The bottom line is that better tools save us more time.  In an industry with extremely low overhead, our time is the most valuable thing we as web developers can offer.  Time and knowledge is what our clients pay us for.  That being said we need to capitalize on both.

Being that WordPress and its array of plugins are constantly changing and being updated we need a way to quickly install WordPress AND the plugins of our choice with a few clicks.  Manually creating a database and uploading files takes too long.  However Plesk’s application packages are not always up to date.  So how can we accomplish this and better capitalize on our time?  Simple – we create an updated version of an existing Plesk package.

Let’s proceed.

Creating the Plesk Application Package

Get the initial application package. Lets fly over to apsstandard.org and download the most current WordPress application package.  This file must be opened with a standard ZIP extracting program.  Upon opening the file we see that the directory structure is very simple.  All we’ll be worrying about is the htdocs folder.  This folder houses all the content that will be installed on the server.  You will notice immediately that the files listed resemble a pretty standard WordPress installation.

Copy all your plugins to the WordPress plugins folder. Yes.  Its really that simple.  If you use 7-Zip like me you’ll be able to simply drag and drop the files of your choice to the /wp-content/plugins folder and the archive will automatically rebuild itself.

Uploading the Plesk Application Package

This is where everything comes together.  Follow to steps below and refer to the appropriate images for guidance.  Also please notes that this procedure was done in Plesk 8.6.0.

1. Click on Server

2. Click Application Vault

3. Click on Add New Application Distribution Package

4. Select the our newly created application package

After the application loads you’ll see a newly created WordPress Package under the other category.  Be patient while uploading as this will take a few minutes.  Once its done, you’re done!  If you need help installing a web application, refer to planetsmb.com’s article on this.

See NEWD’s Application Package

This is our most current application package.  We do use several premium plugins that I have removed but there are enough resources to keep one occupied and clearly illustrate the benefits.

Download Plesk Application Package

The Solution

Simple!!  WordPress has a conditional tag called post_password_required.  The function returns FALSE in 2 situations:

1. Once the user has typed the correct password into the password field
2. If the saved cookie has not expired and let’s the user view the page without typing in the password

Its pretty simple.  It took a LOT of digging through the WordPress forums, codex and google searches but, eventually I found it.

Example Code

Check out the example below to see how I can display the following dynamic content areas, ONLY when the user has entered a password.

if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
 <?php the_content(); ?>
 <?php endwhile; endif; ?>
 </div>
 <div id="rightcolumn">
 <?php
 if (!(post_password_required())) {
 global $pagename;

 switch ($pagename) {
 case 'employee-area' :
 query_posts('category_name=employee-news&showposts=3');
 $pageTitle = 'Employee News';
 break;
 case 'managers-area' :
 query_posts('category_name=managers-news&showposts=3');
 $pageTitle = 'Manager\'s News';
 break;
 }
 } else {
 query_posts('showposts=3&cat=3');    
 $pageTitle = 'Latest News Articles';
 }
 ?>

 <h3><?=$pageTitle ?></h3>
 <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
 <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 <h4><?php the_title(); ?></h4>
 <div><?php the_excerpt(); ?></div>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title();?>">read more &raquo;</a>
 <br />
 <br />
 <?php endwhile; ?>
 <?php else : ?>
 <p>There are no recent posts.</p>
 <?php endif; ?>

If there are any questions to how to use this, please feel free to comment!!

The Code

We’ll start off with the code first.  And then explain what everything does second.  Please note that this is a page.php template file.

<?php get_header(); ?>

 <div id="content">

 <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php while (have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php the_post();  ?>

 <?php if ($pagename=='news') : ?>

 <h1>Latest News Articles</h1>

 <?php the_content(); ?>

 <?php $newQuery = new WP_Query('category=news'); ?>

 <?php if ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php while ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php $newQuery->the_post(); ?>

 <div>

 <strong><?php the_title(); ?></strong><br />

 <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">read more &raquo;</a>

 </div>

 <?php endwhile; ?>

 <?php else : ?>

 <p>Sorry!!  There are no news articles here.</p>

 <?php endif; ?>

 <?php else : ?>

 <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

 <hr />

 <?php the_content(); ?>

 <?php endif; ?>

 <?php endwhile; ?>

 <?php endif; ?>

 </div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

The Explanation

<?php get_header(); ?>

 <div id="content">

 <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php while (have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php the_post();  ?>

The standard WordPress Loop – The first part of the code as seen above is pretty standard.  Nothing out of the ordinary here.

<?php if ($pagename=='news') : ?>

 <h1>Latest News Articles</h1>

 <?php the_content(); ?>

 <?php $newQuery = new WP_Query('category=news'); ?>

 <?php if ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php while ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php $newQuery->the_post(); ?>

 <div>

 <strong><?php the_title(); ?></strong><br />

 <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">read more &raquo;</a>

 </div>

 <?php endwhile; ?>

 <?php else : ?>

 <p>Sorry!!  There are no news articles here.</p>

 <?php endif; ?>

The second and nested loop – Alright.  This is where things might get a little tricky.  Firstly, we’ll check to see what page we’re requesting.  If the page name is ‘news’ then we’ll execute a custom set of instructions.

<?php $newQuery = new WP_Query('category=news'); ?>

Defining a new loop – As seen above, the first part in setting up another wordpress loop inside of an already running wordpress loop is to put the new loop object into a variable.  As noted in the code below, we’ll call this new variable called $newQuery.  This variable obviously can be named whatever you choose.

We also will be using the WP_Query object to build our new loop.  Using query_posts does not work in this situation.

<?php if ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php while ($newQuery->have_posts()) : ?>

 <?php $newQuery->the_post(); ?

Setting up a new loop - Next, we just have to use the information in the variable to build a new loop.  As seen from the above code, this is setup exactly like a normal wordpress loop but, references the $newQuery variable.

