The Problem
The Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way technique made the author block appear on every single post in your WordPress install, let’s take the idea one step further and enable you to choose which posts to display a author block using the WordPress Custom Fields.

The Solution
We will be making edits to your single.php file, please make a backup of your originally single.php file just in case something goes wrong and you need to revert.

We will be using the author block example from Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way which is:

1
2
3
4

<div class="authbio">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>

We will also be using WordPress Custom Fields to trigger wether or not a WordPress Post will show an author block or not. For this example I added the author bio after the article, right before the share options and comments in single.php

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

<?php
   if($authbio = get_post_meta($post->ID, "authbio", "true")) {
?>
<div class="authbio">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>   
<?php } else {?>
* 
<?php }?>

What the above means:
WordPress checks for a Custom Field Key called “authbio” to see if there is any value. If there is a value, display the authbio div which includes our author pic and a short bio. If there is no “authbio” Custom Field Key then display *.

Essentially you can write a post, if you wish to display the author box then add the field “authbio” and give it a value of yes if you do not wish to display any author box then don’t add any field to that post.

For example purposes, this post had a custom field of “authbio” with a value of yes, you can see the author bio and pic at the bottom of the post. Please take a look at every other post on this site…you will notice that after every post you will see a * as this is the only post on this site with an author box.

Things to remember:
-If you are going to use this technique in your WordPress site remove the * or else you will have a * after every post with no author pic and bio, just leave it blank.
-You do not need to call your Custom Field Key “authbio” you can label it anything you want, just use the same naming convention in your php in the single.php.
-This posts references Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way several times, please read it if you have any questions about how to create an author bio and pic box.

Hope this helps, enjoy!

Name/Status:
thepenthousesuperparty.com/Online
Archived Locally: gabediaz.com/2007

Software:
Adobe Flash, Photoshop & PHP

Position:
Design & Development

Description/role:
With Super Bowl XLI coming to Miami in 2007 the company wanted an online presence for their branded event.

Technical Challenge:
A very short turn around time and 1 man team.

DISCLAIMER: Before making any edits to original files make sure to have backups in case something goes terribly wrong…not that it should but you can never be too safe!

WordPress Category Templates
WordPress Category templates are very easy to use, view the WordPress Codex – Category Templates and you will see that hierarchy for a category templates is:

• 1. category-6.php
• 2. category.php
• 3. archive.php
• 4. index.php

This basically just means that WordPress will first look for a template labeled category-6, if there is none, it will then look for category.php and so forth all the way down to index.php.

To create a custom category template, just copy your category.php and resave it as category+”your category ID number.” If you do not have a category.php, you can copy your archive.php or index.php but just remember that your custom template will look like the template you copied until you make your edits. So if you have a category.php, archive.php and index.php you will want to copy your category.php and work from there.

You can find your category ID number by logging into your WordPress backend…go to your categories section and hover over or copy any category names and you will see your category ID. Upload category-”ID#”.php to your theme directory and the specified category can now be freely styled to look differently than your other categories.

WordPress Page Templates
WordPress Page Templates may be easier than Category Templates. Wordpress looks for templates in the following order:

• 1. The Page’s selected “Page Template”
• 2. page.php
• 3. index.php

Let’s pretend we want to create a specific template for an “About Us” page. Most themes will have a page.php so once again, you can copy your page.php and resave it, let’s call it about.php.

Once resaved, our page template must start with the following 5 lines of code so add the following to the very top:

<?php
/*
Template Name: About
*/
?>

The above sets a name for your page template, so you can enter just about anything in the Template Name: “Your Choice” For the ease of consistency I would label the template name something similar to what I am saving the file, so this about.php will have a Template name of About. Now that you have your Page Template named along with some copied format from your original page.php you can edit this about.php to your hearts desire. Any edits made to about.php will only affect those pages using this template. Upload your new about.php to your theme directory and we are all set.

To use a Custom Page template just create or edit any page. You should see a dropdown box labeled Page Template, if all is in order you should see your template name as an option in the dropdown.

WordPress Post Templates
WordPress Post Templates are great because they allow you to make posts in different categories different from each other.

