New to WordPress? Boost Your Blogging Efficiency With Dashboard Tools

If you are anything like me, you may have been happily blogging for many months (or even years) without taking any notice of the WordPress Dashboard. Some of you may not even know what I am referring to. For those of you who log into WordPress on full autopilot, the Dashboard is the first page you a confronted with!

I’ve always found myself skipping past the Dashboard until quite recently, when I spent a bit of time with it and found that it can be rather useful in a few different ways. If you are starting to find that your blog is eating up more hours than you would like, correctly utilizing the WordPress Dashboard can be a great way of making you more efficient in your blog management.

Google Analytics

If you install the Google Analytics For WordPress plugin, you will have the option of your traffic data being projected straight onto your Dashboard. This can be priceless for those of us who get a little too obsessive with checking in on their traffic statistics. I personally used to do it several times a day, which of course was not a useful way to spend my time.

Once I installed Google Analytics For WordPress, I was able to take control of my obsession by setting myself some simple rules. Once a week I allow myself to go nuts and assess my traffic data until I can’t possibly take anymore. But for the rest of the week, I allow myself a glance at the data that the aforementioned plugin presents on your Dashboard (just to check that everything is hunky dory), and no more.

Comments

Comments were another area in which I was not being particularly efficient. Every time I received an email from WordPress informing me that someone had commented on my blog, I would inevitably rush to respond as quickly as possible, regardless of what I was in the middle of doing. Not good.

With effective use of the WordPress Dashboard, I was again able to kill my bad habits. Comments get my attention when I log into WordPress (which is typically once a day) – and email updates are turned off, so I am undistracted whilst I am busy getting on with other things.

Incoming Links

This is a handy little feature that trawls Google Blogsearch for any blog that mentions yours. If you are at all interested in establishing and nurturing valuable relationships with other bloggers in your niche, it can be very useful to see who is linking to you and what they are saying. This doesn’t have a great to deal with efficiency as such, but is a feature worth of mention.

The Sky Is The Limit!

I have just scratched the surface here. The WordPress Dashboard can be customized to a pretty high degree, and many plugins have Dashboard functionality.

Do you find the WordPress Dashboard handy? Are there useful ways in which you use it that I haven’t mentioned? Let us know!

Creative commons image courtesy of Eirik Solheim

Get More Comments on Your WordPress Site with Comments Plus

When it comes to designing your comment form, convenience is absolutely key. If a user is required to create an account with your site before they can comment, you might as well ask them to fetch you a beer from the moon. It’s probably not going to happen. However, if you can give them the option to comment with an account they’ve already set up, then you will be much more likely to get some interaction.

That’s why we wrote Comments Plus for WPMU.org. It gives users the ability to comment via Facebook, Twitter, Google or WordPress IDs.

After we started using this plugin on WPMU.org, we had quite a few readers ask how to implement it. Today we’re delighted to release Comments Plus so that you can get the exact same commenting convenience on your own site.

Features of Comments Plus:

• This plugin effectively allows you to combine comments from all these different services, rather than picking just one
• If users choose Facebook or Twitter, their comments are posted by default to their own accounts, give your site some extra exposure!
• Fully integrated with subscribe by email for Facebook and Google
• Works beautifully with any theme (and if you have any issues we’ll help you to get it working with your theme)

Want to test it out? Just leave a comment below using your Facebook, Twitter, Google or WordPress ID.

You’ll need to have a Twitter and Facebook app set up to enable commenting through those services, but it’s very easy and the plugin guides you through the process.

Comments Plus will inspire more comments on your WordPress site, giving you vital feedback and promoting user interaction. Once you have it installed, commenting becomes irresistibly easy when a user doesn’t have to sign up for an account. Not only will Comments Plus boost interaction on your site, it will also attract new visitors as you gain extra exposure on major social networks. Download it today!

WordPress Basics: How to Launch the Distraction Free Editor

This tip is so simple, I can see some of you rolling your eyes right now, about to click over to more advanced reading. But considering that distractions waste time, and assuming that time is money, this could be a tip that even the most advanced WordPress user may benefit from being reminded of.

The distraction free editor is a feature that came to us in WordPress 3.2. The Full-Screen option clears your browser of everything but the bare necessities of post composition, giving you a blank canvas with no distractions from the task at hand. Check it out:

How to Launch the Distraction Free Editor:

It’s simple – click on the “fullscreen” button and your post editor will instantly change. You can easily exit at any time.

Try it out today and give yourself the benefit of uninterrupted concentration and improved efficiency.

