A couple of weeks ago I was trying to get a design out so a client could review it and let us know if they wanted us to keep working on the design. Fortunately they did! I was struggling to try and figure out how I could have pages with a different template design. I wanted to have a sidebar on one section of the website with a list of subpages. I knew there was a way to do it. I had heard of it before but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I then looked through the WordPress documentation and learned about WordPress page templates and how to create them! I was relieved because I was then able to quickly get a different template for a few pages put together.

It’s really easy to do. At the top of a PHP file in your theme’s root directly, place the following code:

Then of course you’ll pull your header, sidebar, footer and other div elements just like you normally would. After you have gotten it put together upload the file into your theme directory. Go into your WordPress administration area and edit or create a new page. On the side click on the plus sign beside page template, use the drop down to choose your newly created page template. If you were already on the page before you uploaded you may have to refresh.

I wish people would stop using Flash for their entire website design. First of all, Flash slows my computer down to the point where I have to force my browser to close just so I can start browsing the Internet again. I lose the tabs I had open and that doesn’t make me a happy camper! Not all sites do this, I realize that. But there are a lot that do. Secondly, Flash is still not very usable to blind people. I have blind friends, they tell me these things. Third, if you’ve got several layers to go through to get to a certain point in your website, everytime someone visits your website they have to go through the entire thing from the beginning. You can’t simply bookmark the page.

The other aggravation that I’ve got is that sites that use Flash for their entire presentation tend to force you to open a pop up window to view the site. Not only do most browsers block pop ups by default, most people, at least I, don’t think to look for a button that says “click here to open.” Also, stop using splash screens! That is seriously old and annoying. With fast Internet connections people do not want to wait on your stupid splash screen to load and transfer the user to your real homepage. It’s not good for search engine optimization. It also annoys me! So stop it!

I am not completely against Flash. For streaming video across the Internet, Flash is the best solution. You can play flash content on Windows, Mac and Linux. For advertisements (THAT AREN’T ANNOYING) flash can be very good at getting your message across because you are not confined to just text and images. My point to this rant is to use Flash sparingly. I think it’s a great tool but I seriously think people are overusing it.

Over the weekend I had a great opportunity to help someone move from TypePad to WordPress running on their web hosting account. The reason the person wanted to do this is because they were no longer going to continue paying for their TyePad account. Understandable considering the fact that the person was paying for TypePad on top of their web hosting account.

Moving the Posts

Fortunately, getting the TypePad blog entries backed up and imported into WordPress was one of the simplest tasks to take care of. The first step is to login to your TypePad account and click on the Edit Posts link. Then you click on Import/Export. Once TypePad makes a backup of all your entries, which it will do in one file, you can right click on that file and save it to your computer.

The next step is also very easy to do. That is getting the posts you just exported into WordPress. All you have to do is go to your WordPress installation, login to the administration area, click on Manage, then Import. On the import page select “Movable Type and TypePad”. On the next page, click the browse button and find the file that you exported from TypePad (the file I downloaded from TypePad was an HTML file). Once you find the file, click on “Upload file and import” and WordPress will import your posts into it’s database.

Moving Images from TypePad to WordPress

TypePad, like any good blogging service, allows it’s users to upload images to their servers so that images can be placed into blog posts. Although that’s a really great feature to offer, the problem is, what happens if you need a backup or want to move your images elsewhere? The solution that TypePad suggests and the one that I followed worked quite well is to use a program called Getleft. If you’re on a Mac you can use SiteSucker. These two programs download all of the files from a website, as long as they are linked. Open the program, plug in the URLs and start the download process. When I done this, I had to let it run for several hours before it got all the data. Once the software has downloaded the files you’ll want to upload the backup to your web hosting account. A great place to put these files is in your uploads folder (root directory/wp-content/uploads/).

Once you’ve gotten the files into the uploads folder, the next thing that you’ll want to do is get the images re-linked. You could go through every single post and re-link the images by hand OR you could download the Search and Replace plugin. Download the plugin, extract it and upload it to your plugins directory (root directory/wp-content/plugins). Once it is on the server, go back to the WordPress administration area, go to Plugins and click on Activate for Search and Replace.

