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Ycademy Online Seminar May 2012

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:33:05 +0000

Building Apps for mobile devices becomes crucial for online success as an increasing number of web users shift to mobile devices and as the usage stats of mobile users has already passed web usage by desktop and lap-top users in many countries.

Learn how to Build a Mobile App for iOS, Android and Windows

The Ycademy May Seminar will focus on App Building namely on:

Types of Apps
App Building Standards
App Building Publishing Requirements
App Building Workshops

Two days are a short time to become familiar with programming language and developer kits. For this reason we will be using what we believe are the two most powerful App building software packs available for Windows to build and test our Apps.

Participants can test also some of the apps directly on their mobile device.

The seminar will take place on May 26 –27, 2012 from 1 p.m. till 9 p.m. London Time on each day.

Seminar tickets are available with the usual discounts; get your discount code from bianca(at)ycademy.com.

More details during our calls and mails from Bianca.

Click to Get your Ticket

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 3

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:14:26 +0000

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

In this tutorial we will create Custom Post Types and add variables and functionality to them. Also we will add some styling for more user-friendly display in the dashboard.

Having set up our basic Child Theme structure we will now proceed with the customization. But before that we will do some basic WP configuration and go through the settings. You may be used to building WordPress based sites and therefore you may have some habits in as much as settings and configuration are concerned.

Semiomantics XO Custom Magazine for WordPress

Some basic WP Settings

Here is what I do in the dashboard:

1. Trash and permanently delete the Hello World Post.

2. Delete the default Links.

3. Set Permalinks to: /%category%/%postname%/

4. Under Settings General enter Blog Name and Tagline; for the purpose of this exercise I use as a Title: WordPress TTP and as a Tagline: Tips, Themes and Plugins

5. Add some content to test content display by importing an RSS feed using a plugin such as Feedwordpress. I pulled into a new category called Blog the feed from my author-blog at:

http://yorgonestoridis.com/feed

Custom Posts and Child Theme

We have set up a basic child theme for the purpose of modifying and customizing the Parent Theme. Creating structural modifications such as creating Custom Posts and Taxonomies are not strictly speaking theme relevant but should apply to all themes or as the case may be, to multiple themes in a Multi-user installation.

For this reason we will lodge the file which defines the custom posts outside any specific theme folder but inside wp-contents/themes.

We create a file called posttypes.php in wp-contents/themes. This file serves to define our custom post types and the way they integrate into the WP architecture.

In order to include the new Post Types in our Child theme, we include the posttype.php using an include function. This we doby adding a new file to our child theme; this file we call functions.php.

Child Theme functions.php

As you know, every WP theme contains a functions.php file; when creating a child theme which needs to expand the functions existing in the parent theme, then we just add a file with the same name, ‘functions.php’ to the child theme and append the functions defined in the parent theme.

Note: functions.php of the child theme does not override existing functions in the parent theme as is the case with styles (‘style.css)!

PHP allows us easily to include files in a script with the ‘include’ function and then by adding the URL to the file you wish to include.

Our ‘functions.php’ file will look as follows:

Please note that we use the ABSPATH function to construct the URL as the normal url path

 url(".../themes/posttypes.php")

does not work here.

Save functions.php into your Child Theme Folder.

Define Post Types in posttypes.php

In order to set up our post types we proceed step by step:

Set up Custom Post Types
Add advanced Variables to Post Types
Add advanced custom post type functionality
Change the Menu Position (Dashboard) of the Custom Post Types
Add custom post type icon

1. Custom Post Types

Custom Post Types allow to separate different content from the traditional blog content. Blog content usually is edited as Posts and Pages, whereas Pages (static content) can be organized in a hierarchical way and posts are sorted by categories and tags. In order to display static content (pages) using customized layout, we can create different page templates easily.

Custom Post Types allow to sort content by Posts and Custom Post Types whereas custom post types are similar to posts but using custom taxonomies and as the case may be custom layouts or design adapted to the content. A typical example is a single product page from a shop compared to a single post page on the blog section of the website.

For the purpose of our exercise we will create 3 Custom Post Types

WordPress Tips
WordPress Themes
WordPress Plugins

Setting up post types is relatively easy; while we could use plugins to create custom post types, I think hard-coding is a more solid and professional way of creating them. To create a new Custom Post Type we just need to add a few lines of code to the functions file or in our case to the abstraction file at posttypes.php which will then be included int the functions.php as per above where we have added the include function into functions.php.

We will create now the 3 Custom Post Types whereas the code used for each of them is the same except for the post type names and the function names.

To create the first post type, edit posttypes.php and paste in:


 _x('WP Tips'),
'singular_label' => _x('WP Tip'),
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

Save the file.

At the top we type a comment explaining what the following code is all about (Add new Post Type for WP Tips). Then we call the function in to WordPress with ‘add_action’ and at the bottom we register the post type. As you can see the function consists of a number of arguments which we will look into later ($args).

Check out your Dashboard now and you will see that the new post type is added to the menu just above ‘Appearance’.

To add new post types, you just need to copy and paste the above code and make simple changes to the name and labels of the post type.

2. Add advanced Variables

The above post types work, however they are not well refined. For this reason we will add some more variables. As the new posts are still called “Post” in the editor for example we will need to relabel to display the real name of the post type. For this we will write a label variable which can take an array of labels and we thus relabel all instances of our Custom Post Type.

