I Love Typography

This is a blog about all of the intricacies of typography ranging from the basics to super technical jargon-filled goodness. The design is a beautifully simple execution of what they preach.

Their treatment for tags is totally unique. ‘Tags’ is listed in the primary navigation, and when you click on it a grid comes up in a lightbox. I’m always glad to see an out-of-the box solution like this!

Jesús Rodríguez Velasco’s Blog

I love the droves of illustrations on this blog! If you click around the header image will change. It doesn’t look like the author is currently posting (but that certainly doesn’t mean you can’t go over and have a look-see at the design)

Interface Engineering

Pardon the horn-tooting here, but this is one of my favorite designs that has come out of eROI. The  subtle lines that cross from the background into the photos are my favorite aspect. And you better believe it’s WordPress!

jQuery

I have to give a shout-out to the new jQuery API site that was recently rebuilt using Wordpress as their CMS.

Web Designer Wall

This is a popular blog, and for very good reason. I especially like all of the illustrative details, hand-drawn type, the way they’ve handled dates, and the rollovers for the main navigation. Oh heck, I like it all!

Creative Spaces

This organization out of Melbourne, Austrailia lists spaces that are available for creatives to work or exhibits in. I was automatically intrigued by the painterly environment! It’s creative.. and it’s a space… nice!

The juxtaposition of dainty decorative elements with the more grungy textures is interesting.

Typechart

This is another typography related site: so sue me! Typechart is a gallery of typography examples that you can browse through. If you find a style to your liking you are able to directly download the CSS! How cool is that? I’d also like to add that I am especially fond of the color palette and background pattern.

Cloud 365

This site is lovely! It is a project where the author posts a photo or video of clouds every day for a year. The rollovers! You must see the rollovers. It’s pretty easy to spend some time on this site.. so beware :)

WordPress Showcase Sites

If you’re itching to keep browsing I’ve got a list of other places around the interwebz for you to visit:

WordPress’ very own Showcase

CMS Designs

WP Inpsiration

We Love WP

WordPress Garden

WP Float

LoopPress

New 2010 default theme

Kubrick: klassic, but old and krusty. At eROI we’ve discussed creating our own default/starter themes that contain all the basic essential functions for a blog or a non-blog website. Many theme developers just getting started in WordPress (or even those who’ve been at it a while) take the default theme and tweak it to fit their structure/design.  Oftentimes this leads to having extraneous code that isn’t really needed or even code that has been deprecated. Having new default themes with up-to-date functions, heavily commented HTML and CSS, more basic HTML structures and without functions we don’t use often will help new members of our team learn theme creation faster.

But before we could get out of the gate with our eROI Starter Theme however, I learned that Automattic was already in discussions of creating a new default theme for 2010.  I think it would also be a great idea to have multiple default themes depending on the type of site you are building (blog, basic brochure site, community site, magazine site, etc. etc.), which others have suggested as well. Plus, there is also talk of updating the default theme every year, which is an excellent idea considering how regularly new features are added or changed, or functions deprecated.

For the immediately future though, it looks like we will be getting the new 2010 theme along with WordPress 3.0 in April. Check out the current demo and watch as it evolves!

Canonical plugins

If you’ve ever tried looking for a WordPress plugin you know that sometimes it can be quite a task to find a plugin that:

• Does what you need it to do
• Is compatible with the most recent version of WordPress
• Was written by someone willing to offer support, patches and/or new features
• Doesn’t make your site vulnerable to exploits or slow it down with unoptimized or unnecessary code

Even plugin authors with the best intentions at the beginning can give up on supporting it or updating their plugin, even if the functionality is highly sought after (may have something to do with the fact that compensation for WordPress plugin developers is usually no more than a pat on the back, if that). To help alleviate some plugin frustration, the core dev team has decided to start an initiative originally called “canonical plugins” (though I think they have decided to go with “core plugins” as the official name). These plugins would be developed by teams in conjunction with the development of WordPress itself, and have an official bug tracking system and release schedule.

The first core plugin, Health Check, will be a handy tool that will assist in troubleshooting your WordPress installation should things get a bit wonky. Hopefully that will just be the first of many, many, many official/canonical/core plugins.  With core plugins you know they in theory will have been written and tested properly, will always work with the latest version of WordPress, AND be optimized and secure. Sounds miraculous!

