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Justin Tadlock: Using custom taxonomies to create a movie database

Justin Tadlock — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:10:29 PDT

Pop Critics Movie Database

Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about how to create custom taxonomies in WordPress. I still get questions every day about practical applications with them.

Usually, I’m asked, “I understand the definition of taxonomy, but what do I do with them?” This is what I will attempt to answer in this post.

At the end of last week, I managed to talk my cousin into helping me set up a movie database. I thought this would be a great testing ground for custom taxonomies and allow me to present an example of how they can be used.

Go ahead and take a spin around the database and see what we’ve put together. I think it’s a neat concept.

You should make note that some of the things explained in this tutorial assume that you’re running WordPress 2.8+.

If something in the design is a bit wonky, pay it no attention. I just quickly merged it with the main site design and it could use some work.

The custom taxonomies

I created six new taxonomies for my WordPress install: actor, director, genre, producer, studio, and writer. These taxonomies allow readers to find movies based on certain criteria. For example, you can view movies that Tom Hanks has starred in.

The idea here is to give readers the ability to navigate around your site. You want organized content. You want content that’s linked together in meaningful ways. Custom taxonomies allow us to group our content in ways that simple categories and tags can’t.

Creating the custom taxonomies

I recently covered how you can easily create taxonomies in WordPress 2.8. To understand the mechanics behind creating and using them, read that post.

To do this, I added this code to my theme’s functions.php file:

<?php 

add_action( 'init', 'create_pc_db_taxonomies', 0 );

function create_pc_db_taxonomies() {
	register_taxonomy( 'actor', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Actors', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'actor', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'actors' ) ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'director', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Directors', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'director', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'directors' ) ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'genre', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Genres', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'genre', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'genres' ) ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'producer', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Producers', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'producer', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'producers' ) ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'studio', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Studios', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'studio', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'studios' ) ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'writer', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => __('Writers', 'series'), 'query_var' => 'writer', 'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'writers' ) ) );
}

?>

Creating term clouds with custom taxonomies

If you take a look around the movie database, you’ll notice I’ve made ample use of term (tag) clouds. Each represents a different taxonomy and will help you find movies in different ways.

A term cloud of movie genres

Built into version 0.6 of the Hybrid theme (will be released after WordPress 2.8) is a widget called Tags. Traditionally, this widget would allow you to show a tag cloud. In the new version, there’s a select box to choose a taxonomy, which allows us to create a term cloud based on any custom taxonomy. Pretty cool, right?

If you’re not fortunate enough to be using the Hybrid theme, you can hardcode a term cloud like so:

<?php wp_tag_cloud( array( 'taxonomy' => 'taxonomy_name' ) ); ?>

Displaying custom taxonomies in a post

Also covered in my previous tutorial was how to list taxonomy terms for a post. Simply replacing taxonomy_name in the below code with the unique name of your taxonomy will handle that.

<?php echo get_the_term_list( $post->ID, 'taxonomy_name', 'Taxonomy Label: ', ', ', '' ); ?>?

Here’s a look at the movie page (single post view) of Turner & Hooch:

Custom taxonomies on a single-post view

Notice how each taxonomy’s terms are listed. It gives you a view of the actors, genres, directors, producers, studios, and writers for the individual movie.

Displaying taxonomy terms in a page

When dealing with the vast amount of movies available, there’s no good way to show off everything in a sidebar and other small areas. I needed a way to show off each taxonomy on a separate page. So, I created six page templates to handle this:

In each template, I used the wp_tag_cloud() function (shown above) to show off a particular taxonomy. If you’re unfamiliar with creating page templates, read this tutorial on how to create your own.

Taxonomy term templates

Taxonomy terms get their own templates just like tags, categories, and other archives. In keeping with the Tom Hanks scenario, we’ll take a look at the Tom Hanks archive.

There are several things we have to do to make this happen. First, one useful bit of code I appended to my theme’s functions.php file allows me to add any XHTML to my term descriptions:

remove_filter( 'pre_term_description', 'wp_filter_kses' );

Once that was done, I found Tom Hanks under my Actors taxonomy in my WordPress admin (a sub-menu of Posts). I then added an image and short description of the actor. This shows up at the top of the Tom Hanks archive:

View of the Tom Hanks actor archive

Not all themes’ archives are equipped to handle this. Instead of hacking up your theme’s archive.php template, copy and rename it to taxonomy.php. You’ll want to add these two code snippets to this file, replacing other code that might be in the way. Theme authors: You should take note of this.

To get the proper name of the taxonomy term (usually the archive page title), use this code:

<?php $term = get_term_by( 'slug', get_query_var( 'term' ), get_query_var( 'taxonomy' ) ); $term->name; ?>

To show the taxonomy term description, use this code:

<?php echo term_description( '', get_query_var( 'taxonomy' ) ); ?>

Try creating custom taxonomies for yourself

I hope this helps explain how taxonomies can be used on a site. I wanted to give everyone a real-world example to better understand the concept.

I didn’t go into complete detail on each bit of code because the post was getting much too long. In order to better understand how the code works, read over my tutorial on creating custom taxomies. There’s a lot of great information in that post.

As always, feel free to ask questions and discuss. I’ll be happy to help out. Heck, go rate a few movies on the movie database. It could be fun!

10 Things You can Do with WordPress Besides Blogging

Dan Philibin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:00:14 PDT

Today you’re going to learn 10 things you can do with WordPress besides blogging, and whether you’re a WordPress newbie or longtime veteran - I guarantee that you will learn something after reading this post!

While WordPress is the world’s most popular self-hosted blogging solution, it’s also an open source CMS (Content Management Solution). WordPress is known for it’s blogging capabilities, but being a CMS as well it can do nearly anything that can be done within a web site. Like a Forum, photo gallery, web directory, classifieds site, jobs board, news site, and more! The advantage of doing these kinds of things within WordPress are that you can use it for either blogging or other features in as well!

Imagine being able to create a web directory, but use WP RSS, comments, pingback, plugin, and theme features? Consider the ability to add a blog within a subsection of a web site without having to install a separate instance of WordPress there (because WP runs your entire site!).

There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of things you can do with WordPress that aren’t blogging, but here are the top 10 ones I could think of to get the gears turning inside your head!

1. Create a Static Web Site

I’m amazed sometimes when people don’t understand why I would want to create a static web site using WordPress. There are 3 reasons this is the best solution I can think of:

Sheer speed of Setup
Plugins and Themes
Future Growth

I can setup an entire WordPress web site including database and initial setup options in about 10 minutes. I can customize it very quickly with a theme. I can add a very detailed contact form in about 5 minutes with a simple plugin. With another plugin I can generate an XML sitemap to register with the 3 major search engines. To do the same with static HTML (even Dreamweaver) would take soooo much longer, and would require extra scripts for a contact form and XML sitemap.

In addition if I created a 10 page static web site for a client using WordPress, I could create a login account for them and they could update their own web site (or add pages) in the future without needing my assistance. You certainly can’t do that with a static web site!

If you create a static web site in the future using WordPress - here’s what you need to know:

As soon as you setup the site, change permalink structure by going to settings -> permalink in your dashboard. Change the default date based permalink to /%postname%/ like this:

Next, since you’re building a static site you need to assign a static home page. In settings -> reading in your dashboard assign a static page to display for the home page. If you’re going to use the blogging function as well, you can assign it to a sub-page of your blog here as well:

Last, turn off comments. You can turn these back on for any invidual pages (or posts if you use the blogging feature later). Go to settings -> Discussion to turn comments off by default:

2. Build a Directory

Web Directories are old school Internet! A Directory is just a listing of sites, categorized in some way. There are blog directories, business directories, web design directories - just about any niche you can think of is available. To this day people still like directories because unlike a search engine (with millions of results), a good directory usually has great sites categorized by exactly the topic you’re looking for. From a web site owner point of view, directories are usually viewed as a great way to build links, traffic, and authority for your site.

Most web directories are built on some custom PHP script developed specifically for that purpose. Many directories I’ve seen had a script running the main web site, and then WordPress installed in a sub-folder running a blog. You don’t need to do that, because you can actually easlily build your own directory right in WordPress.

You could of course just build a static site, and then create your own pages building a directory by hand. But that would be a lot of work! Why not use a free plugin to automate the process a bit.

Build a Link Directory:

With Sean Blueston’s WP Link Directory Plugin you can build little directory of links with features like categories, search, reciprocal link detection, and the ability to allow paid premium links for a fee via paypal.

Category pages contain pagerank info, link, and description:

If you’re looking for something a bit more complex (that you could scale a bit), you need to check out Open Directory Links. You could definitely build your own open directory in WordPress with this:

It’s got great style and layout and even RSS feeds available at the category levels. It even has pagerank, refer to a friend, and add bookmark for each link:

Maybe you have more of a business site and a “business directory” for your niche would add great value for your client. The difference between a business and link directory is that a business directory has name, link, and description attributes, but also the ability to support phone number and physical address as well:

An advanced type of business directory might be one where you have an event that people have to register for, and you want to feature all the companies they work for online. In that case the Social Events and Registration Directory Plugin is exactly what you’re looking for. People can register for an event, get a confirmation email, and it can even support social networking links, RSS feed links, and custom fields.

