About

This free plugin for Wordpress allows anyone to post to their Twitter account directly from your site’s sidebar. Want to test it out? Try it out in the sidebar.

Download

To download this plugin, sign up for a free account and download twitter-overload.zip from the downloads section.

Installation

Unzip twitter-overload.zip and move the entire twitter-overload folder into wp-content -> plugins. Activate the plugin on your Wordpress admin panel. Finally, visit your Appearance -> Widgets panel and drag the Twitter Overload widget into one of your widgetized areas.

How’d we do it?

Twitter has an API that allows developers to tap into posting and displaying updates on Twitter. There are many methods for interacting with Twitter remotely, including the oAuth approach, but we decided to use the PHP CURL approach because it’s flexible and easy to integrate into a plugin.

Error handling is handled with jQuery. Test it out by leaving one of the blanks empty and click submit. You’ll get a fancy little notice on what you did wrong.

Discount coupons

We have extended our 30% off subscription coupon for annual and annual developer membership subscriptions until Dec. 1, 2009. Only a limited number of coupons are still available, so please sign up soon so you don’t miss out.

• Coupon code: ED64B25D77
• Get the discount now.

Theme updates

Last week, we released updates to Modularity and all of its child themes, High-Def, F8, F8-Remixed, Modfolio, Modslider, and the newest of the bunch, On Assignment (more on this theme tomorrow). These updates provide users with a massive amount of flexibility and customization that didn’t exist before including the following:

• Color picker for easy site color customizations
• Easy logo insertion
• Manage slideshow images from the theme options
• Customizable navigational menu
• Close to 100 theme options. Click here to see all of the new theme options.

You can download these themes from your member page. If your membership expired, you will need to re-activate your subscription.

Tim Thumb (a thumbnail generating script) was removed to prepare our themes for a new and exciting feature in Wordpress 2.9, which is just around the corner. You can read more about the new cool photo cropping and thumbnail functions over at WPEngineer.com. It’s good to see Wordpress take a more unified approach to image and thumbnail management for posts. I was beginning to loose track of all the available image and thumbnail plugins. This will undoubtedly make Wordpress more user-friendly for visual folks.

Photo Galleria Plugin Updated

Yesterday I spent a few hours updating our Photo Galleria plugin to work with the latest version of Wordpress and the latest version of jQuery. Here are the major changes:

• Javascript is now added via the enqueue_script function, which Wordpress introduced a while back to help resolve javascript conflicts in plugins & themes.
• What this means to you is the plugin won’t conflict with themes containing existing javascript libraries nor should it conflict with any plugins
• Same simple activation: Simply activate the plugin and all of your existing galleries inserted into posts will use the script. No configuration needed.

PhotoShelter Plugins

We are currently beta testing and squashing server-specific bugs on our new PhotoShelter plugin. The new plugin merges all three previous plugins into one plugin. Here is an overview of the changes:

• Merges all 3 plugins into 1 plugin.
• Improved navigating through thousands of archived images
• Adds photo display options (lightbox overlay or direct link to PS photo page)
• Improved Searching
• Improved error handling

We would like to have a bullet-proof version for public consumption available by the end of next week. If you want to help beta test the new version, please get in touch.

New theme and plugin changelog

Curious to see how we work? Want to follow our theme development? Please check out our new and improved changelog: http://graphpaperpress.com/changelog/

Kudos to Philip Arthur Moore and our friends at Codebase on this project.

Wordcamp & Future of Web Design in New York

This weekend, I’m heading to New York to attend Wordcamp NYC and the Future of Web Design to, well, frankly, mingle with people who are way smarter than me. Hopefully some of it will wear off on me. I’m really looking forward to sharing ideas and meeting folks who I’ve been tangentially connected with over the last four years. Follow us on Twitter if you want to receive news snippets and updates from these events.

Next month

The next month is going to be massive for Graph Paper Press. We are releasing four new themes, each of which caters to the visual crowd. You can expect to see a few things that you have yet to see in Wordpress themes in our upcoming releases, including resizeable, full screen images, crazy cool modern portfolio designs, and best of all, continued killer support.

We’re excited to announce our first batch of Wordpress + PhotoShelter plugins that allow you to:

1. Integrate your PhotoShelter photos and galleries into your Graph Paper Press themes for Wordpress
2. Allow your visitors to search your PhotoShelter photos from your site’s sidebar
3. Pull in your PhotoShelter gallery updates into your site’s sidebar

If you are a photographer who uses PhotoShelter, these integration plugins will enable you to manage your portfolio, blog, and PhotoShelter photos and galleries all from one site. The combination of Wordpress, PhotoShelter and our themes and plugins will push your web presence into the future, allowing you to connect with clients, promote, sell and license your work all from one place.

How do you get this plugins?

