Hi,

Anyone who knows me, understands that I think learning and using Wordpress is pretty much a must for web designers – Wordpress is a key tool in the web design toolbox. That said, Wordpress does have it’s failings (though not many) and one of them is the seemingly constant stream of upgrades.

What!? Aren’t upgrades a good thing?

Normally sure. But it seems to me that just as soon as you’ve gone through the trouble of installing the latest Wordpress upgrade … you get another dashboard message saying it’s time to upgrade, again!

Of course these days, Wordpress now has an ‘Upgrade Automatically’ button that should do it all for you … but I confess, I’m old-school and I’ve never used it. I do it the old fashion way and download the new Wordpress files manually, upload them to my server etc …

All my complaining aside, one option is to not upgrade all the time.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

Wordpress allows you to schedule your post in advance so you can say, write up a bunch of articles and then schedule them to be published over a period of days (weeks or months .. whatever) while you are say … sitting on the beach.

The video (try watching in 720p and go fullscreen … it’s cool):

Actually, this very post was scheduled for publication the next day, while I was at the movies watching Avatar on the iMax.

… It could be, that you are watching this video at the very moment, that I’m actually watching Avatar and spilling my Coke on the person sitting next to me!

Thanks for watching,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

I occasionally use email questions sent to me as the basis for a quick article; this time around I had a question about Drupal:

Just enjoyed your website introduction video. I am a senior but am still a regular producer of ads books and booklets for my church, having been a printer all my life. A member has set up a Drupal site – I have been asked to ’smarten it up’ – I am new to it but I don’t see to prospect of arriving at a graphically attractive site from that program. I think I would be better suggesting we start afresh and build our own site.

What do you think?

Kind regards
John

Hi John,

Updating the look of a Drupal site can be a bit of a challenge since you have to work within the Drupal framework. What that means is that you need to understand basic web technologies:

- html
- css

… and the Drupal ‘theme’ architecture.

In the end though, using a content management system (nerds call them: CMS’) like Drupal will save you guys a huge amount of time updating and adding to the site over time – especially if you plan to have several contributors.

Another simpler to understand option that could work for you is to base the site on Wordpress. It has many of the Drupal advantages, yet the set up is less daunting and the number of available visual templates (called Themes in the Wordpress world) are many.

We have a video course on that subject here:

http://www.killersites.com/wordpress/wordpress-theme.php

And my basic HTML and CSS video course:

http://www.killersites.com/web-design/

I hope that helps,

Stefan

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

I am a big believer in Wordpress as a platform for web designers to build off of … why only give your clients a simple static site, when you can for the same price, provide them with all the bells and whistles that a Wordpress based site can give you:

• built-in search.
• ability for non-nerds to upload images and add new pages.
• built in password protected pages.

… And man, there is much more.

Anyway, you ought to learn how to use this blog engine (like creating Wordpress templates) … or any other, if you want to beat the competition these days. Other Wordpress like blog engines/CMS’ you may want to consider include:

- Drupal
- Joomla
- Movable Type

… There are many others out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I chose Wordpress a few years back because it was powerful enough for my needs and it had a huge community to lean on – and it still does.

Wordpress 2.9 just released

The nerds in charge of Wordpress seem to have no lives … they just keep coming out with new versions it seems like almost every three weeks! OK, it is isn’t that often but it still is moving along at a pretty faced pace.

Some of the new features in these release:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.

2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.

3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.

4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

You can read more about it at the Wordpress site.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

As you may know, I am a big Wordpress fan and I use it on a few of my ‘killer’ sites. Anyway, I just discovered that the Wordpress nerds have used the Google Gears project to speed up the Wordpress admin user interface.

What is Gears?

Gears is basically a browser add-on that allows Javascript code to run much faster. To use Gears, you as a programmer, has to build it into your Javascript code (as the Wordpress people did ..) and for people to benefit from Gears, it has to be installed into their browsers.

.. You can learn more about this in this video I just created:

You can install Gears (into your web browser) here:

http://tools.google.com/gears/

Please note that Gears works with Firefox and Explorer only.