3. Start a Classifieds Site

Maybe you’d like to start a classifieds site for your group, organization, commnity, or business. The coder of the open directory links plugin also makes a WP Classifieds WordPress Plugin!

It’s fully featured with post dates and view counts, and a fully featured submit form. Users can add contact information an image, and they have an wysiwig editor for ads! Users don’t have to create an account at all to submit ads, spam is controlled by captcha, and all category pages gave RSS links available for visitors.

You can also add classified to a WordPress site with Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin. It has nice layout, but support the ability to charge for listings.

Browsing ads is a breeze with the very flexible layout which shows image, location, date posted, and views. It’s very easy to change categories with the dropdown at the top of each page and the ability to change how many ads are listed per page:

4. Create an Article Repository

Maybe you’ve seen all those great article repositories online and thought it would be a great idea for a site of your own! It’s a great way to get free content and traffic, and there are lots of scripts and programs out there that make setting one up a breeze! With these plugins you can create your own article directory right in WordPress, and use all the normal WP features and functions available!

Using the Article Directory Plugin you can easily setup an aricle repository in your WordPress powered site. It allows you to accept articles submissions, and you can even get targeted content from the article dragon network (you have total control to accept or reject articles). You can quickly build an article repository with this plugin.

5. Make an Image Gallery

Are you a photographer? Are you the “tech guy” of your family tree? Are you in charge of the web site for a local group or organization? Having a baby or wedding? I can’t believe the amount of times I got an email with a link to somebody’s Yahoo account for pictures to a corporate event or small business picnic. I can’t count the number of photographers paying big amounts for online photo managers when there are free tools that would allow them to manage photos within their own web site. There are incredible free plugins available for WordPress for showcasing and displaying images.

NextGen Gallery is the end-all be-all of plugins for photo management in WordPress.

Some of it’s abilites are random pics in the sidebar:

It has the ability to manage hundreds and thousands of pictures in sortable and categorizable galleries. You can upload an entire zip file with pictures for inclusion, and it boasts a fully integrated flash slideshow.

You have complete control of home many galleries are displayed per page, you can have an index page listing all galleries, and you control how the galleries are shown, from the size of the images to the attributes beneath them (title, description, link, etc.).

Another plugin worth mentioning is the Page Flip Image Gallery. If all you need to do for yourself or your client is display some sample work, show a portfolio, or just a simple image gallery - this is awesome! It features full screen mode, and you can even use either JPG files or SWF flash files for gallery display! It has batch upload, upload from URL, and zip file upload.

If you just need something basic and simple, then the Lazyest Gallery Plugin might be just the right one for you! It offers automatic thumbnail and slide creation, and you can add comments on images and folders. It has widgets for random pic and folder list, and you can add captions to all folders and images:

If you’re really lazy, maybe all you want to do is just include your already existing photo galleries. If that’s the case you might want to check out the plethora of Picasa Plugins or Flickr Plugins for WordPress.

6. Build a Review Site

Another great idea is to build a “Review Site” in WordPress. Let’s face it, the bulk of the blogs online are talking about something and giving an opinion (review). There are many sites that review products and services, and there are countless ways of displaying them. I had said that all 10 of my ideas in this article would be alternatives to blogging, but reviews can be done in pages, but also in running blog fashion with individual posts. It just depends on how you decide to setup your site and which plugins you decide to utilize.

One way to do this is with the Review Box plugin. By using a simple shortcode, you can add a “review box” to any page or post in which you can summarize up pros, cons, and then set a percentage rating:

There are also tons of premium themes and plugins for sale so you can create a “review site” in WordPress, but if you want to do it on the cheap, in my opinion the best plugin for that is GD Star Rating.

If you want users to be able to rate or review pages or posts, one of the best plugins for that is WP Post Ratings by Lester Chan. It allows live ratings by users, and shows vote counts, and average rating:

7. Start a Discussion Forum

A discussion forum is probably one of the greatest sources of content you could ever ask for! It’s the epitomy of give and take online, usually people asking for help, and experts answering questions to give their expertise (and signature links) greater exposure.

There are countless hacks and plugins for integrating a “stand-alone” forum or bulletin boards into WordPress, but most people I’ve talked to don’t know that you can can actually create an entire forum inside WordPress itself!

Simple:Press Forum allows you to create an entire (and fully featured) threaded discussion forum within WordPress itself. It has as many (if not more) features than most standalone forums I’ve used. It has search, user registration, rss feeds, pagination, breadcrumbs, full stats, fine grained user control. I’ve used this plugin several times, and I haven’t setup a standalone forum script since.

Another plugin available to create a fully-fledged forum in WordPress is WordPress Forum. It’s last update is Sept 2008, but it does appear to work with WordPress versions 2.02 or higher.

8. Aggregation

I hope I don’t catch a lot of flak for this one, because WordPress aggregation is probably the single most abused feature available. It’s true, there are so many autoblogging plugins available it’s not funny - plugins that sploggers and spammers use to create sites with automatic content hoping to get indexed in search engines and make money for free on autopilot.

Aggregation can be used for good, and I don’t see that many web sites using it that way anymore. RSS feeds are available for readers to subscribe to your content. They are also available to keep track of the most recent updates, and you can aggregate the titles, links, and short excerpts of these updates on your web site for your readers (or even just for you). In addition, there are RSS feed available for things besides blogs you may not have even thought about, AND there are some plugins that provide aggregation without RSS at all - maybe they use an API!

Let me give you some examples….

Are you a twitter-holic? You could use a plugin like Tweet Blender to aggregate tweets from multiple users and / or specific hashtags:

Next I’ll show you some great uses of RSS feeds (first) and then directly after I’ll show you how to “aggregate” these feeds into WordPress using a plugin…

Nearly every category on Craigslist has an RSS feed you can use. Maybe you belong to an organization, group, or even a band that could benefit from including such a feed on your web site. A real estate site could list the latest Craigslist rental listings, a musician site could list the latest gear for sale, etc.

You could do the same thing with eBay. Maybe your client has a business that lists things on eBay. Do an advanced search and the bottom of that page has an RSS feed you can use. Maybe you have a sewing club, you could use an RSS feed from product searches you wanted to track, like fabric sewing machines, patterns, etc.

On ANY eBay search page after the auctions:

scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the RSS link:

You can search on nearly topic using google blog search, and every search there has an RSS feed as well. For example, my could could benefit from a page with an aggregation of the lastest blog postings about WordPress!

Now that I’ve given you some RSS ideas, let’s take find out how to aggregate them into WordPress in a usable fashion. I’ve used a few RSS feed aggregator plugins over the years, but the only that seems to still exist (and be updated frequently) is Feed WordPress.

By using Feed WordPress you can “aggregate” RSS feeds and publish them as WordPress posts. You can see where this can be highly abused by unscrupulous bloggers who want to steal content from other places so they can profit at the original author’s expense. There’s also no reason why you can’t use this for good, and aggregate simple titles and excerpts of posts that might be useful to your visitors. In that regard it’s no different than what a search engine or news compilation site does anyway. If you’re worried about duplicate content, you can go as far as to add an entry into your robots.txt file for noindex, nofollow, and you could even manually remove it from your XML sitemap.

Post can be configured any way you like, giving linkback attribution (or not), and web sites can even be listed as authors (contributors) in your blogroll. You choose what tags and categories are assigned to them, and where the permalinks point. For the most part, the posts you aggregate just look like regular blog posts.

Maybe you want something a little bit simpler than turning RSS feeds into actual blog posts, and you just want to take that Craigslist RSS feed, or eBay RSS feed and list the contents onto a paged page. WordPress already has the ability to parse RSS using the included magpie library.

By using this simple bit of code in any WordPress theme page:


<?php include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
wp_rss('http://example.com/rss/feed/goes/here', 20); ?>

…you can parse any Worpress feed into a list of simple linked titles. This is an incredibly simple way to add value to your blog, and you could add as many different feeds (or numbers of posts) per page as you want. Just keep in mind that this is live (nothing is cached) the more feeds, or more posts per feed you add, the slower the page might be to generate.

9. Membership site

There are bunches of reasons you might want to have a closed “members only” web site. Maybe you need something only your family can access, or a private site for your business or club. Maybe you want to sell access to content, and you need part (or all) of your site walled off from public view.

Memberwing is a WordPress plugin that allows you to setup a membership site. Like many plugins there’s a free and a “pro” version. While the paid versions have all kinds of bells and whistles, the free version does exactly what most people would need, by using special tags it separates “teasers” from premium (paid) content. In this example you can see how content is hidden and users have options to either login or “become a member”.

If you like to keep things a bit simpler than that, you could use the WP Private plugin to restrict access to certain content to registered users. This plugin only hides the content, it doesn’t managage any payment options - so it would be better for a business to use for internal employees, private family content, etc.

Honorable mention goes to the Private RSS Plugin, that would go well with a private membership site.

10. eCommerce Site (online store)

There are plugins that allow you to simple sell single items using PayPal, that’s exactly why the ArtPal Plugin was developed (to sell art). You create a post with a few custom fields and voila! you’re selling art! You could of course use this plugin to sell just about anything using paypal, it doesn’t have to be art.

