I have worked with a lot of different CMS tools in my 10 years of working with computers – Wordpress, Joomla, Sharepoint, and even attempted writing my own CMS tool twice in the past. I have found, in the last 2 years of using Wordpress exclusively that it’s an excellent publishing platform.  As a bonus, being in Vancouver, Canada I’m lucky to have many sources of theme developers and access to local meetup.com groups discussing Wordpress development in Vancouver as well.

Why I think Wordpress is a Great Publishing Platform

1. Extensive community support.

The Wordpress platform is actively developed by Automattic and there is a massive online community behind it as well. It’s the tool of choice for bloggers and Freelance design shops like mine, and the source of information online to solve any problem or question is vast.

See why Wordpress is the CMS you should use

2. Endless plugins that enhance functionality.

Without adding plugins to your Wordpress installation, it’s pretty dull and boring.  Plugins are what make your Wordpress installation sing.  Here is a current list of the Wordpress plugins I use for all client installations and this is just a starting point. 

1. Cforms for building custom feedback forms
2. All in One SEO for handling your Search Engine Optimization
3. Wordpress DB Backup because even world class hosting can fail
4. Social or Sharethis so Posts can be shared on Social and Bookmarking sites
5. Google XML Sitemaps so that Google indexes your site completely
6. Linkwithin to direct readers to other relevant content on your blog
7. Pagemash to manage page ordering and hierarchy if you are building a CMS site
8. Statpress to get a quick pulse of your site activity
9. Quick Meta Keywords which uses your categories in your keyword meta tag if you are running a blog-centered site like mine is
10. Linkubaitor so users can embed URLs themselves

Large Resource of Theme Options. 

Wordpress (today) is quite easy to skin and many companies have popped up online offering theme packages you can buy.  My favourite sources of themes are Themeforest and Woothemes, but I occasionally hunt down alternatives (like the theme in use here).  It’s not that hard to find.  Here is my short list:

1. www.Woothemes.com
2. www.themeforest.net
3. www.templatemonster.com
4. www.revolutiontheme.com
5. www.wpremix.com
6. www.premiumthemes.net
7. www.press75.com
8. www.prothemedesign.com
9. www.pearsonified.com
10. www.wpdesigner.com

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Benefit to Content Writer?
Clean Back links in their content without a rel=nofollow tag and the ability to market and create some Google juice.

Benefit to Syndicator?
Traffic, higher SEO ranking, and hopefully in-line advertising to make money from the additional content, and blog activity

Cool!
I knew content syndication was a possibility with blogs, but the business model SyndicateKahuna has designed is smart.  I’m concerned about content duplication and the rules Google and other search engines use around content duplication including penalization.  That’s the big question I have yet to answer.  Come back soon as I share my thoughts about this.

P.S. Sidenote
On a side note, I was able to register WordpressNinjas.ca today!  I’m super excited about the possibilities of using this new domain name and I really like the idea of using it!  On idea I have is to turn it into a self-serve model to generate more leads and projects and maybe integrate content syndication into the blog side of the site.  Or maybe I will turn it into a paid membership directory for Wordpress developers across Canada and create a ranking system based on meta data like RSS feed activity, Pagerank, and Community Ranking.  That would be cool.  Ninja stars could represent weapons to lower someone’s ranking, and other ninja paraphernalia could represent ways to vote for a member’s ranking. 

Got other ideas?  Let me know!

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I recently started using the Nextgen Gallery on a project I just completed at exquisitecutandfashion.com.  If you haven’t used Nextgen before, it’s an excellent image organizer that let’s you do things like automatic thumbnails, gallery metadata, and more.  Have a look at some samples to get a better idea.

I have come to love Nextgen so much, I decided to use the plugin once again with another client, coastexpressions.ca because it supposedly gave me flash gallery capabilities. Integrating both together is normally a straightforward process inside a blog post.   According to instructions, all you are supposed to do is use [simplegallery id=x] and you should be able to show the flash viewer.  That wasn’t working for me.  When I tried that same short code in the page header of a site nothing happened, and I wasn’t surprised. I assume it’s because the above short code only works inside the Wordpress loop (and probably where the plugin does some run time magic).  Anyways, I found a different approach that works outside the Wordpress post loop and will almost certainly work for you anywhere on your site (including inside a Wordpress loop or in your blog post/page.  Below are complete instructions:

What you will need

• Wordpress web site
• Wordpress Admin access and advanced coding skills
• Nextgen Gallery
• Nextgen Flash Plugin
• Flash Photo viewer from AirtightInteractive

Step 1 – Install the Nextgen Gallery Plugin

Go to Wordpress admin, click Add Plugins, search for “Nextgen”, and Install the Nextgen Gallery plugin.  If you haven’t installed a Wordpress plugin before, the rest of these instructions here aren’t going to make any sense to you at all.  I suggest, you put this tutorial on hold, and learn a bit more first from here, here, and here.