The variable we create with the array of labels looks as follows:


$wordpress_tips_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

We will insert this piece of code just before our block of arguments and then change the arguments accordingly as follows:


 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(

/*      'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*      'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

As you can see from the two commented lines, we have changed ‘label’ to ‘labels and defined with the variable from above ‘$wordpress_tips_labels’ and we have deleted the ‘singular label’ as it is replaced wby ‘singular name’ from the label variable.

For the other new post types it’s the same game, just copy and paste and change the labels accordingly.

Save posttypes.php and check it out in your dashboard.

You will now see all labels added and your site becomes a lot more user-friendly and less confusing.

3. Add advanced functionality

We can define the functionalities of our new post types with an array under the variable ‘supports’; basically the ‘supports’ line defines which functionalities should be supported, i.e. which content should be displayed.

In our example, the line above looks like this:


'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')

When you go to your dashboard, and add a new WP Tip you will see the editor shows the ‘title’, ‘content’ and ‘comments’ fields.

While we can go crazy on adding supported functionality, we will here just look at some standard functionalities. To add more functionality we just need to append the array in the supports variable like so:


'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'

By adding the above functionalities to the supports variable, we get something pretty close to the standard post editor, since we add the author, excerpts and custom fields as well as the featured picture functionality.

Also we can add a new variable, such as ‘has archive’ and then name the archive, in our example ‘WordPress Tips’.

This archive variable allows us to create an index page just for the WP Tips post types.

Our Code for the WP Tips Custom Post Type is as follows:


 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(

/*      'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*      'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

Copy and paste with the necessary changes for the other custom post types and save the file.

Check it out from the Dashboard Menu and the Editor.

4. Change the menu position

As per now, our custom posts menu in the dashboard is positioned just above appearance and below comments. As custom posts are similar to posts, we want to move the custom post tabs just below the Posts tab.

As you can see from our code above, the menu position is set to ‘null’. The value ‘null’ makes that the custom post types are added at the bottom of the first section of the dashboard menu.

Depending of where you want to position your custom posts, you will need to change the value ‘null’ to another value according to the below reference scale:

0 — at the very top
5 — below Posts
10 — below Media
15 — below Links
20 — below Pages
25 — below comments
60 — below first separator
65 — below Plugins
70 — below Users
75 — below Tools
80 — below Settings
100 — below second separator

As we aim the spot below “Posts” we will use the value ‘5’, which will result in


...

'menu_position' => 5,

...

If you want to set a particular order, you can also use 3 different numbers, like 4,5 and 6 respectively.

Do the modification inside the arguments of each post type and save.

By repositioning the custom post type menu items , we signal priority and importance.

Check it out from the dashboard and note that our custom posts are right below ‘Posts’ now.

5. Add Custom Post Type Icons

In order to make our custom post types stick out from the menu and to add user-friendly visual identifiers, we replace the default icons with custom icons.

There are two sizes needed, 16px and 32 px for the menu and the page title area respectively.

I have created sample icons and psd files for your convenience: please download from HERE.

Decompress the downloaded rar file and copy the image folder into wp-contents/themes (as we had done with posttypes.php, as we want to make these images available to all themes.

To add these icons we introduce a new function to posttypes.php with a function batch including some css/html code for styling purposes:


// Add new Custom Post Type icons
add_action( 'admin_head', 'wordpress_icons' );
function wordpress_icons() {
?>


Note the incomplete php delimiter at the end which is needed to switch back to php from css/html code.
Resulting posttypes.php code:
At this stage, your posttypes.php looks as follows:

 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(
/*        'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*        'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

// Add new post type for WP Themes
add_action('init', 'wordpress_themes_init');
function wordpress_themes_init()
{

$wordpress_themes_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Themes', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Theme', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Themes'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Theme', 'wordpress_themes'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Theme'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Theme'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Theme'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Theme'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Themes'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Theme found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Theme found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

$args = array(
'labels' => $wordpress_themes_labels,
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_themes'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_themes',$args);
}

// Add new post type for WP Plugins
add_action('init', 'wordpress_plugins_init');
function wordpress_plugins_init()
{

$wordpress_plugins_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Plugins', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Plugin', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Plugins'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Plugin', 'wordpress_plugins'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Plugin'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Plugin'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Plugin'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Plugin'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Plugins'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Plugin found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Plugin found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

$args = array(
'labels' => $wordpress_plugins_labels,
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_plugins'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_plugins',$args);
}

// Add new Custom Post Type icons
add_action( 'admin_head', 'wordpress_icons' );
function wordpress_icons() {
?>



Check it out from your dashboard and you should see something similar to this:
Custom Post Types with Custom Icons
 
Related posts:

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 2
How to build a custom WordPress Site
Custom Widgets for WordPress
WordPress 3.4 Beta
Facebook Strategy with WordPress

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 3

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:14:26 +0000

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

In this tutorial we will create Custom Post Types and add variables and functionality to them. Also we will add some styling for more user-friendly display in the dashboard.

Semiomantics XO Custom Magazine for WordPress

Some basic WP Settings

Here is what I do in the dashboard:

1. Trash and permanently delete the Hello World Post.

2. Delete the default Links.

3. Set Permalinks to: /%category%/%postname%/

4. Under Settings General enter Blog Name and Tagline; for the purpose of this exercise I use as a Title: WordPress TTP and as a Tagline: Tips, Themes and Plugins

5. Add some content to test content display by importing an RSS feed using a plugin such as Feedwordpress. I pulled into a new category called Blog the feed from my author-blog at:

http://yorgonestoridis.com/feed

Custom Posts and Child Theme

For this reason we will lodge the file which defines the custom posts outside any specific theme folder but inside wp-contents/themes.

