Author: Birgit Pauli-Haack

web & mobile developer for biz + nonprofits in Naples, Florida. WordPress Meetup SWFL organizer, Netsquared organizer, #nptech, photographer.
Owner Pauli Systems, Naples , FL & co-founder NPTechProjects - Improving Nonprofit Impact through Technology
Birgit is also a deputy on the WordPress Global Community Team

Categories
Meeting Information

Meeting Notes: Tools & Plugins to Schedule Social Media posts

Notes of our Meetup on September 21, 2017 at Rocket Lounge in Fort Myers.

WordPress News

4.8.2 Maintenance and Security Release is out. Upgrade now.

There are plenty of security vulnerabilities fixed. Read more

What’s to come in 4.9?

All the information about the upcoming release of 4.9 is available on the make blog. Today we look at the Custom Widget for Galleries – mergee of current feature plugin for testing

You can download Core Media Widget from the Repository

While the audio, video and single image widget section were already merged into Core with 4.8, the Gallery widget is slated to be merged into core for the 4.9 release.

If you test it, please report any issues on GitHub. Sarah Gooding tested things and posted an article on WPTavern

We did our own test on our test site. I really like it:-) It also shows, that you need to be consistent when uploading images to your library. The Widget displays the caption section for the image underneath the image, and it looks much nicer if you fill out the caption field for all images to be displayed in the Widget.

How to use the Gallery Widget?

  • Got to Appearance > Widget
  • Click on Galllery widget and select the widget section
  • Give the widget a Title
  • Click on “Add Media” to select the respective images from the Media Library
  • Make adjustments to other settings, like column number and type of display
  • Click on “Insert Gallery” button
  • Preview in Gallery Widget admin screen
  • Click on Save

Note: You might see in the video that the desired number of columns is set to 2, however, the display in the widget admin screen shows 3 columns. That is a known issue and already in the issue tracker as #190

WordCamp US Dec 1 -3, 2017,

Gutenberg – 1.3

Since our meeting, there were two more updates to the plugins. It’s now in version 1.3. If you’d like to test it but don’t want to set-up a new test site, send me birgit.pauli@gmail.com an email and I will give you access to the tt.wpswfl.org site where we keep the Gutenberg plugin updated

You can catch up all things Gutenberg on this Storify including links to online discussions, documentation, blog posts on how to interact w/ Gutenberg in Themes and Plugins.

WordPress ditched React… see what happened next.

Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress.org will not use Reactjs as it’s new javascript library because of the license that is attached to the open-source library. This decision requires a rewrite of Gutenberg, once the decision is made with of alternative Javascript libraries, the Gutenberg time will change over to the new framework.

This will delay the release of Gutenberg a few weeks and with it the 5.0 release.

Made it Techcrunch pay attention

And then Facebook announced they will release the next version and other open-source projects without the patent clause. And on the subsequent post by Matt Mullenweg more discussion happened. Seems like a never-ending story.

Topics survey results

Topic Survey Results and Upcoming Meetups

Schedule & Speakers

Tools & Plugins to Schedule Social Media posts

Plugins to handle Open-Graph meta tags

Plugins for auto-post / cross-posting to Social web

Tools for scheduling

  • Sprout Social – awesome bulk scheduling feature
  • Hootsuite
  • CoSchedule – WordPress plugin right from your post screen
  • Buffer – Long time around – always relevant
  • SocialOomph – nice Twitter features on the free account, with bulk upload.
  • HopperHQ – only scheduling tool for Instagram

Mini-Tip

if you have a Gmail account and you need more email addresses, you don’t need to create a new account. Just add a + sign after the handle and another string before the @ sign. Example:

Categories
Meeting Information Presentations

Topic Survey Results and Upcoming Meetups

Topic Survey Results Bar Chart

For the last two weeks, we ran a Topics Survey with 10 Topics to fill the next six slots for our monthly meetings at the Rocket Lounge.

Here are the results:

TopicVery interestedInterestedNot at all interestedVotesPoints
Tools & Plugins to Schedule Social Media posts111322633
How to set-up an ecommerce site and evaluate features13852629
Top 10 Plugins or which Plugins do you need for your site13672625
Understanding WordPress Vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, WTF)11962625
How to get backlinks for your site and how to disawow bad ones71452623
Creating web apps with WordPress & Gravity Forms71272619
3rd Party Editors for WordPress61282616
The Business of being a Web Developer79102613
Make WP_CLI Work For You: Extending WP_CLI With Custom Commands86122610
How to find and work with hosting companies?381526-1

The Top 6 Topics will be scheduled. 

