As of the 23rd of January I’ll also be embarking on a PTTLS course at Gosforth Academy. I’ve given presentations and taught IT practices before at University and when I worked at British Airways and now I’m looking forward to doing the same with WordPress.

As of February I’ll be available to take half day and full day training sessions at your business. This will initially cover Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Durham, Edinburgh and generally anywhere in the North-East of England & Scotland.

You can read more about my services on my WordPress training page.

Time

It’s not the main consideration but time is, of course, a large factor. There’s the initial time to design, build and test the system and additional time to maintain it once you have it running. There’s also the regression testing that needs to be carried out following the addition of extra features. All this time could be spent on designing the client’s website, implementing social media or helping with other aspects of delivery. Alternatively the time could be reduced and therefore the cost could be reduced.

Quality

Automattic (the company who develop WordPress) have experts in key areas such as User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Architecture and Security. For bespoke software you would have to have personnel who were good at each of those, plus developers to actually build it. As a freelancer or small business (which most web agencies are) that simply isn’t possible without large overheads. If they’re developing a CMS then the chances are those overheads are going to be passed onto the client, or it’s going to be a secondary thought – which could result in the system becoming quickly out-of-date.

Support

The code base for WordPress is open source (GPL license). This means that anybody is free to take a copy of the code, change it and resell it for a profit. People like myself profit from doing just that, however an altruistic nature in the WordPress community has arisen. This has resulted in the creation of excellent resources and plugins which are in turn, open source. What this also means for businesses is that once they have had their site developed in WordPress then there are lots of people who can support them and they are not tied with one company that will charge them through the roof.

Perception

WordPress has a perception that is it only suitable for blogs. Whereas this was the case two or three years ago, with the introduction of ‘custom post types’ in version 3.0 (2010), this has prompted the community to extend the usage beyond imagination – the fact that WordPress is now even being used for e-commerce* clearly represents that some people’s perceptions about WordPress are out-of-date. Unfortunately clients and agencies still have this perception and by doing so are only restricting their possibilities.

* Although not a replacement for Magento, Shopify etc

Taste

At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to their opinion and they simply might not like WordPress. I personally like the admin area, which is the part of the site where the client will spend most of their time editing their website. I also find the API relatively straightforward to extend WordPress, however some other developers may prefer different a different CMS such as Drupal or Joomla. I can accept that WordPress isn’t for everyone. I can also agree that there are times when it’s maybe best to start with a (relatively) blank slate – my point is don’t just reject it.

Final Thoughts

As a client you should be willing to listen to the option of using WordPress and know that any comments you have heard about it in the past may no longer still be relevant. It’s also very important once your site is live for it to be supportable and it is kept up-to-date otherwise you may end up paying high support costs and be forced to invest in a new website altogether further down the line.

My main advice, however, is just to be open minded and consider all the facts before you make a decision on why WordPress might not be good enough for you; the chances is are it’s probably better than you had anticipated.

By default WordPress will use the number that’s been specified in the settings (the default is 10).

So, when your constructing your query be sure to include showposts in your argument – like so:

showposts => -1

I spent an hour working out why it was only showing 10 posts, so this post is so you don’t have to!

If you have any ‘duh’ moments (doesn’t have to be with WordPress) then please put them in the comments below as the chances are other people (me) have had them too!

It’s not that pagination is broken – or even that it’s difficult – it’s just some people don’t understand what they’re doing, maybe because a) they might just want to copy and paste it and hope it works or b) the tutorials aren’t that clear. So, here’s my attempt using the WP_Query class…

The Code

The first line of code you need is to detect which page of the query we’re on.

$paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ) ? get_query_var( 'paged' ) : 1;

The $paged variable will detect which page we’re on and can therefore bring back the necessary posts. If we have 10 posts altogether and we’re showing 5 on each page and $paged is set to ’2′ then it will bring back posts 6-10.

$args = array( 'posts_per_page' =>5, 'paged' => $paged );

We then create our usual argument for WP_Query. The first argument is important as it stipulates how many results each page is going to display before having to use the pagination. Always include this and don’t rely on the number you have defined in your WordPress settings (default is 10).

$wp_query = new WP_Query( $args ); if( have_posts() ) :
while ( $wp_query->;have_posts() ) : $wp_query->;the_post();

We then create a new instance of WP_Query and loop through the posts as per our argument.

One thing that’s important to notice is that I’m using $wp_query to store the result.

I’ve seen people who have had problems using their own name such as $results. I would stick to $wp_query the first time round just to get the pagination working and then you can change it if needs be.

endwhile;

You will have your content and then of course end the loop. Only after the loop should you call the pagination. You can use these two functions to display it within your layout.

next_posts_link('Older Entries');
previous_posts_link('Newer Entries');

If you are on the first page of results then you’ll only get the ‘Older Entries’ as you are viewing the newest. So now you can browse through the archives of your posts. Don’t forget to end your if statement.

endif;

Advanced Usage

You may instead want to list the pages (e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]). WordPress does not offer this ‘out-of-the-box’ but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel because of this excellent pagination plugin. Simply install that and replace the ‘Older Entries/Newer Entries’ code with the following function.

wp_pagenavi();

Example

As you can see – pretty simple when it comes down to it.

Check out the the full code for WordPress pagination.

The code and tutorial is written from a working example but if you see any problems then please give me a shout or let me know in the comments!

