They claim to be "pinging Google", when it reality you can’t ping Google, what you can do is register a blog with Google Blogsearch, and set up a cms or blog to automatically ping Google Blogsearch every time you post. This means that every post you create will be indexed very quickly, but the main site pages (unless the site is powered by the blog engine, and all registered with Blogsearch) will still take the same time as before to be crawled and indexed.

In this case the company’s entire site is now powered by the WordPress blogging platform come content-management-system, which automatically pings Google Blogsearch every time they post. So, because the site is indexed in Blogsearch, pages and posts get indexed straight away. No mystery, no expensive service, something that anyone can do if they use a CMS that pings Google Blogsearch.

As some of you will know, our sister company Write About Property was added to the Google Blogsearch index (you have to add your site), but it is powered by the CMS we custom built, which didn’t automatically ping Google. When Write About Property asked us to add the functionality we wrote a pinger class.

The company in question’s designs are really good, it is a shame they feel the need to peddle mistruths to try and dupe non-tech savvy potential clients.

Q: Is There Anyway We Can Control the Layout after you Design our Website?

A: Yes.

WordPress started out as a blog, but with the ability to have a static homepage and blog index of recent posts on another page, and a host of other features implemented in various updates, WordPress is now a fully fledged, and fully capable content management system.

It has almost always been possible for developers to create themes that could be modified by the end user through the front-end control panel (wp-admin). From custom header images, the customisations became more and more advanced with themes like Thesis allowing the user to customise navigation background colours, number of columns, the width of those columns, all fonts, and practically every other aspect of the design aesthetics.

But it has just gotten easier. WordPress has just added custom theme API’s allowing developers to hook into the admin system and make their themes more customisable with half the work and code. When you don’t have to burn out your brain writing reams of code to make a simple customisation possible, it leaves a lot of brain power left over to put to creating even more complex flexibility in your design.

What this means is that those people who want control over the layout and look of their site can now have a site for a lower cost, that will either be as customisable or more customisable than a more expensive site a few years ago. More features, more flexibility, less dosh.

The firm came up with Tweet Slider V1, a jQuery based Javascript that pulls the user’s most recent tweets via the Twitter API, and displays them in a modern horizontal slider (see below).

The firm then worked to make the functionality portable, so that it could easily be used on other sites, regardless of the admin’s technical knowledge, before unveiling Tweet Slider to the world via the blog, Twitter and Facebook, read the post here.

They are exciting because they will allow us developers to make themes customisable much more easily than before. But at the same time it is daunting because it is a lot of new code and methods to learn, and also we must wonder how long WordPress will maintain backwards compatibility for the old way of doing it.

There are loads of other features for developers to chew over, but there is no point me listing them all here when they can all be read on the Codex page at WordPress.

It was always going to be a short post; I’m off now to get back in about the learning process of developing for WordPress 3.0.

Don’t get me wrong I have seen people attempt to use WordPress to power a property website, with just the bear minimum of modification, but it just isn’t right.

A property website needs property specific information, like Bedrooms, Price, Proximity to Beach etc. This can all be done using custom fields, but in honesty, unless the client is particularly familiar with WordPress, the Dashboard as it is will be very confusing for adding property details.

That said: I have also seen a heavily modified WordPress CMS powering a property website, to much greater success.

However I feel that if you are going to modify the package to that extent you might as well write custom property software, and use it for your property website projects.

That is a database driven site, where properties are added using a custom and lengthy form, with easy-to-use image upload fields and clear labels.

Immediately WordPress with a customised free theme, sprung to mind, but the client wanted to have an enquiry form on the site.

Now, I could have used a plugin to do this but I found a quicker, and I think better way.

Firstly I set up the site, adjusted the permalink structure, and a static homepage, including customised heading. Then I changed the comment form into an enquiry form like so:

First I changed the heading to say, make an enquiry, rather than leave a comment.

Then I changed the website label to telephone number, and the comments form comment to enquiry.

This would have been ok, apart from the fact that when the form was submitted, the telephone number would be converted into a url, with http prefix hyperlinked. Luckily it is pretty simple to remove the filter and stop this from being done.

I then customised the email sent to the moderator, so that it read as an enquiry, with an appropriate subject line and body. Job done, quickly, cheaply and efficiently – thank you WordPress. The site is: Buy Hurghada Property.com. Call 01776 707064 or 0845 272 3598 or email info@galloway-web-services.com to find out whether WordPress could be the right solution for your business.

