From a personal point of view I've been window shopping online and working out everything I need for my wedding which is now in 10 weeks time! It's quite fun, especially as I enjoy shopping!, and we're both really looking forward to the day when it finally arrives. It'll be great to see all of our family and friends, and the food sounds fantastic

Workwise we've been quite busy. I've been working a lot on a calendar availability system using jQuery and PHP to control it, update dynamically and refresh to keep the calendar updated between a number of users. It's a bit of a challenge and a lot of reading to find out how to do things and how to do them the most efficiently, however it's great fun and different from the normal websites we work on.

I've managed to get a migration script in place for my Page Menu Editor plugin for WordPress. About 6 weeks ago I discovered that the developer on the All in one SEO pack plugin had integrated my code into his plugin at the request of a number of users, which rendered mine a bit obsolete when both are running. However, there was no migration script and he'd used different option names to me, so nothing was copied over. Having both plugins on a number of sites myself, it's a pain to sit and copy it all over manually. So I've now set up a simple migration to allow users to do it themselves if they wish, so if you do use both plugins then an upgrade should be coming through soon with the new migration system.

Finally, our new venture Blog Themes Club is going well. We've added a new theme and I've been adding a number of additional page templates to all our themes to hopefully give our users more than just a basic theme. We're looking to add another new theme next month too and have plenty of ideas for themes to keep us going for a while.

It's all going well

Club Membership

The site is primarily a themes club (in case you hadn't already guessed that!), selling 3, 6 and 12 month membership plans which will allow users to sign in, download and use any of our themes available, get updates of the themes as soon as they're available, get quality support via our private support forum and also via a support desk.

The membership prices are below however we've also reduced these until 1st August as we appreciate that starting with 4 themes isn't a large amount, however our prices are based more on support and continued upgrades:

• 3 months membership – $49 $29
• 6 months membership – $79 $49
• 12 months membership – $99 $69

Single Purchases

Going from experience I know a club membership isn't for everyone, and not everyone will need support or want more than one theme, so we've also got the option to purchase themes individually for a single use. This option doesn't come with any support, but the themes themselves go from $19 which we think is a fairly reasonable price.

Also until July 31st 2009 you can get 25% off the purchase of any Single Use purchase by entering the discount code LAUNCH25 during the checkout process.

Theme Designs

Of course we're aiming to cover all the subject areas that a design can be used for with WordPress including Blogging, CMS, Photoblogs, eCommerce and more. We've already got another theme almost ready to go plus a 6th is being planned ready for design soon. We're hoping to add at least one new theme per 2 months and of course keep our current ones up to date.

Win membership for a month!

To celebrate the launch of Blog Themes Club we are giving away 10 membership accounts for free to readers. These accounts are valid for one month. During that time you will be able to download all of our themes and get daily support.

To enter the competition all you have to do is help us spread the word of our site via Twitter. All you need to do is:

• Follow us on Twitter @BlogThemesClub
• Tweet or ReTweet the folling message via Twitter :
  

  @BlogThemesClub have just launched their new wordpress themes club http://tinyurl.com/n7rhnh – 10 memberships up for grabs in a competition

• Leave a comment linking to the status link of your tweet on our launch post

The deadline for this competition is Sunday 21st June 2009. Therefore, no tweets after midnight Eastern Time (New York Timezone) on Sunday (about 5am GMT) will be counted. We will select the winners randomly and do our best to announce the winners the following day.

» Read our launch post – Blog Themes Club Opens

Maybe I need to elaborate on a couple of things. At most we have maybe 3 or 4 people on a project, or sometimes it's just the two of us, so standard project management software is too excessive for our needs. All I need to do is create a post, write a to do list, add the initials after each item for the person who's dealing with it, and that's it. Then we can just make comments on the post with questions and/or updates about the work. The comments are timestamped which obviously helps, and I'll get an email for every comment. You can also subscribe to the comment feed for each post, so all everyone else will need is a lightweight feedreader and they can just add the comment feed for current work posts to keep up with the discussion.