Maybe your blog accepts donations, or you have a very simple service that you charge for. For that I suggest the Easy Paypal Payment or Donation Accept Plugin:

If you want a solution even simpler than that - I offer you the Paypal Shortcodes Plugin. It doesn’t even have an admin interface - once enabled it allows you to add paypal buttons automatically in posts by using simple WP shortcodes:

You could use Fat Free Cart if you want a bone simple actual shopping cart - but you still want to sell on your blog and accept payments through paypal or google checkout. This plugin is very similar to ArtPal.

There are several plugins that go well beyond the “basics” of selling something through paypal. The eShop Plugin is packed with features such as several payment options, automatic email on successful purchase, multiple options for products, stats, and various shipping options. It seems quite mature, and there are many example stores to view.

By far the most popular though seems to be the eCommerce Plugin for WordPress. It boasts social networking hooks, payment options like paypal, google checkout, Authorize.net and more. It has one page checkout, and lots of documentation and community support. I have to admit, the example sites that use the eCommerce plugin look nearly identical to any of the big box retailers online storefronts:

Conclusion

Well, your’re probably exhausted now - but I’ve definitely lived up to my word and showed you more ways to use WordPress (that aren’t blogging) than you can shake a stick at! I hope this gives you some great ideas for both your own blogs and web sites, as well as your clients!

About the Author

JTPratt writes about being a WordPress Consultant, and has recently launched his newest site - WordPress Directory.

The 3 Feet Please Campaign and Road Guardian

Kiril The Mad Macedonian — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:41:24 PDT

Cars, SUV's, RV's, Busses, and Trucks, OH, MY!!

As I wrote in Dec., when I first reported on the 3 Feet Please Movement, it doesn't matter how safe a bicyclist you are, no matter how properly you share the road with the 4 to 18-Wheeler Majority, the problem of how close, is too close, is of concern to Recreational Cyclists, and Bike Commuters, alike, every single day.

The US states with "3 Foot Laws" are: Florida, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oregon, Illinois, Tennessee, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, Arizona, South Carolina, Washington, Oklahoma, and Maine... and other states aren't far behind.

In fact, Colorado recently enacted a law that includes a 3 Feet Requirement.

What can people in the other states, and in countries around the world, do to get others to get on board?

Well, there's always the option of making the point with a peaceful, bold, and clear, FASHION STATEMENT. ;-D

Joe Mizereck thought that was a brilliant idea! ;-D

He created a 3 Feet Please Campaign and related T-Shirt, and Cycling Jersey,

He wrote on his site:

"The battle for space between cyclists and motorists is intensifying--worldwide. And the need for space has never been greater. More must be done to educate motorists of the importance of sharing our roads and giving cyclists at least 3 feet of clearance when passing.

As a cyclist who spends a lot of time on the roads in traffic I have experienced numerous close calls. After one frustrating ride I decided to act. I designed a jersey with the words "3 Feet Please" on the back. I shared this idea with several fellow cyclists who thought this could make a difference."

I, too, think it will help.

If nothing else it will get the attention of those we share the road with.

Oh, and, um, if not...when you are flattened from behind, by that SUV, and the cops show up to question the person driving the thing, they can ask him/her if they noticed the words on the shirt you were wearing. ;-D

Check out the website of the 3 Feet Please Worldwide Campaign.

On the Media Page of the website is an amazing 5 min. video report by Fox News in Wisconsin.

It has footage that will blow you away.

Jeff Frings is an ordinary cyclist, and he’s tired of being treated unfairly on the roadways.

His experiences show it’s not just ordinary motorists who put us at risk, it’s municipal workers and even police officers.

So he mounted a couple of video cameras to his bike and put together a blog.

His hard work has successfully gotten the authorities to issue motorists a number of reprimands and traffic citations, and his blog has gained national attention thanks to an article in Velo News.

Check out Jeff's Bike Blog for more information.

On his blog Jeff makes this important point...

He, and Joe, are not alone:

There are people who are wearing/selling jerseys or have started using cameras on rides and calling the police.

Whatever they are doing, the point is they are doing something.

I commend anyone who is trying to make the situation better.

I would also urge anyone who is doing something to talk to your local media about your efforts.

I think educating the public is the key to improving the situation.

To all those who've had enough and decided it's time to do something, thanks and keep up the good work.

As for my own humble efforts, I have a whole archive of personal investigative reports, photos, and reports on other stories: Share the Road, and Trail: Safety Matters!

Riding to work in Long Beach, on 2nd, just past PCH, one January afternoon, I was where I was supposd to be (Or so I thought!), in the side of the lane closest to the curb, but not in the gutter...

That story, with photo, can be read here.

Recently Joe told me of a new site he has helped begin with Max Jones, a fellow Floridian, called Road Guardian... "the first worldwide tool to help cyclists report, mark and share cycling incidents and trouble spots."

As the website describes it:

"The company name is SafeCycling, LLC, a for-profit corporation based in Tallahassee. Max is the tech guru who makes it all happen. Joe, well, he's the cyclist who wants to save other cyclists' lives and make cycling safer for everyone. RoadGuardian.com was Joe's idea… Max gave it life..."

As for its purpose:

To save lives by helping cyclists avoid risky roadways.

There are a lot of wonderful roads to ride around the world and there are some roads that cyclists should avoid because they have problems, danger points, and troublesome histories as experienced by cyclists.

This site offers cyclists a process for reporting, marking and sharing those danger points. This information will help cyclists plan their routes for safe experiences.

And what's equally exciting is that by making cycling safer for existing cyclists we make cycling more attractive to non-cyclists. When non-cyclists become cyclists they increase the numbers of cyclists on the road and this makes it even safer for all cyclists… just think about what that means.

You can learn more about how it works, and how to use it, on the detailed FAQ Page.

I decided to give the site a try, by reporting the incident above, and signed up.

Going to the Reporting Tool I found a collection of questions, and Info Logging Steps to go through.

I had to choose an incident from Close call, Collision, Death, and Trouble Spot.

I chose Trouble Spot.

I next entered the date, time, and location.

Next I had to choose a Problem Type from Vehicle, Dog, Bicyclist, and Road Condition ( No, Pigeon, Cat, Jogger, and Pedestrian were not among the options to choose from ;-D ).

I chose Vehicle.

Next I had to choose directions for me, and the Motorist from N, S, E, W, NW, NE, SW, SE.

If the incident does not involve a Motorist then the Motorist direction is not answered.

Next I had to describe the incident in my own words.

The description is only as good, and as useful, as the contributor takes the time to make it, including the answers to all the other questions before and after, and that might be a problem if the contributor does not take the appropriate time, and effort to be helpful, and clear.

Next I had to answer Yes or No to wether the incident was Harrassment.

Next I had to answer Yes, or No to wether I filed Crash Report with the police.

Next I clicked on Preview to allow the Google Map to change its image to that of the location I provided it, and watched as a Satellite View, with Street Names (The Hybrid, as opposed to simply the Map, or Satellite choices alone.) of the intersection, and its surroundings, appears.

If all is as it should be you click "Yes, this is Correct", or if not, "Change Address".

The map allows the person viewing it to move left, right, and up and down, and zoom in, or out.

Once I approved it a Thank You note appeared, and I was done!

To make sure all really went well I went to the Report Viewer Page.

Once there I have several menus to chose options from in the Filter.

I Chose Trouble Spot, United States, Long Beach, and hit Search.

The map appears with the location marked with either a yellow marker for Close Call, Red for Collision, Black for Death, or Orange for Trouble Spot.

Clicking on the marker brings a pop-up allowing you to read the incident report, and also see a street level view of the location.

Road Guardian is a real cool tool, and while members don't have a page where all their personal reports can be found in 1 place, and there are still growing pains of a Technical Nature, that doesn't keep me from recommending the site.

As you can see, in the photos above, I have now taken to wearing the 3 Feet Please T-Shirt, and Jersey, on my Commutes to, and from, work. ;-D

The reactions from motorists has, so far, been positive in the 2 weeks I've been wearing the shirts.

Motorists of all types have given me a wide birth, and if I have taken the lane, as I do for 4 miles on the ride thru Long Beach, no-one has honked their horn, instead just going around me in the lane to my left.

On the bus I've had a few people ask about the shirt, and the Bus drivers have gotten a kick out of them.

So far I've had no cyclists approach me on the street about them, but expect that that will happen a lot as time goes by. ;-D

Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes

Ian Stewart — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:40:48 PDT

In this post we’ll review how to write a PHP function and go over the basic idea of how you can use Action Hooks in your WordPress Theme. We’ll take a look at a practical example of injecting a Welcome Blurb into your Theme without touching the existing code and we’ll also look at how to remove existing content being injected into Theme Hooks.

Packing Up A Function

Action hooks are in a lot of WordPress Themes nowadays. There’s a good reason for that but you’re probably wondering what the big deal is right? They’re such a big deal because firstly, they’re incredibly easy to use and secondly, because they’re extremely powerful.

