Here’s a screenshot, no super heros were injured acquiring this:

Available as a plugin code named MP6:

According to Matt Mullenweg this is not intended for the general public, just for savvy WordPress enthusiasts eager to preview or contribute to a re-imagination of our collective home, wp-admin.

Here’s what’s new:

From the base of what was in trunk 3.6 last week, here’s what’s new:

• A visual treatment for the toolbar and menubar that visually unifies the two and reduces clutter.
• Flatter visual styling, with square corners, for tables and grouping elements like .postbox.
• Increased saturation of the traditional WP blue (old vs new comparison: http://cl.ly/image/1X2G3X1Y0y2g ).
• A splash of color to denote the current menu item. (gasp)
• Removed the burnt orange hover state in favor of a lighter blue.
• Single-color icons are now served via an icon font, making them load instantly and look crisp at any zoom factor. (The speed is noticeable on slower connections, like Gogo.) We can also use these for mobile apps.
• Consistent typography for all operating systems by including the Open Sans web font. (Cognizant of complications embedded this could entail.)
• Added padding between links in the menu for easier touch navigation, important as the majority of internet interaction will happen on touch devices within a few years.
• Lightened the page background using white backgrounds for grouping elements and a gray background for the body.
• Removed the large header icons for a cleaner look at the top of the page. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

According to WordPress.org, existence of this plugin will be officially denied, but discussion will happen at http://make.wordpress.org/ui/ if you’d like to participate.

Have you tried it out? What do you think?

The post Top Secret – New WordPress Admin UI Design appeared first on Tummel.Me.

The other issue (once we get past that first one) is an encoding error that is happening somewhere in CiviCRM that causes an XML error on the link url. It happens because it builds the url using an ampersand (&) in one spot and that throws the encoding error. I didn’t quite figure out where that is generated from as I didn’t have time to go through all of the files but I do have a work around to keep the rss feed from throwing the error.

I might point out that I started down this road in an effort to put the CiviCRM events in a WordPress widget, something that should be pretty simple and valuable right? Well, follow along and you’ll see how I managed to get it working. Caveat, these instructions involve making changes to core CiviCRM files and will be overwritten when updated. Hopefully fixes make it into the code before then

The first file we need to edit is wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm.php. This is where we will tell CiviCRM to strip the html WordPress wants to put in. Insert the code in red below at line 374:

add_filter('init', 'civicrm_wp_invoke');
return;
}
// strip rss html added by gs
if (civicrm_wp_in_civicrm() &&
$_GET['q'] === 'civicrm/event/ical' && $_GET['html'] != '1') {
civicrm_wp_invoke();
CRM_Utils_System::civiExit( );
}

This is what you should end up with:

To get rid of the XML error we need to edit:

wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/templates/crm/core/calendar/rss.tpl

I’ve highlighted all the changes I made to mine in red though you only need to add the CDATA section to have the XML parser skip that part that is encoded wrong. Since I was in here, I changed the title for mine and commented out the Harvard link.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>{ts}Leadership Napa Valley Public Calendar{/ts}</title>
<link>{$config->userFrameworkBaseURL}</link>
<description>{ts}Listing of current and upcoming public events.{/ts}</description>
<language>{$rssLang}</language>
<generator>CiviCRM</generator>
{*<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>*}
{foreach from=$events key=uid item=event}
<item>
<title>{$event.title|escape:'htmlall'}</title>
<link><![CDATA[{crmURL p='civicrm/event/info' q="reset=1&amp;id=`$event.event_id`" fe=1 a=1}]]></link>
<description>

Now if you’re like me, you’re doing all of this to get an upcoming event widget in your sidebar so here’s how I did mine.

1. Install and activate amr ical events list from the WordPress plugin directory.
2. Grab your feed url by going into your events dashboard in CiviCRM, right clicking on the calendar icon and copying the link address.
3. Drag the new upcoming event widget into the appropriate sidebar and paste your link into the external ics url box at the bottom and save.

That’s it, now you should have a CiviCRM | WordPress event widget like so:

Hope this helps someone out there and keep on WordPressing!!