Download the 1st plugin

Step 2 – Create a Gallery and add some Images

Once the plugin is installed and activated, find the new Gallery menu in your Wordpress admin. Create a new gallery (name it whatever you like), and add as many images as you like.  Click the image above if you need some help.

Step 3 – Install Flash plugin

If you haven’t seen it before, a company called AirtightInteractive has some really great flash photo viewers you can get for free.  In combination with one of those flash photo viewers (I’m using Simpleviewer in this example), we can show our Nextgen gallery on our site.  In order to do that, we need a second plugin.  Download and activate it.

Download the 2nd plugin

Step 4 – Download and Install the Flash files

Now that you have the 2nd plugin installed, you will need some flash files installed in your Wordpress Plugins folder.  See below for detailed instructions (original instructions located here)

1. Create a folder in your Wordpress plugin folder called “nggflash-swf”. 

2. Go to the web page http://www.airtightinteractive.com/ and download the SimpleViewer & Tiltviewer & AutoViewer & PostcardViewer

3. If you intend to use PostcardViewer, rename viewer.swf in the PostcardViewer folder to pcviewer.swf

4. Upload the file viewer.swf, TiltViewer.swf, autoviewer.swf and pcviewer.swf to the wp-content/plugins/nggflash-swf folder

5. Activate the plugin

6. Go to Gallery->FlashViewer.  Enter the location of your SWF file.

Step 5 – Embed your Gallery

If you have gotten this far, you are doing well. You should have the following done:

• Nextgen Gallery plugin installed, activated, and at least one gallery populated with images
• Nextgen Flash plugin installed, activated, and configured (see Gallery->FlashViewer in Wordpress admin for configuration)

1. Now, get the ID of your Nextgen gallery as show below

   

2. Using the above ID, enter the code below anywhere on your site where you want the Flash viewer to appear. 

   1: <div id="gallery">

   2: <object height="480" width="950" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" class="simpleviewer" name="so1" data="/wp-content/plugins/nggflash-swf/viewer.swf" id="so1_1" style="visibility: visible;"><param name="wmode" value="opaque"/><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="bgcolor" value="#E2F0FD"/><param name="flashvars" value="preloaderColor=0x999999&amp;xmlDataPath=/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-flashviewer/xml/simpleviewer.php?gid=1"/></object>

   3: </div>

3. In your code above, change gid=1 to the number of your Nextgen Gallery ID where 1 is replaced by your gallery id.

   1: ....php?gid=1"/></object>

   2: </div>

4. Change your flash object width and height as well.  I tried a few different sizes, and it seems that Simpleviewer doesn’t like anything smaller than 480 pixels in height.

   1: <object height="480" width="950"

5. If you are using Simpleviewer as I am, change your background color as well

   1: <param name="bgcolor" value="#E2F0FD"/>

If all goes, well you should have a functional flash photo viewer connecting to your Nextgen gallery.  Got problems?  Let me know.

Demo my Gallery

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Minimum Requirements:

1. Wordpress website
2. A form built with Cforms which is already running on the page you want (I’m using version 11 in this example)
3. A Paypal account of any kind

Limitations:

1. You can’t take in subscription or recurring payments with this tutorial as far as I can tell, unless you fiddle some more with the PayPal Link Generator

Instructions:

Install the Cforms plug-in into your Wordpress installation – if you are stuck at this stage, this tutorial probably isn’t for you.  How about hiring us to do the installation for you?

Build your website form in Cforms to your satisfaction

Integrate the form into your page or post using the Wordpress Page/Post editor

Visit the Paypal Link Generator at http://www.codetransit.com/generators/paypal_link_generator.php and create a link of your liking

Once you click “Generate Link” you will get two boxes.  One is a form you can use on any page, and the other is a Link for Email – which is the one we want here.  Grab that code and copy it.

Visit your Cforms configuration page for the form you’re using and go to Core Form Admin/ Email Options

In this area, look for Redirect options and past the Email Link into that option and also Enable this option

Now, if you did everything correctly, you should be forwarded to this link automatically after submitting a form! 

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Out of the blue, I was contacted today by a local business owner seeking Wordpress theme customization from a theme they purchased on Themeforest (by the way, read about how I was able to provide everything the client wanted in my other blog post)  At first, I thought someone referred them to me, but after asking I was told they found me by searching for the phrase Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver on Google where I rank #6.  

