All the Facts about Wordpress (Infographic)

While I've moved on from Wordpress myself, I can't help but continue to follow it's progress. So I felt compelled to share this comprehensive infographic detailing everything from the number of plugins to a timeline of events in the content management platform's evolution. The platform deserves recognition for it's scope and flexibility.

Source: Wordpress Infographic by strebel

Squarespace or Self-Hosted Wordpress: Which is right for you?

I’ve just moved this site from Wordpress to Squarespace.  Both platforms are powerful and have their advantages and disadvantages. For me, it boiled down to my Wordpress installation becoming over bloated and self-hosting being overly time consuming.  A simple solution like Squarespace came to the rescue to help me create a streamlined version of the site in a week. Here are some points that aided me in my decision:

Setup

Squarespace:  Setup in minutes pretty much.  The interface is click, drag, drop.  You can add pages, sidebars and content pretty quickly.  Upload zip files of photos and they’ll unzip and appear on your gallery.  Sidebars can be hidden on certain pages

Wordpress:  The Wordpress setup is simple, but can feel technical and scary to beginners.  Adding pages does involve dealing with the template system which can be fairly technical if you want to customize them to the level that Squarespace does out of the box.  Plus, self-hosting had lead to folders filled with legacy files which I had to manage and keep track of.
Winner: Squarespace

Versioning:
Squarespace: When I first wrote this post, I saved it as a draft, wandered off, and when I went to publish the post ... It was blank.  A long post was gone and tech support had no way of getting it back. I couldn’t recover anything from the Firefox cache.  It’s a pretty big weakness.  After the second time losing the post, I’m now writing this from Google Docs.

Wordpress:  Versioning allows you to roll back your blog posts to earlier versions. Wordpress is a mature platform so it has pretty extensive features like this built in.  Both platforms allow you to use an external XML-RPC editor that could add this feature in.

Winner: Wordpress

Time/Price:
Squarespace: Since time is money, these were grouped together in my decision making.  A Squarespace site can be setup in minutes.  No backend setup, dealing with file structures. Much of the simplicity of the site let’s you spend your time worrying about content. Squarespace starts at $8 a month.

Wordpress:  You can set up Wordpress on a host pretty quickly too, but a lot of the backend tweaking ate up most of my time.  The CMS and it’s plugins needed updates frequently, which is something Squarespace does for you in the background.  My hosting with ICDSoft (still would highly recommend them) was only $6 a month and Wordpress itself is free.

Winner (Squarespace): Wordpress  Winner (Time): Squarespace

Lock in:
Squarespace: Both Squarespace and Wordpress have import and export features.  Squarespace exports to Movable Type’s export format which is compatible with most platforms including Wordpress.  Importing into Squarespace, the platform will also copy over your images.  

Wordpress: With self-hosted Wordpress, you can just download your file structure and maintain it on your new site.  It’ll import most blog platform files, just follow the documentation.  Wordpress also gives you fine control over your URL structure.

Winner: Draw

Templates:
Squarespace: 60 professional templates are provided for you to customize.  They are easy to use with a WYSIWYG (“What You See is What You Get”) interface.  It’s very easy to get a nice looking site quickly for beginners to do some designs that would be extremely complicated in Wordpress.

Wordpress: Hundreds of templates from a large community, but there’s a learning curve to figuring out the template format.  It’s very code-oriented for beginners, but with that comes a lot of flexibility

Winner: Draw

Help

Squarespace:  While there is a community behind the scenes, you have paid technical support included with your account. They’ll answer questions and fix problems on your behalf.

Wordpress: The support community is vast, but there’s no guaranteed answer and you’ll have to implement your solutions yourself
Winner: Squarespace

Functionality

Squarespace:  Their service tends to come up with easy and polished ways functions like a nice gallery or widget. Rather than being everything to all people, they roll out features that they can do well.
Wordpress: The clear winner here is Wordpress which is extensible with pretty much any feature you might hope for thanks to the community of plugins.
Winner: Wordpress

Gallery/File System

Squarespace: Built in gallery system is great for portfolio sites such as mine.  The file download system is what I use for my music, while on my old system I had reskinned Movable Type to create a music download index.