If you want to get started with them we’re going to have to take a look at how to write a PHP function again. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it pretty simple.

 
function pretty_basic() {
 
   // This is a PHP comment.
 
   // PHP "stuff" goes here.
 
}
 
function still_pretty_basic() { ?>
 
   <!-- HTML comment now -->
 
   <!-- Notice how I "broke out" of writing PHP? -->
 
   <!-- I added closing and opening PHP tags just inside the curly braces -->
 
 
 
   <?php // I can even write more familiar-looking PHP here ?>
 
<?php }

So that’s how you write a PHP function. It’s pretty easy. It’s a little package of “stuff” like more PHP or HTML that you can write in 1 place—like your functions.php file—and call in another place like so:

 
   <?php pretty_basic() ?>
 
   <?php still_pretty_basic() ?>

You’ve seen the same thing before with WordPress functions like wp_list_pages() or the_content(). These functions are packed with “stuff” deep in the bowels of the WordPress core and output wherever they appear in your template files.

The Basic Idea Behind Action Hooks

A lot of really smart theme developers have started adding what are essentially empty functions to their themes ready to be filled up with stuff. We call these Action Hooks. I first noticed them in the Tarski theme and Tarski theme developer Benedict Eastaugh does a really good job of explaining why you’d want to use them and how to add them to your theme. But you’ve probably already seen them before.

WordPress Themes use a pair of default hooks called wp_head() and wp_footer(). If you know what those are you know what we’re doing here. Those two function calls are for adding “stuff” to your WordPress theme without editing the template.

In a nutshell here’s what Action Hooks will mean to you if your favorite theme uses them: you can add any content you like—extra WordPress functions, plugin calls, singing and dancing jQuery-powered sliders—simply by adding your function to an existing action hook. You won’t have to edit the original template files. And your additions will be safe from any upgrades the theme author makes.

Adding Content To An Action Hook

Let’s do something practical we’ll add a “Welcome To My Blog” blurb just below the header of the Thematic Theme using the Thematic Action Hook, thematic_belowheader(). Place the following code snippet in your Child Theme functions.php file.

 
// First we make our function
function childtheme_welcome_blurb() {
 
// We'll show it only on the HOME page IF it's NOT paged
// (so, not page 2,3,etc.)
if (is_home() & !is_paged()) { ?>
 
<!-- our welcome blurb starts here -->
<div id="welcome-blurb">
<p>Welcome to <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>.</p>
</div>
<!-- our welcome blurb ends here -->
<?php }
 
} // end of our new function childtheme_welcome_blurb
 
// Now we add our new function to our Thematic Action Hook
add_action('thematic_belowheader','childtheme_welcome_blurb');

Make sure you read the comments in the code snippet. It’s easy as cake! Want to add something to a WordPress Theme without touching the files and making a headache for yourself when it comes time to upgrade? Just find out where the Action is!

Removing Existing Content From Actions

In some themes, like Thematic, some of the Action Hooks are already partly filled up with stuff. This might look a little unusual if you’ve never seen it before but it’s insanely powerful. You can basically unplug parts of your theme.

Here’s the basic syntax for removing content from your Theme that’s already being hooked-in.

// Unhook default Thematic functions
function unhook_thematic_functions() {
    // Don't forget the position number if the original function has one
    remove_action('thematic_hook_name','thematic_function_name',postitionnumber);
}
add_action('init','unhook_thematic_functions');

And as an example, here’s a code snippet that will remove the entire main navigation menu from your Thematic Theme. Just pop it into your Child Theme functions.php and let it rip.

// Unhook default Thematic functions
function unhook_thematic_functions() {
    // Don't forget the position number if the original function has one
    remove_action('thematic_header','thematic_access',9);
}
add_action('init','unhook_thematic_functions');

Combine these 2 concepts with a hooked-up WordPress Theme and you can do practically anything.

How To Modify WordPress Themes The Smart Way

This post is part of the series How To Modify WordPress Themes The Smart Way.

WordPress Child Theme Basics
Modular CSS in WordPress Child Themes
Using Filter Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes

The safer the seat, the more likely the MP is to be involved in the expenses scandal

malcolmclark — Sat, 23 May 2009 23:49:53 PDT

Below are the links to the research that has been going around the blogosphere this weekend. The original research was done by Mark Thompson and then taken on by another blogger. The research takes all the MPs implicated by The Telegraph (the list from the Telegraph used was the version updated at 3:00pm Sunday – 94 MPs in total) and then looks for patterns by comparing it with the list of MPs ordered by their majority from the 2005 election.

The main findings are: that the safer the seat, the more likely the MP is to be implicated.

Here, the list of MPs ordered according to majority has been split into 4; with the highest majorities in the top quartile. The other numbers refer to how many MPs written about in The Telegraph fit into each quartile. The pattern is very clear.

There is further number-crunching done on the blog. And then some statistical analysis to show what has been found isn’t a fluke. In fact, on two tests it is either 1 in 1000 or 1 in 3000 that the effect witnessed (ie correlation between safe seats and expenses) would have arisen by chance. So fairly robust we feel.

Mark’s initial post is here: http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2009/05/has-our-electoral-system-contributed-to.html

and an update which includes some more detailed statistical analysis from another blogger here:http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2009/05/mps-expenses-and-safe-seats-correlation.html

There are two caveats to the research – two factors that may have an effect on the result. Firstly, the longevity of the MP’s service. It may be the case that he less marginal an MP, the longer-established they are and the more bad habits they will have. Secondly, The Telegraph may have chosen to run first with MPs who are more high profile (ministers, opposition spokespeople, senior backbenchers) and these people tend to be ones who are in safer seats. But in both cases the lack of marginality and accountability is key. You’d expect MPs to have served longer if in safe seats; and why should ministers etc be promoted on basis of how secure their seat is, especially as that makes it harder for people to hold them to account?

Please make use of this data and analysis however you feel most appropriate. It is already out there on the blogosphere (even Iain Dale is linking to it), but the wider we can push this link the better.

I have also posted on Saturday about the early stages of the connections between expenses and wider electoral reform http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/archives/2009/05/rope_for_mps_bu.html

Plus in the Observer yesterday:

Such arguments are music to the ears of mainstream proponents of electoral reform. Malcolm Clark, of Make Votes Count, says the expenses row has exposed the weakness of a system that guarantees MPs in safe seats a life tenure, regardless of what they do. "If there is a strong feeling against some people because of what they've done, why should it be so hard to ditch them?"

There is a lot of traffic on libdem blogosphere esp (their activists’ passion for campaigning on electoral reform has been strengthened) but also wider – in tweets, blogs and other mentions that aren’t connected to LibDems. As one of the MVC supporters entitled an email to me today: “Opportunity”. Exactly.

Steintrikes

Andrew — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:52:12 PDT

Mungo photo credit goes to Steintrikes

Steintrikes look mighty impressive…and they were out in full force recnetly at Spezi, a large European bike Show (in Germersheim, Germany). Distributed by Bike Revolution, take the Mungo for example…this new model features full front and rear suspension, disc brakes all around, Shimano components, a very comfy reclined seat, No Waste Design, and much more…all for around 42lbs.

Ready for touring…photo credit goes to bike-revolution

There are a few Steintrike models to choose from, and if you prefer to switch it up depending on riding season…they are down with that too. If your wondering how much weight a trike can carry, Steintrikes can carry a double load, up to 45 kg (100 pounds). Steintrikes also have a hidden feature called no waste design. What that means is the cyclist won’t have to fight against the suspension while pedaling…putting more power towards your goal. According to Steintrikes,

Our frames are made from raw material we chose. It’s a cold drawn precision seamless tubing with only 1mm thick wall. We use the same material for all the frame parts. And we hand build it. We measure, clean, cut, and weld every single piece to make a frame. It’s really hand made in the best meaning of the term, but it’s not just that. We used someone else’s invention and made it simpler. Some years ago in the electronics industry, someone started building “modules” and started plugging them into the motherboard. We did that with our frames. We made a design with a specific wheelbase, track, tested it, refined the steering design and we got ourselves an excellent trike model. It had a flaw: it wasn’t good for everyone all the time. So, we took the same front end, kept the wheelbase and changed it’s rear end, and we got the first modular trike. Then came the others. Today, you can make choice, small or big wheel, hard tail or suspended, it’s all up to your preference. And even better, if you decide you want a change for the Summer or Winter, touring or racing, you can “pimp your ride”… AND it doesn’t require a surgery on an open wallet…

Photo credit goes to bike-revolution

Need a trunk on your whip? Yeah, they got that too…

Steintrikes

Kinda related posts

Extra Wheel Voyager

Andrew — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:01:57 PDT

Photo credit goes to Extrawheel

Unlike most bike trailers that employ the use of two wheels, the Extra Wheel Voyager bike trailer only uses one…thus reducing weight and width. Extra Wheel trailers claim to be the lightest on the market, and apparently will also detach in the event of a major collision. In case of emergency, you can use the wheel of the trailer to replace a flat or damaged wheel on your bike.

