. Start by logging into the WordPress Dashboard and clicking the “Pages” category on the sidebar. From there, click “Add Page” or “Add New,” and wait for the resulting control panel page to load. As mentioned earlier, the actual body text of the page will be left blank, as its content will be pulled directly from a template. In this dialog, only the page title needs to be filed out. This page title will actually do nothing more than to generate the page’s permalink, so name it something user-friendly which can be easily read and remembered. A great example is “Main Feed” or “Main Content.” The resulting URL to the site’s new feed would appear like the following: http://domain.com/main-content/ This is the same way a regular page would appear, which means users won’t have difficulty accessing the new, more robust source of the site’s usual content. Now, in the sidebar area, locate the “Page Attributes” box. The setting to be modified here is the “Default Template” drop-down menu. In it, a list of custom-created templates will appear, so long as those custom templates have been given Dashboard-friendly names so that the control panel can “see” them. If you’ve done everything right up to this point, a template named “Feed of Site’s Main Content” will appear in the list. Select that template and then save all changes made to the new page. This is essentially the end of the road when it comes to creating a feed full of the site’s richest articles. Be sure to point your browser toward the new feed’s permalink and ensure that everything displays as it should. Remember that WordPress variables and RSS feed code can be a bit picky, and this might result in a few errors that can be easily fixed. If everything works, then it’s time to place links to the new feed on the website itself and in the “ When everything has been linked to updated, the process is complete and users will now be able to enjoy rich website content without all of the “fluff” that often parallels it on the typical, 21st century blog. You might also like…WordPress Plugins to Help Make Your Site Responsive → Or, you could browse our extensive WordPress Archives.
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| How Developers can Take Advantage of Social Media Posted: 24 May 2012 08:26 AM PDT Working in the field of web development has a much different feel than graphics design. The work is more task-oriented and requires a higher level of concentration and detail. Not to mention bug fixes, maintenance, or getting sites running live on a web server. It seems the job of a designer is more creative and freeform. This holds true for development as well, except in a different ideology. The open source movement has dramatically changed the web design industry at its core.. And social media is a related industry with a tremendous backbone. Once you understand how social networks can help you as a developer you’ll be hard-pressed taking the Internet for granted! Building ContactsWhen I first got started in coding websites it was much easier to work with a group of people. This is still the case with any modern-day large project. But with so many open source content management systems floating around, you are no longer required to work with people in the same physical space. Network around and try to meet other passionate developers working on similar ideas as yourself. There are online forums, bulletin boards, and blog discussion threads where you can share ideas together. This is the best way to teach yourself new techniques as well. But one of the biggest advantages is using one of these infamous open source CMS’. Most of the popular examples have been running for years now, and are coupled with a populated support forum. I’ve included just a few links to check out: The Stack NetworkI cannot recommend enough young devs to start using Stack Overflow. I am naturally curious about building web products – so when I run into trouble coding some JavaScript or PHP it’s very frustrating. But the Stack network is full of brilliant coders who have years and years of practice under their belt. To signup for an account you should visit the Stack Exchange website. From there you can connect directly to Twitter or Google, or register using an e-mail address. But once you’re in you can connect the same account details over each of their different sites. A couple popular communities are the pro webmasters and ux stack(there’s even one for WordPress). You have the option of including some extra contact details on your profile page. It makes communicating easier, especially with other helpful members who can answer your questions. But the community isn’t just about grabbing quick fixes for problematic code. You can also go through some of the recently asked questions and help answer folks who are struggling. If you’re a beginner then you likely won’t have as much knowledge to do this. But as you have more time to practice these skills should become easier to memorize. Coding on Open SourceThe recent trend of open source code has allowed for major improvements to rendering engines in web browsers. Webkit standards are being adopted by most 3rd party developers, including Microsoft and Mozilla. Web developers can host their code online for free and share it with a huge network of other devs from around the world. The most popular example is GitHub which acts as a Git repository for open source code. This includes much more than HTML/CSS/JS – even up to software development with Java and C++. But the whole website also acts as a social network where developers may connect with each other via e-mail, chat, or personal message. You can setup teams of developers and work coding projects hosted on their servers. Another cool resource Bitbucket is more private for personal projects. The system behaves very similar to GitHub, although profiles aren’t a huge aspect. I personally haven’t used the site very much – however I have read great things about their service in a few blog articles. Write About your ExperienceIf you have some years of experience it may be worthwhile to setup a small blog of your own. Even if you just have a simple portfolio website, or nothing at all, you can still write tutorials and articles about coding practices and web development. Write about anything you know which would be helpful for others to understand and build products for the web. Over time it’s possible you will aggregate a small following. Curious web developers will always be interested in learning about new techniques. If your content is good then it’s easy to draw in and captivate a small audience. You can further this success by running profiles on major networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Marketing is just as important and you can’t ignore the girth of social media. Check Social News WebsitesIn the same vein as social media there is a popular sub-culture devoted to social news. This is a type of web application where the community of users becomes the editors. All stories are voted on and only the most popular articles will publish onto front page. Digg is possibly the pioneer in this industry – yet the web development niche has seen progress. My favorite network is Dzone as it has been around for years and supplies great front-page content. Another popular choice is PHP Camp which is more devoted to PHP web applications. You can signup for free on either website and submit tutorials you find online, or alternatively submit your own blog posts. A newer launch Source Canvas has been online for just a few months now. Their network is invite-only and requires administrator’s approval to register. But this leads to much higher quality submissions, which ultimately provides an excellent source for networking with like-minded people. Check out any of these brands and see if you can relate to the community. ConclusionThese are just a few suggestions to get your name out there on the Internet. It’s important to keep trying new ways of marketing, and feel free to experiment with anything and everything at your disposal. The advancing Internet technologies as well as mobile devices will play a huge role moving forward into the 21st century. If you have similar ideas or websites for networking with web developers please share with us in the post discussion area below.
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