Wordpress:  No built in gallery system, but plugins or even a seperate gallery CMS can be used and integrated.  I used Gallery2 in my previous setup, but there was little integration between the two systems.
Winner: Squarespace

Conclusion:

I won’t give a final verdict because each of these categories will be weighted different depending on your needs.  If you need an easy to use, no hassle, interface Squarespace might be a good time saver for you.  I chose Squarespace for itself content driven system and ease of use no hassle backend.  Wordpress’s flexibility and power can’t yet be beat.  In the end, it’ll come down to content. What system will help you product the best content and interface for your users?

TwitterLink Comments Let's Readers Add Their Twitter Name to Wordpress Posts

TwitterLink Comments

For Wordpress Blogs: The TwitterLink Comments plugin will add a new field to your comment so readers can add their Twitter username. Right along side their website name in your comments, they'll get a link to their twitter.

You can either the plugin to automatically set up your form and display or the link to avoid ever needing to touch a template. Or you can do it manually for more control.

You can even customize the CSS classes, HTML, link and message within the settings page!

TwitterLink Comments [comluv.com]

Top 10 Ramblings of This Graphic Designer & Illustrator in 2008

Here's a post of the most popular posts in 2008. This site has been a great success compared to year's past. Focusing more on what people want to read about and where that intersects with what I want to write about has been a key strategy. People visit this site for design, crafts, tv talk and tech and we'll expect a lot more of this in the year to come. Please keep on commenting about the things you care about and I'll keep researching and rambling about it. If you really want to support this site, subscribe to the feed and maybe even buy a print of my art.

Now on with the top 10 list, in reverse order for maximum suspense:

#10 12 Social Websites for Artists & Designers

Graphic designers, especially those who freelance, often rely on networking for information, growth and work. These 12 social sites provide great ways to meet other designers in either a professional and amateur context. And there are even more social sites recommended in the comments.

#9 Telefrancais

This post of the Telefrancais theme song five years ago isn't just about the original post. The comments thread has spawned 80 posts of discussion. Telefrancais was a weird French language instructional video that North American classes were subjected to. The nostalgia of a talking pineapple that hasn't made it very far in the digital age has driven people here on their quest to discover the truth of Ananas.

#8 Closed Versus Open Source DVD Burning Software

Burning a DVD in Windows is only as easy or hard as the software that you have. Luckily, there are free, open source solutions and people are really looking for them making it number eight on our list.

#7 Embedding Twitter in Your Wordpress Blog

Twitter is a micro-blogging website that has become one of the most watched "Web 2.0" sites in the recent year. Embedding a micro-blog in your Wordpress blog can add an additional, more up-to-date feed of information in between your larger posts. This tip tells you how to do it pretty easily (You can friend me on Twitter at twitter.com/sketchee)

#6 How to listen to podcasts without iTunes or an iPod

Audio programming is great for a commute or at wor. With podcasts being a free medium, it seems like they're taking off more and more. This compilation of tips is meant to make the concept behind podcasts easier so you can start listening to free customized radio-like programming even if you don't have the latest gadgets. If you can read this, you probably have everything you need to enjoy podcasts.

#5 Gifts for Graphic Designers: A Wish List

Whether it's about the holidays, a birthday, a promotion or a non-event, people are looking for all kinds of gifts for graphic designers. The latest picks quickly became one of this year's hottest posts.

#4 David Bromstad

This old post still seems to strike a cord with David Bromstad fans. He's an interior decorator on HGTV. While the post is old, the comments still buzz with conversation about the star. If you're looking for a place to talk about David, join in the discussion.

#3 Graphic Design Meets Open Source Software

These free open source tools for graphic designers on a budget seems to have resonated with people. Open Source software has taken off in 2008. Open source fonts, web design, illustration software, page design and photo development tools are there for the freelancer, casual use or business. If you're interested in any of these, check out this post.

#2 Designing Your Own Custom Shoe

Shoe design was once limited to athletes, celebrities, big name designers and whoever is designing shoes for the brands. Now some of that technology has gone to the masses and it sounds like people are loving the idea. Now someone tell Zazzle we want men's shoes in 2009!