It's simple, but that's all we need. Somewhere for me to list the work needing to be done that we can all access, and somewhere to share the discussion, where the discussion is logged for future reference.

Today I decided to try out a plugin called Allow Categories which allows you to restrict any non Admin to only see posts from specific categories. This isn't to try and hide our work from the freelancers that we employ, but more to simply reduce what they need to wade through really. The restriction/hiding of posts works fine, however all categories were still being displayed in the category list in the sidebar, so after various attempts I've managed to use a function to override the wp_list_categories() output, and remove the specific categories that shouldn't be displayed.

I've added my first actual project post for a new site that needs to be sorted out over the next couple of weeks. It took me all of a couple of minutes to type up what needed doing plus leave a comment with an update of what we were still waiting for from the client and what could be started.

Besides adding the other projects that are currently on, I just need to work out how I want the front page to work and look. So far so good

So how am I using WordPress? Well this is the plan, once it's set up I'll let you know if it works! At present I've decided to create a category for each web site we maintain currently, then work on each site will go up as a post. The idea is then as we (2+ people working on each site) work through things we can leave comments, questions, requests for opinions etc. on the posts. As work is done the post can be closed and a new one started, and if there are different sections to the work ie. for a whole new site, then multiple posts can be made.

Then on the front page the latest posts for each site can be displayed, or I can easily just control which sites to display on the front page so that sites that are not being worked on can be kept out of the lime light. I've not worked out the front page yet as you can tell!

I personally find it much easier to just type out a to do list and then update that with the del and ins tags as and when things are done rather than creating a record for every single task.

So WordPress is installed and now is just the task of adding all the work to it. I'll let you know how it pans out Any suggestions on how to structure the front page are welcome!

This may also be my own problem which is why I've not seen anyone else mention it. I've got an issue (which I don't have on any other site) on my comments admin page, and the comment counts are wrong on that too. So it's something to look into further when I have the time.

The other gripe I've got is that when you use the automatic upgrade in the admin, it overwrites all the files and also the classic and default theme directories. My first thought when I realised this was that surely there are people out there who use one of these themes and just make a few alterations themselves? My second thought, well more a concern, was that a lot of sites we have to upgrade has their theme in the default directory. You may wonder why, and there is a good reason! If you go to a WP site, the first thing WP has to do is check which theme is in use and then check if it's there by looking for the stylesheet. If the stylesheet can't be found WP automatically reverts back to the default theme and updates the database to make the default theme the selected theme.

It's an understandable method however I've found that if I happen to be updating my stylesheet for this site, for a brief couple of seconds my stylesheet doesn't exist as FTP will delete the file and then upload the new version. At that point, if anyone visits the site, the theme is switched to default. It sounds like a rare thing but I've had it happen a few times on this site, so once I worked this out I started to use the default directory instead.

Okay, so I realise that I could leave sites as they are and just not use the built in upgrade function but with around 20+ sites to upgrade (not all mine!) when a new version is out, the function is very much welcomed, however in my mind, overwriting the theme directories is a flaw. Either, the option should be given to copy the theme directories over or not, or simply just not part of the upgrade.

However, despite my problem and annoyance, those are the only issues that I can really find wrong with the new version. I just now need to update all the sites to not use the default directory!

We run quite a few client sites on WordPress, and let's face it, sometimes you don't want to upgrade immediately, perhaps other work needs doing to the site theme before you want to upgrade everything, or you have another reason (client's paying up is usually a major one!). If you're like me then you'd rather your client's didn't see this notice about upgrading. Some can start contacting you asking why it needs upgrading and if the site is safe to use, others request the update there and then.

Why the notice is shown to non Admins I'm not sure. However, after a quick check and a few lines of code, I've now released a plugin to just hide this message from anyone who isn't a level 10 (i.e. Administrators). Once I've got time I'll probably add an options page to allow people to hide it altogether, or to perhaps allow Editors and Admins to see the message, but not Subscribers through to Authors.