I hope you guys find this useful.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

As the title of this post suggest, there are three things you need if you want to create a ‘killer’ blog:

1. Start with a great blog software.
2. Get a great design.
3. Produce great content.

The list above is in order of doing, but not the order of importance: content is still king and so you must be able to produce quality content on a regular basis for your blog, otherwise it won’t work.

Let’s look at some details …

Great blog software

You must spend some time to figure out what blog software is best for you. There are many you can choose from (including several CMS’) … and you can even do it manually. This is what you should look for in a blog setup:

• Easy posting of content. The blog should be easy to use.
• Syndication – automatic RSS feed creation.
• Built in search.
• Gravatar (universal avatar) support.

I personally use Wordpress because it meets all of the above and it has a huge community of people actively extending its’ functionality. That said, there are many other good choices out there … one of them may be better for you than my choice.

Great design

When I am talking design, I am talking about both how it looks (aesthetics) and I am also taking about how easy it is (from the user s perspective) to use it. Again, you will have to investigate this yourself because many times, this is personal taste.

Great content

The first rule of web design that I learned back in 1994, was that content was king. You can have the best looking blog/web site in the world but if the content sucks, no one will come back.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I just wanted to announce that my video tutorials on installing and using Wordpress are being featured in the latest edition of Web Designer Magazine.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

Let’s take it from the source:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

From a community members point of view, what’s cool about gravatars is that you don’t have to upload your avatar image on every blog, forum or community that you are a member of. And from the community owner’s point of view, you can now add a little pizazz to your blog or forum with your members gravatars.

You can read more about gravatars in the magazine.

In a nutshell:

Both are web based applications/software designed to allow many people to contribute content (typically articles … but podcast and videos are becoming more common) to a website.

I would say the basic difference is that a CMS (Ex: Drupal) is a closed system where only certain people can add or edit content to the website/cms.

On the other hand, a wiki is an open system where anyone can edit and add content. The idea behind a wiki is that the masses will eventually correct any false information – with the help of editors.

My thoughts:

I’m no wiki expert, but I see wiki’s being more suitable to general encyclopedic information. If you need a tighter structure and control over what is being posted on your site, I would be leaning towards a CMS rather than a WIKI.

That said, I am sure that the differences between the two types of software has room for a lot of gray area – I’m sure some CMS software have WIKI like functionality and vice versa.

How about blogs?

Blogs are kinda like a CMS for one person. One other distinction would be that the blog traditionally is date driven – where newer articles are posted to the front page of the blog. As with the WIKI/CMS blurring of the lines, you see the same with blogs and CMS software.

For example: Wordpress (a popular blog program) has CMS like features:

• Multiple users can post articles.
• You can have static non date affected pages. Wordpress call these ‘pages’.

Beyond the CMS-like features built into the core Wordpress package, Wordpress has a huge number of plug-ins out there that extend it’s capability considerably … bringing it even closer inline with a true CMS.

A few links:

Wordpress home page: www.wordpress.org
Drupal home page: http://drupal.org
Another popular CMS – Joomla: joomla.org
Wiki software: Media Wiki

Ciao,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I was just looking around the CMS and Blog scene, in terms of software, and I just finished taking another look at Drupal 6.

… Based on what I’ve seen so far, it looks very cool.

With this version of Drupal (Drupal 6.2) you see a lot of administration panel improvements and the whole process of installing and configuring Drupal has been streamlined. It is actually really easy.

Drupal 6 has a lot of other cool additions and tools like:

• Built in triggers: you can tell Drupal to do things when say for example someone post a comment.
• Better Forums: more features now.
• Drag-and-drop admin UI capabilities. It is easier to manage where things appear on your pages.

… And much more.

Most important, Drupal looks to be much faster than it was in previous versions.

… That’s one thing that bugged the hell out of me about old and slow Drupal 5.

You can get Drupal at: http://drupal.org/

I know, short post. I’m just busy with other stuff.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com