EvoBloggito

WordCamp ABQ presentation: Build a powerful CMS with custom fields and custom post types

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Sep 17, 2011; Category: Content Management System, Design/Development; Tags: Custom Fields, Custom Post Types, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

Slides from my presentation at WordCamp Albuquerque, Sep. 17, 2011. Also includes info about modifying Tiny MCE editor to make it more useful (and less dangerous).

The PDF is downloadable on Slideshare (link above slides and in the lower left of the control bar.)

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();
?>

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.

Evo Launches WordPress-based Website for IntelliCyt

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Nov 27, 2010; Category: Content Management System, Design/Development, Marketing, WordPress; Tags: CMS, Communication, Marketing, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

Visit intellicyt.com»

IntelliCyt Corp. is an interesting biotech company in Albuquerque. They make high-throughput flow cytometry equipment and software, with a unique patented process. We were fortunate to do their first website (and their logo) in 2007 while they were still a very small startup. They are still considered a startup (and are attracting funding from venture capitalists), but they’ve grown quite a bit. We’ve watched them go through stages of product development and definition, and it’s been interesting.

Recently, they realized they needed a better online platform for marketing than their static website (in 2007, we didn’t know anything about WordPress, and their budget would not have supported the custom Content Management Systems we were building at that time). While they were hesitant about the whole blog thing, as many companies are at first, they decided WordPress would provide a better means of providing current information to their customers and prospects, and a platform for some two-way communication. WordPress gives IntelliCyt more control over their online communications, enabling them to update their site quickly and easily.

The site is built on Evo4 CMS WordPress theme, developed by Evo for business websites with integrated blogs. The design is meant to impart a clean, high-tech, uncluttered feel, in keeping with the biotech industry.

WordPress was recently voted the best Content Management System in the 2010 Open Source Awards. Little by little, people are recognizing WordPress as a powerful and easy-to-use content management system suitable for business websites.