You can view the official plugin page or just download it from WordPress.

A quick wrap up of what's been happening:

WordPress 2.7 was finally released this week, and not a moment too soon. WP 2.7 is the best version yet, the admin is beautiful and the features are great.

We finally took a day off work (on an exceptionally cold but sunny day) and got to the zoo, something we'd been planning to do since October. It was all worth it when I got to see what I went for – the new lion cub. I could have just stood and watched him for hours!

Work has continued to be busy, which is obviously good from a credit crunch / recession point of view. I'm just a tad bit tired and need a break! However, come Friday I'll be stopping work (well client work) for Christmas, and certainly can't wait! Although I seem to be arranging to sort out so much stuff over Christmas that I'll probably be busier than ever!

I won a competition the other week and got a premium WordPress template for free, so I need to get around to injecting my own personality into that, plus the 2.7 code (yes another job for Christmas). So I'll be updating the design of this site soon.

Both Dave and I won a bit of cash off the BloggingTips.com forum competition, so we put our winnings together and put it towards a new Sigma 10-20mm camera lens. I've not had a chance to get any shots with it yet, however I hope to have a play next week and see what I can capture.

I've been eying up Sam's iPhone with a major amount of jealousy! Frustratingly, I've got over a year left on my current contract (yes the one that had no improvement on it whatsoever!). I'm quite tempted to take on a second contract just to get the iPhone, and use that for business, then keep my other for personal for the time being until the contract runs out. But I do keep trying to tell myself to just wait!

And I've finally got Family Ski (We Ski) for the Wii, a bit of an early christmas present off Dave. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's good fun anyway. I've only spent about half an hour on it due to lack of time, but it's quite surreal shussing down, round the trails and paths, avoiding the silly people standing having a chat on the slopes (it's just like real life!).

However, hopefully I can take a long weekend here and there next year and get up to Scotland to do the real thing

Most of it has gone pretty smoothly. I've not only updated to use the new comment pagination (after 25 comments, which is a rarity on my posts!), but I've also still kept my own comment styling and markup, using the comment callback function.

I have spotted a couple of issues or concerns however, but I'm not sure if this is down to the code I've used, so I'll be checking on these more in depth first.

The first is the comment count using the comments_number() tag. I noticed when I first added my updated theme files that one the post I happened to check, there was one comment displaying however the count said 2. On further investigation I did have a second comment on the post but it was unmoderated. Obviously not the outcome I'd prefer, as sometimes I just don't have a chance, or forget to moderate comments, so it would be confusing to some to see perhaps a heading of '4 Responses' yet only one displayed!

The second issue, or not really an issue but a strange finding, is that in the callback function you effectively rewrite your comment markup. You start with a list item so essentially you should finish with a list item. On the codex page for the wp_list_comments() tag, the callback function example has the closing list item tag, however, when you use this code in your theme, you actually get two closing list items. It looks like the template tag automatically adds the closing list item regardless of what you use. Obviously this is strange behaviour as it's assuming that you're using a list for your comments (which you should, but plenty of themes out there don't), and it leaves you with incomplete code in your function, which is not usually the case.

Hopefully the first issue mentioned will be fixed before the final release, and the second is more a case of whether it's considered normal behaviour or not. To me it isn't, and who ever wrote the codex page thought it wasn't either, but perhaps to the WordPress developers it's how it should be!

However, they're only minor issues, and the advantages and beauty of WordPress 2.7 far outweights those that's for sure.

All I'm now waiting for is the release of WordPress MU 2.7 for a couple of sites!

