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List only child Pages of a specific parent Page

I am building a site for a client, and I want to list all the child Pages, which will be many, of one of their parent pages in the sidebar. To help you understand better, this client provides many services, so I wanted there to be a parent Page called “Services,” and this parent Page will have a list of child Pages, each of which goes into detail about each specific service.

I couldn’t find any information on how to do this, but then I came across a tag for categories that allows you to only list the subcategories of a specific category. This tag is as follows:

<?php wp_list_cats('child_of=8, 14'); ?>

By using this tag, you would only list the child categories of the categories with IDs of 8 and 14. So I decided to see if this would work with Pages, and it did!

So here’s the code I put in the sidebar to list only the child Pages of the Services Page, sorted alphabetically and omitting the title of “Pages”:

<?php wp_list_pages('child_of=2&sort_column=post_title&title_li=') ?>

Hurray!

Posted in WordPress as CMS | 32 Comments »

Getting bored of how your dashboard looks? Try WordPress NiceAdmin

We bloggers spend a lot of time in the admin section of our WordPress blogs. It can get kind of boring looking at the same blue chunky lettering and design after a while. I decided to install the WordPress NiceAdmin plugin to add some variety to the same ‘ol same ‘ol.

It is so pretty! Gradients, a nicer font, details like pointers pointing at the upper-level of your admin that you are using. This is also useful if you plan on building sites for clients based on WordPress – they get a prettier backend, and it looks like it wouldn’t be that hard to customize it. Hurray! (Note to self: get a life).

WordPress NiceAdmin>>

Posted in Plugins, WordPress as CMS | 2 Comments »

Restricting Pages to logged in users

redwing studio has a detailed description how to set up a Page in your WordPress blog so that only logged in users can see the content. You can restrict access to a page by making it private, or by using a Role Manager plugin, but this method allows the following:

• The Page shows up on the navigation bar (it doesn’t with the other methods)
• If a user tries to view it and is not logged in, you can have the page display whatever you want, such as a login form and/or a message telling them they must log in to see the content (the page just appears blank with the other methods)

To accomplish this, you need to create a unique Page template, and modify the code.

User only/protected pages in WordPress>> 

Posted in Tips, WordPress as CMS | No Comments »

Inserting editable text in the sidebar

Update: since I wrote this post, I discovered some problems with this solution. I ended up using a different solution, which you can see in Inserting editable text in the sidebar – part II: Widgets.

I created a site for a client based on WordPress that needed some dynamic editable text in the sidebar aside from the usual blog-type stuff like archives and categories. They had a section they needed to be able to update frequently and easily from the backend.

First I tried to use Kaf’s Get-a-Post plugin. I put the required code in the sidebar, and the owners of the site could edit the specified post and the updated content would appear on the site. But the plugin did weird stuff to the text that appeared under that part on the sidebar. It was creating links where there shouldn’t be links, and was changing the formatting of the h2’s.

Next I tried Kaf’s Welcome Visitor plugin. This creates a new link under Options in the backend, and on that page you can enter text in what is very similar to the regular WordPress Write Post or Write Pages format. On this Welcome page you can enter a title and text, and after putting the correct code on the sidebar (or wherever you want it to appear), that text and changes you make to it appear there. But this plugin had even more quirks: the Welcome link under Options only appeared to users with administrative privileges, and not to anyone else; and it disappeared on the front end to any users that are logged in to the site. So I ruled this one out too.

And then I found the answer: Improved Include Page plugin. I created a page with the name that should appear as the header on the sidebar. I made sure to code the header so that this page wouldn’t appear on the navigation bar by entering the following code where the navigation bar should appear:

<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=12&sort_column=menu_order&title_li='); ?>

12 is the page ID, and the “exclude” code tells the page not to display that particular page name in the navigation bar.

Then I put the following code in the sidebar where I wanted the text on that page to appear:

<?php if(function_exists('iinclude_page')) iinclude_page(12,'displayTitle=true&titleBefore=<h2>'); ?>

Now this code tells the page to display the Page with ID of 12. Title=true means it will display the title of the page, and titleBefore=<h2> means that the title will be styled with h2 tags.

And it worked! You can see the results here: www.kayema.com. Look at the top text on the sidebar, where it says “KSI Quote” – that header plus the numbers and date underneath are editable in the backend on the page called “KSI quote.”