10 High Quality WordPress and BuddyPress Tutorials From September 2011

Finding high quality WordPress tutorials can be a challenge if you don’t maintain a lot of RSS subscriptions and follow all the right people on Twitter. While catching up on my Google Reader subscriptions I decided to put together a list of some of the highest quality WordPress content from September. I read all of these blogs religiously and they are great sources for learning more about working with WordPress. Check out our summary and get subscribed to your favorites.

3 Ways to Reset the WordPress Loop

This tutorial acquaints you with the WordPress template tags that you need to reset the loop when working with multiple, customized loops. You’ll learn how and when to use them. This tutorial is definitely one to bookmark, especially if you develop or customize WordPress themes.

» Visit Tutorial

Developing BuddyPress Themes – Part 1 : Working with the BuddyPress API and Loops

This one is for all the BuddyPress fans out there. High quality tutorials for BuddyPress are few and far between, but I’m glad to recommend this one to anyone who is just getting started theming for BuddyPress. This tutorial will help you learn how to use BuddyPress template tags, recognize and customize the various loops and learn how to use conditionals. You’ll also get an introduction to creating and editing a basic BuddyPress child theme.

» View Tutorial

Developing BuddyPress Themes – Part 2: Creating a Custom Style and Home Page

This is part 2 to the tutorial above and it expands on creating and customizing a child theme for BuddyPress with CSS and the custom.php file. You’ll also learn how to create a custom home page and integrate loops into your custom pages.

» View Tutorial

Theme Wrappers

Scribu helps you get rid of code duplication in this awesome tutorial.

You’ll learn how to effectively use get_template_part() in your WordPress themes.

» View Tutorial

How to Create Additional Image Sizes in WordPress

In this tutorial WPbeginner shows you how to use the built-in WordPress post thumbnails feature along with the add_image_size() function, which lets you specify image sizes and give you the option to crop. If you get a good handle on this, you can virtually eliminate the need to use a 3rd party image resizer in your WordPress themes.

» View Tutorial

Actions and filters are NOT the same thing…

Do you know the difference between actions and filters? Check out Otto’s tutorial on the basic differences and uses of both. This tutorial will be especially helpful to beginner plugin developers.

» View Tutorial

“Posts per page” dropdown for BuddyPress single forum topic view

Here’s another one for the BuddyPress crowd. Boone Gorges shows you how to allow your members to select how many posts they’d like to see at a time when viewing a single forum topic. Follow his quick instructions or modify them to suit your needs.

» View Tutorial

WordPress Essentials: Interacting With The WordPress Database

This is a more advanced tutorial from the new Smashing Magazine WordPress section. It covers how to get started with the $wpdb class, how to retrieve data from your WordPress database and how to run more advanced queries that update or delete something in the database. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn how to create more tailored and specific queries.

» View Tutorial

Quick Tip: User Permissions and Your Plugin

This tutorial contains a few short tips for plugin developers. You’ll learn what you should be using to determine who can see the various admin menus of your plugin.

» View Tutorial

Add a Customizable Header image to your WordPress Theme

The ability to change your WordPress theme header from within the admin panel is included in the Twenty Ten theme. This tutorial shows you how to add this functionality to your own theme. It’s actually fairly easy to do if you follow the instructions and use the snippets posted in this guide.

» View Tutorial

Daily Tip: Add a Twitter Follow Lightbox to Your WordPress Site

Jump-start your Twitter following through your WordPress site with the nifty Twitter Like Box Lightbox plugin.

You may recollect our recent post highlighting the Facebook Page Promoter Lightbox. Well now you can have the same functionality on your WordPress site for Twitter, in this new plugin by the same developer, Arevico.

Features of the Twitter Like Box Lightbox plugin:

• Display the lighthox on pages, posts and/or on your homepage
• Set a delay for the lightbox to show
• Grow your Twitter follower base
• Gain exposure to friends of your new followers
• Ability to show the lightbox once every x days (per visitor)s

Check out the demo video:

Download the Twitter Like Box Lightbox plugin for free from the WordPress repository and start getting more followers today.

Daily Tip: PressWork Launches New WordPress Showcase

PressWork has been getting quite a bit of attention lately as the latest HTML5 drag-and-drop framework for WordPress sites. The PressWork theme collection is growing rapidly, and so is their user base. This week PressWork launched a new showcase for sites running on their framework.

If your site is powered by PressWork + WordPress, drop them a note through the submission form. The only requirement is that the website is built on PressWork or a PressWork premium child theme and that it has been creatively adapted.