Menu management

This is a new feature in WordPress 3.0 that will fill a HUGE hole in its CMS capabilities. Previously it has been very difficult to create an easily manageable navigation/menu on your WordPress site.  Creating a dynamic list of navigation links on the front-end is doable, but difficult or nearly impossible if you want to have navigation containing mixed content, e.g. pages with different parents, posts, category pages, etc.  For example, if you wanted your sidebar navigation to contain your About page, your introduction blog post, and links to your categories “Design” and “Development”, you’d probably have to code those links into your template.

With a menu manager in the WordPress admin area, you will be able to create one or more menus and add any type of link you wish. The menu management screen looks virtually the same as widget management screen, and appears to work similarly too.  Just call the menu you’ve created in your template, and you will never need to edit that template again to update your navigation links.  So clients can now change their navigation themselves if that’s something the design will allow them to do (horizontal navigation with limited space or with graphic text/buttons might not be good candidates for a dynamic menu).

But wait, there’s more…

If you have any upcoming features that you are looking forward to, or anything else to add, please share!  There are other things happening in the WordPress community that I haven’t mentioned, things like the community code of conduct and making it easier to participate, as well as other features and code changes, but I think this post is long enough as it is, and frankly I just don’t know enough about some of those initiatives. I’m always looking to learn more though so if you have any thoughts/links to share, please do.

I’d like to share a few of things I’m excited about right now in the world of WordPress. Some of these are coming up very soon (WordPress 3.0 is on schedule to be released in April) while some might be rolled out over the course of the year, or maybe even next year. But even the fact that discussions are taking place  is very exciting for a WordPress dork like me.

WPMU merging into WordPress

This is a biggie. For any non-WordPress-nerds, WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) is like a separate branch of WordPress that allows you to have multiple blogs on a single installation. With WPMU you can allow users to create their own blogs on your site (like we did with Online Marketing Connect). Or you can use multiple blogs to better compartmentalize different types of content and information (which we’ve also done before).  The multi-user capabilities have come in quite handy and we use it quite a lot here at eROI. However, the problem with WPMU has been that it was separate from WordPress. Every time WordPress was updated to a new version and given new features, WPMU had to be updated with those same features separately. Releases for MU can come weeks after the equivalent WordPress release.

So now the “thin layer of code” that makes WordPress into WPMU is going to be integrated with WordPress, so they will be one and the same.  This is excellent news, especially for plugin users and plugin authors who always had to make sure plugin code worked in both regular and MU versions of WordPress. The feature set that MU provided will be known as “multi-site” in post-merge WordPress, and can be activated and managed from an admin settings page.  Here is an early-look tutorial for how the multi-site feature will be enabled and configured.  Unfortunately it looks like native multiple domain name support won’t be included in the 3.0 release, but we can cross our fingers for a later release.

Custom post types (or “object types” or “item types”)

When you build a site in WordPress you usually have to work with the two built-in content types, namely Posts and Pages. Because WordPress was created as a blogging platform, these content types make sense – “Posts” are your blog posts or articles, and “Pages” are your static pages like About or Contact.  When you get into using WordPress as a CMS, these content types can be a bit limiting.  It is entirely possible to build a robust data-filled website using WordPress and its default content types, but it can sometimes be confusing to a client (or whoever will be updating the blog) when you explain “Press releases and office locations are under Posts, and your homepage and about page are under Pages.” Unless you spend some time explaining the history of WordPress and WHY it has a “Posts” section even though their site may not have a blog, site management can be unintuitive and abstract.

Enter custom post types.  Instead of using “Posts” for Press Releases, just make a type called “Press Releases,” and add a section in the navigation for Press Releases including Edit and Add New functions. I’ve written before about the plugin More Fields and its custom post type abilities, but have yet to have a completely smooth experience with it (though still love its custom field capabilities).  Fortunately, native support for custom post types was much improved in WordPress 2.9, and in 3.0 it will be even better.  You will still have to register your new content type using a plugin (Discussions on Wordpress Trac indicate a post type manager UI in the admin area won’t happen), but the act of doing so will now automatically add manage & edit screens and custom taxonomy management pages for your custom type.