We create a file called posttypes.php in wp-contents/themes. This file serves to define our custom post types and the way they integrate into the WP architecture.

In order to include the new Post Types in our Child theme, we include the posttype.php using an include function. This we doby adding a new file to our child theme; this file we call functions.php.

Child Theme functions.php

Note: functions.php of the child theme does not override existing functions in the parent theme as is the case with styles (‘style.css)!

PHP allows us easily to include files in a script with the ‘include’ function and then by adding the URL to the file you wish to include.

Our ‘functions.php’ file will look as follows:

Please note that we use the ABSPATH function to construct the URL as the normal url path

 url(".../themes/posttypes.php")

does not work here.

Save functions.php into your Child Theme Folder.

Define Post Types in posttypes.php

In order to set up our post types we proceed step by step:

Set up Custom Post Types
Add advanced Variables to Post Types
Add advanced custom post type functionality
Change the Menu Position (Dashboard) of the Custom Post Types
Add custom post type icon

1. Custom Post Types

For the purpose of our exercise we will create 3 Custom Post Types

WordPress Tips
WordPress Themes
WordPress Plugins

We will create now the 3 Custom Post Types whereas the code used for each of them is the same except for the post type names and the function names.

To create the first post type, edit posttypes.php and paste in:


 _x('WP Tips'),
'singular_label' => _x('WP Tip'),
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

Save the file.

Check out your Dashboard now and you will see that the new post type is added to the menu just above ‘Appearance’.

To add new post types, you just need to copy and paste the above code and make simple changes to the name and labels of the post type.

2. Add advanced Variables

The variable we create with the array of labels looks as follows:


$wordpress_tips_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

We will insert this piece of code just before our block of arguments and then change the arguments accordingly as follows:


 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(

/*      'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*      'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

For the other new post types it’s the same game, just copy and paste and change the labels accordingly.

Save posttypes.php and check it out in your dashboard.

You will now see all labels added and your site becomes a lot more user-friendly and less confusing.

3. Add advanced functionality

In our example, the line above looks like this:


'supports' => array('title','editor','comments')

When you go to your dashboard, and add a new WP Tip you will see the editor shows the ‘title’, ‘content’ and ‘comments’ fields.


'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'

Also we can add a new variable, such as ‘has archive’ and then name the archive, in our example ‘WordPress Tips’.

This archive variable allows us to create an index page just for the WP Tips post types.

Our Code for the WP Tips Custom Post Type is as follows:


 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(

/*      'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*      'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

Copy and paste with the necessary changes for the other custom post types and save the file.

Check it out from the Dashboard Menu and the Editor.

4. Change the menu position

As you can see from our code above, the menu position is set to ‘null’. The value ‘null’ makes that the custom post types are added at the bottom of the first section of the dashboard menu.

Depending of where you want to position your custom posts, you will need to change the value ‘null’ to another value according to the below reference scale:

As we aim the spot below “Posts” we will use the value ‘5’, which will result in


...

'menu_position' => 5,

...

If you want to set a particular order, you can also use 3 different numbers, like 4,5 and 6 respectively.

Do the modification inside the arguments of each post type and save.

By repositioning the custom post type menu items , we signal priority and importance.

Check it out from the dashboard and note that our custom posts are right below ‘Posts’ now.

5. Add Custom Post Type Icons

In order to make our custom post types stick out from the menu and to add user-friendly visual identifiers, we replace the default icons with custom icons.

There are two sizes needed, 16px and 32 px for the menu and the page title area respectively.

I have created sample icons and psd files for your convenience: please download from HERE.

Decompress the downloaded rar file and copy the image folder into wp-contents/themes (as we had done with posttypes.php, as we want to make these images available to all themes.

To add these icons we introduce a new function to posttypes.php with a function batch including some css/html code for styling purposes:


// Add new Custom Post Type icons
add_action( 'admin_head', 'wordpress_icons' );
function wordpress_icons() {
?>


Note the incomplete php delimiter at the end which is needed to switch back to php from css/html code.
Resulting posttypes.php code:
At this stage, your posttypes.php looks as follows:

 _x('WP Tips', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Tip', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Tips'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Tip', 'wordpress_tips'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Tip'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Tip'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Tip'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Tip'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Tips'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Tips found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Tips found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);
$args = array(
/*        'label' => _x('WP Tips'), */
'labels' => $wordpress_tips_labels,
/*        'singular_label' => _x('WP Tips'),   */
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_tips'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_tips',$args);
}

// Add new post type for WP Themes
add_action('init', 'wordpress_themes_init');
function wordpress_themes_init()
{

$wordpress_themes_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Themes', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Theme', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Themes'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Theme', 'wordpress_themes'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Theme'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Theme'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Theme'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Theme'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Themes'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Theme found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Theme found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

$args = array(
'labels' => $wordpress_themes_labels,
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_themes'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_themes',$args);
}

// Add new post type for WP Plugins
add_action('init', 'wordpress_plugins_init');
function wordpress_plugins_init()
{