Photo credit goes to Extrawheel

Having only one wheel does come at a load-hauling price though, as the Extra Wheel can only haul up too 75lbs (while the Burley Nomad can haul up too 100lbs). For 345EU (about $465usd) you can pick up the Voyager…price includes fastening fork, quick release lock, and 2 waterproof Cordura panniers. Wheel sizes range from 26″-28″. A 29″ model is purportedly in the works, and should work perfectly with the Pugsley…the SUV of bicycles. There are also more cost effective setups available, check them out here

Extra Wheel Voyager

Kinda related posts

Abolish automatic settings!

Haje Jan Kamps — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:14:55 PDT

If you look at the top of your SLR camera, you’ll probably find a little round dial, which has a whole load of different settings on them. Some of them are automatic settings (like the green square), some of them are ‘creative automatic’ settings (like the little runner), and others are the modes that let you do the heavy lifting yourself (P, Tv, Av and M).

This little dial is called your mode wheel, and it’s your mortal enemy, the destroyer of creativity, and the root of all evil in the world including, but not limited to, wars, swine flu, and stepping in chewing gum with a new pair of shoes.

In this article, I’m going to show you the error of your ways (if you’ve been using it), or I’ll show you what each of the settings means, what it does, and how to recreate the effect by using the manual shooting modes instead.

$ earned from this advert will be invested in beer

Why do they upset you so much?

Good question. The creative automatic modes make me angry because they take important decisions out of your hands, but that’s not the worst of it: People who are using the creative automatic modes might, in the short term, be able to take photographs of a technical quality beyond what they would normally be able to, but if you resign yourself to letting your camera do the work and make the creative decisions for you, the problem is that you don’t understand the underlying theory behind what you are doing, and despite getting better results, you’re not becoming a better photographer.

Imagine, say, that you had an oven that would automatically detect what you put in the oven, then calculate how big it is, what you’re trying to do with it, and select the right temperature and time, before beeping at you when your Sunday roast / cake is finished or your socks are dry. (What? You don’t dry your socks in the oven? Hmm, just me, then.) Either way, the result would be perfect every time, but where’s the satisfaction in not knowing what your oven did to bake this cake? And more importantly, what if you want to take creative liberties - say, you might prefer your cookies a little bit American-style; gooey inside - or you might want to make them crispier, for example…

The purpose of this article, then, is to ensure that if you want gooey or crispy photographs, you know how much heat you need to turn on, for how long, and if your cookie tray needs to go in the top or the bottom of the oven.

Okay, enough of the dodgy similes already, let’s have it!

Right, in the picture above, starting from the top, going counter-clockwise, the modes are:

Suppress Flash

Photo: Into The Warmth by me on Flickr - no flash needed here, it would have ruined the effect.

Why this is even a mode to itself I have no idea - depending on why you want to shoot without a flash, the easiest thing to do is to use Program mode (but also see Tv and Av, below), which means that the flash will only come on if you tell it to.

If you’re in a low-light situation, pick a higher ISO speed - this will create a bit more digital noise in your photo, but it means that you reduce the need for using a flash. If possible, select a bigger aperture so your shutter speed becomes lower.

Remember the general rule that you can hand-hold a camera at a shutter speed which is the same as the focal length of your lens: So if you’re shooting at 300mm, you should use 1/300 second shutter time or faster. If you’re using a sexy little 50mm prime lens, you can hand-hold at 1/50th of a second. Zooms are the same: if you’re using a 17-35mm zoom, you can hand-hold at about 1/10th of a second at full wide angle, and about 1/30th of a second at full zoom.

Of course, it’s possible to bend these rules, but if you adjust your ISO speed and shutter time to stick with them, you generally get a good, blur-free exposure without having to resort to using your flash gun.

Night-time portraiture

Photo: Electric Light Afro by me on Flickr - By combining flash and a longer shutter time, you get the foreground sharp and the background bright enough to see.

Night-time portraiture is the only of these settings which actually has any merit, in my opinion - not because it’s that difficult to do, but until someone has explained to you how you can get good night-time portraits, it can be a little bit counter-intuitive.

Imagine you’re in Paris with a loved one, and you want to take a photo of them, at night, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. You take a photo with a flash, and you can’t see the tower. You take a photo without a flash, and you can see the tower just fine, but your friend, who naturally is unable to stand still for more than a microsecond at the time, is all blurry and hazy. What to do?

Actually, Av is your friend: In Programme and Tv modes, the flash and shutter time will combine to try to expose your foreground correctly. In Aperture-priority, however, your camera will measure the light that is available to you, and then fire the flash to ‘fill in’ the foreground.

What, in effect, is happening, is that your camera is taking a ‘normal’ photo - exposed for the background - but then also uses the flash to expose the foreground correctly.

For further control (you might decide, for example, that the full 3-second exposure to get the ‘right’ exposure for the background isn’t necessary, and that the background looks OK after only a second, or fraction of a second), you can use full manual mode. On most D-SLR cameras and some external flashguns, you can also set the flash output manually, or adjusting it up or down. This differs from camera to camera (on the Canon, you’re looking for Flash Exposure Compensation, or F-EV), so check in your manual.

Top Tip: For creative effect, try to take a photo in AV mode, but move the camera or use the zoom while you’re taking the photo. Because of the flash your foreground will be static, but you get a hugely dramatic and awesome swirling, moving streaks effect because of the lights in the background.

Sports

Photo: Skate-Zo-Phrenia by me on Flickr

Sports mode is a complete fraud: Use Tv mode, set to a fast shutter time (’fast’ in this case depends on the sport you’re trying to capture. For snooker, fast isn’t very fast, and 1/60 of a second should do, but for horse racing, you need a much faster shutter time), and see what your camera comes up with.

If the pictures are too dark, it’s because your camera needs to use an aperture which is bigger than your lens can do (say, it’s using f/5.6 but needs f/2.8 to do the correct exposure). This is signified by a blinking aperture in your viewfinder, and can be solved by either using a lens with a larger maximum aperture, setting a higher ISO speed, or using a flash gun (although, say, darts players don’t really like it when flashes are going off in their face when they’re trying to throw A HUNNNNDRED AND EEEEEIGHTYYYYYYYY).

Macro

Photo: Coloured Paper (macro) by me on Flickr

I know a couple of things about macro photography, and I genuinely can’t see a single good reason for that Macro mode being on a SLR camera. For a compact camera, sure: It puts the lens into a ‘focus close to the camera instead of in the far distance’ mode, which means that it’s not wasting its time trying to focus far away. On a SLR, if you’re savvy enough to have bought a macro lens, you probably will be fine with Programme mode, and if you haven’t got a macro lens, then you’re basically out of luck (unless you build your own, of course, but that’s a different article altogether).

To replicate this mode in the real world, use programme or Manual mode, use a macro lens, and snap away.

Landscape

Photo: Freedom in Black and White by me on Flickr

Landscapes, glorious landscapes. Set your lens to manual focus, and turn it to the little ∞ (infinity) symbol. Note that it IS possible to focus past infinity - that’s because when you’re working with infrared photography, the light is refracted slightly differently, and you may actually need to focus past what is ‘infinity’ for daylight.

Anyway, your lens at infinity, set your mode dial to Av, and select a large-ish aperture. f/8 or f/11 is a good starting point.

Select as low an ISO mode you can get away with (bearing in mind the rule about hand-holding your camera, above, or just go ahead and use a tripod), and bob’s your uncle.

If you want to get advanced, and you need a very deep depth of field - say, for example - you want a person in the foreground, but you also want the background in focus - read up on ‘Hyperfocal distance’ and prepare to be amazed.

Portraiture

Photo: Shaken, Not Stirred by me on Flickr

I can’t believe they created a separate thing for portraiture - do a search on Flickr for portraiture, and see what comes up. How can they possibly assume that one single mode fits all styles of portraiture?

Anywhoo - for getting good portraits, start with a reasonably long lens (130mm or so is perfect), stand back a little, use a large-ish aperture (f/4 or so) to throw the background out of focus, and start from there.

Full automatic

This mode will select whether you use a flash or not, your ISO speed, your shutter speed and your aperture for you. It reduces your nice, expensive dSLR camera to nothing more than a big point-and-shoot. If I ever catch you (yes, you, I’m looking at you) with your camera set to the fully automatic mode, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ban you from visiting this site ever again.

Go on, live a little, flick your mode dial one notch clockwise, and enter the world of Program mode. The camera still does most of the thinking for you, but at least you are controlling it, rather than the other way around.

P - Program mode

Is one step up from automatic mode - and I confess to using it on occasion: The photographer selects everything except the aperture and shutter time, which the camera calculates for you. If it comes up with a combination of the two you don’t like, use your index finger wheel to change them - turn one way and you’ll see the aperture get smaller and the shutter speeds get faster - and vice-versa for turning it the other way, obviously. Use EV compensation to over- or under-expose your images a little, etc.

Program mode is great if you just want to get the right exposure, and you’re concentrating on just getting the photo, without worrying too much about depth of field etc. I know quite a few news photographers (!) who decided that manual mode was too finicky for them, and are shooting in programme mode most of the time. If it’s good enough for the national press, it’s good enough for me.

Tv - Shutter-speed priority AE mode

In Tv-mode, you dial in a shutter speed (say, 1/200 second), and the camera will attempt to get the ‘correct’ exposure by using the aperture to compensate for varying lighting situations.