Want to find out more about PressWork? Check out our recent articles:

• PressWork: A New HTML5 Front-end, Drag and Drop WordPress Framework
• PressWork Officially Launches Free Drag-and-Drop WordPress Framework
• PressWork Releases First Premium Child Theme: InstaPress for Photo and Video Blogging

Daily Tip: CollabPress Now Supports BuddyPress

Last year we featured CollabPress when it first launched. Since that time CollabPress has received many updates and new features.

Today the CollabPress team announced that v1.2 is now available with full BuddyPress support. This means that if you’re running a community site, you can now incorporate full-featured task and project management using CollabPress.

The built-in BuddyPress group support allows you to add projects, task lists, tasks, and comments to any group in your BuddyPress network. CollabPress automatically integrates group members into task assignments so that you can add projects into your groups! Please note that the new BuddyPress features will require BuddyPress v1.5+.

The latest version of the plugin also allows you to assign specific users to each project so that you have full control of user access. Task item priority is also included in v1.2 as a new feature and will be expanded upon in future releases.

Upgrade your copy of CollabPress to take advantage of all the new features.

Making WordPress Easier for Your Clients

Do you work as a freelance WordPress developer? If your trade is building WordPress sites for other people, most of your clients probably maintain their site and update content by themselves.

That’s the whole appeal of WordPress to folks outside the web industry – it’s a DIY solution that replaces the need for a webmaster and gives people a more direct form of control over their online presence. Provided, of course, that they understand what they’re doing.

A good WordPress site needs to feel natural for your client

Being able to self-maintain a website loses a lot of its appeal if the process is frustrating and bewildering. Setting your clients up for a smooth WordPress journey requires the right mix of education, forward planning and intuitive design. This is especially true of clients with limited technical knowledge and no prior experience with WordPress as a CMS. Ask yourself a few questions:

• Can the client easily navigate the WordPress user interface?
• Do they understand when, why and how to update WordPress?
• Does the client have realistic expectations about what they can do with their WordPress site?

Things can go south very quickly if you give your client a site that they don’t feel comfortable and confident with. A daily barrage of questions and complaints is a waste of your valuable working time, and defeats the entire purpose of using a self-managed CMS in the first place.

Planning ahead for a successful Client-WordPress relationship

Preparing your client for the exciting world of WordPress is crucial if they’re going to have a positive experience with the site you build.

Jonathan May gave a presentation on this topic at WordCamp Boston a couple of months ago. It’s not one of the most riveting episodes of WordPress TV that we’ve ever seen, but Jonathon does have some insightful commentary on building an intuitive WordPress experience for your client. It’s quite long, but well worth a look if you’ve got a spare 30 minutes.

What do you think?

What are strategies and tools you use to make WordPress easier for clients?

Smashing Magazine Launches New WordPress Section

You’ll notice a new WordPress tab on the Smashing Magazine menu. As their publication is one of millions of sites that run on WordPress, Smashing Magazine saw an opportunity to provide some quality resources on more advanced topics. The Smashing Magazine team is launching a new WordPress Section, with the help of new editor Jeff Starr. The objective:

With the new Smashing WordPress section, we’re aiming for quality articles on intermediate-level topics, with an emphasis on developing smarter, faster sites with the world’s most popular publishing platform.

Recent topics in the WordPress Section include:

• WordPress Essentials: Interacting With The WordPress Database
• Free WordPress Themes: 2011 Edition
• How To Build A Media Site On WordPress (Part 1)

We’re excited about the new WordPress section, as it can only serve to benefit the community with more high quality resources. Check out the launch announcement on Smashing Magazine for more information on what to expect from the new WordPress section in the future.

thetalkingfowl: A Free Minimalist HTML5 WordPress Theme

Once in awhile the WordPress Theme Directory surprises you with a decent theme that you might actually consider using on your website. thetalkingfowl is a new one that caught my attention today.

It’s a minimalist theme that integrates the HTML5 Boilerplate and the 960 grid CSS framework. The theme incorporates built-in Flickr and Twitter feeds without the use of plugins.

The post templates include only the bare minimum, which gives a strong focus on content.

Features include:

• Custom pull-down tab menu
• Timeline post page
• Translation-ready
• Theme options menu
• Plugin-free Twitter and Flickr feed

Check out a live demo of thetalkingfowl, which is also in use on the theme’s homepage.

thetalkingfowl has been fully checked out to be up to the rigorous standards of the WordPress Theme Review team, so you can rest assured that it is safe to install on your site. Use it as is or modify it to be a base for your own HTML5 creations.

Download thetalkingfowl from the WordPress theme directory or install it directly through your WordPress dashboard.

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