$wordpress_plugins_labels = array(
'name' => _x('WP Plugins', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('WP Plugin', 'post type singular name'),
'all_items' => __('All WP Plugins'),
'add_new' => _x('Add new WP Plugin', 'wordpress_plugins'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add new WP Plugin'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit WP Plugin'),
'new_item' => __('New WP Plugin'),
'view_item' => __('View WP Plugin'),
'search_items' => __('Search in WP Plugins'),
'not_found' =>  __('No WP Plugin found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No WP Plugin found in trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

$args = array(
'labels' => $wordpress_plugins_labels,
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => 5,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields'),
'has_archive' => 'wordpress_plugins'
);
register_post_type('wordpress_plugins',$args);
}

// Add new Custom Post Type icons
add_action( 'admin_head', 'wordpress_icons' );
function wordpress_icons() {
?>



Check it out from your dashboard and you should see something similar to this:
Custom Post Types with Custom Icons
 
Related posts:

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 2
How to build a custom WordPress Site
Custom Widgets for WordPress
WordPress 3.4 Beta
Facebook Strategy with WordPress

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 2

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:25:22 +0000

Build a Custom WP with Semiomantics XO

This post focuses on setting up our Main Theme and a Child Theme. For the purpose of this exercise we will use Semiomantics XO as the parent theme because it’s flexible, user-friendly and highly optimized. In fact you can use most any decent WP theme to follow this tutorial, namely the TwentyEleven which comes with the WP installation.

Semiomantics XO for WordPress — Custom Magazine

Adding a Theme

Like on any live site, our test site on BitNami allows us to add themes either from the Dashboard (upload the theme’s zip file) or by pasting the theme into the themes folder in wp-contents.

Access your BitNami environment using Windows Explorer and surf to the themes folder. You will see the same folders and files structure under htdocs as you are used to when accessing your WordPress folder on a server using an FTP client.

Folders on BitNamy WP Stack

In order to add Themes, we just drop theme folders into the ‘themes’ folder as per above. As you can see, I have amongst others) added my Semiomantics XO (the ‘xo’ folder under themes). XO will serve as the parent theme of the new website. Instead however of customizing XO directly, I will create a child theme which will contain all modifications. The advantage is clear: when an update or upgrade of the theme becomes available, the parent theme can be updated without destroying the child and restarting the customization job from scratch.

Create a WP Child Theme for Semiomantics XO

A WordPress child theme consists first of all of a Folder to which we add a style-sheet.

This style-sheet contains a commented header which defines the parent theme folder as well as other optional data and it usually imports the parent theme’s style-sheet with a simple line of code (no need to copy paste the whole style-sheet). Also we will add a screenshot which will serve as a thumbnail in the Themes tab of our WP Dashboard.

Style-sheet for Child Theme

As you can see above, I am editing my files using the free PSPad which is handy to edit the various files we need to develop.

How to Create a Child Theme step by Step

1. Add a new folder to the WP Themes folder under wp-contents/themes; name it as you like your theme to be named, in my case: yorgo12

2. Create a new file called style.css using your editor and save it into the new theme folder.

3. Edit the style.css file by adding a commented section defining:

Theme Name (yorgo12 in the above case)
Theme URI (this is optional and can be your website where you may talk about your theme; in my case: semiomantics.com)
Description (Optional; I have added a simple description, but you may well describe your Child theme, for example: 3 column minimalist child theme for Semiomantics XO.
Author: (Optional; put your name.)
Template: This is important: put the FOLDER NAME of the parent theme, in my case xo.
Version: (Optional: I start with version 1.0)

You could add other data as some authors do, such as Author’s URI and more, but that’s not necessary.

NOTE: All the above information sits between comment tags (/*.….….*/)

Next, we import the style-sheet of the parent theme with the following line of code:


@import url("../xo/style.css");

I have then added a comment to remind that you should not edit above unless you know what you do.

Your style.css file reads now similar to the following:


/*
Theme Name:       yorgo12
Theme URI:        http://semiomantics.com
Description:      Child Theme for Semiomantics XO 12
Author:           Yorgo Nestoridis
Template:         xo
Version:          1.0
*/
@import url("../xo/style.css");
/* Edit here below*/

Save the file into the new Child Theme folder.

4. Add a Thumbnail

Usually the image represents a screenshot of the new site but it can also be a brand logo or any other image. Important: the image should be called ‘screenshot’ and be in png format to fit into WP. Use image size 300px x 225px for best display.

screenshot.png

Drop the image into the Child Theme folder.

Let’s now activate our new Child Theme from the WP Dashboard under Appearance/Themes.

What you will see is an out of the box XO when looking at the front-end of the site.

Having set the base for our custom development, we will start now to adapt the site to the needs of the hypothetical customer. Continue reading the next post.

How to build a custom WordPress Site

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:25:15 +0000

Custom WordPress Design and Developments

This post will start a series of articles about building custom Websites based on WordPress and the Semiomantics XO Theme.

We will therefore use most of our remaining daily Ycademy calls this month to go into advanced customization issues. But first we will start at the beginning by planning and formulating a project which will allow us to test code, functions and design.

Semiomantics XO Custom Theme for WordPress

The WordPress Custom Project

For the purpose of this exercise, we will build plan and execute a hypothetical customer’s project.

The new website will be about WordPress, namely about WordPress Tips, Themes and Plugins. It’s a site for a WordPress developer and web designer.

The Architecture of the site

The structure of the Website will be based on WordPress and include some static pages such as the About, Contact, Imprint and Privacy pages as well as structured dynamic content. As the site will focus on 3 main topics, Tips, Themes and Plugins, we will build for each of these topics custom Posts and Taxonomies.