And that’s not all…

There is too much WP future goodness for just one post. Check back tomorrow for three more totally boffo advancements in WordPress!  Yep, I said BOFFO.

Last year I saw a demonstration of the Expression Engine CMS presented by Josh Pyles of Pixelmatrix Design.  I drooled over its ability to create different page types with their own custom fields, all presented in a beautiful UI.  I ogled and stared and sighed and wished that WordPress could do the same thing.  One of my favorite plugins, More Fields, could add some of that custom field functionality, but without custom page types and the beautiful UI.

Last week I finally had a chance to play around with the newly released, highly anticipated WordPress 2.7.   The new UI and navigation structure impressed me, as did its ease of use.  I love how I can get where I need to with minimal clicking.  But even more exciting than WP 2.7 is the updated version of the More Fields plugin.  Here’s a representation of how I felt when I first started exploring the features of the new More Fields:  (imagine him saying “custom page types!!!” instead of “Nintendo 64!!!”)

OK, so maybe that’s a bit of exaggeration.  But I was excited.  I think I may have even pumped my fist and said “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

The new More Fields plugin allows you to create those custom page types, based on either the default Page or Post page type.  You can still create custom fields like with the old plugin, but now you can assign fields to specific page types.  You also have complete control of which content boxes appear on your custom page type, or even the default page types:  If you want, you can remove the Tags, Categories, Authors, Excerpt, Discussion, or any other box on the edit page.  You can also set a default category for the specific page type.

For example, if you have a page type “Event”, you can set the category as “event” and then remove the category select box from the edit page so that the category can’t be changed on accident. You can also get rid of any other boxes on the edit screen that aren’t relevant.  You can add custom fields for Event Date and Venue, and not have to worry about them also appearing on any other page type (say, your static ‘About Page’).

If you also have different types of “Post”-type content, you can also create various page types based on Posts.  Maybe you have a “Photo Post” with a default category of “photo” and custom fields for Camera information, Date Taken, etc.  Those custom fields won’t show up on your “Family Posts”.

The More Fields plugin now has more custom field types than before too.  You can now assign a custom field to use a WYSIWYG editor, instead of being stuck with plain text.  Using the WYSIWYG is also a great way to assign an image to a custom field  (instead of having to copy/paste the image URL to a text field) – for example, assigning a custom thumbnail image to a blog post on your homepage.

OK, that all sounds great right? But I haven’t even gotten to the COOLEST part yet.  More Fields even adds your custom page types to the navigation bar.  You can even go one step further, and remove the default “Page” and “Post” links, and only display your custom page/post types. So you can tweakyour admin area to only display the content types your users will actually need.

The new More Fields plugin is far from perfect though.  Funkiness and inconsistencies abound, at least at the time of this post.  For example, if you decide to keep the default “Page” type, ALL of your custom pages will also appear there.  The same goes for the default “Post” and all of your custom post types.  This is because, according to the WordPress database, all your custom types are still either “Posts” or “Pages”.  But having content listed in two different places may be confusing for some of your users.  If you want to have default “Pages” in your nav, it may be better to create a custom “Page” type and then remove the default from the menu.  The same goes for “Posts”.

I also came across some funkiness if I decided to edit the settings for the default “Page” or “Post”.  More Fields saved the changes I made, but also added another “Page” item in the navigation – which if you neglect to add the plural version in the settings, will show up as an empty “ghost” box in the nav bar.  Also, if you click on Add New in the ghost box, you will get an error because the custom page type doesn’t actually exist – it’s just a duplication of the default.

The current version of the plugin also seems to break the WordPress Media Library and causes it to hide all your previously uploaded files.  Not so good.

But despite the problems, I am very excited about the improvements to More Fields and what it does for WP 2.7.  I’m sure the plugin will only get better and better, and the bugs will be fixed eventually.  More Fields opens up a lot of possibilites for WordPress as a CMS.  Thank goodness for plugin developers like Kal Ström and Henrik Melin. I’ll be sure to send some donations their way for the awesome work they’ve done, and if I continue to use their plugin for client projects, I’ll be encouraging eROI to do the same!