My love affair with WordPress began just 2 years ago, and I wasn’t fully aware of how it could be customised until a year ago. Now that I do know, I am going to replace the hand-written content management system that I coded for Write About Property with WordPress.

I didn’t use WordPress because I wanted to have different sections for articles on overseas property and UK property, I didn’t think this could be done using WordPress but I now know that it can. When I eventually get round to incorporating WordPress into my existing CMS here is what I will be doing:

On the UK property articles page I currently have:

<?php

$sql = ("SELECT * FROM wap_content WHERE Type=’Article’ && Category=’UK Property’ ORDER BY id DESC");
$result = mysql_query($sql);

<?php while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$id = $row['id'] + 1 * 100;
$url = parse_title($row['Type']) . "s" . "/" . parse_title($row['Title']) . "-" . $id . ".php";
echo ‘
<h2><a title="’ . $row["Title"] . ‘" href="http://www.write-about-property.com/’ . $url . ‘">’ . $row["Title"] . ‘</a></h2>
<p class="smaller">
Posted:’ . $row["Date"] . ‘ – By ‘ . $row["Company"] . ‘</p>
<p>’ . sort_preview($row["Article"]) . ‘</p><a class="readmore" title="’ . $row["Title"] . ‘" href="http://www.write-about-property.com/’ . $url . ‘">Read More&hellip;</a>’;
}
?>

Now, to bring in the new WordPress posts on UK property above the posts in my existing CMS I need to add the following code directly above my code:

<?php require(‘blog/wp-blog-header.php’);
query_posts(‘category_name=uk-property’);
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<p class="smaller">
Posted:<?php the_date(”,’<span class="date">’,'</span>’); ?>By <?php the_author();?></p>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" class="rm">Read more&hellip;</a>
<?php endwhile;
endif;?>

The important bit there is <?php query_posts(‘category_name=uk-property’); ?>. So, when I do this on the overseas property page it will be

<?php query_posts(‘category_name=overseas-property’);?>. Then I simply put future articles into the WordPress CMS and their previews will appear above the articles from the old CMS. Job done!

WordPress is misconstrued as simply a blogging platform, when, in reality it can be used to power an entire website and blog.

For a start creating themes in custom designs is easy if you know how (and we do). Then it is just a case of selecting a static homepage from the settings/reading menu.

Once you have a static front page, your pages are linked like the pages of any website. The problem is – for most people – that websites tend to display their latest news or blog-posts on the pages of their website – usually in the sidebar or the footer.

They think that this is a problem for WordPress but it isn’t; 10-15 lines of code and you can display as many recent posts in whatever design, layout or fashion you like – heck, you can even display them by category in different areas if you so wish.

Thus, I have also dispelled another common myth: that there is no way to seperate the display of WordPress content into its categories. Like, say a property company wanted to have the latest articles on overseas property display on one page, and the latest articles on UK property on another. Again, 10-15 lines of code on each page and this can easily be done.

But what if you want to have a contact form, or a shopping cart, or a javascript gallery? Well for 90% of those things that one could ever want to do there will be an easy to use and install plugin, which will do the job straight out of the box. If however a plugin can’t be found that meets the needs of the task, there is nothing to stop you from creating the page manually, and installing it via FTP as you would with any website, and simply adding the link manually into the WP template.

To display post previews from the WordPress blog, and retain the WordPress functions, all that is needed is the inclusion of one file: wp-blog-header.php from the root folder of the WP install.

Here are some examples of websites where I have used WordPress as the CMS for the entire site:

The County Hotel Stoneykirk:

The client specified that their having control over the site; the ability to add and remove content easily was one of their core requirements. Rather than me reinventing the wheel, WordPress was the perfect solution, because it has such an easy to use interface (admin) and the Wysiwig editor is among the best I have seen.

Reclaimed Floorboards.com

The reason for choosing WordPress to power this site is because it is to be a content-focussed site, with guides, tips and articles all on reclaimed flooring. The featured content section is an excellent example of how post previews can be included on the main pages of the website. That box will display the 4 most recent posts from the featured content category.

I also plan to incorporate WordPress to power the articles and blog sections of Write About Property, using the include and functionality mentioned above, watch this space for an update on how smoothly that goes.

In the past, I was the first person to say that not all businesses need a website. That a small tradesman who goes self-employed in his local area should not spend heavily on a website, when his target market would be flicking through the yellow pages and hiring the competition.

That is before… Read full post

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