#1 Hemming Jeans Like A Pro

Crafty and resourceful designers really have responded to this tip on hemming jeans. It's the most popular post on this site. As a shorter person myself, it really makes life easier to have the option of hemming pants. This tip takes a bit of practice, but it can be worth it. Practice on some cheap jeans from a consignment shop if you're really worried about messing up those designer brands.

Embedding Your Zazzle Store in Wordpress

I have just integrated my Zazzle store into this Wordpress blog thanks to Zazzle's Store Builder feature. Take a look at the result on the Sketchee.com Art Prints Shop Page. You can include items from any shop, not just your own, and you make the referral fee on all sales. While there is documentation on the Zazzle site, this article will focus on specifically embedding the store builder in a Wordpress page.

photo credit: jelene

First, you'll want to download the store builder files. You'll have to customize the files with your identifying information. Open the file configuration.php, in the folder include, using your favorite text editor. You'll see some fields in quotes marked to be edited. Your contributor name or contributor handle is the name of your gallery on Zazzle.com. Your associate id number can be obtained by logging into Zazzle. Upload the files anywhere on your site that supports PHP using your favorite FTP program. This could be in your Wordpress theme folder, although I installed mine in a root level folder. You can call it whatever you like, for example I called the folder /storebuilder.

In Wordpress, you'll want to make a copy of the template that you'd like to embed the store into. I made a copy of my Pages template, pages.php, and renamed it shop.php. This is in the wordpress folder under /wp-content/themes in the folder of the current theme. Log onto your site admin panel and navigate to the Theme Editor in Wordpress. In Wordpress 2.6.5 this is located under the Design Tab. Select shop.php and above any other code you will need to insert the following code; the Template Name can be anything you want:

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Shop
*/
?>

Next, we'll edit the shop.php template to add the shopbuilder code. This can be anywhere on your template. Note that the path must be a full server path as in the example code. There are a ton of customization options to be aware of. The full description of each is available in the configuration.php that we had edited earlier. These variables can also be set there, but it is more versatile to do it from your templates since you could have multiple pages or multiple includes of the storebuilder on one page! The productType variable lets you choose a product (shirts, stickers, etc) by using one of the numbers form configuration.php. If showPagination is true, it will allow your shop page to have several pages of products to navigate through. showSorting lets users choose between sorting by popularity or date added. gridCellSize is the size of the image (tiny, small, medium, large or huge).

< ?php

// configure Zazzle Store Builder display
$_GET['productType'] = '';
$_GET['showPagination'] = 'false';
$_GET['showSorting'] = 'false';
$_GET['showProductDescription'] = 'false';
$_GET['showByLine'] = 'false';
$_GET['showProductTitle'] = 'true';
$_GET['showProductPrice'] = 'false';
$_GET['gridCellSize'] = 'medium';
$_GET['showHowMany'] = '100';

include "/home/FULLPATH/www/www/storebuilder/include/zstore.php"; ?>

Using the theme editor, you'll need to enter a line in the header.php of your Wordpress theme. This should placed between the <head> tags. Note that if you named your /storebuilder directory something different, you'll have to change this to reflect that. You may also want to put this css file in the theme's folder instead and refer to it there; that way it could be modified in the theme editor although you probably won't need to touch it. This contains the styles that the store uses and are already named so not to conflict with your blog styles:

<link id="ext_css" rel="stylesheet" <br/>type="text/css" href="/storebuilder/css/zstore.css"/>

Finally, create a new Wordpress page (Write > Page). You can write a little bit of intro text as the post itself. The most important thing is to scroll down under Advanced Options for the page. Look for Page Template and set that box to the Template Name you created above. You may also want to disable comments for this page if your theme isn't already set to do this. Publish the post.

That is pretty much it. The item links in your store even go to a version of the Zazzle's product page with a smaller header bar to minimize their branding on your store. If you have any difficulty, feel free to post here or at the Zazzle forum.

Update: If all of this sounds too technical or just too time consuming for you, try out the zStore Helper Plugin