The post Broken Feeds – CiviCRM and WordPress appeared first on Tummel.Me.

So guess what, customers are most engaged and likely to make a purchase from your business when they are looking to act. So for businesses to turn those searches into into purchases, local search matters.

Here are some best practices to help you do some local search optimization on your own business or at least help you identify where you may need some help:

Own your location information

It’s important to have correct location information everywhere. That’s on the media channels you own and the ones you don’t. If you don’t have access, request that the site owner updates the information. Your business information will make its way into the digital ecosphere, make sure you own it.

Claim your local search categories

Search results take into account the words that appear on your website and pages across the internet. Take it a step further by using the native search features like categories to appear in more, relevant results.

49% of search queries are unbranded. So if you sell “Nike”, also choose the “shoe” category to ensure more customers find you.

Update often and everywhere

The more information you publish, the more likely your customers are to find it. Some data never changes, like your phone number or web URL, but you should update your special offers, photos and categories frequently.

Begin by updating for the season – so change your hours to reflect your summer or holiday hours, and include recent photos.

Give them what they want

When potential customers are searching locally, they are very likely to act. So be sure to provide the useful, correct and relevant information they need. That might be bios of your staff, deli menus, special holiday offers or hours of operation.

Without a full, rich search experience, your customers won’t know why they should visit.

The post Local Search Optimization – Best Practices appeared first on Tummel.Me.

Positive Community Impact

Yountville School Foundation – YSF has already benefited from Tummeling for a Cause, recently receiving a website, http://fundyountville.com, to help support and raise funds for Yountville Elementary School

Details

Tummeling for a Cause is a program meant to give deserving non-profits a new web presence. Each quarter, the community can nominate their favorite non-profit on Tummel.Me’s website. With the nominees, Tummel.Me will select a short list of non-profits which will then be voted on by the community via their website or Facebook. The non-profit with the most votes wins. Submissions can be made at http://tummel.me/tummeling-for-a-cause/.

The post Tummeling for a Cause Q1 2013 Nominations Open appeared first on Tummel.Me.

The post Writing Styles – A Quick Poll appeared first on Tummel.Me.

Review them, pick one and CAST YOUR VOTE!

Yountville School Foundation

The Yountville School Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to raising funds to ensure that Yountville’s neighborhood school remains a vital part of our community. Due to the state budget crisis and continued cuts in funding for education, the school district has closed some small schools in Napa Valley to save money. Concerned about the future of Yountville Elementary, a group of citizens approached the school board and reached an agreement that will make the school financially viable while in return receiving a guarantee that the school will stay open for years to come.

http://www.fundyountville.com/

Active 20-30 Club of Napa

Provides young adults with an opportunity for personal growth, friendships and leadership development while improving the quality of life for the special needs children in their community.

The Active 20-30 Club of Napa #57 is unique from other service organizations in that we place a strong emphasis on an ACTIVE approach to community service—participating in a hands-on fashion.

Every year we offer our annual events—an “egg” hunt, fishing derby, Kids’ Day, parade, and Project Santa—all free to the community. Through our Birthday Buddies program, we provide birthday party supplies to families living at a local shelter to celebrate a child’s birthday. We also participate in special projects as they arise—playground construction and clean-up days, and Junior Achievement.

http://www.napaactive2030.org/Home.html

Pink Heals Napa Valley

A non-profit group dedicated to supporting women and raising awareness in Napa Valley. We support all types of cancer relief efforts and focus on women as a whole in whatever type of cancer they battle. As men it is in our nature to care for the women in our lives, this is just another way to show love and support. Our women are the most important people in our lives, whether they are our mothers, wives, daughters or sisters. The money raised in our community stays in our community and can continually be generated based on our shirt sales. We selflessly put our women first in the battle against cancer, at the very least we wear her color to let her know we CARE! We bring Love & Hope to our community and around the country in the form of Pink Fire Trucks. We sell t-shirts to help fund our mission and always accept donations.

http://www.pinkhealsnapavalley.com/

VOTE NOW!Submit a non-profit for Q3

The post TFC Q2 2012 Finalist Details appeared first on Tummel.Me.

