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Adding PDF Links to WordPress Posts and Pages
Linking to a pdf can, in many cases, be a very convenient way to add content to your site. We often find that clients will want to add menus, brochures, instructions etc. that may be most effectively viewed, shared or printed in pdf format. Uploading a pdf and adding a link in your site’s content so that visitors can download this document is all possible through the standard WordPress admin options.
When you are editing a page or post in the WordPress admin, there are a group of four options above the main edit window labelled ‘Upload/Insert’. The first is for uploading and managing images, the second for video, the third for audio and the fourth for other media (text files, pdfs etc.). If you select the fourth option (named ‘Add Media’) you will then open a pop up window where you can upload the pdf. Once the file has finished uploading, you will have a choice of options. Selecting ‘Insert into Post’ (as you would with an image) will not work here – it only inserts the document’s title into the body content of the page or post. To insert a link to the pdf, rather, you can first select the ‘File URL’ option. Doing so will cause the file’s link location to be displayed in the ‘Link URL’ field. You can then copy this url to your clipboard and exit the pop up box.
Next enter the text that you will use as the selectable link text in the content of the page or post. Click and drag over this text to select it. Once you have selected the text, the link button will become accessible. You can click this to bring up another pop up box where you are able to paste the url for the pdf that you had previously copied. You will finally need to click ‘Insert’ to add the link.
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Macmillan Global Wins TEFL.net Site of the Month Award
We’re very pleased to hear of the success of http://www.macmillanglobal.com in the TEFL.net Site of the Month Award. Global won the award for February due to their valuable teaching resources and all-round contribution to English language training.
The site has achieved great success already in terms of visits and newsletter subscribers. We’re confident that this success will continue due to their commitment to high quality content. The site offers audio and pdf downloads, videos and frequent blog posts about their course and broader issues relating to teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The blog section features the writing of well-respected contributors such as David Crystal and Linsay Clandfield.
We are proud of the web design and our contribution to presenting their content in an effective, visually-appealing manner and we hope to see the site continue to achieve Macmillan’s goals in award-winning style.
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Sunglasses Save rise in the search engines
We have been working on the Sunglasses Save web design, onsite SEO and offsite SEO for 9 months now through the depths of the ICY Winter. The site is now bursting to life as they have progressed to top 5 position for most of their brand sunglasses and on page 3 and rising for the VAST and competitive search phrase Sunglasses.
Sunglasses
The word Sunglasses was searched over a million times in december which is the worst time of year for sunglasses so as we progress the guys at Sunglasses Save should have a busy summer. When our gameplan comes to fruition I am expecting to be furnished with a pair of awesome Ray Ban Aviators for the summer holidays.
The site is built in Magento and we have developed some unique and creative SEO site technology to give the site competitive edge.
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Embedding YouTube Videos, Flickr Images and more in WordPress 2.9
WordPress 2.9 has greatly increased the ease of embedding videos, images and other types of content. You are now able to display videos on your site from, for example, YouTube simply by entering the url of the YouTube video as plain text in a WordPress page or post. It is also possible to similarly embed videos from Vimeo, DailyMotion, Google Video and other video sites or embed images from Flickr and Photobucket. Embedding articles from Scribd or polls from PollDaddy is equally staightforward. A more comprehensive list of sites that you can embed from using this method is available at http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds .
The example displayed below shows the post content in the admin (4 urls entered as plain text on a separate line – one from Flickr, one from Scribd, one from YouTube and one from PollDaddy) and the next two screenshots display the output on the front end of the site (a Flickr image, a Scribd article, a YouTube video and a PollDaddy poll).
This is all possible in WordPress 2.9 through it’s support of the oEmbed protocol. This protocol enables your site to query another site for the code needed to embed parts of its content.
By default you are only able to embed content from a list of sites approved by WordPress. This can be extended by using the oEmbed Discovery plugin or, for developers, using the template tags wp_oembed_add_provider() (for allowing embedded content from an oEmbed-enabled site) and wp_embed_register_handler() (to enable embedded content from a non-oEmbed site).
If you would, however, prefer to prevent links from being converted to embedded content, this feature can be turned off under Settings > Media. There you will need to deselect the options labelled ‘Attempt to automatically embed all plain text URLs’ and ‘Attempt to embed content from unknown URLs using oEmbed’.
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Image Editing in WordPress
The release of version 2.9 provided WordPress users with some very useful additional image editing capabilities. In the following article we will look at some of the new options for reversing, rotating, cropping and resizing images.
When you are editing a page or post, a row of tools for uploading additional files is available just above the main content entry box. These tools are labelled ‘Upload/Insert’ and the first is used to handle image files. Click on this tool to open the media file pop up window.
From the pop up window, click on ‘Select Files’ and choose the image you want to upload.
Once this file has uploaded select the ‘Edit Image’ button.
