Yan

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good idea though, i think i will try this on my next site.

Article with code samples on why you should style your links with a bottom border instead of the default underline for readability …

This experiment is a long-term project - we have created the email addresses and are they are now floating around the Internet, slowly collecting spam.

Stay tuned!

Thanks again

1. A forum. Create topics (blog entries) and people contribute their comments like a forum. Some people may say “well, that’s a blog” - not quite. You can deliberately set-up topics that require feedback from users such as brainstorming challenges.

2. Q & A. A bit like Yahoo! Answers, but maybe you pick a niche and ask questions (and encourage others to ask questions) that your website visitors can answer. If you pick a niche, then you’re not trying to compete with popular sites like Yahoo! Answers and MeFi Ask.

Great job.

After reading this post, I am not sure I understand what you are trying to relate. Please expand on your thoughts a little more. Thanks…

Es desafortunado ver cuántos comentarios y fija el foro del blog eso en vez de centrarse en lo que dijo alguien las vueltas de la discusión en apagado una conversación del asunto sobre nada….

thanks in advance!

I am wondering if I could tweak it to accept assignments from existing customers … that is, they could post a request for work (lawn mowing, gutter cleaning, window cleaning, snow removal etc. AND pay for it at the same time — eliminating the hassle (for both of us!) of how to get the money to me for services performed while they are away from home.

I have much to learn. Thanks for helping me check ONE thing off the list.

It sounds interesting but I am not sure that I agree with you completely….

I can’t believe that I missed your point, I will have to do some research on this….

Not something that is obvious to most people; they know the designs feel/look impressive, but the intelligent and consistent pattern of the typography is impressive.

I’m still voting for McCain, because that’s all Obama is. A good campaign. Wish there was more to that book than it’s cover.

CSS only styles the element (i.e. changing the colors, text style, layout, etc).

Javascript, or more exactly AJAX or JQuery would be necessary to make the box more functional, for example to fade in and out on some user action.

About the plugins, I have tried and compared Fresh-Page (now called Flutter), More Fields, and rc:Custom Fields GUI.

Flutter is extremely ambitious and touches many other areas besides the Write Post page. It has an impossibly cumbersome set-up, and in the end it didn’t change my Write Post page. It just added a new Write tab, that I could name whatever, such as “Contribute A Post”. And then the custom fields I wanted were not beautifully displayed. Another problem is that Flutter conflicts with the plugin Get Custom Fields which I also have in-use live on my site (it conflicts because Flutter attempts to incorporate Get Custom Fields, but I didn’t want to change my whole theme to suit Flutter unless I knew it would be my solution). In short it had way too many problems. In favor of Flutter, this was the only plugin of the 3 that allowed the Checkbox List style of input (Choose 1 Or More From The List!). I did test it, and it actually worked. So I know this feature could be implemented in other plugins (or coded by hand, if I knew the right code).

More Fields - the backend interface is much more simple. This plugin would be good except it doesn’t allow the Checkbox List style of input (for multiple-selecting values).

rc: Custom Fields GUI - was a very good and simple plugin. I have used it for years. It actually still works with WP 2.6. Unfortunately the author hasn’t updated the plugin, but it’s not broken. It just lacks a backend (you have to edit a text file which is OK with me), and it doesn’t offer the Checkbox List style of input.

Again, just to be clear about my needs: WordPress custom fields WILL allow multiple values for one key, on one post. So you can have the KEY “Favorite 3 Fruits” and offer the choice of values Apple, Orange, Kiwi, Strawberry, Grape, Banana.

In comparison the normal “Drop Down List” and “Radio Button” styles of input, which are offered in all 3 plugins, are made for one value per one key. “Choose one of the following”. Example, KEY = “How Good”, and values are Bad, Good, Better, Best.

Flutter and More Fields have another twist on this: the checkbox that simply returns the value “on” or “off” (can also be used for true/false).

The situation is this: WordPress allows the input type I want. But the author has to understand the obscure WP Custom Fields interface. The author has to know how to use that. It’s not easy, especially try explaining “If you want 3 favorite fruits, then just set the Favorite Fruits key 3 times and type in your different values.” That’s too hard. The 3 plugins all offer the solution of making Really Obvious and theoretically beautiful input fields on the Write Post page, that every author will see, before you hit Publish. So you’ve got your TITLE, your POST writing area, and then right under that you can customize nice things like FAVORITE FRUITS, and it will have a beautiful checkbox list.

Flutter can make this kind of input, but unfortunately if you study that plugin it has crazy problems that make this solution not attractive right now. Maybe someday. Meanwhile we have a plugin from 2005-2007 (custom fields gui) that is a great foundation — someone should update it (please). And we have a runner-up, More Fields, also a good plugin that would work for me if 1 more feature was added.