I've written about the new features and the comment code for the pagination over at Blogging Tips:

WordPress Theme Enhancements I
WordPress Theme Enhancements II
WordPress Theme Enhancements III

And I'll be writing about the code for threaded comments next week. Added the 3rd post above

I've already made these changes to my own theme in anticipation of the release of either the full 2.7 version or at least the release candidate version, that I've read is to be coming soon. For my comments file I still wanted comments and pings/trackbacks separated, so with a bit of alterations to the code on my post at Blogging Tips, I've now got this working. The only slight difference is the layout, however I've got a couple of final changes to do and then my theme is ready for 2.7.

So, if you want to make use of the new features in WordPress 2.7, mainly the comment pagination and/or threading, then I recommend making these changes ready for its release.

Write a Page

Creating a new Page isn't too much different, there are just a few different boxes on the page, and a few different options to check on. I've already listed the ideal, must have plugins for using WordPress as a CMS, so I'll assume these are installed and activated. When you open up your Write Page section you'll see a number of input boxes available to you (this list currently references WordPress 2.6.3, it will differ slightly for older or newer versions!):

Title

This is the title of your page. Providing you've installed the All in One SEO Pack and Page Menu Editor plugins, then this page title will be displayed as the Page heading, usually output above the Page content.

Page

This is the Page content box where all of your content goes

All in One SEO Pack – Title

This is the very top page title that appears in the top of your browser window, above the address bar.

All in One SEO Pack – Description

The meta description that will be output in the document header of the Page. It will not be visible on the page.

All in One SEO Pack – Keywords

The meta keywords that will be output in the document header of the Page. Again, these are not visible on the page.

Page Menu Label

This is the text that will be set as the anchor text for this page in the navigation menu.

Page Link Title Attribute

The text that goes into the title attribute of the page link in the navigation menu. It appears as a 'tooltip' when the user hovers their mouse over the link.

Custom Fields

Where you can add additional custom information unique to that page.

Comments & Pings

This will control if you want to allow comments and/or pings to the page – probably not something you'll want anyway on a standard site.

Password Protect This Page

Naturally, will allow you to password protect the page.

Page Parent

If you're going to have a number of pages and can group them then you can set the page parent of the group here. The page needs to already exist to be available as a parent page.

Page Template

Some pages may need a slightly different template with additional coding in. You can select which template to use here.

Page Order

Allows you to control the order of how the pages are displayed in the navigation menu.

Page Author

You can change the author of the page if you wish to assign different authors to different pages (useful for a site where you have multiple users/editors but probably not a necessity on a standard site).

Don't worry if you've not come across some of these before. I'll be explaining all of the options available over the next few weeks!

So for now, the main boxes that you probably need to ensure you complete are:

• Title
• Page (Content)
• All in One SEO Pack – Title
• All in One SEO Pack – Description
• Page Menu Label
• Page Order

The Page Order isn't a necessity, however whilst you may create your pages in the order that you want them in, in the future if you want to add a new page somewhere in the middle of this list, you'll need to set your page orders then for definite. I tend to set my page order on each post simply so that I know it'll be in the right order!

Manage Pages

As you create your pages and publish them, they'll then appear on your Manage -> Pages section. In this section you can view all of your pages, and they'll appear in the order that you've set in the Page Order box, if you've set it there, else they'll appear in the order they were created. Child pages will appear under the Parent pages. To edit a page just click on the page's title. To view the page on the front end, click on the Published link on the right hand side.

Add your Basic Content

Whilst you're creating each page you can also add your basic content to each one. Basic content is ideally plain text content, or with slight formatting such as bold/italics, headings, links and lists. This also includes adding in images where relevant. Content that I don't recommend adding in via the Page Content box is complex content such as forms, tables and of course anything dynamic. The more complex information can be added in via a page template which I'll explain next week.

You may wonder how to deal with perhaps a contact form on your site. For now, add in the brief paragraph for the page, or perhaps your contact details such as business name, address, telephone number and email. We'll then set this to appear above the contact form output which will be in a page template. Then on the frontend the visitor will see your content first, and then a contact form.

I'll explain Page Templates next week! If you can't wait then I recommend the following reading:

• Page Templates – Create a Links Page
• Create a Contact Page