WordPress Designers and Developers in Minneapolis, MN

WordPress Calendar Plugin Update

September 22nd, 2011 — plugin, Wordpress

Progress has been steady on our new WordPress calendar plugin.

Tonight I packaged a simple list widget with the plugin and have it running in the sidebar on MSP WordPress.

The admin interface is looking pretty sweet.

Adie and I have decided to make this the easiest-to-use calendar plugin ever. It is going to be so easy to use that you will wonder why nobody did it before – at least that is our goal.

Our design strategy is one of minimalism with a robust API. So, out-of-the-box it will have very few features, however, plugin developers will have lots of fun adding features via hooks and filters.  We recognize that some people want an event plugin that does all sorts of crazy things out of the box.  There are already a number of plugins that cater to that crowd, and we feel that in addressing all sorts of random functionality, those plugins have sacrificed design and usability.

We have a solid wireframe and a working prototype. We are meeting on Friday to (hopefully) finalize a name for the product, and then we expect the next step will be a first design iteration with an actual artist.

Last Friday we met and came up with 100 possible names, before winnowing that list down to 15 of our favorites.

Fun times!

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BackupBuddy – 1st Experience

August 31st, 2011 — Blog Post, plugin, Thoughts, Wordpress, Wordpress plugin

Tonight I utilized BackupBuddy to migrate a WordPress installation from a live server to a local install using MAMP on my Mac.  It was my first attempt at a BackupBuddy migration and took about 5 minutes to complete.

The process was intuitive and easy.  Earlier in the evening, I attempted to do a manual move and was running into all sorts of issues moving my database and connecting the dots – moreso than usual.  So, the ease of this BackupBuddy move was much appreciated.

What has been your experience with BackupBuddy?

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Really Simple Captcha Image Not Displaying

August 9th, 2011 — Blog Post, plugin

I must have spent two hours troubleshooting this issue with the Really Simple Captcha plugin today. I am using it with Gravity Forms, and the captcha image was not displaying at all – I was getting a broken image.

The solution was to create a folder in “wp-content”->”uploads”->”gravity_forms” called, “captcha” (see image below). Once I did that everything worked properly!

Add the "captcha" folder as shown above

I hope this blog post saves you some time!

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A Fresh Look at a Calendar Plugin in WordPress

July 25th, 2011 — Blog Post, plugin, Thoughts

I have been completely unsatisfied with all of the calendar plugins that I have tried.  None do a good job on the usability front.

So, I will be building my own calendar plugin.  It’ll be a fresh look at calendaring in WordPress.

I need your thoughts and ideas.  I would like this to be the most easy-to-use plugin you have seen.  I want you to say, “Wow.  That was fun to use.”  As such, I will be focusing on usability with the initial release.  The core plugin will create a calendar entry with the following 5 pieces of data:

  • Title
  • Time
  • Location
  • Description
  • Links
Is the above a good starting point for the plugin?  Did I miss anything?
What basic features do you need in a calendar plugin?
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Adding Login Boxes to WordPress Using wp_login_form()

December 27th, 2010 — Blog Post, plugin, Wordpress

I had a conversation recently with Josh about some WordPress stuff, and he brought up the new “wp_login_form” function that shipped with WordPress 3.0. I suppose I had read about it, but the value of it did not occur to me until this week when the opportunity came up to utilize it.

Josh and I are working on a site together, and the site needs a login form within the normal page structure. Basically, we need to show a login form if a user is not already logged-in.

I remember tackling this problem a few years ago with a link to the “…/wp-login.php” page. Of course, this method of logging in is a bit disjointed for the average user.

So, on our new site, we will be embedding a login form within the normal page structure using the wp_login_form() function.

*and there was much rejoicing*

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