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How to List Upcoming Events and Events Archive with Custom Post Types

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 27, 2011; Category: Content Management System, Design/Development, WordPress; Tags: Custom Fields, Custom Post Types, WordPress as CMS; 3 Comments

Recently, I had an opportunity to build an events listing that showed only upcoming events, with the next event appearing at the top. That’s pretty easy to accomplish. But I also wanted past events to disappear from the listing and show up instead on an events archive listing. It took a lot of searching and asking questions in two WordPress forums to piece together a query that worked.

First, I created a custom post type for events. Then I created a custom field called “order-date” to control ordering. Why a custom field? Why not rely on WordPress’ innate order-by-date function? Because WordPress uses the date posted, and it’s quite likely that events will not be posted in the order of their occurrence. But just as important, I needed the order-date to be the date of the event so we could use it to drop an event from the upcoming events listing and move it to the events archive listing. The custom field uses the Y-m-d date format for comparison with the Y-m-d format of today’s date.

Here is the query on the upcoming events listing template:

<?php
   $paged = ( get_query_var('paged') ) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
      $today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-6 hours')); //define “today” format; note timezone offset of -6 hours
      query_posts(array(
      'post_type' => 'events', //query “events”
      'posts_per_page' => 5,
      'paged' => $paged,
      'meta_key' => 'order-date',
      'orderby' => 'meta_value',
      'order' => 'ASC', //sort in ascending order
      'meta_query' => array(
         array(
         'key' => 'order-date',
         'meta-value' => $value, //value of “order-date” custom field
         'value' => $today, //value of “today”
         'compare' => '>=', //show events greater than or equal to today
         'type' => 'CHAR'
         )
      )
   ));
   if (have_posts()) :
   while (have_posts()) : the_post();
?>

On a separate template for displaying the archive listing, I made the following changes (highlighted in red) to display past events in descending order:

<?php
   $paged = ( get_query_var('paged') ) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
      $today = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-6 hours'));
      query_posts(array(
      'post_type' => 'events',
      'posts_per_page' => 5,
      'paged' => $paged,
      'meta_key' => 'order-date',
      'orderby' => 'meta_value',
      'order' => 'DESC', //descending order
      'meta_query' => array(
         array(
         'key' => 'order-date',
         'meta-value' => $value,
         'value' => $today,
         'compare' => '<', //show events less than today (past)
         'type' => 'CHAR'
         )
      )
   ));
   if (have_posts()) :
   while (have_posts()) : the_post();
?>

Why I’m abandoning a land line altogether: bye bye Qwest!

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 15, 2011; Category: Communication; Tags: Business, Communication, Zeitgeist; 5 Comments

At the end of June, I’ll be abandoning Qwest service entirely, saving about $56/month on phone service. Not that $56/month is outrageous; it’s actually a good bit less than what I pay Tmobile every month, although there really is no comparison between what I can do on my Tmobile-powered Android and what I can do with the land line, which has become pretty useless. And $56 is way too much to pay for useless.

I used to think it was important to have a land line because along with it came a Yellow Pages listing. But in the past 2 years, I’ve logged the calls coming in on the land line. The average number of calls I’ve gotten on the land line each month during that period is between 15-16. Three of those are typically from two long-standing clients who seem to prefer that number to my cell phone (Marcie, Ted: call me on my cell!). About every 3-4 months I get a call from a new prospective client, indicating they found me in the Yellow Pages. At least 80% of those want me to fix a broken down website their nephew built for them in 2002, or something equally unattractive or unrewarding (I’ve learned the magic phrase that makes them go away: “we’re not the right people for that”). During the two years, I have not acquired a single new client who first contacted me on my land line or who first saw my Yellow Pages ad and then contacted me by other means.

By contrast, during that period I’ve acquired approximately a dozen new clients who contacted me at someone’s recommendation, who found me in a web search, or who became acquainted with me via social media. Monthly cost for those? $0. Math is not my strong suit, but even I can figure out that, in comparison, the Yellow Pages ad is not very cost-effective.

And the other 12-13 calls per month? People from India selling offshore programming and “web designing” services (why do always say “web designing” and not “web design?”). No kidding. I guess in India they assume web developers here are so busy that we need a lot of help, because they call and they call and they call. I understand they’re just trying to make a living, but I do get tired of telling them I’m not interested.

The other reason I have held onto my land line is so I can have a fax machine. But I realized recently that I have not needed a fax machine in more than a year, and probably could have emailed a scanned document saved as a pdf in its place. Faxing has become outmoded as a means of communication. It’s time to dump the fax machine and move on.

I’m looking forward to being done with Qwest. I expect it will feel a bit like it felt when I was able to replace Microsoft Office for Mac with Open Office: lighter, more flexible. And $56/month more in my pocket. And I can live without explaining several times a month that I don’t need web designing services.

Update 6/16/2011: This did not factor into my decision, but when I called Qwest to cancel as of July 1, I was able to reserve the land line number for one year for $65, during which time a phone message directing callers to my cell phone number will be played (I expect that means I will continue to hear from programmers in India, sigh…). If I decide I made a mistake during that 12-month period, I can have the land line restarted. It’s nice to have the fallback option, though I don’t foresee using it.

Hilltop Landscaping: what a company blog should look like

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Apr 24, 2011; Category: Blogging; Tags: Blogging for Business, Local Search, WordPress; 2 Comments

Let’s just come out and admit it: most company blogs are horrible. Either they are never updated (I resemble that remark), or they read like press releases, in that dry, official tone of corporate PR that no one reads because it’s not actually meant to be read.