… Interestingly, I very rarely use Tv mode, but that’s mostly because if I find myself in a situation where I want to actually control the shutter speed directly, I’m already shooting in fully manual.

One situation where it might be handy is if you’re shooting sports - say, rally racing - where you know you want a fast shutter speed, but the light can change quickly. The other situation I can think of is if you’re panning (i.e. a bicyclist comes flying past you, and you want to get them in focus while the background is out of focus), and you need a slightly slower shutter speed.

One thing to be aware of is that most lenses have a far more limited aperture range than your camera has a shutter time range. Think about it: your camera can do from several minute exposures to a fraction of a second, while your lens will only usefully span a much lower range. If you’re shooting in Tv, keep an eye on which apertures your camera is selecting for you, because if it’s getting too big, some of your photos might come out over-exposed

Av - Aperture priority AE mode

Av mode is the opposite of Tv mode, above: You select the aperture, and the camera calculates the right shutter time. Generally, I shoot either in Av or in fully manual, because for most of my photography, the depth of field (i.e. how much of the photo is in focus) is more important to me than whether the motion is frozen or not.

You get a deep depth of field by selecting a small aperture (f/22, f/32), or a shallow depth of field by selecting a big aperture (f/1.8, f/2.8).

When shooting in Av mode, still keep an eye on your shutter times - if they are very fast without you needing them to be, you may be able to use a slower ISO (switching from ISO 400 to ISO 200), which gives images with less noise. If they’re very slow, your photos might be coming out blurry, and you may want to ramp up the ISO or use a slightly larger aperture.

M - Manual

Go on. Try it for a week. You’ll love it. This is photography at its most control-freakishly delicious.

A-DEP: Automatic depth of field

Is just plain weird. The idea is that you focus on the point that is furthest away, then on the point that is closest to you, and the camera will then focus and select the aperture you need for you. Basically, it’s using the Hyperfocal Distance (mentioned above, under landscapes), but in an automatic way which is actually more complicated to wrap your head around than just doing it yourself in the first place.

I think I can honestly say that I’ve never, ever used A-DEP before in my life, and that I don’t think I ever will. Give me manual exposure and a bit of guesswork any day of the week :-)

Go forth! Prosper!

So, in summary, what I would love for you to do is to reduce your photography to only 4 of the modes above: P, Tv, Av, M. if you’re feeling particularly hardcore, limit yourself to Av and M only.

And if you are a truly epic photographer with skillz beyond my wildest dreams, set your camera to M and pry the button off altogether. Chuck it away. You’ve graduated. Nothing’s gonna stop you now!

More Search Options and other updates from our Searchology event

A Googler — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:15:52 PDT

Today we are hosting our second Searchology event, to update our users, partners, and customers on the progress we have made in search and tell them about new features. Our first Searchology was two years ago, when we were excited to launch Universal Search, a feature that blended results of different types (web pages, images, videos, books, etc.) on the results page. Since then Universal Search has grown quite a bit, adding new types of results, expanding to new countries, and triggering on ten times as many queries as it did when we launched it.

But as people get more sophisticated at search they are coming to us to solve more complex problems. To stay on top of this, we have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that's on the web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment. We want to help our users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it.

Our first announcement today is a new set of features that we call Search Options, which are a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier. Search Options helps solve a problem that can be vexing: what query should I ask?

Let's say you are looking for forum discussions about a specific product, but are most interested in ones that have taken place more recently. That's not an easy query to formulate, but with Search Options you can search for the product's name, apply the option to filter out anything but forum sites, and then apply an option to only see results from the past week. Just last week, at our Shareholders' Meeting, I had a woman ask me why she couldn't organize her results by time, with the most recent information appearing first. "Come back Tuesday," I wanted to say!

The Search Options panel also gives you the ability to view your results in new ways. One view gives you more information about each result, including images as well as text, while others let you explore and iterate your search in different ways.

Check out a video tour here:

We think of the Search Options panel as a tool belt that gives you new ways to interact with Google Search, and we plan to fill it with more innovative and useful features in the future.

Another challenging problem we have worked on is better understanding the information you get back from a search. When you see your results from a Google search, how do you decide which one has the best information for you? Or, how can we help you make the best decision about where to click?

We call the set of information we return with each result a "snippet," and today we are announcing that some of our snippets are going to get richer. These "rich snippets" extract and show more useful information from web pages than the preview text that you are used to seeing. For example, if you are thinking of trying out a new restaurant and are searching for reviews, rich snippets could include things like the average review score, the number of reviews, and the restaurant's price range:

In this example, you can quickly see that the Drooling Dog Bar B Q has gotten lots of positive reviews, and if you want to see what other people have said about the restaurant, clicking this result is a good choice.

We can't provide these snippets on our own, so we hope that web publishers will help us by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google. We will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google's search results stays high. If you are a webmaster and are interested in participating, visit the rich snippets help page to learn more.

We also showed a preview of a new tool that we're calling Google Squared. Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet. We'll be opening it up to users later this month on Google Labs.

These features really explore search from a broad and entirely new perspective. Because we realize that when you can't quickly find just the exact information or content you need or want, it's our problem, not yours. And it's a problem with plenty of room left for innovation. Stay tuned.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Jack Menzel, Group Product Manager

Justin Tadlock: Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8

Justin Tadlock — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:09:17 PDT

Imagine you ran a website that reviewed books, movies, and music. When writing posts in WordPress, you want to label something as a book, yet you also want to further label it by genre or by author.

Traditionally, we’d come up with a way to use our categories and post tags to have some sort of classification system. I’m going to show you how you’ll be able to break free from this rigid system and do things your way.

In WordPress 2.3, the new taxonomy API was introduced. It allowed us to make up our own taxonomies. Here’s the problem: No one has been using custom taxonomies.

In WordPress 2.8, creating custom taxonomies won’t even be the job of a plugin developer. Average users can make and use any taxonomy they want with a few lines of code. WordPress will handle the rest by adding the meta boxes on the write post page and new admin menus for managing them.

What is a taxonomy?

I realize that word may be unfamiliar to many of you. In short, a taxonomy is a way to group items. Here’s the Answers.com definition of taxonomy:

The classification of organisms in an ordered system that indicates natural relationships.
The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics.
Division into ordered groups or categories.

The third definition is probably the best for our purposes.

By default, WordPress comes pre-loaded with three taxonomies: category, post_tag, and link_category. The first two allow us to label our posts a certain way. The last lets us categorize our links. I’ll be showing you how to easily create your own and use them in this tutorial.

Each taxonomy has what are called terms. For example, all of your tags are actually terms that live within the post_tag taxonomy.

What the new taxonomy features do

Once you’ve created your new taxonomy, WordPress will set up admin panels for you automatically. You’ll also get a new meta box when writing a post. This is the part that makes the new features in WordPress 2.8 so cool. We’re going to be setting up three taxonomies in this tutorial: people, places, and animals.

You’ll see this when you write a new post:

Here’s the view of the admin panel for our people taxonomy (click image for larger view):

Some of you might have noticed the word “tags” in a few places on the page. I’m not sure if this will be updated in the future or if it can be easily changed.

How to create a custom taxonomy

I’m only going to cover the basics here for average users. Plugin developers can take this and do all kinds of neat things. Also, the new features in WordPress 2.8 only apply to tag-like taxonomies (non-hierarchical) for posts.

In this example, we’ll be creating three custom taxonomies: people, places, and animals. You can create as many or as little as you want.

Open your theme’s functions.php file or create a plugin file to work with. Add this code:

<?php
add_action( 'init', 'create_my_taxonomies', 1 );

function create_my_taxonomies() {
	register_taxonomy( 'people', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'People', 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'places', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'Places', 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true ) );
	register_taxonomy( 'animals', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'Animals', 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true ) );
}

?>

Breaking down the code

Let’s look at one line of the code we started with and break down each part. The taxonomy we registered for people looks like this:

register_taxonomy( 'people', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'People', 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true ) );

people tells WordPress what the name of the taxonomy is.

post tells WordPress what object type this taxonomy applies to. You could also make a taxonomy for pages or links if you wanted, but WordPress doesn’t do the cool stuff with anything but posts right now.

hierarchical means whether the taxonomy terms can be in a hierarchy (categories are hierarchical, tags are not). So, we set this to false to behave like tags and to use the new WordPress features.

label is the name of your taxonomy that you want to show up in things like the WordPress admin. (Note: This should be localized if you’re creating a plugin for public release.)

query_var lets WordPress know if you want to be able to query posts for things such as showing all posts in the people taxonomy about Will Smith. If you set it to true, the query variable will be the name of your taxonomy. This can also be any text string you want. We’ll keep ours at true for simplicity.

rewrite is whether you want WordPress to give you prettier permalinks when viewing a taxonomy page or archive. So, you could have something like yoursite.com/people/will-smith rather than yoursite.com/?people=will-smith.

Keep reading, and I’ll give you some practical usage examples.