For example let’s say you had 2 categories named Apples and Oranges. You styled each category differently using Custom Category Templates but also wanted posts that appeared in Oranges to have a different look than posts appearing in Apples.

Custom Category Templates do not pass any styling to the posts within, posts take their styling from either single.php or index.php as per the WordPress Template Hierarchy.

Most themes will have a single.php, so yes once again duplicate your single.php…twice. We only need two Post Templates in this example since we want one Post Template for Oranges and just use our original Post Template for posts appearing in the Category Apples and the rest of our posts in our blog.

Let’s name one of our copies of single.php to singleOriginal.php, this is a direct duplicate of our original file unedited.

For our second copy of single.php that will be used as a Custom Post Template for the posts in Oranges, let’s save this file as singleOranges.php. This file will be the edited single.php that will have whatever custom edits you want for all Posts in the category Oranges. Make your edits to this file and you will also need to retrieve the category ID for the category Oranges, let’s pretend it has an ID of 10.

Recap
Before we move ahead, let’s make sure we have everything in order, we should have 3 files and 1 Category ID number.

The 3 files consist of a singleOrignial.php which is a direct duplicate of our original single.php. We should also have a singleOranges.php which has our edits for our custom look for all posts in the category Oranges(ID #10). And finally we should still have our original single.php unedited in it’s original format.

Now let’s edit single.php since WordPress first goes to single.php for all Post Templates. Edit your single.php with the following:

    <?php
    $post = $wp_query->post;
    if ( in_category('10') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOranges.php');}
    else {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOriginal.php');
    }
    ?>

That’s it! Basically the above checks the posts to see if it’s category 10, if so use the template singleOranges.php, else use singleOriginal.php. What if you wanted a Custom Post Template for Oranges, Apples and Grapes but still wanted a single.php for everything else?

    <?php
    $post = $wp_query->post;
    if ( in_category('10') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOranges.php');}
    elseif ( in_category('11') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleApples.php');}
    elseif ( in_category('12') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleGrapes.php');}
    else {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOriginal.php');
    }
    ?>

A very easy way to customize posts in any category. Go ahead and get creative with customizing then come back and leave a comment to show it off, would love to see what some people do!

I have close to 50 apps loaded onto my phone, but in reality there are only a handful that I use on a daily basis.

As the App Store is about to hit 1 billion downloads, here are “5 Must Have Free Apps” that I find to be great.

• TwitterFon – Yes Twitter is just about everywhere nowadays. From P. Diddy, to your local News Channel it seems that everyone has a Twitter account. The great thing about TwitterFon is that you have a menu bar on your screen which lets you sort through your Friends, Replies, Messages, Favorites and an option to Search. View profiles, see timelines and be able to retweet makes this my go to Twitter app.
• Google – Even if you don’t have a Google Account to make use of the Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc. features, just installing this app for the the Google Search feature is worth it. If you search using the google search bar using the iPhones built in Safari browser you will see the same results as you would on your computer If you use the Google App search you will get results tailored to your location. Not to mention search by voice is pretty cool.
• Fandango – Need to check what’s playing at your local theatre? Pop in your Zip Code and you are all set. Never tried to buy tickets through it but it is an option if your theatre supports it.
• Free Wi-Fi Locator – Using your current location this little app returns the nearest locations that offer Free Wi-Fi. This is not to be confused with other apps such as WiFinder which just searches for the nearest Wi-Fi locations.
• Pandora – Streaming music to your iPhone based on your choices. Listen to a song or two and Pandora will start to recommend music based on what you just heard. Create specific stations for different genres and enjoy free streamed music.

The above are only a handful of great apps so also check out: Skype, Mint.com, Facebook, AIM, Brightkite, Urbanspoon, Yelp and iTalk, you won’t be disappointed.

Have an app that you love? Please leave a comment and let me know, free or paid I love downloading and testing out new apps!

Those were the words that came out of my mouth this morning when I checked my email on my iPhone. For those registered to Adjix you may have received an email from the company announcing their new advertising format in which Twitter users will be able to embed an ad at the end of their Twitter Tweets in order to monetize off of their number of followers.