After the plugin has been installed, in your WordPress administration area click on “Manage” and then “Search and Replace.” The next step is a bit tricky, you need to find out the old URL and the new URL. You can get an idea of what I used from the screen shot below.

You can then click on “Replace!”. Once the process has completed, go back to your blog and make sure that the images have been re-linked properly. Go back through your archives and see that images on old posts are linked properly as well.

Creating an authors list

The person that I done this for had a blog where several people contributed and wanted to have a list of the authors on the sidebar of each contributor. The idea is, when you click on the author’s name, you’ll get a page with all that author’s posts. I’ve inserted a screenshot below, from this you can tell how I integrated the required code into the sidebar of the theme this person chose.

Scratching the surface

I’m sure there are more features that could be ported over from TypePad to WordPress and I am sure a lot of them have been. What I have mentioned above is simply what I done on this particular project. If you’ve got other suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.

Before you start blogging, you’ll want to set up Akismet and a backup schedule for your new WordPress blog along with other plugins that you might want to use.

I am wanting to convert my blogs that are running on Nucleus CMS to WordPress, there are several reasons why and first of all, I want to explain why and then I will tell you how to do this:

The first and major reason I am wanting to switch is because I do not feel as though my blogs are getting enough visitors. One reason I feel this is happening is because when a search engine spiders my blogs they are not able to index my posts, from my understanding this has to do with the URL scheme for permalinks that Nucleus uses, its too complicated. In the Nucleus CMS forums there are tutorials for how to change the way articles are linked, however, I have been completely un-sucessful with them.

There are more features in WordPress than in Nucleus and I am wanting them now, I don't want to have to wait on future versions. The development of Nucleus seems to have slowed down, tremendously. Features I am wanting that WordPress has out-of-the box right now:

• Static pages
• Password protection
• Multiple categories
• Better SPAM prevention
• Easier blog-rolling or linking.
• Dashboard that shows you news in the WordPress community as well as notifications when someone links to your site.

When you upload images using Nucleus CMS it creates a proprietary link instead of linking to the image. This is especially annoying for me because when I do convert to WordPress, I am going to have to update each post so that the images will actually work!

There are other reasons that I don't like Nucleus CMS. There are reasons why I like it. However, I seriously believe it is time for me to make the switch to WordPress CMS. If nothing else, just so I can get more visitors coming to this website! At least, I hope that will happen! So, here is how we do this!

1. Backup your Nucleus CMS database! If something goes wrong, you might have problems accessing your site.
2. Install fresh copy of WordPress 1.5. This is an older version of WordPress, however, the converter that we are going to use does not like the newer version of WordPress. Once we get the Nucleus CMS database imported into WordPress 1.5 we can upgrade to the latest version (currently 2.04).

   WordPress Archive Directory
   WordPress Version 1.5 (ZIP)

3. Download the converter that we are going to use and then upload into a directory on your web server. Nucleus ConverterYou can see the original documentation for the converter here.
4. Make sure you have available the username and password of both your Nucleus & WordPress databases. Also, make sure that your Nucleus database doesn't have a prefix. If it does, you'll need to write down what the prefix of the database is.
5. Navigate to the converter script that you uploaded to your site.
6. Plug in the fields and click on convert.

Your posts should now be converted into WordPress, at least, this worked for me. Now, make sure you upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and then you can start cleaning up your WordPress blog. Unfortunately, you'll have to edit individual posts and re-link your images.

If you have uploaded images to your nucleus installation you can download them from the media directory, my images were under “nucleus/media/1″. I plan to upload the images to another directory and then re-link each one. If there is a simpler solution that I come up with, I will update this post.

I had multiple blogs on my Nucleus installation and what I am planning to do is to turn each of those blogs into its own category in the new WordPress installation. I need to move a couple of blogs into their own installation. I'm hoping I can either come up with a way to export individual blogs, or, once they are converted, export into a new install and delete the posts I don't want. If anyone has a simple way to do this, please, let me know!