We have narrowed all the nomination down to these 3 candidates that we believe can benefit the most from Tummeling for a Cause and that actually accepted their nomination.

Now it’s up to you, the public. Simply cast your vote and the non-profit with the most votes on July 20th at 5:00 p.m will be the winner.

Encourage your friends to vote either here or on our Facebook page as the results are linked.

The post Tummeling for a Cause – Q2 2012 appeared first on Tummel.Me.

Here is a little tip for anyone out there who may be using a custom password form to protect individual pages and posts. WordPress has this functionality built into its core but it is possible to customize the wording and look of your form. If you aren’t able to get into password protected posts anymore, you likely have a custom password form.

This post isn’t a long description of how to make custom password forms, rather a helpful tip to fix your password protected posts and pages if they are no longer accessible since upgrading to WordPress 3.4.

The core of the problem is that WordPress 3.4 has deprecated the use of wp-pass.php which was used in many custom password forms and replaced it with wp-login.php. Below is what a custom password form function is likely to look like, at least it’s what mine looks like:

// Custom password protected message / form
add_filter( 'the_password_form', 'custom_password_form' );
function custom_password_form() { global $post; $label = 'pwbox-'.( empty( $post->ID ) ? rand() : $post->ID ); $o = '<form class="protected-post-form" action="' . get_option('siteurl') . '/wp-pass.php action=postpass" method="post">
' . __( "<h2>Enter Password</h2>
<p>This proposal is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:</p>" ) . '
<label for="' . $label . '">' . __( "Password:" ) . ' </label><input name="post_password" id="' . $label . '" type="password" size="20" /><input type="submit" class="submit" name="Submit" value="' . esc_attr__( "Submit" ) . '" /> </form>
';
return $o;
}

The first trick is finding where in your theme files that bit of code might be located. It could be in the functions.php file or  in its own php file somewhere in your theme. Once you find it though, if you replace wp-pass.php with wp-login.php?action=postpass you should fix your problem. At least that’s how I updated my custom themes.

The post WordPress 3.4 Custom Password Form appeared first on Tummel.Me.

I wasn’t able to find a very good comparison between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress. WordPress.com has since done an article comparing the two options but, reading it now I don’t know it would have done me much good at the time. So I thought I would take this opportunity to give you my opinion on the differences between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress, so you can make a more informed decision as to which option to take.

What Is The Difference?

In my opinion, the main issue when deciding whether to choose WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress is having a true understanding of the structural difference.

The best analogy I can think of to make clear the differences between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress is that of computers. Self-hosted WordPress is the equivalent of buying your own PC. It is yours to do with as you wish – you can add components, install software, browse the internet unrestricted – the world is your oyster. Meanwhile, WordPress.com is the equivalent of using a library computer. You’re operating within a controlled environment. You do not have the same freedom as you would have with your own PC.

That, in a nutshell, is the main difference. WordPress.com is restricted – self-hosted WordPress is not.

So Why Bother With WordPress.com?

If you are happy to work within the restrictions, you can have a site up and running at no cost – the same cannot be said for self-hosted WordPress. But that’s not all – WordPress.com offers some additional features that do not come as standard with self-hosted WordPress. For someone who only has a very casual or tentative interest in web publishing, WordPress is a great starting ground. Sign up, log in, and get posting.

But in my humble opinion, WordPress.com is not a viable long-term solution for most people looking to take anything more than a casual interest in blogging.

Pros and Cons

At this stage it would be pertinent to take a closer look at how WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress differ. First of all, it is important to note that on a macro level, they are one and the same. They are based upon the same piece of software. But whilst self-hosted WordPress just hands over the keys and lets you drive, WordPress.com packages the software up in a somewhat restrictive way, then gives you control of what is left.

Here is a rundown of what WordPress.com has to offer over self-hosted WordPress, straight out of the box:

• Free hosting (up to 3gb)
• Automatic backups
• Automatic upgrades

Here is a rundown of what self-hosted WordPress has to offer over WordPress.com:

• Unrestricted theme and plugin uploads
• Complete control over your site