The Developer’s environment

To build the new website in a test environment, we install BitNami and namely the WordPress stack (free download). BitNami creates an independent (Apache) server environment with MySQL server and installed WordPress, ready to use via our browser. If you are used to Firefox and Firebug, you will find it easy to customize your styles and designs.

Now we can access the WordPress Dashboard via the browser and the files using windows explorer.

We are ready to start working on our project. Please look forward to the next related post where we will start adding Semiomantics XO and start building our custom child theme.

SuperMoon 2012 Image

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:35:27 +0000

SuperMoon 2012 Image

The edited version of the SuperMoon 2012 from Vouliagmeni.

Incoming search terms:

How to shoot the Moon with a Point and Shoot Camera

Yorgo Nestoridis — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:48:27 +0000

Vouliagmeni Moon Photo with Point and Shoot Camera

Believe it or not, it is possible to shoot the Moon with an average point and shoot camera. In fact, for as long as you dispose of a reasonable optical zoom (300–400 mm equivalent) and the possibility to switch to manual settings, you should be able to catch some details of the surface of the moon. Of course there will be a lack of detail and sharpness, but at least you won’t end up with just a white spot on a black background.

As today the Moon is at it’s closest to the earth for this year, I did a test run last night and brought back the following shot:

Vouliagmeni Moon May 4, 2012

This is about as good as it could get

The above was shot with the following

F-stop: f/6.3

Exposure time: 1/250

ISO-speed ISO-400

Focal-length: 49 mm

35-mm focal length: 389

Exposure Program: Aperture Priority

The idea was to figure out different settings to catch at least some of the texture of the surface of the moon.

Vouliagmeni Full-moon May 5, 2012

Tonight I found a nice spot, just above Vouliagmeni’s Limanaki to catch the moon rising above the Varkiza Bay.

Click to view the bigger version for more detail.

This time I went for Shutter Priority and ISO 200 which resulted in an Exposure Time of 0,77 sec. Also I used an Exposure Bias of +0.7 step.

Of course this is not the kind of quality you could expect from a professional picture, but it shows what you can do with most any point and shoot.

Vouliagmeni Moon Variations

The temptation to pull such pictures through Photoshop is evident and I have not resisted just for the fun.

And a cooler version, filtering out some red which we usually see when the moon rises at the sea:

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How to Preview your Mobile WordPress for iPhone and iPad

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:57:59 +0000

iPhone Simulator or Emulator for WordPress?

Subsequent to last week’s Ycademy Seminar, I read on Bianca Gubalke’s blog a post about the difficulty to create a WordPress Mobile version without having recourse to a preview tool. As I agree with this statement, I will show you here below a simple method to preview your WordPress Mobile version for iPhone, iPod and iPad.

iPhone Simulator

The first question is: Do we need an iPhone Simulator at all? I have not seen a single free online iPhone Simulator which would render the mobile version of our WordPress sites. Online Simulators are therefore useless for our purpose.

Semiomantics Mobile Developments

iPhone Emulator

Free online Emulators I have come across do not generate a preview of the mobile WordPress version. There are some paid solutions which are however pretty cool and accurate, namely the MobiOne emulator included in the Studio version. There is a 14 day free trial, thereafter a $99 fee.

Surprisingly the emulator included with TheAppBuilder does not render the mobile version — this would be a real plus since it’s a free tool until you want to publish your app to a store.

There is a much easier to use solution out there which is accessible to anyone and available for Mac and Windows:

Preview your iPhone, iPod and iPad App in your Browser (Mac and Windows)

The quick solution to Bianca’s and still many other people’s problem has been solved by Apple itself. The Safari Browser is equipped with Developer Tools which allow to preview websites under multiple user agents amongst iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Here is how to get there:

1. Download Safari

2. Once Downloaded, go Edit -> Preferences-> Advanced

3. Tick “Show Develop menu in menu bar”

4. From the Develop Menu under User Agent select Safari iOS 4.3.3 — iPhone

5. Your Browser will switch to the Mobile view; reduce browser width to minimum to get the best idea of what it would look like on an iPhone.

To get an iPad preview, just switch the user agent to iPad.

Conclusion

There is no more excuse for not customizing your Mobile WordPress version, namely if you work with WPTouch Pro :-).

Incoming search terms:

safari developer bar

Give WordPress an App Look

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:25:19 +0000

App Look for WordPress

Screenshots — under development

Mobile Developments for Small and Home Business

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 02 May 2012 17:20:10 +0000

Mobile Developments for Small and Home Business

The rapid expansion of the Mobile Web and the success of smartphones and tablets open new opportunities and imperatives for Website Developments. In as much as Semiomantics is concerned, the focus is set on two main issues:

Conversion and integration of web content into an App
Publishing on Multiple Platforms
Optimization

Conversion and integration of web content into an App

Whether it is a simple blog or a shop, a photo site or a video library, a directory or any other content, your website can be converted and integrated into a mobile App. Production cost will vary in function of the complexity of the development. I mention cost at this point because for the time being, App developments are still relatively expensive, but that’s the price to pay for a seat in the front row.

The mobile web and mobile devices and platforms offer today many features designed to enhance conversation, feedback and interaction which are much more dynamic, flexible and user-friendly than those offered on traditional websites. Also, an App is much easier to use on a smartphone than surfing a website.