Adjix’s current ad program is based on link shrinking and including a text link on the top portion of the site as long as you are logged into your account on Adjix when shortening your link.

What’s actually useful about Adjix is that they offer several features such as the ability to track the number of clicks your unique shortened link receives. Not only are stats recorded for links with ads but there is an option to shrink a link without an ad, and yes you will still be able to track clicks for that URL.

Do people actually use the service for click tracking and not to serve ads?
Yes. More importantly one of the Twitter elite, @guykawasaki uses the Adjix service very frequently(to shrink and record stats) and if you visit his Twitter stream you will see that most, if not all of his links begin with http://adjix.com.

Adjix has a video demo of their new feature as well as details on their blog outlining Advertiser Info, Twitter User Info and how to install their bookmarklet in order to start embedding ads into your Tweets.

Luckily for me the only person I follow that uses Adjix is @guykawasaki, but the thought of monetizing on Tweets to a large list of followers may cause several to sign up and start using Adjix’s new ad embed. If so, we very well may see more Tweets as the mock put out by Adjix.

Creating Your New Database
Just sign into your account and navigate to Web Space & Access and then to MySQL Administration. Click on “New Database” and you will be prompted to name your new database along with the option of choosing between MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 5.0 for your new database. WordPress Requirements state that WordPress need PHP 4.3 or higher to function properly although a few plugins require that you use PHP 5 to function. Choose PHP 5 and your database will begin setup.

Since we created a new database and chose the option of MySQL your database is using PHP 5 right? Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Checking Your PHP Version by Creating a phpinfo.php File
1&1 will have your new database running PHP 4.4.9. Easiest way to check what version of PHP you are running is to create a phpinfo.php file and insert the following.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Upload this file to your directory and open phpinfo.php in your web browser.

The information at the top of this window will display the version of PHP that you are running.

Forcing 1&1 to Use PHP 5
It only takes 2 lines added to your .htaccess to force 1&1 to use a version of PHP 5. Add the following to the first 2 lines in your .htaccess file.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

Once you make the edits to your .htaccess upload it to your directory and once again open phpinfo.php in your web browser. You should now be able to see that your database is using PHP 5

Luckily the site was still functional but I could not access the admin section.  A quick search and I was able to find an article by Ajit Gaddam surprisingly enough called Solution to Error 500 after upgrading to WordPress 2.7.

—
Ajit’s fix:

This seems to be a problem for WordPress blogs which are hosted by 1&1
The solution to the Error 500 – Internal Server error
1. Create a file called “php.ini” in the /wp-admin/ directory of your blog
2. In the file add the text “memory = 20MB” without the quotes

—

What is odd is that I have installed a fresh install of WordPress 2.7 on a 1&1 server with no issues, but experienced this error only when upgrading to WordPress 2.7.

Also see Enabling Author Pic and Bio for WordPress Single Posts for displaying an author bio box on a post by post basis.

—

A lot of sites/blogs out there have guest posts and/or multiple authors who contribute content on a regular basis. Now, there is nothing new with displaying the author name of a post, that snippet of code is just

<?php the_author(); ?>

and will simply display the authors name. We want to get a little more stylish and display a bio with an image, usually you can find a small bio of the article author before or after the post you are reading. 2 quick random examples can be seen below:

Steven Snell(Vandelay Design and DesignM.ag) is a contributer to the popular site PSDTuts, they do an author pic/bio before the article.

From Steven’s 20 Photoshop Painted Inspiration and Brush Resources

Adelle Charles runs FuelYourCreativity.com in which she displays an author pic/bio after the article.

From Adelle’s Micromanaging a Creative

Both of these examples display a little information about the author along with a link to the author’s site. Who doesn’t love some link love?!

Both are also are calling in the author’s Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) that is linked to the author’s email*.

*For those who don’t know you can import an author’s image using the gravatar code:

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), '80' ); ?>

In which the author’s email will be checked with Gravatar, if the person has an account the image linked to their email will be displayed, exact same concept of pulling in avatars in the comments section of your favorite site.

But what happens if the author doesn’t have a Gravatar account?

Hmm…interesting.