Hope this helps someone else who’s searching. Also the above plugins might work differently for someone else, with another set-up, different WordPress, different PHP version, etc. This is just from my personal experiments recently. I am grateful to all the plugin authors and the writer of this post.

I would recommend not using special characters. For example, if you wanted to use a key called “Today’s Reading,” why not just use “Reading” as the key. Then, when you display it in the template, just use

Today’s Reading: < ?php echo $Reading; ?>


This was you can avoid using special characters and even spaces without any lose in functionality or simplicity.

There is no easy way to have a custom field use a dropdown box for its values. You’d either have to type in “Swimming” or “Hiking” each time, or you can try using the FreshPost plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fresh-page/

This plugin will allow you to create your own “Write __” admin page. For example, WordPress already has a Write Post and Write Page. You can now create Write Whatever and populate it with what fields you need.

Is this the plugin you used?

That example you reposted from the Codex brings something else to light, as well as spaces: special characters. The key “Today’s mood” has an apostrophe. I don’t really know 100% if special characters and spaces might cause problems or not. Personally I would avoid putting something like & ampersand in the custom field key. It just seems risky to me that it might be rendered differently in another setting. I might make my guideline as “Make the custom field key something that you can remember exactly when you go to insert code in your theme later. Keep it simple. Avoid unusual characters.”

However, like you said, even HTML is cool in the Value field. That’s a great feature. You can put something like a hyperlink, or the HTML to display an image, in your Value — and then display this easily in your theme, around your post. This opens up a world of possibilities.

Here’s my next question though. The one thing I really wish for in Custom Fields is to make a multiple-select checkbox area, very much like the Categories selecting area on Write Post. I would have 1 pre-determined custom field Key, and 5 pre-determined custom field Values. The post author could select 1 or more Values. For example, KEY: “Favorite Outdoor Activity”, VALUES: (Choose one or more): “Hiking,” “Soccer,” “Rock climbing,” “Disc Golf,” “Swimming”.

And I would use the normal custom field function to display an Array on the post. So the post would say, This Author’s Favorite Outdoor Activities are: Hiking, Swimming.

I’ve tried 2 plugins for this and neither was suitable. They offered a radio button (select 1 of the 5 options), but not a multi-select (check 1 or more of these options).

Thanks again for prompting this thread.

padding-left: 3px 3px 3px 22px;

which I think should be

padding: 3px 3px 3px 22px;

According to the WordPress Codex example, you can use spaces in keys:

“We’ll add two custom fields, one called “Currently Reading” and the other “Today’s Mood”. The following instructions will demonstrate how to add this information to a post using Custom Fields.

1. After you have written your post, scroll down to the area titled Custom Fields.
2. To create a new Custom Field called “Currently Reading”, enter the text “Currently Reading” (without the quotes) in the text entry field titled Key.
3. The newly created Key should now be assigned a Value, which in our case is the name of the book currently being read, “Calvin and Hobbes”. Type “Calvin and Hobbes” in the Value field, again without the quotes.
4. Click Add Custom Field button to save this custom information for that post. ”

Link: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Custom_Fields

You may in fact use spaces, such as “Author Name,” as your keys. The only issue is that you may be more suspect to mistypings etc when actually using the custom fields in your templates.

That said, if you were designing a site for a client, it may be better to use spaces from a readability standpoint. In this case the client will most likely not be editing the templates, so as long as you set it up you should be fine.

However, for designing a WordPress site for personal use, in which case you may even be tweaking the design quite a lot, custom fields without spaces would minimize mistakes. For our site we are constantly making small, coding changes - these changes may result in accidentally breaking apart a key value for example.

The choice between spaces and no spaces is a personal choice. From a readability standpoint you are correct. From a design and structure standpoint it may depend more on the designer.

Great question Dgold. It are these types of questions that are not answered on the Codex or in tutorials that are at the least interesting to know.

Thanks again,

Jeff Strank
NetParty

You need to use spaces because when you display the custom field, it shows the key. You want it to be readable. I think you should use the key “Author Name” not “Author_Name”, or at least, it doesn’t matter.

If there’s a reason I have not thought of, please say?

Thanks for the article.

You are right in the sense that, suppose you have a red message box with 3 different icons. In that case it may be better to use a more semantic labeling system that perhaps describes each icon.

But if you only have 2 or 3 message boxes total, it may be easier to use color. Image what would happen if you didn’t use a message box for a very long time - you would have to go back and check which CSS tag was used. But if you used the color as the name in your stylesheet, it would perhaps be easier to remember.

Either way, it is more of a personal choice, and like mentioned, may depend on how many of these styles you have etc. And like you mention, for beginners using colors is probably the best choice. Thanks!

ResumePress looks much more professional and is free, not $30!! thanks guys

Nixon also had a pretty good marketing campaign, but yes, Obama’s is the new gold standard.

You can sell anything in this world, even garbage, if you know how to market. Anything can be presented nicely with great marketing. Politics is no different.