Improved Include Page>>

Posted in Plugins, WordPress as CMS | 6 Comments »

Page Links To

The Page Links To plugin allows WordPress Pages to link to any page you would like. I recently used it on a site where the top nav bar is comprised of pages, but two of the pages – the news and resources pages – needed to have dynamic content that was pulled from posts so that the items on those pages would be easily manageable and organized (i.e. by date, author, tags, etc.).

I created two categories on the blog: News and Resources. I created two Pages: News and Resources. I then followed the directions of the plugin and did the following:

1. Scroll down to the Custom Fields.
2. Enter links_to as a key.
3. For the value, I entered the URI of the category that I wanted to link this page to as the value of the key. So for News, I clicked on the News category on the blog page to get the URI, and copied and pasted that URI into the value field.

Now, when users click on News on the nav bar, it displays the news page as it would appear in the blog. I think that this plugin is another example of how WordPress can be used as a CMS. Excellent!

Page Links To>>

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Upload+ to automatically change uploaded file names

Update June 7, 2007: Pixline has released a new version of the Upload+ plugin. Their changelog says that they added more options. You can also now download the plugin from the WordPress.org plugin page.

If you are building a site for clients based on WordPress, you want to make it as easy for them as possible to enter information without having to consider coding and other issues.

This plugin is great for those types of sites, as well as for anyone with a WordPress site who wants to have one less thing to think about. When a file is selected for uploading, this plugin changes the filename according to the following three rules:

• only lowercase;
• only alphanumeric [a-z] and digits;
• convert spaces in underscores ( _ )

Upload+>>
Plugin page on WordPress.org>>

Posted in Plugins, WordPress as CMS | 3 Comments »

Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress plugin

From DEAN LEE:/DEV/BLOG:

FCKEditor is a full feature web based WYSIWYG html editor,the best things is that:FCKeditor is compatible with most of the internet browsers which include: IE 5.5+ (Windows), Firefox 1.0+, Mozilla 1.3+ and Netscape 7,and claims to produce clean and valid XHTML 1.0 output.

Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress plugin(V1.2)>>

Posted in Plugins, WordPress as CMS | No Comments »

Customize the Wordpress Login Screen in 10 Steps

Customize the login screen.

Customize the Wordpress Login Screen in 10 Steps>>

Posted in Tips, WordPress as CMS | No Comments »

Themed Login Plugin

Customize the login, registration, and reset password forms.

Features at a Glance

• Theme the Login, Registration, and Forgot Password Forms.
• Customize the top text of the forms
• Change the default registration email that goes to the user. NEW
• Change the default notification email that goes to the admin. NEW
• Change the default email address (wordpress@domain.com that the registration email comes from. NEW
• Send emails to a user when the administrator adds a user. This is an option that can be turned on or off. If this option is on, when an administrator adds a user then that user gets an email just as if the user had registered manually except that the administrator specifies the password. NEW

Themed Login Plugin>>

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It says a lot for Wordpress

Christian Montoya over at the Montoya Herald says he understands why many web developers use WordPress as a CMS system instead of the many other systems that are not blogging platforms, but CMS systems themselves.

All of these CMS’s have rather complicated administration interfaces, tend to be difficult to theme, and usually don’t put as much emphasis on syndicated publishing as blogging software. It’s really interesting when you think about it; after all, on a typical website you might publish a couple handfuls of static pages, whereas you might have a fresh news posting every week. Doesn’t it make sense for a platform to emphasize news/blog content over static pages? Moreover, if you are going to hand something over to a client, it’s natural to opt for something that non-technical people can use (and do every day). When I tell people “updating this site is just like updating your Livejournal/Xanga,” that’s one of the great things about Wordpress. It’s the combination of the simple admin interface and the focus on blogging (even when the end result is not a blog) that makes Wordpress ideal for most simple sites that I would build for a client.

He does point out that WordPress has its limitations, which makes sense since it’s goal is to be a good blogging platform. But he sums up with a good point:

…content management systems shouldn’t just be about offering more features and functionality for the developer, but being user-friendly for the client too.

I have started to use WordPress as a CMS system because it is relatively easy to theme and customize, and web site owners can easily update their content.

Posted in WordPress as CMS | No Comments »