We already have speakers for the following topics:

  • How to set-up an e-commerce site and evaluate features – Chris Christoff
  • Understanding WordPress Vulnerabilities (XSS, CSRF, WTF) – Chris Wiegman
  • Creating web apps with WordPress & Gravity Forms – Colleen Brady
  • Tools & Plugins to Schedule Social Media posts – Birgit Pauli-Haack on September 21, 2017

We are in the process of coordinating dates with the speakers. The meetings will be announced on Meetup. but you can already mark your calendars with the dates.

Save the Meeting Dates:

All 6 pm all at Rocket Lounge, Downtown, Fort Myers.

  • September 21, 2017 – Tools & Plugins to Schedule Social Media posts
  • October 19, 2017
  • November 16, 2017
  • December 21, 2017
  • January 18, 2018, and
  • February 15, 2018

Question: What topics do you find missing?

Answers:

  • Dealing with online harassment; hiding identity online — (not a WordPress topic)
  • WordPress 101
  • How to prevent or avoid spam comments and messages, if that’s even possible (Should be covered in the Plugin Topic) 
  • Troubleshooting – where DIY’ers can find help for some nagging issues
  • REST API
  • Best practices for developers

We keep the suggestions related to WordPress for the next survey, which will be held in December.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Meeting Information

Four most exciting presentations at WordCamp Europe

WordCamp Europe Paris 2017 - Entrance

WordPress Gutenberg

Learn more about the new editor Gutenberg. It’s a major shift from the current editor. Revealed at WordCamp Europe it has received already 3 updates and it now in 0.5.0 You can find a collection of resources and blog posts on Storify

And I created this post in the Gutenberg editor 0.5.0. and then I messed it up. Not yet production ready. Told Yeh!

Get a head-start on Gutenberg Editor testing via this post

Three Kinds of Design

John Maeda talked about the Three Kinds of Design. He used his Design Tech Report 2017 PDF as prompts on screen, which was interesting.
You can read his Design Tech Report here. You can also listen to the report via Vimeo.


Listen to John Maeda explains how WordPress actually produces Computational Designers. It’s in this video close to the end:

I particularly was fascinated by Maeda’s remarks about China. Listen to him yourself. Especially how Chinese people use their
smartphones.

CSS Grid – Creating Web Layouts the right way! Finally.

CSS Grid is finally here. I had given up on ever getting into the nitty-gritty of Cascading Styles sheets. Our designer-developer is so proficient in it, that I was able to delegate that part since 2006 or so. Wholeheartedly agree with Morten, when he says “Web Layouts are broken. We just refined how we break them.”

NEED AND EXAMPLE?

Layout files like this are not uncommon. They are almost a badge of honor. Right?

Here is a little excerpt from the slide-deck

CSS Grid Changes Everything About Web Layouts: WordCamp Europe 2017 from Morten Rand-Hendriksen

For everyone who wants to really dive into the talk and see Morten go to all of his 106 slides, watch it on WordPress.TV

Well worth your time!

Cathedral and Bazaar

How do we build Community? Like we build open-source. Eric Raymond wrote about his time at Linux – the open-source operating system, in his book Cathedral and Bazaar. Andrea Middleton at WordCamp Europe

  • With many eyes, all bugs are shallow.
  • Release early, release often.
  • Scratching a personal itch
  • Egoless participation.

Five Good Faith Rules

  1. The group is for the benefit of the community, not specific businesses or individuals. (egoless participation)
  2. Membership is open to anyone. (many eyes, and also modeling that open bazaar concept)
  3. Everything is volunteer-based; speakers or organizers are not paid. (egoless participation)
  4. Anyone can organize an event. (many eyes, release early/often, “personal itch,” egoless participation, and also the open bazaar.)
  5. The community works together to make a welcoming environment, and discriminatory behavior is not accepted. (many eyes)

 

Andrea Middleton’s talk is now on WordPress.tv.

