Systems Consciousness

After a week, I’m still very happy with my WordPress installation. I’ve since learned that several of my colleagues’ organizations have integrated Drupal and Wordpress websites, which I think could be an excellent way to leverage the best aspects of both platforms. I’m going to stay exclusively WordPress for as long as possible, and as of now I’ve found no real limitations to what I need to accomplish. One serious exception to this is that I’ve yet to find a simple and clean way to display widgets in main content sections. As of now all widgets appear on the side panel. But if I can somehow widgetize my main content panel, then I feel I’ll have the ultimate in development flexibility and clean user interface. If you like what you see, and you want to see more, please consider visiting one of our sponsors. Each click makes us a few cents.

Before I go into the plugins that I’ve installed and found useful, let me first mention the theme that I’m using. For both of my WordPress sites (see criticalmath.com codename mercury), I’m using the backbone of the decolor theme by webdemar. I like it because it’s incredibly simple and clean, and it doesn’t have a lot of clutter. I’ve customized it somewhat on this page by altering the header image. On the CriticalMath mercury project I’ve removed the header image entirely and added a sharp corner at the top; on both sites I’ve reduced the size of the top panel. You can make customizations like this by going into Design > Edit Themes > Stylesheet and editing the CSS. This took me about 15 minutes.

On deanhaddock.com I’m using the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget, the All-in-One SEO Pack, Exec-PHP, and Google Analyticator. On CriticalMath.com I have installed all but the AddThis plugin, which I intend to install soon, and additionally the cforms, pageMash, and WP-phpMyAdmin plugin. One of my next steps is to explore (but not write about, sorry) the potential security holes for each of these plugins, but for now I’ll just talk about their functionality.

There is one plugin that I want to warn you about, though. Many bloggers use Google AdSense™ to generate revenue. One of the first plugins I found was the AdSense Manager by Martin Fitzpatrick. At first, I thought this was a godsend because I could easily create and display AdSense blocks in widgets throughout my site. I had it running for about 36 hours before I dug deep into the settings, and I was surprised to find a subtle form input telling me that I was already donating 3% of my AdSense proceeds to the developer. In Mr. Fitzpatrick’s defense, this was probably mentioned in the readme file, but I didn’t notice it. I am sure, however, that it wasn’t mentioned upon install or anywhere on the widget’s WordPress page. I changed the setting to 0% out of spite, and then I totally removed the widget and washed my hands. If you are running this widget and wondering why your AdSense revenues are low, you may want to check the settings. With all due respect to Mr. Fitzpatrick, I suggest that readers just create a Text Widget in the side panel and insert their own AdSense javascript.

The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget is pretty straightforward, but there was a bit of customization involved. There are a number of different styles for the AddThis button. (I like the simple orange plus sign or the more specific “share” button.) You’ll have to go into the plugin editor in WordPress and change the PHP. Look toward the bottom just under “$pub = $this->addthis_username;”. You can copy and paste your own custom AddThis script between the <div></div>.

The All-in-One SEO Pack is a great way to generate traffic to your blog. This plugin helps you specify a title, description and keywords for your post to make it easier for search engines to spider. I highly recommend this plugin for any WordPress blogger trying to get more hits.

Exec-PHP is my favorite of all plugins because it allows me to inject snipets of PHP anywhere on my site, including Text Widgets, posts and pages. This plugin truly takes WordPress out of the linearity trap and greatly expands its potential. With Exec-PHP you can get virtually any PHP functionality you need as simply as you can create a blog post. If you really want to blow the doors off of your WordPress installation, download WP-phpMyAdmin. This plugin will give you access to your WordPress database via phpMyAdmin. You can also use it to interface with the databases you’ll inevitably create with your PHP-rich WordPress site!

Google Analytics, if you haven’t heard yet, is another very nice, free tool from your favorite galactic data hoarders. The WordPress Google Analyticator plugin helps you configure your website to send data to your Google Analytics account. This is a great way to keep track of your site’s visitors, where they come from, and how they found you.

Cforms and pageMash I haven’t used very much. Cforms is a pretty powerful tool that helps you create forms for your site. I plan on using it to make form creation a little faster and more consistant throughout CriticalMath. I have yet to figure out how to get these forms displaying on pages and posts instead of just the side panel, and this is a tremendous setback as of now. PageMash is a cute little plugin that lets you visually arrange your pages.

The thing to remember about these plugins, and the WordPress platform in general, is that all of it was developed by a community. It’s fascinating to see that so many developers have similar needs and are willing and able to work together so efficiently. Despite whatever shortfalls I may find in WordPress as I continue to use it, my general sense is that systems like these are the future of web development. MicroSoft® clearly agrees with this, as they’ve recently updated and expanded their SharePoint Server platform. In fact, the entire MS Office 2007 suite is peopled with SharePoint features. MicroSoft FrontPage is now even MS SharePoint Designer! While most of the internet is still in the “building websites” paradigm, there is a huge movement of developers building websites that build websites. This is, after all, the movement that brought you MySpace™ and Facebook™, which are huge websites made up of individuals’ templated websites.