To crop the image, click, hold and drag to select the area that you want to keep. Select the crop tool from the row of options at the top and then click ‘Save’ to apply the changes.
The additional buttons along the top can be clicked to rotate clockwise, rotate anticlockwise, flip vertically and flip horizontally. Remember to select ‘Save’ to apply the changes.
In addition to the original image file uploaded, WordPress generates versions in 3 other sizes: thumbnail, medium and large (the default sizes for these can be specified under Settings > Media). When you are editing images using the new options in WordPress 2.9 and above, you can choose to apply these alterations to all sizes, only the thumbnail versions or all sizes except the thumbnail versions.
We are very pleased to see this functionality added to the WordPress core as it means that simple editing tasks can be handled without the need for external software which can be expensive and cumbersome. While the options may appear quite limited compared to what external software and plugins can offer, they are nonetheless very useful.
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WordPress Database Backup Plugin
Today we are very thankful for one highly recommend and potentially invaluable plugin: the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
It’s likely that you have been frustrated several times by losing unsaved work when your computer or one of it’s applications has crashed unexpectedly. Just imagine, then, the all-consuming sorrow of losing weeks, months or even years of blog posts or other site content. Your hosting company may provide a responsible backup service (or you may have a well-considered system in place if your site is self-hosted) but some extra insurance can be crucial if the unexpected happens (as it did for one of our client sites today).
The WordPress Database Backup plugin makes backing up WordPress content a painless process. Once the plugin has been added and activated through the WordPress admin section, it is then possible to specify an email address for the database backups to be sent to. Regular automatic backups can be set up to be received at your email address at a chosen interval. This interval can range from every hour (suitable for a very active site) to every week (for a site where content is changed less frequently). Once these few options have been set, the latest content backup will be emailed to you regularly and potential catastrophes avoided with no further effort required.
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Blowtorches – ecommerce research begins
We are scheduling an ecommerce web design and SEO project for February this year focusing on selling gas items including blowtorches. The proposed site will retail blowtorch products and accessories including propane and butane refills.
Blow torches are tools used in all industries for a range of purposes from cutting and joining metal to browning cakes in the kitchen. Blowtorches are not a seasonal item and sell all year round. Its an exiting project this one as it is a more obscure and less mainstream product. To find out whther it sells online there is really only one way to find out. We will be pushing this one in the search engines and producing a cool web design to increase the likelihood of sale.
A quick note too. We have recently got well into photography for our ecommerce projects and it will be on display shortly on our site.
Blowtorch | web design
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First aid kits
First aid Kits are vital for business and the home and are bundles of products, usually including bandaging and treatments for small wounds abrasions and burns. Being the owner of a first aid kit does not necessarily make you a bonafied paramedic but it will help you treat everyday injuries if you know what you are doing.
In the next few months we are carrying out initial SEO research into the First Aid Kit sector for a small ecommerce and web design project we are launching for ourselves. Should we go for it, it will be our first venture into ecommerce not for clients and will be a great learner for us to be on the other side of a sales driven site. We will be implementing all of the web design and SEO methodology that we implement for outr clients and will be going at it hammer and tongue. We have source a quality and good value product that meets our criteria and arranged a supply chain for it.
We wont be going ahead until we are 100% sure that it is a winner… watch this space.
first aid kit | web design
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Getting stuck-in to Magento
After really getting stuck into the nuts and bolts of Magento today, it is becoming more clear how useful and and structured Magento is. As time goes on I think the system will make more sense and will become a more efficient way of developing e-commerce websites.
One of the major challenges that I have faced so far is the templating system of Magento. It is different to systems I have used in the past but makes a lot more sense in the fact that everything fits together the way it should.
You can really see that Magento has been clearly thought out and developed in a way that helps the system fit together nicely.
I will be making regular posts about my progress with Magento and how I am using it at Juno Web Design to create cutting edge websites.
Magento eCommerce
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Benefits of Using a Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system can be used to:
- Simplify the addition and management of content on your site (so that this will all be possible without technical knowledge).
- Allow many people to edit and contribute to your site and allow control over which contributors have particular permissions.
- Set a template or theme for the site so that new content can be easily set to display with a consistent style.
- Incorporate security features, SEO features and other functionality and keep up to date with upgrades.
- Provide options to backup and export site content.
Around 5% of sites currently online use some form of web CMS technology – this means that roughly 95% of current websites can only be edited with specialist technical knowledge. This is unfortunate for the vast majority of people who are unlikely to have the familiarity with HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript or other languages that would be needed to fully control the content and appearance of their site without a CMS.
Fortunately the web CMS options continue to improve and be used more widely, allowing more people to take control of their site. Our preferred content management system at Juno tends to be WordPress. We find WordPress to be excellent in providing all the advantages listed above. We have been very pleased to see non-technical users managing text and images on their site and, in some cases, adding entirely new features to their site using WordPress plugins.