<div>

 <strong><?php the_title(); ?></strong><br />

 <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">read more &raquo;</a>

 </div>

Displaying the content – Lastly, we have to display the information using standard wordpress template tags.  Note that these tags do NOT reference the $newQuery variable.  The code for presenting a loop ALWAYS remainds the same.

Conclusion

And that’s it!!  As we can see, this technique is very powerful and with some creative thought can be used in many, many different situations.  This is also yet another step in using WordPress as a full blown CMS.

Let’s take a look…

The Problems

Out of the box the Folio Elements by Jason Schuller of Press75.com is fantastic.  By the sound of the name, this theme is great for a simple portfolio site; web design, visual arts, photography or anything like that.  However there were several shortcomings the way it stood.

Pseudo AJAX Implementation – Try the theme out.  It uses AJAX but, code wise it isn’t performing an asyncronous transaction at all.  All content is loaded in to the page right off the bat.  This causes slower page load and leads us to our next point.

Poor SEO quality – Any site that uses this theme needs to understand that SEO is not a goal.  As the theme stood, any site would get a lower quality score because of the duplicate content on the homepage and all subsequent pages.  Not to mention the slow loading time and inline JavaScript.

jCarousel Lite Bug – The theme was not having the 3rd item in the carousel pop up… WHY?!

The Solutions

True AJAX Integration – First things first.  I setup the theme to use actual AJAX.  I wrote a simple script that outputs the content using the standard WordPress Loop.  Then I setup all the links for the pages and posts to utilize this script and passed them into the FaceBox.  This works a lot better and in favor of putting all the page and post content directly into the page.

Better SEO Scores – While this theme still isn’t good to use if SEO goals are important, the true AJAX integration helps out a LOT!  This prevents the site from being indexed with duplicate content.  Also I moved the on page JavaScript to a separate file.  Both of the fixes decrease page load time and slightly increases its SEO score.

Fixing the jCarsouel Bug – This was actually easy and honestly a mistake that I make more often than I’d like to admit!!  Basically the order in which you load JavaScript is important.  Because jCarousel creates DUPLICATES of the content in the carousel, the carousel script needed to be loaded before the facebox script.  Also, the whole reason that the jCarousel plugin uses duplicate content is to acheive the circular wrapping effect.  This is crucial to this theme as it would look akward if the carousel bounced to the first post.

Get the Theme!!

Folio Elements

• Live Demonstration
• Documentation

NEWD WordPress CMS Plugins Distribution

The WordPress CMS Plugins

Askimet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

All-In-One-SEO-Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines.

Yoast Breadcrumbs – Easily add breadcrumbs to your template.

cForms – cforms is a feature rich plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.

Google Analytics for WordPress – The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.

Google Sitemap Generator – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

List Pages Plus – Alter the output of the wplistpages() function’s HTML. Add in your own classes, insert text into link title, add additional tags surrounding title. Top-level Parents and Children are set seperately for greater flexibility. You can also turn off parent links, useful when using collapsible menus.

NextGEN Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option.

Peter’s Login Redirect – Define a set of redirect rules for specific users, users with specific roles, users with specific capabilities, and a blanket rule for all other users. This is all managed in Settings > Login redirects. Version 1.5 and up of this plugin is compatible only with WordPress 2.6.2 and up.

PODs CMS – Pods lets you create, manage, and display custom content types using WordPress. Like Drupal CCK, these content types can relate to one another, allowing for sites packed with interconnectedness. Automatic pagination, filtering, public forms, access control, menu editing and more are possible with the Pods CMS plugin.

Post Thumb Revisited – This plugin scans a post for the first image and then creates a thumbnail for it.  I find this very useful in almost any situation.

Role Manager – Allows for the creation and alteration of WordPress roles.  Very useful for CMS based sites.

WPLite – WPlite (“WordPress lite”) is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress administration menu—even the Dashboard. On top of that, you can also hide post meta controls on the Write page, so as to simplify the editing interface.

Conclusion

Make your life easier and download the WordPress CMS Plugins Distribution.

NEWD WordPress CMS Plugins Distribution

Why am I using this?

Simple!  The more you use WordPress and more importantly the more you develop around the WordPress platform the more you are going to realize that you need certain things done that WordPress doesn’t natively provide.

One thing that I find myself needing often is the user’s permission level.  This concept aims towards using WordPress as a full blown CMS (which in my opinion is rapidly heading in that direction anyway).  So without any further a due, let’s map out our first function.

Making it Happen

Step 1 – Create the functions.php file in your theme directory. Pretty straight forward right?  I could put a picture of how to do this but,  I think you’ll get it.

Step 2 – Write the function. In the new file that we’ve just created, add the following code.

<?php

/********************************************************************
 * Determine if the user is logged in and what user level they have *
 ********************************************************************/

function the_user_level () {
	if (is_user_logged_in()) {
		global $current_user, $wpdb;
		$userLevel = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT meta_value FROM $wpdb->usermeta WHERE user_id=$current_user->id AND meta_key='wp_user_level'");
		return $userLevel;
	} else {
		return 0;
	}
}
?>

Step 3 – Utilize the function within a template file. All you need to do now is make the call to the function.  Try implementing it in any one of your template files with a piece of code something like this.

<?php
    $accessLevel = the_user_level();
    if ($accessLevel > 0) {
        echo '<p>Welcome user!  Your current access level is <strong>' . $accessLevel . '.</strong></p>';
    } else {
        echo '<p>You are currently not logged in.</p>';
    }
?>

In conclusion

And that’s pretty much it.  Very straight forward.  Please note that this tutorial is not for beginners and resides on the more intermediate/advanced level.   Stay tuned for more WordPress tricks!