Wordpress Melbourne

moving wordpress..

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:52:42 +0000

..and correcting the new image paths.

I recently changed the directory that one of my WordPress sites was in.
For SEO Reasons i thought “websites-melbourne” is a much more semantic directory name then “pixelstormv5″.

I followed the method listed on the wordpress codex Moving WordPress and everything went smoothly. Except my images were not visible. All my images where hardcoded in using custom fields with relative urls. eg:

/pixelstormv5/images/website-05.jpg.

So the problem was the image path needed to be changed on each individual post. Changing 187 image paths manually is time intensive. I try to avoid manual alterations like this and went searching for a more dynamic way.

Here is that dynamic way.

access you database via php myAdmin. Click the SQL button. No do a SQL find and replace using the below code.

Find and replace meta data in the mysql database.

update TABLE_NAME set FIELD_NAME = replace(FIELD_NAME, ‘find this string’, ‘replace found string with this string’);

As i mentioned before. I use custom fields for all my image paths.

So all my image paths are in the table “wp_postmeta” table of the database. Therefore, my script looked like this.

update wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,"pixelstormv5","websites-melbourne");

Click go and let the script run. If it worked. the Script just saved you hours of frustrating manual adjustments. And was far more accurate then a human could be. Computers don’t get distracted and start day dreaming of more enjoyable tasks.

budget wordpress website in 1 hour

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:09:12 +0000

Setting up the foundation of a WordPress website will take about 1 hour. Providing:

The domain name has been purchased and the domain name server is pointing to the correct location (your hosting space).
The hosting space has been setup and has the ability to create at least one Mysql database.

The Parental Animations website below is a real world example of what can be accomplished in just one hour of website training with WordPress.
It’s a pretty good starting point for a website on a budget.

visit site

Feather theme

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:02:05 +0000

I had the pleasure of modifying the Elegant Themes premium “Feather” theme recently. And it’s a step in the right direction for the WordPress community.

Visit Site

Handy little features such as swappable background: textures / colors give the owner a chance to input a little of their own creativity into the theme.

Along with picture overlay graphics which add a bit more depth to the design.

It comes with all your standard page templates with a few extras thrown in too. The final list is plentiful and looks like this.

E-commerce Multisite on WordPress.

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:24:29 +0000

I’ve spent countless hours looking for a wordPress multi-site e-commerce solution. Here is what i went through before settling on my final solution.

WpEcommerce There where a few bugs when i was testing this. And answers in the forum where hard to come by. This was the premium version of the plugin too.
Shopp Nice plugin but, doesn’t support multisite as yet.
YAK Probably not suited to my audience, the use of shortcodes could make it a hard to explain to users how to upload products.
Cart66 (phpurchase) Tax options not available for Australia

I used WPMU’s Marketpress for the final solution. It was really the only option i had for an E-commerce multisite with wordpress.

The draw-backs to WPMU where plentiful.

WPMU products themes/plugins are loaded with unused buddypress code. I don’t use buddypress. I don’t even know what it is exactly.
The marketpress software i’snt brilliant but it works.
The only source of documentation is the forum
I found The support team frustrating. They would prefer to dodge questions rather then provide straight answers on the software capabilities. They are in america somewhere and there is a massive time difference to Melbourne. This made the process so slow.
So many times i asked the support team detailed questions, with screenshots etc, only to wait 15 hours for a basic routine response like “Is the plugin switched on?”
Fortunately for WPMU, when your monthly membership expires you aren’t allowed to post forum messages. I think this is quite an unethical business practice. I feel as if I’m paying to notify them of bugs in their software
WPMU are expensive.

This was a difficult project in general as there is plenty of functionality to consider with multisites. You have multiple accounts, multiple sites, different user roles and capabilities Gasp I got in done, and i have got to say I quite enjoyed creating this monster. New people sign up everyday. New products being uploaded consistently and for me, it’s a peek inside a world of craft I never new existed.

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wordpress lessons melbourne

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:06:02 +0000

WordPress themes can often be quite simple and easy to workout. That’s fine simple is good. But what about some of those jaw-dropping, must-have Wp themes. Are they simple? Easy to work out?

Well, some of them can test you. They will test your time, your patience and your knowledge of WordPress. Remember many themes come with access to a forum. But often support these kaotic forums are scary and its hard to get the support you require.

The High Art Theme is one of those drop dead gorgeous WP themes that comes with a couple advanced techniques ingrained into its core. It expects everyone to have a certain level of knowledge in order to use the theme as advertised.