Ok first thing first, make sure your author is listed as a “User” for your site. If they are not listed, create the account:

Go to your WordPress dashboard>>Users>>Authors>>Profile

Make sure the section for the Bio Info is filled out and while your at it make sure the First Name, Last Name and Nickname are filled out as well…they will come in handy later on.

Now open your Single Post php file, usually single.php. This page generates the layout of your article and is the file you need to edit in order to display some author info. For my example I added the author bio after the article, right before the share options and comments.

1
2
3

<div class="authbio">
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>

Yikes, ugly but it works!

Let’s add some quick CSS to make it look somewhat respectable, you can always style away later!

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

.authbio{
color: #666;
font-weight: normal;
background: #fff;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
width: 420px;
height:60px;
padding: 8px;
margin-bottom:5px;
}

Okay, so now we are pulling in the author’s bio…what about the image?

Remember all the author fields you were suppose to fill out? First Name, Last Name, Nickname…if you didn’t do it, go do it now!

Let’s add these lines before your the_author_description in your single.php file.

1

<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>

Your author image and bio should now look like this:

1
2
3
4

<div class="authbio">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>

What the above means:

The above img src is looking for a file in your “Your Theme Stylesheet Directory/images” folder aka www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/ThemeName/images/.

php the_author_firstname is the first name used in the author fields under dashboard>>users>>profile

Please note that this is just returning what was entered into the First Name field and not the complete author name. Finally the extension “.jpg” is appended to the name.

Now you just need to upload a photo to your: www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/ThemeName/images/ and name the file exactly the same name you placed in the First Name Field in the author profile.

Throw in a little CSS to clear up the spacing

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

img.alignleft {
    float:left;
    background-color: #fff;
    border:1px solid #ccc;
    padding: 4px;
    margin: 0 7px 2px 0;
    display: inline;
}

And we are looking pretty much done!

—

—

Things to remember:

You can put links in your bio, no need to forget to link back to your site.

The above technique is looking for an image labeled the same as the “First Name” of the author. Also try the_author_lastname(); or the_author_nickname();

The technique above will provide a static solution for an author who does not have a Gravatar account. What is great about Gravatar is that the image will follow you wherever go as it’s linked to your email address. If you change your Gravatar image I believe it will be reflected everywhere you have left a comment, written a guest post etc. Using a Gravatar helps your personal branding to be consistent throughout the web.

Hope this is helpful, as I used it as a solution for an guest author who has an offline presence.

Before using the Voice Search you will need to turn on the feature under “Settings” when you launch Google Mobile App. Don’t forget the instructions as “Voice Search only works in English, and works best for North American English accents.”

After you turn on the settings, just put the phone to your ear and the proximity sensor in your iPhone will start the process of recording your voice with a little beep. Speak regular into the phone and then just move the phone away from your ear.

Watch as Google does it’s magic.

And finally you are presented with your search results which are now optimized for your iPhone which are in the same fashion we are used to, just laid out more efficiently for your iPhone.

Of course Voice Search is cool in itself but when you launch the app, it will ask you if it can use your current location. By just saying “Movie Times” in the app I was able to pull up the times for the nearest theater.

Sure beats opening up an app, typing in the zip code of your location and then choosing the nearest theater! I also tested out some random searches which all returned what I was looking for. Overall, if you have an iPhone you probably already have the previous version of the Google Mobile App installed, just update and you’ll be all set. Else download the Google Mobile App from the iTunes Store and test away, you’ll be surprised how well it works and may definitely change the way you search on your iPhone.

Name/Status:
mypleasurepet.com/Offline

Software:
Flash, Photoshop

Position:
Flash Designer/Developer

Description/Role:
MyPleasurePet.com was an online initiative to bring to life the revamped Penthouse Magazine in a fun manner by “playing” with the current Pet of the Year, Heather Vandeven. Developed by Sugartown Creative, MyPleasurePet.com was a sexy/naughty Subservient Chicken.

Due to the site launch building up momentum(via launch party invitations), there was the need for a placeholder until the actual site went live. A countdown timer was a fun way to keep the momentum going and an outlet to give those early site visitors a definitive launch date.

Technical Challenge:
None.