Web Development for YOU

Although WordPress is the best blogging platform invented by man yet, it leaves much to be desired when it comes to the default WYSIWYG editor. Luckily for us, there are a handful of third party editors available.

1. BlogDesk, a free stand-alone application, lets you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog. It features an ImageWizard that lets you crop, resize and rotate images. It also has a Technorati Tags Generator that lets you easily define and insert tags instead of retyping them over and over again.
2. Qumana is a free, easy-to-use stand-alone desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs. You can use Qumana even when you are offline. Save your blog posts to your hard drive and upload whenever you like. Great for bloggers on the move.
3. TinyMCE Advanced adds 16 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Full Screen, IESpell, Layer, Media, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras. Its free and packs quite a punch when it comes to adding extra functions to the editor.
4. WP Super Edit is a free WordPress plugin designed to give some control over the visual / WYSIWYG editor and add some functionality without modifying the WordPress source code.
5. Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit brings the magic of Fckeditor back to TinyMCE. So if you prefer TinyMCE as its concision, but used to Fckeditor’s powerful functions, then MsE is your good choice. Please do note that this is a free addon plugin to WP Super Edit described above.
6. Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts. It includes a lot of features such as WYSIWYG Authoring, Photo Publishing, Map Publishing and a Writer SDK. The Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
7. FCKEditor is a free, full featured web based WYSIWYG html editor, it’s lightweight and is compatible with most internet browsers which include: IE 5.5+ (Windows), Firefox 1.0+, Mozilla 1.3+ and Netscape 7+. Its strong points are the excellent interface and built-in File and Upload Managers.
8. Mudbomb’s free WYSIWYG Plugin for WordPress gives you a lot of control over your images, letting you choose the thumbnail size, the compression quality, et al. It also supports emoticons and features dictionary support.
9. BlogJet is a Windows blog client for managing multiple blogs that supports file attachments among other regular features such as an Image Manager, Youtube and Flickr support. There are both free and paid versions of BlogJet available.
10. ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured free blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.
11. RocketPost is a paid WYSIWYG editor that lets you edit and upload multiple posts at the same time. It features built-in photo editing, instant photo albums, automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, drop caps, pull quotes and a running word count.
12. Advanced TinyMCE Editor is a free plugin that turns your existing WordPress editor into a WYSIWYG powerhouse.

If none of the above editors are to your liking, there’s one software that you are sure to be familiar with – Microsoft Word. Yes, unknown to many, Microsoft Word 2007 has native support for publishing posts to blogs running on WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Live Spaces. Sahas explains how to setup your blog in Microsoft Word 2007 here.

The following factors can gear the Intranet towards success:

1. Document the intranet strategy

Develop and document an intranet strategy, based on a consideration of the requirements and balance of information/content, technology and governance. This strategy has to be aligned with the overall strategy of the organisation.

2. Use personas and tasks/scenarios to identify user requirements

Personas are virtual cvs that summarise the main characteristics of employees undertaking specific roles, and the tasks that these roles require. Focusing on perhaps six key user scenarios can make a significant difference to the quality and acceptance of the intranet.

3. Understand and support content contribution
Information quality in an intranet is essential. Invariably intranet content contribution is not included in job descriptions or valued by managers, and as a result gets low priority.

4. Enhance the intranet in a series of small, manageable, steps
An intranet should be continuously enhanced to reflect changing requirements, rather than wait for the opportunity and resources to carry out a major revision.

5. Manage metadata
Content authors may not have the skills and expertise needed to add metadata. Metadata is not just about ‘keywords’. The effort involved in developing metadata schemes and taxonomies is always underestimated.

6. Provide effective search functionality
Users have to trust the search functionality so that they feel totally confident that either they have found all relevant information, or that information is not on the intranet.

7. Provide access to the business environment
Make sure that the intranet provides access to information from external sources, such as business and market information. It is easy to be so focused on the provision of internal information that access to external information is overlooked

8. Undertake regular usability testing
Usability testing should be carried out at all stages of the life of an intranet, and there should be a range of feedback channels to ensure that the content and the information architecture continue to meet the expectations of contributors, users and stakeholders.

9. Support collaborative working
Intranet websites on their own are not good collaborative applications. There could be significant benefit in implementing wikis and blogs, discussion forums and surveys.

10. Set up a suitable governance structure
The governance structure should reflect this enterprise value of the intranet. There should be clear communication channels to the staff and also back to the intranet team so that changes in business requirements can be identified at the earliest opportunity.

11. KPIs and measurement of success
Both long term and short term goals and well thought KPIs have to be defined right from the beginning.

WordPress has become the most popular blogging platform , developers are using its core to design content driven websites and using it as a proper user friendly CMS. One of the key reasons of WordPress success is its templating system. To develop a WordPress unique site  you need to understand its basics and see how it is structured. The following article looks at such information in detail.

The basics

WordPress themes are the standard layout system that define your blog’s appearance. It consists of template files, functions, template tags and images. To install a WordPress theme, you just need to upload it and activate it in your WordPress admin.

WordPress page structure

Most of the time, a WordPress page is composed of the header, the sidebar, the content and the footer. These structural elements usually are separated files that you can include in your template files. There can be more structure elements, such as other sidebars, advertising space or whatever you can think of.

Template files

The above chart shows what files are used depending on the page you are using. You can use only the index.php with a stylesheet, but you would be missing customization options that make your theme more user-friendly.

The Loop

In WordPress, the loop is a set of functions used to display your posts and everything related to the posts (title, tags, author, categories,…). To customize the loop, WordPress has some well documented pages that you’ll find here or here. For a more advanced loop use like multiple loops on the front page, some blogs offer very extensive tutorials about it.

Template Tags

Template tags are small PHP snippets that are used to display info on the blog. For example, <?php bloginfo(’url’) ?> will display the base url of your blog. WordPress has a very good documentation about template tags and lists the tags available. When using WordPress plugins, you’ll sometimes get plugin specific template tags.

Functions

The functions.php file is a special one, it will not display a specific page but contains all functions used for your template. For example, you will need it to create widget zones or to create a theme customization page in WordPress’ admin.

Thanks to Design Reviver for such a nice contribution.

Here is a very useful designers heaven printable CSS 3 Cheat Sheet (PDF), a complete listing of all the properties, selectors types and allowed values in the current CSS 3 specification from the W3C. Each property is provided in a section that attempts to match it with the section (module) that it is most actively associated within the W3C specification. Next to each property is a listing of the expected values that that property takes (normal text shows named values it accepts and italics shows value types it will accept).

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