These plugins are currently only available to our paying members. You will need to sign up and become a member of Graph Paper Press to download these plugins. So, yep, that’s over 20 themes, two hours of HD video tutorials, a well-groomed support forum managed by experienced Wordpressers, and these special PhotoShelter integration plugins.

Example

Jack Gruber is a staff photojournalist at USA TODAY, the largest newspaper in the US. His newly integrated website allows him to:

• Shoot, batch upload to PhotoShelter, and batch insert his photos into his new site in minutes
• Store his photo archive with PhotoShelter
• Add PhotoShelter photos and galleries to his Wordpress-powered site
• Allow his site visitors to search his photo archive from his Wordpress sidebar
• Retain the same look and feel across his PhotoShelter + Graph Paper Press + Wordpress site

Here’s a secret: Jack Gruber is sporting our new On Assignment theme (a free child theme for Modularity). This theme is a free download and is available in your member area. If you are an existing GPP user, you will need to log into your Member area; if you are a newcomer to GPP, you will need to signup to download.

For those who don’t know what PhotoShelter is, here is a brief run-down of their services, in their own words:

PhotoShelter builds the best photography websites with sales and marketing tools, high-res file delivery, and secure image archiving. We serve over 48,000 photographers worldwide, from full-time pros to aspiring artists.

Discount
In all honesty, if you are a serious photographer, you need PhotoShelter. Here is a little incentive: PhotoShelter is giving Graph Paper Press users a special discount. Sign up for PhotoShelter here for the special discount. The savings is a $55 discount compared to their regular monthly account ($29.99) and $25 off their advertised annual discount (normally $329). This special offer last until Oct. 31, 2009.

Now lets take these plugins for a little ride, shall we?

How to integrate PhotoShelter & Wordpress (Tutorial #1)

How to add PhotoShelter galleries to a Wordpress sidebar (Tutorial #2)

How to add PhotoShelter gallery updates to Wordpress (Tutorial #3)

How to search PhotoShelter photos from Wordpress (Tutorial #4)

We have also updated Modularity, F8, F8-Remixed, and Modslider to version 2.1. These are merely enhancements and not critical at all. Most of the upgrades happened on the Theme Options page, as you can see in this video tutorial:

In case you’ve missed it, we’ve been busy reinventing our theme lineup, with updates to Modularity and all of its child themes, the Gridline suite, Fullscreen and Work-a-holic. You can read about specific changes by visiting our theme changelog page. These updates will give you the ability to:

• Add new and improved homepage applications
• Install virtually any plugin, without running into javascript conflicts
• Retain theme options configuration when switching between child themes for Modularity
• Load your site quicker than ever, thanks to decreased theme file sizes.

If you are a current or past Graph Paper Press theme user, this is a highly recommended update.

Graph Paper Press also went back to the design chopping block and has emerged much cleaner and now features links to a growing list of sites using our themes. We received a flood of emails after we released this feature and I’ve got to say that I’m totally and utterly impressed by how our sites are being used around the world wide internets. These sites are a testament to our Wordpress theme design philosophy: We build themes that are highly flexible and minimally skinned so that you, the publisher, can have maximum creative control. The people who use our themes are highly creative content producers, including photographers, videographers, designers, and publishers.

The new Graph Paper Press site is a slightly modified version of Modularity. Here is the amazing part: The site redesign was completed in about eight hours total. Yep, eight hours. Designing with Modularity as a base theme makes theme development ridiculously simple because of the numerous homepage “apps” to choose from. These apps, paired with a CSS framework, gave me a great head start on reinventing this site. More changes are planned, so stay tuned.

In theme news, we postponed the release of Fullscreen Pro so that we could update our existing set of themes. That said, Fullscreen Pro is going to be a real surprise and will include a feature set that is much, much more robust that initially planned. Fullscreen Pro is actually three themes crammed into one, with a set of homepage designs to select from on the theme options page. This will be very popular with the photo/visual crowd.

And to keep up with the Jones’, we’re also now on Twitter. Imagine that! As you can see, I’m not a huge fan of the site, but it will give us another channel to communicate smallish news updates and snippets of goodness from around the Web. So follow us if you want.

Notable improvements

1. Optional full-screen HD video display on homepage
2. Cross javaScript framework compatible – this means, you can now add plugins that use any other javaScript library than jQuery.
3. Revamped theme options. Fewer clicks!

Feature changes

1. Theme Options – Show or hide contact info in the menu.
2. Theme Options – Easy selection of categories. No more searching for category IDs! (for 2.8.1 only)
3. Theme Options – Add your custom logo.
4. Navigation issues in IE fixed.
5. Slider overlapping issue fixed. Now only pulls posts that has images.
6. Dynamic slideshow also pulls posts that have images so no blank frames.
7. Static slideshow reads from the slideshow folder and automatically pulls 5 random images at a time. No more hard-coding needed. You only have to upload your images in the slideshow folder.
8. Choose to show slideshow or a video on the main area on homepage.