Bookmarking a website and then accessing (loading) it at a later time is one thing; accessing an app with the content already downloaded to the device is a completely different story. Surfing the web on a smart device is in many countries relatively slow and linked to excessive cost for bandwidth. The App is a onetime download and thereafter only updates will need to be downloaded, which saves time and bandwidth.

Communication between the user and the App owner or amongst the users can take place using all mobile features, from email, over SMS to Push Notifications which will display an alert immediately. Skype integration (or other communication plugins) is a plus.

Publishing on Multiple Platforms

The mobile web has been dominated by Blackberry first, today by Apple (iOS, iPhone, iPad), Android Operating System by Google and Microsoft with Windows Mobile. Producing for multiple platforms is costly but seems to become a necessity for as long as no uniform standards prevail.

Like publishing a website, App publishing has to do with visibility, traffic and sales. Mobile web users are active on Google, Facebook and in App Stores to find what they are looking for. This is a key issue: Apple’s App Store with over 500 000 Apps has become a real search heaven. If your name, brand or product is not available there, you are losing out on the potential of the mobile market.

App Store Optimization and Marketing

You can write the best App in this world, if it cannot be discovered by interested people, it’s worthless. As mobile web users surf the stores to find Apps corresponding to their needs, it is important to

Optimize the App you submit to a store and to monitor downloads and reviews
Market the App inside and outside the store.
Make sure search algorithms can detect and become aware of the existence of your app and as the case may be optimize for top ranking.

For the time being it is not clear how Search Engines will deal with Apps nor how App stores will make more App related info available to bots, however it can be expected that sooner or later Google will include App results as they have included Video and Images or Local Content into their search returns.

Incoming search terms:

alert update app

Customizing CSS in WP Mobile Theme

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:36:47 +0000

Common Changes

Common Changes

This post lists some CSS snippets to customize WPTouch Pro.

Remove the Page Title Area

Note: When removing the page title area we recommend using a child theme’s stylesheet and applying the code below to its corresponding stylesheet, per the instructions on applying custom CSS.

In the iPhone theme:

.page-title-area { display:none !important; }

In the iPad theme:

.page .title-area {display: none;}

Remove reflection on calendar icons and post-thumbnails

.idevice .post .thumbnail-wrap { -webkit-box-reflect: none; }
.idevice .calendar-box { -webkit-box-reflect: none; }

Change the size of the Post Thumbnails

Change every instance of 46px to your desired size

.post .thumbnail-wrap { height: 46px; width: 46px; } .post img.attachment-post-thumbnail { width: 46px; height: 46px; }

Remove rounded corners on Post Thumbnails

.post img.attachment-post-thumbnail { -webkit-mask-box-image: none; }

Remove “Comments are closed” text when comments are disabled in WordPress

p.nocomments, #respond { display:none !important; }

Remove comments completely

#respond, ol.commentlist, a.com-toggle { display: none !important; }

Remove comment # bubble

.comment-bubble { display:none !important; }

Remove ‘breadcumb’ text in category and search pages

.archive-text { display: none !important; }

Use custom color for the mobile header

#header { background-color: #ffffff !important; }

where #ffffff can be customized to suit.

Remove “HelloBar”

#hellobar-container, #hellobar-wrapper, #hellobar-pusher {display: none;}

Eval base64 Hack Solutions

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:06:43 +0000

eval base64 on WordPress or other Sites

WordPress and other CMS powered sites are often targets for hackers who mass-inject some code into php and or html files.

What to look for

The cases I came across so far showed a hack just before the closing body tag in form of a short script pointing to an external source. Also, in some cases I found some php file in the uploads folder (in WP the uploads folder should not contain any php files).

Once the script executed, a long string starting something like this:

is placed on php and/or htm/html files. This eval base64 encoded and injected PHP code will hit all php archives.

How to get rid of the hack without destroying your site

To start with: change your passwords (FTP and Admin). Make sure your site script WP and Plugins are updated.

Check your footer.php (theme folder) and delete eventually the script added by the hack (or just load your backed up footer.php and replace the file).

Check your uploads folder for php files and delete them. Check your plugins folder for unusual php files and as the case may be delete them.

If you are not familiar with Ruby, PuTTY and Shell access, then there is a relatively simple solution available by running a php script from your root. The script will back-up the hacked files, replace the hack with another string and save the repaired file.

A second script can be used to delete the backed-up hacks once we are sure that all works fine.

These scripts have been developed by Sergi Rodrigues Rius and published on his spanish website. They work on the most common php CMS.

Download from HERE.

Upload the search_and_replace.php into the root folder of your site and run it by opening the page in your browser.

Once you are sure all is working fine, run the second script (this can be done after a few days or weeks).

Local Website Design

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:07:48 +0000

How to build a Local Website

How to build a Local Website

Go Local is the name of the game in 2011/12 and the success of bringing the global web developments back home is a trend of the time. First it was about tagging people, now we tag locations, be it on social networks such as Facebook or on Photo sites, such as Picasa or Flickr.

Based on the fact that surfers search for and prefer local business to cross border transactions, social networks namely have built in the local tags and stimulate users to hook media and events to geographically tagged locations.

How to dominate the local market?

In order to dominate the local market, you need to assess the use of the internet your neighbors make; chances are that they mostly hang out on social media, search Google and use email. This is of course an extremely simplified view but it gives an indication about where we need to build high visibility.