We’d be interested to hear about your experiences of using content management systems so please do add a comment if you have anything you feel compelled to share.
The next post in this series will feature more information about how WordPress compares with other popular web content management systems.
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Cloud Computing, Part III
As discussed in my previous articles, cloud computing is a system in which software programs and storage space can be accessed via the Internet. It can be used for hosting, thus eliminating the need for personal hosting services which can bog down. If you put your web design on a cloud server, you have instant access to computing power. As your needs grow, you can ramp up; as it ebbs, you release the servers back to the cloud.
There are several advantages to cloud computing:
• Scalability – easy to grow or shrink with demand
• Instantly available
• Save money – pay only for what you use
• No hardware to deal withHow it works:
Cloud computing involves surrendering control, which some people find liberating while it makes others very nervous. For instance, users of a site like Salesforce.com don’t know or care how the site is executed, how it deals with failures, where it is located, or any of the other little details one has to deal with when running business operations. So what DO they want? They want their service to work when they need it.
The potential uses of cloud computing are infinite. If you utilize the correct middleware, you can hand off all of your programming needs to a cloud computing system. Literally, everything from basic word processing software to customized computer programs designed for a specific company can work on a cloud computing system.
Cloud computing is a metered service similar to a public utility like cable, cell phone networks, electricity, water, and natural gas. It allows a computing system to attain and release computing resources on demand. Cloud computing also allows the deployment of software applications into an environment running the necessary technology stack for development, staging, or production of a software application. It manages this while minimizing the necessary interaction with the underlying layers of the technology stack.
There are three distinct sub-areas of cloud computing. They are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, which are discussed here.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):
With IaaS clouds, it becomes simple and affordable to distribute resources such as servers, connections, storage, and any other tools necessary to build an application environment from scratch. In other words, rather than purchasing servers, software, data center space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. IaaS clouds are the core infrastructure of PaaS and SaaS clouds.
Platform as a Service (PaaS):
PaaS clouds are designed to deliver a cost-effective cloud-based workspace environment (hardware architecture or software framework). They allow a company to deploy applications without the costs and complexities of buying and managing the essential hardware and software.
Software as a Service (SaaS):
Software as a Service has been around for a while and even precedes the term “Cloud Computing”. It is basically a cost effective way for businesses to acquire rights to use software as needed without having to buy licenses for all users and applications. With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.
Recently Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware announced that they are teaming up to sell hardware and software for cloud computing. The three companies are creating something they call the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition “to accelerate customers’ ability to increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility, and lower IT, energy and real-estate costs through pervasive data center virtualization and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.” With advocates like these, it looks like cloud computing is here to stay.
Juno Web Design
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Cloud Computing – Concerns and Issues
As I discussed in my last article on cloud computing, it is being called the Next Big Thing in web design, and it is steadily gaining ground in the business world. There is a lot of enthusiasm for this new frontier, but naturally there are many concerns among the “experts”.
The main concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. The thought of handing your important data over to something called a “cloud” can be daunting. Nervous corporate executives might hesitate to take advantage of a cloud computing system because they feel like they’re surrendering control of their company’s information. Data inside the ‘cloud’ is outside a company’s firewall and that brings with it an intrinsic threat of risk, because services that companies outsource evade the physical, logical and personnel controls that I.T. shops wield over data maintained in-house. Other fears include:
• Risk of data breaching
• Appeal to cyber crooks
• Lack of specific standards for security and data privacy
• Questions about jurisdiction. European concern about U.S. privacy laws led to creation of the U.S. Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, which are intended to provide European companies with a degree of insulation from U.S. laws
• Data location. Cloud users probably do not know exactly where their data is hosted—not even the specific country• Best practice issues:
o Exception monitoring systems
o Vigilance, or lack thereof, over updates and ensuring that staff does not receive unauthorized access privileges
o Third-party companies who may be able to access data
o Password creation and protection
o Availability guarantees and penalties
o Accommodation of personal security policies by the cloud computing companyOther issues with cloud computing are more philosophical. Who owns the data: the company who places their data with the cloud computing service or the cloud computing service itself? Can a cloud computing company ever legally deny a client access to their own data? Companies, law firms, and universities are currently debating these issues and others.
There is also growing concern about how cloud computing could impact the business of computer maintenance and repair. If companies make the leap to centralized computer systems, they will have less need for internal I.T. support. By removing infrastructure ownership from I.T., suddenly I.T. no longer has control over key business resources, which makes it feasible for someone concerned with a cost/benefit approach, like a CFO, to start limiting I.T.’s control. It is doubtful that this will have much of an impact on the cloud computing industry; the same concerns were no doubt raised when inventions like the cotton gin, assembly lines, and, well, computers first appeared.
Juno Web Design