As you might guess, I’m extremely pleased by the first page ranking considering I have had my new site, Full Motion Group, out for less than a year, and that I only recently installed a new theme from Themeforest.  I’m going to share with you what I believe are the key factors in getting the ranking, and why I believe it’s partly attributed to the single page design I decided to implement.

Before I list my reasons, let’s get clear on WHAT a single page web site is:

1. A theme or design where all of your primary keyword rich site content is loaded into the client browser when they hit your domain name root
2. No frames, iframes, or fancy post-backs to load content in-line. 
3. Flash is NOT your primary content vehicle (can be used for headers and non-keyword rich content).
4. Any sub-page content or blog posts can be linked to, but those pages are not your primary keyword-rich content

As mentioned, I recently implemented a single page theme on my business portfolio web site, Full Motion Group.  The theme was from Themeforest called Personal Landing Page. I made many modifications to the theme (which i discuss at length about in the comments to the theme) to suit my needs like adding testimonials and making it possible to link to individual posts in the portfolio section. 

If you visit the site, and then view the source code, you will see that the site’s primary content is loaded when you visit the home page.  The only content that doesn’t appear on-load are the in-depth profile case studies (like this profile).  In future, I might enhance the design further to load this content as well but for now I’m happy with the way it is.

After purchasing the theme, and playing around with source code, I knew that the theme had potential for good search engine ranking, but I never guessed it would produce results until today.

How I got to be #6 on Google for “Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver” and why a single page web site is better for your search engine ranking

1. Reason #1: All site content is loaded when a search engine crawler visits the site.  No additional links need to be followed that contain keyword rich content. 
2. Reason #2: If keywords are repeated unnecessarily (like in site footers), they pollute crawler statistics.  For example, let’s say you have a page footer on every page that contains a short description of your business and some relevant keywords.  Keywords used in that description appear for each page of your site and that forces crawlers to make some guesses about what that page could be about
3. Reason #3: You only need to maintain meta-tag information for one page.  I used the All-in-one seo plugin whenever I launch a Wordpress site, and one of the first things I do is enter the home page title and description.  With a single page theme, I only need to do this once and I can carefully monitor my analytics results and tweak those keywords to match the results I’m looking for.
4. Reason #4: Content deeper within your site might not get crawled.  With traditional multi-page web sites, you need to hope that a crawler will index your entire site. Who knows how search engine crawlers behave, and it might not always be the case (as anyone that has tried to search the Microsoft site can attest to). Single page web sites on the other hand, are crawled and indexed completely, that you can be sure of.
5. Reason #5: Single page web sites load more quickly. Well, this isn’t always the case, but certainly a single page theme creates less total traffic than say 10 individual pages of the same content (barring content that is cached in browser).
6. Reason #6: Single page web sites that are updated are re-indexed completely. I’m sure that every time I updated my web site, a search engine eventually revisits and recrawls the site eventually.  Having all my content on a single page load also means that all my content is re-indexed which is even better because I can carefully tweak my entire site’s keywords without too much fuss.

I have yet to prove for sure that a single page theme is better for you from an SEO point of view, and certainly this doesn’t always apply for all sites (as you get larger, you will need to split content into multiple pages), but if you can get away with it, I suggest you give it a try.

Like this post?  Leave a comment or link to me!

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Get Post Image is a plugin I recently found that let’s you you place an image from a post into your home page to entice visitors to read your post.  I found a trick to OPTIONALLY show an image if it’s found, and not show one if it isn’t.  I used the PHP command “strpos” which allows me to search for the default.jpg and not show it if my post doesn’t contain an image.

Installation Instructions:

1. Download the plugin from http://www.andrewgrant.org/get-post-image
2. Install and activate the plugin as with any other Wordpress installation
3. Determine where you want your image thumbnail to appear (usually on your home page as I have done here), and find your post loop (the

<?php
    $image_tag = gpi_get_image(0,http://www.site.com/default.jpg, "portfolio-image");
    $url = get_permalink();
    $pos = strpos($image_tag,"http://www.site.com/default.jpg");
    if($pos === false) {
        echo "<a href=’$url’ class=preview>$image_tag</a>";
         // string needle NOT found in haystack
    }
    else {
         // string needle found in haystack
    }
    ?>
<?php the_excerpt(‘Read the rest of this entry &raquo;’); ?>

If you need more help with installing/configuring this plugin, let me know.  Just shoot me an email if you like.

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