Over the next few weeks I will be in and out of the office for a couple family vacations and some on location client projects. My good friend and collaborator Jamie Orillion did a blog post a few months back about running your business from your phone. I thought it could be helpful to do a [...]
There is tons of buzz in the web business right now about social media. I have clients calling me about new websites asking about social media every week. They all want to have a “social media presence” on the internet. Most of them have no idea why, they just want to be on Twitter and [...]
As we noted last week with the launch of WordPress there are a few simple little interface tweaks that make it lighter and faster. We are now offering with all new projects free 30 day access to our extensive video training series (see screenshot below). The video library is kept updated automatically when versions or [...]
Not many updates to WordPress have gotten me so excited as the most recent version. WordPress 3 has really amped up the CMS factor with many new features that previously were achieved with 3rd party plugins. Most of the functionality that I added onto my client’s websites are now built directly into the core of the system. I have been working on a few new sites that are close to launch that are built from the ground up with WordPress 3. There are over 1,217 bug fixes and feature improvements, I will spare you all the geekery and only highlight a few here.
This feature expands upon the standard “post types” of posts, pages, and attachments. It gives users the ability to create a new section to categorize data. When this feature is implemented into a website it can really be tweaked to what ever dataset that needs to be displayed. The main examples used by WordPress to explain the functionality are things like a real estate listings, a podcast directory, or a book/movie database. But really you could do anything with custom post types. For instance you could use it to display store locations with address information, descriptions and more.
This is a feature that I have included in many websites with the use plugins for quite a few years now, but it is finally a part of the core system. This allows users to create and modify their menu systems on the fly. If you want to have categories in the menu as well as pages you just drag and drop and you are good to go. It also allows the ability to make links that can point to other locations. This helps free up the need to create dummy pages with redirects.
Previously this feature was known as WordPress MU, but it as well as been integrated directly into the system. WordPress 3 now lets you very easily manage multiple WordPress sites with one install. Another feature that when used correctly can be very useful. For instance a shopping complex that has one main website with multiple sub sites for each individual business, allowing individual control to all the users for their own site, but still connected and hosted in one location.
There are countless features and many security fixes, way too many to note here. But they also did many little interface tweaks that help make things less cluttered and easier to just get in and write. If you host your site yourself make sure to update, you will be happy. As always we are ready to go with WordPress 3 and have already been playing in the sandbox with it for quite a few months. You can get more information on the new features here and for the geeks amongst us more details here.