You also want to have an idea about how people access the net and websites; you will notice an increased use of mobile deices, which means that your content needs to be formatted and optimized for desktops as well as for tablets and mobile phones.

Finally you may notice that surfers prefer visual content to text, which impacts on editing and publishing for multiple platforms.

How to Dominate Google Top 10

In order to build high visibility on search returns, you need

a local website.
make use of all possible Google Listings pertaining to the geographic location.
great content and consistent publishing to provide useful information and trigger conversation.

How to Dominate Social Networks

To dominate social networks (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn) we need

optimized profiles.
Facebook Pages.
a consistent flow of information to trigger attention and conversation.
an optimized set-up to assure traffic back to our websites (let the social networks work for us instead of the opposite).

How to dominate the Mobile Web

To dominate the mobile web we need

mobile versions of our websites (tablets and smartphones).
mobile search optimization.
ideally an App.
easy to use interactive functions.

How to manage a Local Presence online

The answer is similar to managing a business online. There are three main elements I like to focus on:

an optimized workflow to assure maximum productivity.
high quality content and content providers.
an integrated publishing network to hit all the important targets with per platform optimized content.

How to monetize a Local Website

Ads from Local Business.
Ads from external Business wanting to do business locally.
Eventually by integrating a local directory.
Eventually by integrating a real estate classifieds feature.
Eventually by integrating a service and products exchange.
… and more.

How to get readers to the Local Website

Just a few ideas:

Talk about people.
Talk about events.
Talk about stories concerning the community.
Talk about Local Sports, Clubs, Associations.
Publish Pictures (people like to see their face and place).
Talk about local business.
Integrate a news wire from the major’s office.
Have a local Gossip column.
Let visitors contribute and discuss content.
Don’t forget rating.
Create competitions, contests, top 3 lists.
Exchange advertising space with local media to promote your site quickly an consistently.
Bring the conversation from social networks back to your site.
… and so much more!

I hope this post helps your brainstorming when creating your local project. I will publish shortly a detailed project for my demo community, Vouliagmeni.

Ycademy Online Seminar Apri 2012

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:13:06 +0000

Mobile WordPress and Social Media

The fast evolution of the mobile web has created new needs for publishers, whereas the objective remains to integrate mobile web targets into an existing workflow and to optimize productivity with the help of automated conversion scripts and tools.

What’s New on Mobile WordPress and Social Media

At Semiomantics the starting point for our development is the most comprehensive conversion plugin, called WPTouch Pro. WPTouch has released its latest version end of March 2012 with some adjustments for iOS 5.1 and many other fixes and developments:

* Added: Custom advertising options for iPad

* Added: Simple caching of desktop functions.php

* Added: Russian language file

* Added: Automatic archiving of previous settings in wptouch-data directory

* Added: Compatibility setting for BuddyPress Mobile AJAX support

* Fixed: Changing user-agent matching that may have interfered with advertising in certain scenarios

* Changed: Replaced include with locate_template in theme files, should allow child overrides of custom WPtouch Pro template files

* Changed: Algorithm to reload settings; may have caused settings to be lost in a certain scenario

* Updated: All translations based on 2.6 strings

* Fixed: An issue with Register and Lost password links in Classic

* Fixed: Video issues with jwPlayer and other video sources and plugins

* Fixed: An issue which could cause the Share button not to show in Classic mobile theme

* Fixed: Improved appearance for Embedded Google maps

* Fixed: Issues with Tweet text encoding in sharing options for Classic

* Fixed: Search form issues with Skeleton theme

* Fixed: Admin issues for non-English languages

* Fixed: Issue where style.min.css was never loaded in child themes of Classic

* Fixed: Broken admin icons when SSL was enabled in the admin

* Added: Hungarian language

* Changed: Adjustments for memory management in Classic iPad theme

* Fixed: An issue with MapPress embeds

* Fixed: An issue with JetPack videos

* Fixed: An issue with Smart Youtube plugin videos

* Fixed: Issue with blank spaces in custom user agent string

Why to use advanced Mobile Web Developments

The above recent change-logs indicate the extent of considerations necessary for a serious development of an integrated mobile WP based solution. The reason for such complexity lies amongst others in the following:

Increasing WordPress complexity and advanced plugin developments.
The multitude of mobile operating systems, browsers and devices of different sizes, display resolutions and aspect ratios.
The improved algorithms of Mobile Search.
The complexity of Semiomantics’ unbeaten optimization for conventional and mobile search.
The popularity of mobile and smart devices and the automated Mobile Search privileging mobile site versions.
The popularity of Social Networks and their ever changing integration parameters.

The Goal of Semiomantics Developments

At Semiomantics we aim to make complex matters simple for day to day use. As an author or business, you don’t want to spend your time with technical issues or sitting logged into social networks to keep up with the continuous stream of information and exchanges. You want to do your business and be assured that your message gets spread broadly and that visitors requests are piped to proper destination without your intervention.

Semiomantics Developers are trained to build high end customer specific solutions assuring optimized productivity and workflow.

The Goal and Agenda of the Ycademy April Seminar

Based on the above, the Seminar will provide all necessary updates and upgrades for existing and new installations of high end websites, namely those built on Semiomantics XO and EVO frameworks.

During numerous Workshops we will knock participants personal sites into shape to comply with the highest standards.