So, when you find a company blog that’s entertaining and informative, co-written by several people in a company who, as a group, post two-three times each week, who aren’t afraid to be real people in their blog posts: well, it’s beyond refreshing. It’s stunning. The Hilltop Landscape Architects and Contractors have a company blog like that. In less than four months (their current WordPress-based website launched in January, 2011), blogging has become central to their marketing efforts, and their website traffic is on a definite upward slope.

I have first-hand knowledge of The Hilltop as a customer (if you live in New Mexico and need landscaping, you should contact them). They are also my client. I designed and built their website and I work with them on an ongoing basis as a blog coach. I would love to be able to take credit for the quality of their blog, but I do little more than encourage them and make an occasional edit for clarity. I can tell you not all of the bloggers at The Hilltop were just waiting for an opportunity to write an occasional blog post. But they do it, and even (sometimes) find themselves enjoying it. And they are producing a body of work that is beginning to add up to a resource for people with various landscape issues.

Recent blog posts have dealt with practical matters such as windbreaks, dog-friendly landscaping, weed control, the dangers of topping trees, and landscaping methods for reducing danger from wildfires. There have also been posts on subjects such as sensory gardens, New Mexico blooming plants, and the importance of focal points in landscape design. And then there was the infamous April 1 blog post. This kind of variety (and I’ve only scratched the surface) makes The Hilltop’s blog both an information resource and a source of entertainment.

How do they do it? It starts with a commitment from the owner, Jim Forrester. The Hilltop has never had a marketing department; they’ve never needed one because the continual growth in Albuquerque and other cities in New Mexico kept them busy and growing. In the last couple of years, things have gotten a lot more competitive. Jim knew they had to do something to market the company’s services, but he found the idea of spending money on traditional marketing less than appealing. When he and I talked about how inbound marketing techniques could be used to gain business, he liked the idea. More importantly, he committed his time and his people’s time to make it happen. Among the eight Hilltop staffers who blog (including Jim), blogging is part of their job.

Once a week (recently every two weeks, because spring is their busiest season), we meet for an hour to discuss upcoming and potential blog posts and talk about such things as how to get backlinks, how to promote their blog posts, what to do when the blogging well runs dry, and other things related to blogging. There is usually a fair amount of laughing and carrying on; someone looking in the window might conclude there was no useful work being done. But they’d be wrong.

Take a look at The HIlltop’s blog. Read a few posts and then come back here and tell me what you think.

We launched a new website with new EvoGallery CMS WordPress theme

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 17, 2011; Category: Design/Development, WordPress; Tags: Design/Development, Theme Development, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

Visit the website»

Recently I launched a complete remake of my personal art site: raygulick.com. I’m an oil painter, and my painting site has needed an upgrade for at least 2-3 years. Some opportunities as a painter are beginning to come my way, so I had some motivation to redesign the website and, of course, I built it on WordPress.

I started out looking at existing gallery themes (there are literally hundreds), but could not find one that wasn’t over-complicated, under-documented, or both. In the interest of both saving some time and ending up with what I wanted, I decided to create my own gallery theme that suits the way I want to work and display my art. EvoGallery CMS was the result. It shares some characteristics with Evo4CMS theme, but there are significant differences in the grid and in functionality specifically suited for online galleries.

The theme has a deliberately stripped-down appearance that allows website visitors to focus their attention on the artwork. For now, the website utilizes only the homepage gallery, but as I need additional galleries, they can be easily added. “Sold” or “NFS” items can easily be indicated without having to create a new thumbnail image. Care has been taken to make the theme as quickly and easily “update-able” by artists (not normally HTML monkeys) as possible.

I’ve decided not to release EvoGallery CMS for public download while I mull over some business opportunities in which the theme may play a role.

Whew! Launching two websites in the same week

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 25, 2011; Category: Design/Development, WordPress; Tags: Design/Development, Marketing, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

We launched two WordPress-based websites this week, and I’m pleased with both. But I’m really happy double launches are an unusual event. So many things need to happen just before launch, in addition to the inevitable last-minute content changes, and two at once is pretty demanding.

The first site, launching Thursday evening, is The Hilltop Landscape Architects and Contractors. The Hilltop is the premier landscape company in New Mexico, both in residential and commercial landscaping. They decided a new website was in order to serve as the foundation for their marketing efforts. Their site is built on WordPress and includes a blog, several galleries (The Hilltop has great photos, and you should go check them out), and a New Mexico Landscaping Plants and Trees resource and reference. We will be working with them for the next several months, coaching them in making the most of their website in marketing their services.

The second site, launching just about 24 hours later, is Passages International. Passages provides green funeral products to funeral homes, allowing funeral homes to offer green funerals to the growing number of people who want them. Their website features product galleries, with plans to evolve toward taking wholesale orders online. Some related websites will follow shortly, including a site serving the United Kingdom and a site offering products for green pet funerals.

As demanding as the sites were as they slide down the rails together, the companies are both interesting and the people associated with them are great people. As such, these sites represent some of our best best work, much of it behind the scenes utilizing WordPress custom fields to expand its CMS capabilities.

Both sites were built on WordPress with our own Evo4 CMS theme. If you look at both, a similar structure can be detected, but the look and feel of the sites are completely different. Evo4 CMS gives designers a “blank canvas” on which to support almost any business’ branding and marketing needs, and launching these two sites together for two very different kinds of businesses allows us to highlight the theme’s flexibility.