View the improved Theme Options page

Minimized theme options page

Full theme options page

We are also now on Twitter! Follow us.

Work-a-holic is a free minimalistic two and three column WordPress theme that focuses mainly on showcasing portfolios for artists, web designers, photographers and illustrators. Work-a-holic separates your portfolio from your blog, enabling easy navigation for clients in a clean, intuitive fashion. It also has a separate sidebar for portfolio (shows recent projects) and a separate widgetized sidebar for the blog and pages.

Major features

• Separate Blog and Portfolio Section
• Blog lists posts as normal blog
• Portfolio pulls latest thumbnail of the post and lists each of them on three columns
• Multiple image gallery container (slider) on portfolio posts
• Basic Theme Options
• Twitter integrated – shows latest Tweet
• Separate sidebar on Portfolio and normal sidebar on Blog
• One Page template with separate sidebar
• Ability to have a separate desired Thumbnail if WP-Post-Thumbnail plugin is installed
• jQuery effects on Portfolio thumbnails
• Multi-level Drop Down Menu
• Support Nested Comments
• Three footer widgets
• Uses 960 css framework and jQuery javascript framework
• XHML: This theme has been tested on Firefox, Safari, IE 8, 7, 6.

Work-a-holic examples

• Built-in gallery script in action
• Portfolio category archive
• Blog archive
• Page template

Setting up Work-a-holic Video

• Separate Blog / Portfolio and setting up images / excerpt for Portfolio

Fullscreen is a free one-column photography and multimedia theme for Wordpress that can be used for portfolios, photoblogs, videoblogs, and virtually anything else where you want your content to be front and center. It provides visual artists (photographers, painters, videographers, motionographers, illustrators) a better way of presenting their latest work online using a minimalist side-scrolling homepage. Emphasis is placed on your content, rather than on an overly designed theme. If you are a free or paying subscriber to Graph Paper Press, Fullscreen can be downloaded from your member page.

Major Features

• Side-scrolling homepage packed with thumbnails representing your posts
• Automatic thumbnail generator with the ability to override the automated thumbnails
• Built-in HD video player for self-hosting HD quality video
• Ability to embed video from YouTube (HD), Vimeo, MetaCafe, Seesmic, Google Video, Revver
• jQuery UI framework for icons
• 950 pixel wide theme with no left or right sidebar
• Comments are revealed in a modal dialog window to minimize page clutter
• Threaded comments
• Three footer widgets
• Built-in Gravatar support for comments
• Drop-down navigation to maximize homepage space
• Built atop CSS frameworks to speed customization
• Forward and backward compatibility with previous versions of Wordpress
• XHML: This theme has been tested on Firefox, Safari, IE 8, 7, 6.

Fullscreen examples

• Matthew Brady Clark is a fabulous apparel and graphic designer living in Georgetown, Texas. Check out his new portfolio site using Fullscreen.
• View a sample gallery page using the Fullscreen theme.
• View a sample full-width photo page.
• View the built-in HD video player.

Design philosophy

We think your site should highlight your content, not our design. Our design takes a back seat so that your content can shine through front and center. The homepage of Fullscreen is an amalgam of your latest visual content, organized in a hierarchical manner with your latest five posts featured twice as large as the preceding 20 posts. Single post pages are 950 pixels wide, enabling your post large photos, videos, or other work that is important to you. Three widgetized areas give you customization control over the bottom (footer) region of your site.

There are a few basic principle that you must know before jumping into this tutorial. First, javascripts are like car parts: You can’t mix Ford parts and expect them to work on a Honda. The same goes with javascript libraries. Conflicting javascript libraries can cause some javascript-powered features to “choke” or freeze. There are ways to use multiple libraries together, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Second, you must load JQUERY before you load JQUERY plugins, like the ones we use on our sites. Make sure that JQUERY shows before other javascripts in the head of your site.

Demo
Download

First
Unzip the download files posted above. Upload slider.css, slider.php, timthumb.php, the /js/ and /cache/ folders into your active theme folder. Copy the contents of the /images/ folder into your themes /images/ folder. Do not overwrite your existing /images/ folder. TimThumb.php requires the GD library, which is available on any host sever with PHP 4.3+ installed. Manually change the /cache/ folder permissions to 777.

Open up header.php in the theme editor. Add these three lines of code somewhere between the <head> and </head>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/slider.css" type="text/css" media="screen" charset="utf-8">
<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/slider.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>

If you already have JQUERY running on site, do not add it again. If you are unsure, view your source code and look for a line containing “jquery.”