I’m here for those who don’t want to spent the time working things out. I can show you how. Provide wordpress and theme specific training. Its quick, it’s painless, its friendly and effective.

Below is the HighArt theme which i got know quit intimately whilst working through a few customizations for “Girl Printer” Carolyn Fraser.

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Simple facebook Connect. What is the shortcode for manual Like

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Social media is not just a link to facebook. For far more in-depth facebook integration checkout “simple facebook connect” http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-facebook-connect/ This wordpress plugin is very popular, And its creator “Otto” is a busy man, so finding snippets of specific information can be difficult. I’m going to do you a solid and spare you the trouble of finding the shortcode for manual insertion of the facebook like button.

[fb-like]

This code, can go straight into any wordpress post or page.

Custom theme creation

admin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:48:16 +0000

Although there is plenty of free wordPress themes out there. Nothing beats custom made. Custom made themes are great for people that know exactly what they want. Custom made themes have a reputation for being expensive. Not true. Custom made themes will become expensive if you don’t know what you want. Being crystal clear about what you want can be quite the money saver.

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wordpress template help

admin — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:39:03 +0000

Some templates look great, but can be a little difficult to figure out. MVP Sports Marketing had a little trouble with their template “Work-A-Holic”, so they called me. I was able to fix the template issues and teach them how it all worked in less then an hour.

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Import large mysql database file using terminal

admin — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:07:03 +0000

Some databases are to big to copy using phpMyAdmin. So we need to use terminal.

Firstly, save your large database file from Php myAdmin as an Sql file to you hard drive folder on your desktop.

Fire up terminal.

Now change the cd (current directory) of terminal by typing in

cd / Desktop

Hit enter.

Now, according to terminal, your Desktop location is actually your main Hard drive folder not the place that displays your screen savers. So that is where we will be importing your file from.

Next step is to tell terminal the location of your Sql file and grant access to the database you want to copy your large SQL file into. So copy in this code

/path-to-the-mysql-database-you-are-copying-to/ -u database_username -p database_name < my_database.sql

Change the path to your mysql file, database name, database username, and the file name of the large database file accordingly.
Hit the Enter key.

If successful, it will ask for the password of the database. Type it in, hit Enter. Wait a moment…

Terminal will return with the current location.
No “Congratulations” messages, just the current location. Terminal is all business.

For safety, exit terminal by typing in

exit

Hit Enter

Hoped this helped. there are already plenty of tutorials that cover this topic, but I wanted to write one for my own records, plus When i was following the other tutorials none actually worked for me the first time.
So in writing this I got a chance to iron out some of the inaccuracies of the efforts of others.

Custom links for nextgen gallery single pics

admin — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 09:14:12 +0000

I like to use Nextgen gallery to handle all my site images. But what happens when you want to display a “singlepic” ie:

[singlepic id=13 w=312 h=212]

But! You want it to link to some place special, rather then just enlarging the image in a thickbox.

Firstly you obviously need the sensational NextGen Gallery installed, with at least one gallery of images ready to go.

Secondly, get the NextGen Gallery Custom Fields module. Install it, activate it, click on it (available from the left hand side admin menu) and create a new custom field for the “images” option rather then galleries. Give it a name. I called my custom field “link” as that’s what I’m using it for. I’m overriding the default link.

Then you’ll be asked what galleries you want your new “link” custom field to be available in. I created a gallery specifically for my front page and for my blog. So I linked my new custom field to both.

You need to make an adjustment to your nextgen gallery “singlepic.php” located in plugins/nextgengallery/view/.
replace this:

<a href="imageURL ?>" title="linktitle ?>"  echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
	" echo $image->classname ?>" src=" echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>" alt=" echo $image->alttext ?>"
	title=" echo $image->alttext ?>" />
 if (!empty ($image->caption)) : ?> echo $image->caption ?> endif; ?>
 endif; ?>

With this:

<a href="ngg_custom_fields["link"]; ?>"
title="description ?>"
 echo $image->thumbcode ?>  >
" echo $image->alttext ?>"
alt=" echo $image->alttext ?>" src=" echo $image->
thumbnailURL ?>"
 echo $image->size ?> />

 if (!empty ($image->caption)) : ?> echo $image->caption ?> endif; ?>
 endif; ?>

Notice how we are echoing out a custom field called “link”. Which was the name given to the custom field we made earlier.

Back to NgGallery now and you will see you are free to add whatever link you like, to whatever image you like. Effectively overriding the default nextgen gallery links.

Remember, If you update nextgen gallery plugin, this change will be overwritten, and the images will link to full size images again.