How to create a tag cloud with your custom taxonomies

Let’s say you want a people cloud rather than a tag cloud. Well, we’d use our standard wp_tag_cloud() template tag with a few extra arguments. Place this code where you’d like to show your people cloud:

<?php wp_tag_cloud( array( 'taxonomy' => 'people', 'number' => 45 ) ); ?>

It’s as simple as that. All you need to do is set the taxonomy argument to the taxonomy of your choice.

How to list a taxonomy’s terms for each post

Maybe you want to show a particular taxonomy’s terms along with your post, which is common with categories and tags. In this example, we’ll show the terms from the people taxonomy. Add this within The Loop where you’d like it to show:

<?php echo get_the_term_list( $post->ID, 'people', 'People: ', ', ', '' ); ?>

How to show posts only from a specific taxonomy

Let’s suppose you wanted to create a custom page template or set your home page to show 10 posts with the term “Will Smith” (from your people taxonomy). Add this code before The Loop:

<?php query_posts( array( 'people' => 'will-smith', 'showposts' => 10 ) ); ?>

What? Did you think it would be tougher than that?

Create your own custom taxonomies

Taxonomies are no longer something that only plugin developers can create. It’s time for you to go out and explore custom taxonomies for yourself. Make something that is unique to your site.

I’m thinking of making a WordPress taxonomy for my blog since that’s pretty much all I blog about.

If you have questions or would like to see more practical usage examples, feel free to ask in the comments. It might even be cool to set up a big list of ideas for new taxonomies. There’s so much more we could do that I couldn’t cover in one tutorial. It might be worth writing another one if everyone feels we need it.

Remember, this tutorial is for WordPress 2.8, which is under development at the time of writing. Things could change by the time it’s released.

Perishable Press: Important Security Fix for WordPress

Jeff Starr — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:01:32 PDT

The other day, my server crashed and Perishable Press was unable to connect to the MySQL database. Normally, when WordPress encounters a database error, it delivers a specific error message similar to the following:

Default database-error message

This customizable database error message explains the situation to visitors and circumvents any malicious activity involving exposed scripts, PHP errors, and other issues related to unexpected database issues.

That sounds nice, but there is a problem

The problem that I painfully discovered when my server crashed is that WordPress does not always display the default page for all database-related issues. Apparently, if the database is missing entirely, WordPress assumes that it has not yet been installed and loads the Installation Page:

WordPress Installation Page

Yikes! This is exactly what happened when my server crashed, MySQL was unavailable, and the WordPress Installation Page was displayed to over 100 visitors while I scrambled to resolve the issue.

During the event, there were several attempts to assume control of my site through the Installation Page. Fortunately, I was working on the site (via FTP, cPanel, phpMyAdmin, and so on) during the attacks, and was able to terminate an inevitable hostile takeover.

“john@greatCampingTrips.com”, I’m staring at you here.

It happened to me, and it could happen to you

To me, this scenario represents an enormous security risk for all currently available versions of WordPress (up to 2.8 at the time of this writing). If WordPress serves up the Installation Page the next time your database goes down, anyone could easily gain full control of your entire server. By simply entering an email address and specifying a blog title, an attacker would administratively re-install WordPress and receive the following message:

WordPress installation-success message

Ouch! This is no good. I was fortunate enough to have been there during the incident, however it could have happened while I was away from the computer. What if I had been asleep, at work, or on vacation? Trust me, it doesn’t take long for a savvy attacker to annihilate an entire server, and the damage may be irreversible.

A temporary solution, until WordPress does it better

After restoring full functionality to my site, deleting multiple “Hello world!” posts and “About” pages, and removing the newly added Administrator, it was time to prevent this situation from happening again. The easiest way to do this involves deleting, blocking, or modifying the wp-admin/install.php file, which contains the script that generates the Installation Page.

Until WordPress incorporates a better solution, I recommend one of the following three fixes:

Fix #1: Just nuke it
Simply delete the wp-admin/install.php file entirely. It is not needed after installation.

Fix #2: HTAccess to the rescue
Place the following slice of HTAccess into your site’s web-accessible root directory to prevent access to your install.php file:

# PROTECT install.php
<Files install.php>
 Order Allow,Deny
 Deny from all
 Satisfy all
</Files>

Fix #3: Replace it with something safe and useful
Replace the insecure version of the file with something secure and informative by following these quick steps:

Rename the original install.php to something like, “install_DISABLED.php” or whatever.
Create a new file named “install.php” and add the following code:

<?php // install.php replacement page: http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/05/05/important-security-fix-for-wordpress/ ?>
<?php header("HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable"); ?>
<?php header("Status 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable"); ?>
<?php header("Retry-After 3600"); // 60 minutes ?>
<?php mail("your@email.com", "Database Error", "There is a problem with teh database!"); ?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
		<title>Error Establishing Database Connection</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<img src="images/wordpress-logo.png" />
		<h1>Error Establishing Database Connection</h1>
		<p>We are currently experiencing database issues. Please check back shortly. Thank you.</p>
	</body>
</html>

Once uploaded to your server, this new install.php file will prevent any malicious behavior by serving up a static web page. Now, instead of showing the Installation Page when your database is unavailable, WordPress will display the following message:

WordPress installation replacement page

In addition to displaying this information to your visitors, the Installation Replacement Page also performs the following actions:

Communicates a 503 (Service Temporarily Unavailable) status code to clients and search engines
Instructs clients and search engines to return after 60 minutes (configurable)
Sends an email informing you of the situation so that you may take action

To use the Replacement Page, don’t forget to specify an email address in the fourth line. You may also change other variables, such as the time duration, email subject, or email message. If you need any help with these variables, please leave a comment. I have also made the Installation Replacement Page available for easy download:

Download the Installation Replacement Page [ 655 Bytes • .zip format • 701 downloads ]

Live long and prosper

Until the developers at WordPress implement a cleaner, more permanent solution for this issue, I highly recommend applying one of the solutions provided in this article. There is no reason to keep the original install.php file after you have installed WordPress, so feel free to delete, modify, or block it. Trust me, dealing with the trauma of watching your site get hijacked by some unscrupulous cracker whore just ain’t worth the pain.

[ Thank you for subscribing to Perishable Press ]

Twittering toilet

Caleb Kraft — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:28:42 PDT

We wouldn’t want to let a week slip by without something new being made to twitter would we? This time it is a toilet. Don’t worry, they are sparing us the graphic details, it pretty much tweets every time it is flushed. As you can see in the picture above, they’re using an Arduino for the toilet/PC connection. If you really want to make something twitter, this might be a good starting point. It’s basically twittering every time a button is pushed. You can download the source code on the site as well as find a tutorial on Arduino basics.

[via astera]

Discussion: Using the MSK format to print your own Moleskine pages

Armand Frasco — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Above is a page from Moleskinerie translated via MSK into a page for Moleskine notebook.

See how it was done from the actual blog post here, to the MSK printout here.

The MSK format to print your own Moleskine pages have been on for a few of weeks now and we have received lots of comments on it. As with everything else, MSK is a work in progress and can only get better in time and with your suggestions on how to make it better.

We'd like to hear your comments here. Thank you!

Using Filter Hooks in WordPress Child Themes

Ian Stewart — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:35:33 PDT

In this post you’ll learn to take advantage of Filter Hooks in your WordPress Child Themes. Filter Hooks are an essential weapon in your WordPress Theming arsenal. With them you’ll have almost complete control over the HTML created by your WordPress Theme—without touching any template files.

Warning: things will get a little technical on this one but hang in there—you’re about to become an expert in this stuff.

How WordPress Filter Hooks Work

Filtering a function is actually pretty easy—once you know how WordPress filters work. But if you’re going to filter something in your Child Theme functions you’re going to have to get your hands messy with a little PHP. Luckily, it’s pretty easy stuff.

If you’re just getting started messing around with PHP I want you to remember this one crucial tip: the functions file must begin and end with the opening and closing PHP tags. With no extra lines before or after. Something like this:

1
2
3

<?php
// We're going to be pasting our code between those PHP tags above and below this comment
?>

The Anatomy of a WordPress Filter Hook

Let’s look at the anatomy of a WordPress Filter Hook.

// We'll use this form if we're going to just outright replace something
function my_function_name() {
  // Your custom code goes here, between the curly braces
}
add_filter('filter_name','my_function_name');

Take a look at the above example. We just wrote some PHP code. We wrote a function:

2
3
4

function my_function_name() {
    // Your custom code goes here, between the curly braces
}

And then we told WordPress to take that function and use my_function_name instead of the original content, or code, that was returned by filter_name.

5	add_filter('filter_name','my_function_name');

filter_name is the key here. Somewhere in the bowels of WordPress, or our Parent Theme code, there is a function that looks something like this:

function super_stuff() {
    $stuff = 'bacon';
    echo apply_filters ( 'filter_name' , $stuff );
}

Did you catch that last line in the super_stuff function? echo essentially means “put it on the screen” but the really important bit here is apply_filters. That’s where we’re getting our filter_name, the filter we’re, um, well, filtering. Any function using apply_filters, whether it’s in the WordPress code or your Parent Theme code, will let itself be filtered by another function in a plugin or, more importantly to us here, a WordPress Child Theme.