…. and then I attended a WordCamp

Categories
Meeting Information

New WordPress Editor: Gutenberg is in early beta and needs testers

Gutenberg Editor in Plugin Repository

Earlier today, I started a Storify to collect all the resources and blog posts about the Gutenberg Editor. It was released in it 0.2 version just around WordCamp Europe. Matt Mullenweg ran a demo video during his interview with Om Malik on WordCamp Europe Second Day.

The Storify has all the links and post from all corners of the WordPress Community.  If you don’t enjoy working with unfinished software just read through some of the blog posts to get an idea of how big the changes will be for you as a user of WordPress. Just read some of the blog posts.

It will not be in the next version 4.9. And it’s not clear when WordPress 5.0 will come out.
It definitely depends on how far the Gutenberg Editor can be pushed forward.

Head-first into Gutenberg Testing

Install the Gutenberg plugin on your non-production site. As long as Gutenberg is not officially released I would not use it on any production site. Be warned. If you don’t have a testing site or development site at your disposal but still want to test it, scroll further down to request access to our test site.

Are you an Accessibility Expert? WordPress needs your help

 

What’s new in Gutenberg? (14th July)

The Gutenberg Editor Frequently Asked Questions on GitHub

The design team around Gutenberg Editor published a few questions from the community. For instance: “How do I make my own block?” Or “How will old metaboxes (PHP) work?”. You can read the answers on GitHub.

For Developers  creating your own Blocks for Gutenberg

 

First Steps w/ Gutenberg editor

On our Testing & Training site, I posted small notes about my first steps with Gutenberg.

Paris #3

Paris #2

Paris #1

If you’d like to get an opportunity to test Gutenberg, but don’t have a testing site available, enter your information in this form and I’ll set-up an account on our test site. The only requirement beyond the form is that you answer a few questions via our user survey.

So here is the Storify: WordPress Gutenberg Editor – What is it, how to test and what other people think

Categories
Meeting Information Presentations

Online Strategies for StartUps – Recap and Resources

Whether you’re starting a new business or launching a new website, you’re probably wondering how to develop a successful online strategy.

At this month’s WordPress Meetup SWFL three local businesses answered start-up strategy questions! They focused on branding, content ,marketing, and social media marketing strategies and finished off the evening with a lively Q & A.

Branding and Design: Elle and David Denning
Jumpanzee @Jumpanzee_team

Content Marketing Strategy: Tia Willin
THOH Creations Blog and Content Services @THOHCreations

Social Media Marketing Strategy: Mary Anne Cipressy
What’s Up Southwest Florida @WhatsUpSWFL

Huge Thank you to Elle & David, Tia, and Mary Anne for sharing their expertise so generously!

Thank you to Peter Ocsody of The RocketLoungs for hosting our meetup and providing the video recording!

Categories
Meeting Information

WordPress Weekly Coffee Klatch – Our first, a success!

WordPress Kaffeeklatsch with Ani

By Ani – organizer of WordPress Weekly Coffee Klatch, WordPress Meetup SWFL

I am calling this one a big success!

We had our first ever WordPress Weekly Coffee Klatch (From the German, Kaffeeklatsch.), on Wednesday, July 6 th 2016 at 11 am. This was the first of what we are hoping to put on every week. Incidentally, it was almost two years ago, to the date, that I first logged into WordPress.com to get a blog started. In September of 2015 I started a self-hosted site/blog, and today I hosted a WordPress Meetup KaffeeKlatsch. Not because I’m an expert by any means, because I surely am not.  Simply due to the fact that I have a desire for learning and I’m guessing it’s something all members of the WordPress Meetup SWFL share.

I have attended several of the monthly evening events and one of the things I’ve always longed for at those, was mingling, so we could get to know one another more, make connections with WordPress users to troubleshoot problems, ask advice and things of that nature.  Also, for me, while the monthly meetings are soooo informative, and I encouraged the daytime folks to attend this month’s 6-8 pm meeting, my brain is so tired at that time of night.  I had been kicking around this late morning coffee shop thing for several months.

It was a pretty fine turnout.