Also, I should note that when I done this I also installed a fresh copy of Nuclues onto my local server, just in case something went horribly wrong, I am going to write a post for backing up your Nucleus install and then installing locally, hopefully soon, if you would need an article like this please let me know and I'll speed up the post.

It is going to be a long process and a tedius one, but, I believe once I do I will be much happier! Hopefully this has helped you out somewhat as well!

Definition of a web designer

Once upon a time, the web designer of your website was responsible for everything. They designed the layout, they coded the site, they updated content for you whenever you needed them to, they also made sure everything was in proper working order. Today however, the role of the web designer is changing, in my opinion. The main change that I see is that the web designer is no longer and should no longer be responsible for the content on the clients website. I do however think that the web designer is responsible for making sure that the site looks good, is maintained, is in working condition and is backed up regularly and can provide assistance to the customer. How is this possible? How can a client with no knowledge of web design principles or coding languages know how to update the website? Its called a content management system (CMS).

So what exactly is a CMS?

I always tell people that a CMS is an online application that you can install onto your website that allows YOU to manage YOUR content and the designer can manage the look of the site and maintain the site. You login to the administration area and create your content and publish it. There is no knowledge of coding languages required. The only thing you need to know, is how to navigate the CMS.

Reasons to implement a CMS

• Once the website is set up, you can assign a single user, a multiple user or groups of users to manage the content on the website. A lot of business will have a secretary update the content on the website using the CMS. The best part about this is, you don't have to email your designer, wait on them to update the content, wait on them to reply saying its updated…you can go ahead and make the changes yourself.
• You can apply different permissions to each user. If you wanted to assign an author permission to a user but not allow them to publish the content, you could assign someone else the ability to publish articles.
• Since its simple to create and publish content, you can publish content more quickly and more often. You could update your site whenever any new news about your company is available: press releases, news items, new employees, new products, product updates, etc. This will help keep your website from feeling stagnated. You can also create a blog which will allow your customers to leave you comments. This allows you to have interaction with your customers.
• Backing up the website is also much easier. You can quickly make a backup of the database and your website theme. In the event that something was to happen to your website or you needed to move it, it could quickly be fixed or moved.
• Since the underlying framework of a CMS is already there for you, it is much easier and quicker to create a websites look and feel. You could create your own CMS, but, WHY re-invent the wheel?
• There are MANY CMS' out there and MANY of them are free. You can pick and choose which one you'd like to use based on the features it has, the database and scripting software that it runs on, user interface, etc. Most CMS websites will have a demonstration area for their CMS. There is also a website that you can view reviews and demonstrations of the CMS.
• I think most CMS' do a really good job of search engine optimization (SEO). I think they do a better job at SEO than just having HTML/XHTML & CSS pages.

Problems with a CMS (there aren't many, fortunately)

• Although a CMS is reasonably secure (usually), your IT department or your web design department will need to make sure that your website is secure. They will need to make sure certain files remain hidden from the public (for database security). They will need to make sure the database is backed up, regularly.
• If you're going to create a blog on your website and allow comments, you will need to make sure comments are moderated so that you don't have SPAM or rude comments on your blogs. This can sometimes get out of hand and almost become a full-time job. You'll either need to make sure there is a way to take care of SPAM or simply not allow comments.
• You are taking money away from your designer!!! LOL. Since I am a web designer myself, I thought I'd throw that one in there.

Which CMS to use?

The two that I am going to recommend to you are free AND open source. They are my two favorite CMS', they have plugins/modules that you can extend your CMS with. They're very user friendly. They're not too difficult to install either. Best of all, if you can't hire a web designer, you can download ready made themes for your site. The bad part about that is, it won't be custom to your company. Both CMS' have plugins/modules for e-commerce. The two I recommend are:

Drupal
WordPress

WordPress is more centered around blogging, however, you can tweak the code to allow it to be much more like a standard website.

If you'd like to try out the CMS' above or other ones, you can check out OpenSourceCMS.com