This is huge. But if you don’t get it yet, that’s OK. I’m a big believer in teaching through copy and paste. So let’s get to it and start filtering some Theme functions.

Filtering Theme Functions

Activate the Child Theme, Chiron, we made in Modular CSS in WordPress Child Themes and make a functions file if you haven’t already (chiron/functions.php). We’re going to start out by filtering with one of the more complicated looking Theme functions in our Parent Theme, Thematic, thematic_postheader.

Actually it’s not that complicated at all. Let’s have a look at an abridged version of thematic_postheader that contains almost everything you’ll need to know.

// Information in Post Header
// Basically the stuff you see at the top of every post
function thematic_postheader() {
    global $id, $post, $authordata;
 
    // The Post Title 		    
    $posttitle = apply_filters('thematic_postheader_posttitle',$posttitle); 
 
    // The Post Meta    
    $postmeta = apply_filters('thematic_postheader_postmeta',$postmeta); 
 
    // Is this a post or a page?
    if ($post->post_type == 'page' || is_404()) {
        // If it's a page show only the Post Title
        $postheader = $posttitle;        
    } else {
        // If it's a post show the Post Title and The Post Meta
        $postheader = $posttitle . $postmeta;    
    }
 
    // Echo the Post Header
    echo apply_filters( 'thematic_postheader', $postheader ); // Filter to override default post header
}

Did you look at the code? There’s 3 apply_filters in there, 1 for thematic_postheader itself and 2 for the content inside of it, the Post Title and the Post Meta.

Alright. Let’s do something stupid and replace everything in our Post Headers with … bacon. Copy this code snippet to your Child Theme functions file, save and reload your test site.

function childtheme_postheader() {
	echo 'bacon';
}
add_filter('thematic_postheader','childtheme_postheader');

Your Post Titles and Post Meta should have all disappeared and been replaced with … bacon. Not especially useful but you just learned how to filter the output of any filterable function.

Let’s try another—more useful—function. Delete the previous snippet from your functions file.

At some point you might want to add a containing div to all the Post Titles in your theme. Perhaps you want to add a complicated background effect or need to float something in a particular way. We’re going to filter the variable in thematic_postheader that’s returning the Post Title and make that change to the code output by the Theme template files—without actually editing any template files.

Copy this code snippet to your Child Theme functions file, save and reload your test site.

function childtheme_posttitle($posttitle) {
	return '<div class="containing">' . $posttitle . '</div>';
}
add_filter('thematic_postheader_posttitle','childtheme_posttitle');

Check out your test site source code. You just added a containing div to every Post Title on your site. With only 4 lines of code.

Take note of what we did differently in this function. We added a variable in line 1 and returned it in line 2. Doing this lets you use the content of the original function you’re filtering. This is powerful stuff.

You’ve now been armed with enough information to go out and start filtering Parent Theme functions in your WordPress Child Themes (and you’re halfway to becoming a WordPress Plugin author too). Now all you need are some functions to filter.

Where To Look For Filters

Besides digging through the code (which I always find useful) there are two good resources for finding where all the filters you need are hiding.

How To Modify WordPress Themes The Smart Way

This post is part of the series How To Modify WordPress Themes The Smart Way.

WordPress Child Theme Basics
Modular CSS in WordPress Child Themes
Using Filter Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes

04/20/09 PHD comic: 'Tales from the Road - MD Anderson Cancer Center'

(author unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:10:10 PDT

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com

title: "Tales from the Road - MD Anderson Cancer Center" - originally published 4/20/2009 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

Frazz: Helmets for motorists

Yokota Fritz — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:21:12 PDT

Frazz rules.

WP Engineer: Change Admin Pagination on Posts, Pages and Comments

Frank — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:53:39 PDT

One or the other users in the backend of WordPress find it quite disturbing that not more than 20 articles, pages and comments per page gets listed. Especially if you work with many tables and you have a fast connection, then an increased number of listed articles, pages, comments is useful. How to adapt and with a little CSS getting the best presentation I will show now, here are some tips.

As of WordPress version 2.8

With WordPress 2.8 comes a new value in the user's options for each page in the backend. This allows each user to extend the number of listed pages, articles and comments per page. If you like to solve it also in advance of WordPress 2.8, then the following syntax helps.

Alternative Plugin

You should embed the syntax in a Plugin.
I am purposely not providing a Plugin, because the support of my existing solutions is already overwhelming. So it is rather as a basis for people who want to start here and as a memory for me when I need it again.

Some comments I have directly written down in the source code, so it is understandable. Also I do upload a CSS file, the content can be found at the end, which changes the design a little bit and create a better overview of the large number of entries.

// value for posts
define( 'FB_CAP_PER_POST', 100 );
// value for pages
define( 'FB_CAP_PER_PAGE', 100 );
// value for comments
define( 'FB_CAP_PER_COMMENT', 100 );
 
// only in admin area
if ( is_admin() ) {
	global $pagenow;
 
	if ( $pagenow == 'edit-pages.php' ) {
		add_filter( 'manage_pages_query', 'page_ChangeAdminPagination' );
		add_action( 'admin_print_styles', 'AddMyStylesheet' );
	}
	if ( $pagenow == 'edit.php' ) {
		add_action( 'admin_head', 'post_ChangeAdminPagination' );
		add_action( 'admin_print_styles', 'AddMyStylesheet' );
	}
	if ( $pagenow == 'edit-comments.php' )
		add_filter( 'comments_per_page', 'comment_ChangeAdminPagination' );
}
 
function post_ChangeAdminPagination() {
	global $wp_query;
 
	if ( $wp_query->query_vars[s] == '' ) {
		$per_post = (int) FB_CAP_PER_POST;
		$wp_query->query( 'showposts=' . $per_post );
	}
}
 
function page_ChangeAdminPagination($query) {
	global $per_page;
 
	$per_page = (int) FB_CAP_PER_PAGE;
	//$query['posts_per_page'] = $per_page;
	$query['posts_per_archive_page'] = $per_page;
 
	return $query;
}
 
function comment_ChangeAdminPagination($count) {
 
	$per_comment = (int) FB_CAP_PER_COMMENT;
 
	return $per_comment;
}
 
function AddMyStylesheet() {
 
		$myStyleFile = WP_PLUGIN_URL . '/change_admin_pagination/css/style.css';
		wp_register_style( 'change_admin_pagination', $myStyleFile );
		wp_enqueue_style( 'change_admin_pagination');
}

The following content is intended only to that area for editing the page or next to the entry contribution is shown. Thus, the line is smaller and has more entries available to view.

/**
 * style for smaller tables in admin of WordPress
 * @author Frank Bültge
 * @date 01.04.2009 20:51:59
 */
.post-title strong {
	float: left;
}
 
.row-actions {
	float: left;
	margin-left: 1% !important;
}
 
.check-column, tr td {
	padding-bottom: 0 !important;
}
 
 
.column-date {
	width: 15% !important;
}
 
td.date {
	font-size: .6em;
}
 
td.date abbr {
	float: right;
}

Memory Map and Sustrans collaboration product shipping from Monday

(author unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:57:20 PDT

Digital version of the entire National Cycle Network ready for order

“I didn’t want my sons to think that I hadn’t put up a fight”

Andrea — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:07:23 PDT

These are the words of Emma Ferguson, whose husband was killed by a lorry driver who did not have the left side mirror on his vehicle. She has won a compensation claim against the company that owned the vehicle, in the civil courts. Characteristically the driver was NOT charged.

As more innocent people are killed by lorries in London, one takes inspiration by Mrs. Ferguson. If we all have the same resolve to protect vulnerable road users and ensure that anyone who wishes to ride a bicycle in London, can do it without apprehension and fear, then in a few years, this city will also see a level of civility seen in other European capitals.

The picture above shows the scene of one of London’s killing fields, where a 30 year old woman was crushed by a lorry this week. Elephant & Castle is one of the busiest roundabouts and the lady should have never been in that position. But how can anyone blame her, when the cycle infrastructure is so poor, when cycle lanes end when they are most needed, when the UK Government delays implementation of EU Directives requiring life-saving mirrors, when the Mayor slashes the funding for improving the cycle network, and indeed when he puts two fixie riders on the cover of his policy document?

More specifically, Southwark Council had put forward plans to make the Elephant & Castle node safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Boris Johnson refused to approve the plans, because they would have affected motor-traffic flows.

We should not let the barbarians rule our city.

Café de l'Arbre

Padraig — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:14:18 PDT

Sunday, when the PROs leave Carrefour de l'Arbre and enter the commune of Gruson, they'll pass an isolated café whose year-round business owes to the race. The owners of the Café de l'Arbre have decorated the inside with art depicting the race's great personalities. The paintings and murals by the artist Teel decorate the walls of the café, making it a year-round celebration of the greatest single day of racing on the calendar.

Above, left to right: Tom Boonen, Alain Bondue, Frederic Guesdon, Felice Gimondi, Jean Stablinski, Hennie Kuiper, Freddy Maertens and Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle.

Shown here are Octave Lapize and Charles Crupelandt leading the field.

This trio needs no introduction: Johan Museeuw, Andrea Tafi and Andrei Tchmil.

Images courtesy John Pierce, Photosport International.