Only under a week notice and we had five people including me.  Three out of five brought laptops and I took notes, old school, on paper too.  I think all who attended agreed that it was a very productive meeting and we discussed a plethora of topics.  We had people from different backgrounds with knowledge of the internet in many forms.  I raised several subjects, one of them being, Child Themes which several of the attendees were unfamiliar.  Those of us that had been attending Birgit’s monthly 6 pm meetings were acquainted with this term.

Grab the resources at shared on this meetup How to modify Themes? From “Edit CSS” to Creating Child Themes

Hoping to encourage participation.

I decided it would be a nice idea to have some kind of a prize given at the end to whoever was the most helpful to other participants.  I was hoping this would be a nice incentive for more advanced users to attend.  We decided that James was the winner of that title, but he wasn’t able to take the prize home, (homemade organic pizza crust, made by yours truly) so I made it a gift to Larry, the owner of the coffee house.  Incidentally, Larry was also my contact person in reserving their private meeting room.  He seemed most appreciative and anxious to try it out!

Our most gracious host.

We all felt that The Grind was absolutely spectacular!  The private meeting room was marvelous and we were able to close the doors. Most of us purchased a fruit smoothie which was very refreshing since it’s been really hot the last few days. They also serve lunch so next time some of us may order that as well.

All in all, I believe that it was a huge win! I did forget to take that selfie of our group that Birgit wanted so we’ll have to try for next week. I would really like our members to make an effort to attend in the next month if schedules allow. Having a strong start can make or break these kinds of functions. Hoping to see more of you there next Wednesday and in the weeks to come. Remember to get your RSVP’s in and update if plans change as space is limited to only 10 people at this venue. Thanks again to those of you who attended.

Categories
Meeting Information

Custom Post Types & Custom Fields: Meeting Notes at The RocketLounge

WordPress Meetup at The RocketLounge

Thank you to Peter & Dieter provide The RocketLounge as our new meeting space. We appreciate your hospitality and generosity!

I want to say that this was one of the best ones that I have been too so far. I love the fact that we can be more up close and personal at the new venue. — Ani

Informative MeetUp and met some great people too! — Marcy

Upcoming WordCamps and other WordPress Events

Mentioned during discussions

  • Eventful.com Live Event Feeds from Florida – They also have a Developer API to check out
  • Google Resizer – use to check how your site looks on different screen sizes.

Custom Post Types and Custom Fields made WordPress Enterprise ready

The WordPress Core Team introduced Custom Post Types in 2010 with version 3.0, and it made WordPress enterprise ready as a content management system for lots of different use cases beyond blogging and brochure-like websites.

Custom Post Types Solutions via plugins

Please share your favorite Custom Post Type plugin in the comments!  

Articles:

WordPress Codex resources

Plugins for Administrators & Developers

    • Custom Post Type UI – This plugin provides an easy to use interface to create and administer custom post types and taxonomies in WordPress. The plugin just creates the types. You will need to add them to the theme yourself.
    • Advanced Custom Fields – love it because of the repeater field in the pro version,
    • Custom Field Suite a visual custom fields management plugin.

Code Examples:

Display of Custom Fields (ACF) per custom post type.

Code, assuming you installed the  ACF plugin.

In your Theme:  If your Custom Post Type’s slug is ‘product’  – copy the single.php template from your theme and save it as single-product.php. WordPress will pick that template automatically.

 

Withing the loop add something like this, assuming ‘product’ is your custom post type and ‘applications’ and ‘twc_options’ are your custom fields, associated with the custom post type.

<code>

elseif ( is_singular( ‘product’ ) ){

if( get_field(‘applications’) ): ?>

<div class=”acf”>

<h2>Applications</h2>

<?php the_field(‘applications’); ?>

</div>

<?php endif;

if( get_field(‘twc_options’) ): ?>

<div class=”acf”>

<h2>Features and Benefits</h2>

<?php the_field(‘twc_options’); ?>

</div>

<?php endif;

}

 

For a custom post type taxonomy pages you can use the following WordPress core functions

function display_wirescables() {

echo( ‘<ul class=”wirecat”>’ );

foreach (get_terms(‘wires-cables’) as $cat) :

echo( ‘<li>’ );

echo( ‘<a href=”‘ . get_term_link($cat->slug, ‘wires-cables’) . ‘”>’ .  $cat->name . ‘</a>’ );

echo( ‘</li>’ );

endforeach;

echo( ‘</ul>’ );

}

</code>