Imagine a page with a header and three paragraphs of text. You want the paragraphs to be quite tight together (margin-bottom of 5px) but you want the first paragraph underneath the heading (a h2 for example) to be slightly bigger.

You could put a margin underneath the h2, but when you make the change it affects a whole host of h2′s on the site both in your sidebar and in the main content of the site – you wanted a simple change but instead this is going to take you 30 minutes to change and test – this is where selectors come in.

h2+p { margin-top: 10px; }

The CSS above would add a margin of 10px to the top of the first paragraph after the h2, better still it works in all major browsers (I don’t include IE6 in that)!

This standard has been out for a while now but it doesn’t mean to say everybody knows about it and of course there are much more complex things you can do with it, of which I would be interested to know how other people are stretching the CSS boundaries…?

So, I have written a guide on how to get your project up and running, quickly and effectively.

The post is written over at Born Digital where I help run workshops for software projects and can be accessed by clicking the link below.

How to save money on your next software project →

I have already explained what you need to do in order to boost your site up the Google rankings for your preferred search, so I followed my own advice and here’s what happened.

1. Up until I integrated a CMS with the site I had little idea of what damp proofing was so the first thing I had to do was to do some research. I asked the client what the key areas of his business were and found that ‘Damp Proofing’, ‘Timber Rot & Woodworm’ and ‘Basement Conversion’ were the main items to focus on. I then used the Google Keyword Checker to confirm the keywords I should be using in relation to the target market.
2. Following this research I changed the <titles> tags and the page headings <h1>to match what I was targeting. The site’s name also lends itself to this too, so it’s in the URL. Although not important Google I also ensured that the meta descriptions were filled out correctly and described the business.

   

3. Unfortunately the next hurdle I had to jump over was that the content on the site. The content was copied down from the parent company therefore it was not unique and it was not entirely relevant. I requested the content was rewritten by the client to be more relevant and I also edited to ensure keywords were in the text.
4. I noticed that in particular in this trade that the directories ruled the roost. Top of the listings were sites such as Yell that listed all the damp proof companies. Yell is a great way to list your business but the by product of it is that you also have backlinks from a top site, of great inmportance to Search Engine Optimisation.
5. Revisit. Just like with anything, don’t assume that the first time you do something it’s going to be perfect. I looked at rival sites and how well the site was doing and reviewed title tags and content to ensure it was going in the right direction.
6. Patience. This was never going to be a five minute task that produced instant results. It took a few months to get from page 15 to page 1. I explained this to the client beforehand which meant that they were under no illusions I could work miracles.

The end result – Damp Proof North East is number one for all the key search terms and is receiving more visits and conversions than ever – another happy client!

Hot off the press: How to Optimise a CMS Driven Website

I always optimise my WordPress installations so it’s delivering cached pages to visitors. The benefit of caching is that the pages load faster as the size of the page requests are smaller. This is because the database queries are stored and do not have to be ran each time a visitor requests a page. Such technique is essential for a CMS like WordPress; otherwise the site is going to take a long time to load and your visitor/customer is going to go elsewhere.

The difference for this site it was an image intensive site for photography meaning big images had to be loaded regularly – even more of a problem. The solution then, a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

The products

My CDN of choice was Amazon’s Cloudfront. Files are stored on Amazon S3 and Cloudfront then distributes them when requested. There are others on the market but just through Amazon’s reputation I chose them. I’d be open to using others in the future but only if I could see a real difference.

The details

When a new image is uploaded through the media uploader it is pushed out to the Amazon S3 bucket. The Amazon S3 bucket therefore is a mirror image of the uploads folder in wp-content.

When a visitor hits the site, they are served the image from Amazon S3 which is faster than most other web servers. There’s also the added benefit that the images can be requested at the same time as other files from the web server which means more requests can happen concurrently – again, speeding things up.

The benefits

The hosting package I use for my client is a standard package – so it’s not necessarily the quickest. If my client wanted to have quicker hosting then they’d be looking at £30 per month, instead of £60 a year – a massive difference and something most clients would not be prepared to do.

With Amazon S3 and Cloudfront you are only paying for the amount of requests per files, rather than a flat fee. This invariable costs less due to the ‘Pay-as-you-Go’ type billing.

My costs for the last month for this site and Ally’s site were $0.78 so it hasn’t exactly broke the bank, and the speed, well there’s no doubt it’s much faster.

Do you need help setting up an CDN for your site, or do you need other areas of your site speeding up? Get in contact and I’ll be able to help you out!

One thing I did struggle with however was uploading multiple files to a remote web server. I usually upload WordPress other applications to web servers at least once per day which include thousands of files – that’s thousands of individual requests, giving my FTP client more opportunities, especially with slower upload speeds, to timeout.

So, instead of uploading multiple files I zipped them all into one file and transfers them onto the server. I then unzip them on the server using a PHP function, which takes seconds.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Zip the files up into a file call it myfile.zip
2. Upload myfile.zip to the folder on your web server into the correct folder.
3. Create a PHP file named unzip.php in the same folder as your zip file with the following in it:
   <?php
$zip = new ZipArchive;
$location = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$zip->open('myfile.zip');
$zip->extractTo("/$location/");
$zip->close();
?>
4. RUN unzip.php from your web browser and it will instantly unzip all the files.
5. For security purposes delete myfile.zip and unzip.php from your server so nobody else can unzip files on your server.

And that’s about it. It was a massive time saver me for and increased the stability of my uploads over a slower internet connection.