Second
Now that we have loaded the css and javascripts required for running the slider, we can now include the slider.php Wordpress template file in your theme files. Open up index.php or home.php and locate spot where you want to include the slider. If you are using our Modularity theme framework, you might insert the slider right above this line of code:

<?php
$featured = get_option('T_featured');
if($featured == "On") { include (THEMELIB . '/apps/featured.php'); }
?>

Paste this right above it:

<?php include ('slider.php') ?>

As you might guess, this tells Wordpress to include the slider.php.

Third
Finally, we are going to create a custom write panel to your Wordpress post, so that you can choose a thumbnail for each post. Open up your functions.php file and add this code right above the very last ?>.

// Custom Write Panel
$meta_boxes =
	array(
		"image" => array(
			"name" => "image",
			"type" => "text",
			"std" => "",
			"title" => "Image",
			"description" => "Using the \"<em>Add an Image</em>\" button, upload an image and paste the URL here. Images will be resized. This is the post main image and will automatically be sized.")
	);
function meta_boxes() {
	global $post, $meta_boxes;
	echo'
		<table class="widefat" cellspacing="0" id="inactive-plugins-table">
			<tbody class="plugins">';
			foreach($meta_boxes as $meta_box) {
				$meta_box_value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $pre.'_value', true);
				if($meta_box_value == "")
					$meta_box_value = $meta_box['std'];
				echo'<tr>
						<td width="70" align="center">';		
							echo'<input type="hidden" name="'.$meta_box['name'].'_noncename" id="'.$meta_box['name'].'_noncename" value="'.wp_create_nonce( plugin_basename(__FILE__) ).'" />';
							echo'<h2>'.$meta_box['title'].'</h2>';
				echo'	</td>
						<td>';
							echo'<input type="text" name="'.$meta_box['name'].'_value" value="'.get_post_meta($post->ID, $meta_box['name'].'_value', true).'" size="70%" /><br />';
							echo'<p><label for="'.$meta_box['name'].'_value">'.$meta_box['description'].' </label></p>';
				echo'	</td>
					</tr>';
			}
	echo'
			</tbody>
		</table>';		
}
function create_meta_box() {
	global $theme_name;
	if ( function_exists('add_meta_box') ) {
		add_meta_box( 'new-meta-boxes', 'Photo for post', 'meta_boxes', 'post', 'normal', 'high' );
	}
}
function save_postdata( $post_id ) {
	global $post, $meta_boxes;
	foreach($meta_boxes as $meta_box) {
		// Verify
		if ( !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST[$meta_box['name'].'_noncename'], plugin_basename(__FILE__) )) {
			return $post_id;
		}
		if ( 'page' == $_POST['post_type'] ) {
			if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post_id ))
				return $post_id;
		} else {
			if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post_id ))
				return $post_id;
		}
		$data = $_POST[$meta_box['name'].'_value'];
		if(get_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value') == "")
			add_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', $data, true);
		elseif($data != get_post_meta($post_id, $pre.'_value', true))
			update_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', $data);
		elseif($data == "")
			delete_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', get_post_meta($post_id, $meta_box['name'].'_value', true));
	}
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'create_meta_box');
add_action('save_post', 'save_postdata');

You are done.
If you have made it this far, it’s now time to see your slider in action. Go write a new post in Wordpress, paste the URL to your image in to the new image panel, and view your site.

Cheers.

Thanks to CSS Tricks for the jquery trick, TimThumb for thumbnail generation and Wordpress for the great publishing system.

This theme is going to rock the iPhone, too. It’s gonna be mobile-friendly so you can pitch editors, entice clients and promote your work while on the go.

Now we turn to you, the faithful Wordpresser. What would you like to see in a photo gallery theme? Post your suggestions in the comments below.

For those interested, you can grab the latest Modularity theme framework and Modslider releases from the members-only area. These two updates squashed a couple IE bugs.

By now, most of you have had a chance to log into our new “members only” section. For those who have not, here is your chance. The new membership system improves how we interact with Graph Paper Press theme users, forum support, downloads, theme updates, etc. Users can now grab all our themes and member-only content (support, tutorials, etc) access by signing up. Both free and paid memberships are available.

Why the new membership system, you ask? It is simple. Wordpress has grown tremendously recently, so fast in fact, that it is easy to spend hours and hours Googling for answers to basic Wordpress questions. Many questions posted on the official Wordpress forums often go unanswered largely because there is a finite group of developers responding to an exponentially increasing user base. We offer an alternative to that system by keeping our user base small and focused around a familiar theme framework. Oh yeah….plus we make some neat themes and child themes that can manage your portfolio or magazine Web site.

UPDATE: Re-enrollment has now closed. Previous theme buyers must use the coupon code emailed out to receive an enrollment discount.