EvoBloggito

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.

Launching Another WordPress Site: Talatek, LLC

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

Visit talatek.com»

Obviously, we’ve been busy: TalaTek’s website is the fourth we’ve launched in a month (the third in little more than a week), with more in the works. This pace would be impossible without WordPress. With it, however, it’s not much of a stretch (discounting some late hours here and there).

The more I work with WordPress, and the more I understand of it’s capabilities and how to take advantage of them, the more impressed I am with it. Not just because it allows me to do more as a designer and developer (does it ever!), but because it allows website owners to do more to manage their online presence. It enables business owners and organization managers to utilize their websites as active communications tools, making updates and changes on an as-needed basis with very little effort.

TalaTek is in line with a trend I’m seeing in which businesses are more willing to embrace blogging as a means of creating content of value to their market, establishing their expertise and enhancing their search engine rankings. TalaTek has elected to call their blog posts “articles,” but I don’t care what they call them as long as they keep posting and getting the benefits of posting them.

Leon Sterling of Compelling Concepts wrote the copy for the website and developed the messaging. It was good to have a partner in the creative process; design is much easier—and more effective—when a clear message exists.

We Do That: Working with Designers to Build Sites with WordPress

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 24, 2010; Category: CSS, Design/Development; Tags: Design/Development, WordPress, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

Visit theigniteforum.com»

Early this week we launched another website designed by Kilmer & Kilmer, brand builders. It’s a small site, just four pages, but what’s significant about it is that it’s built on WordPress—Kilmer & Kilmer’s first such website. I’ve been trying gently to push them in that direction for a few months and, maybe just to shut me up, they decided to give it a try.

Except for WP’s CMS capabilities, it doesn’t begin to make use of the WordPress platform. What it does show, however, is how adaptable both WordPress and our own Evo4 CMS theme are in building custom-designed websites. (Evo4 CMS was specifically built for design flexibility.)

As a designer myself, you might think I’d have a certain amount of resistance to doing the slice-and-dice and CSS for another designer’s website. Not so. Even though it can occasionally be frustrating to work with other designers who have a different approach, it helps keep my vision fresh. It’s easy to get in a rut when working with the same tools and platform, and working with other designers who don’t share all my assumptions helps prevent that.

If you know a designer who is interested in using WordPress as a platform, send him/her my way. If we click, an ongoing design/build relationship could benefit both of us, and our clients.

Basic Custom Fields Technique to Enhance WordPress as a CMS

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Mar 11, 2010; Category: CSS, Design/Development, PHP for Designers, WordPress; Tags: Custom Fields, PHP for Designers, WordPress, WordPress as CMS; No Comments

This is not a new trick, and I certainly did not invent it. It’s been used before, but when I went searching for information about how to do it, it was hard to find. In fact, I finally had to ask a friend who is much better at PHP than I am to help me (I only recently learned to spell P-H-P). This is really basic stuff, but for a lot of us, basic is what we need to get on with our projects.

Sometimes, you need things to NOT appear on a page unless something else that goes with it appears on the page. This is a pretty basic capability for most CMS systems, but I had never done it with WordPress on a page-by-page basis.

Here’s the scenario. I wanted to add a highlighted note in the subnavigation area of my WordPress theme, Evo4 CMS, and I wanted it to be tied to the content of the page it appeared on. I hadn’t used custom fields much, but it seemed to me that was the way to go. Here is an example of the code I wanted to appear below the subnavigation items on the pages:

<div class="sub-note">
     <h5>Subnav Note Heading</h5>
     <p>Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt velit esse cillum dolore
     duis aute irure dolor.</p>
</div>

Pretty simple, right? I decided that, for greater flexibility, my client would have to be responsible for the HTML formatting within the div (this particular client is capable), but I did not want them to be responsible for the div itself, as things can get ugly when someone forgets to close a div or attaches the wrong class to it. In the WordPress backend, on the page on which I wanted the note to appear, I created a custom field named “subnavnote” and added the value (same as above, but without the div):

<h5>Subnav Note Heading</h5>
<p>Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt velit esse cillum dolore duis
aute irure dolor.</p>

On the page template in my theme (page.php), in the subnavigation column, I added the following:

<div class="sub-note">
<?php echo get_post_meta($post->'ID, 'subnavnote', true); ?>
</div>

Woohoo! That displayed the text from the custom field in the subnavigation area. But there was a problem: when I went to other pages, an empty “sub-note” div displayed (CSS specified padding and a background color for the div, which caused it to be visible even when empty). And that was definitely NOT something to yell “woohoo” about.

I needed a way to make the div appear on a page only if there was a value for “subnavnote.” No note, no need for the note container. This was where Googling left me high and dry, as I didn’t know the right terms to use, or how to ask the question so that I was able to find a usable answer. I have no doubt the answer was and is out there, but it remained outside my grasp.

After fiddling and failing with some PHP code snippets, I asked a friend who is a PHP coder for help. Here’s the solution she gave me:

<?php $subnavnote_value = get_post_meta($post->ID,
   'subnavnote', true); ?>
<?php echo ($subnavnote_value != '') ?
   "<div class='sub-note'>".$subnavnote_value."</div>" : ''; ?>

Basically, if there is no value for the custom field on a particular page, this code prevents the div that contains the custom field content from appearing. And if there is a value for the custom field, both the value and its container div appear on the page.

I would break down the code and explain it if I was competent to do so, but I’m not. I can see how it works, however, and have adapted it to other similar circumstances, which greatly increases my ability to use custom fields. I hope this solution is similarly useful for you.

Evo4 CMS Earns Silver Rating by ThemeGrade

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Oct 14, 2009; Category: Blogging, Design/Development, Zeitgeist; Tags: Design/Development, WordPress as CMS, WordPress Themes; No Comments

ThemeGrade is a website that tests and grades WordPress themes for general code compliance and for on-page SEO. Our recently launched theme for professional designers using WordPress as a CMS (Evo4 CMS) scored 6 of 7 points on the SEO portion, and 12 of 16 points on the general portion of the test (2 points were deducted because we don’t offer support: It’s a free theme! Who in their right mind would offer support for a giveaway?) At any rate, a silver rating puts Evo4 CMS in good company, in the top 30 of more than 175 themes currently, and we’re really pleased that our first theme did so well.

Other than offering support (maybe on the next release, we’ll make it paid and offer support), we’re looking at the areas where we lost points to see how we can fix them, or if fixing them is even desireable. For instance, we lost a point by not having nested or threaded comments. I’m not sure we want to “fix” that. First, few people use or want nested or threaded comments, and second, if they do, there are some pretty good plugins available to make that happen.

We lost another point having to do with sidebar link heirarchy. Frankly, I’m not sure what that is, but I will find out. And I’ll also do some research on what the SEO issue is with “home page heading.”