1. Mobile Web

We will go step by step through the set-up and development of the customized version of each participants author site. This includes the following workshops:

Build a Mobile Child Theme for your Website.
Build OS specific Icons.
Build a Start up screen (image).
Build Mobile specific WP 3.0 menus.
Custom Links and Icons.
Integrate Advertizing: Adsense, Admob, Custom Ads.
Custom Post formats for the Mobile theme.
Test Plugin compatibility and create your mobile plugin menu.
Embed media for Mobile content, YouTube, Vimeo or self-hosted standard h.264 encoded media.
Specifics for tablet computing, namely for the iPad and other touch tablets.

2. Mobile Social Networks

We will focus on Facebook in particular. Mobile Facebook is quite restrictive; it is therefore important to learn about what is visible on mobile FB and what cannot be accessed, respectively, how we may work around some of these restrictions.

In fact: Mobile Facebook is quite disappointing, be it whether you access it via the App or the browser. Custom content on app driven canvas pages and page favorites don’t display! Even promoting their link on the wall will not trigger any display. There are some workarounds by using different browsers where you can modify browser settings and simulate a desktop browser, but that’s not a solution for the masses.

Facebook is not here to promote YOUR site but just to grab your content for it’s own purpose.

We will show you how to work around the problem and take advantage of the FB App and Mobile Site to get most out of it. The goal is to achieve that Facebook works for you and not you for Facebook.

We will also come back to the desktop version of Facebook, showing how to build the most neutral and minimalist Facebook page for full and perfect control of all your content.

Schedule

The Ycademy Online Seminar will take place on April 28/29, 2012 starting daily as usual at 1 p.m. London Time and closing at 9 p.m. London time.

Materials

All materials and scripts are provided and included.

Tickets and Discounts

The cost for this seminar is $85; discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros (please mail Bianca at bianca(at)ycademy.com for the coupon code.

Click on the below image to get your ticket.

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Flowers from Vouliagmeni Beach

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:03:31 +0000

Vouliagmeni Spring Flowers

After a rather cold winter, it’s now getting warmer and sprouting all over the place in Vouliagmeni. Time for a stroll at the beach; the bright colors of the spring flowers attract men and bees.

Here just a few images of what the beach is populated with these days:

Click to view

Hope you enjoy :-).

Incoming search terms:

WordPress 3.4 Beta

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:36:35 +0000

WordPress 3.4 Beta Custom Headers and Backgrounds

The release of WordPress 3.4 Beta raises a number of problemsquestions for theme designers in as much as Custom Headers and Custom Backgrounds are concerned.

The implementation methods via add_custom_background() and add_custom_image_header() will be depreciated and replaced by a more powerful method via add_theme_support().

The impact for Semiomantics XO and EVO

Due to the depreciation of the old calls, we will need to update the themes and make the modifications needed to take advantage of the new features provided by WordPress 3.4. The new theme versions will work with WP 3.4 minimum and must not be used with previous WP versions.

Custom developments and child themes may need a special treatment, depending on the degree of customization. I will arrange for some developers calls or set up some tutorials in due course. For the time being I am testing WP 3.4 Beta to check backwards compatibility using our themes.

I will keep you posted on results and updates.

Incoming search terms:

New Photoshop CS6 Beta

Yorgo Nestoridis — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 17:34:40 +0000

Photoshop CS6

Today let’s have a look at Photoshop CS6 Beta which is available for free download from Adobe. The version is called ‘Superstition’ and it is the first significant update to Photoshop since CS5 ( in the Suite CS5.5 Adobe delivered the same Photoshop as in CS5).

Who is Photoshop CS6 for?

Having thoroughly tested the new Photoshop CS6 Beta, it seems to me that this version is addressing namely people who are working with digital photos and videos; also the 3D features have been significantly improved.

In other words, if you are not using Photoshop to edit your images, needing content aware patching and selective blurring, there is no real need to upgrade your CS5.

If however you are a photo freak and if you are shooting short videos, then Photoshop CS6 is a smashing program, allowing you to go beyond what photography can do (such as multiple shallow depth of field areas on a single image).

Click to view

What is new on Photoshop CS6?

This is what’s new on Photoshop CS6:

UI redesign (all new icons and optional dark UI) OK, they copied (sorry, got inspired by (big companies don’t copy, huh)) Apple’s Aperture; you can switch back to the old colors in the Beta version.

Auto and background saves. (… no comment).

Content-aware Patch and Move tools (Smashing stuff for Photo freaks!).

Blur Gallery (smashing as well as you go beyond photography!).

Color Range: skin tone and face detection (OK but not smashing).

Adobe Camera RAW 7 (this really brings out the detail of RAW formats).

Enhanced crop tool (at last they understood what we want)!

New properties panel (so what?).

Enhanced video support (good stuff, namely if you don’t have a real video editor).

Oil Paint filter (I don’t like this McDonald’s stuff).

Adaptive Wide Angle filter (Brilliant stuff)!

Paragraph and Character Styles (Great stuff — but only if you need to edit text with Photoshop).

Updated Printing UI (no substantial change — just for the look …).

Photoshop CS6 must see videos

There are two videos I recommend to get an impression of the good stuff contained in Photoshop CS6:

Russel Brown’s 6 favorites

Julieanne Kost’s Favorites

Photoshop CS6 and Windows 8

I have installed Photoshop CS6 on my Windows 8 installation and it works great! I am just still frustrated by the 64 bit version which is still slower than the 32 bit edition. Also my OnOne tools don’t fit into and work on the 64bit version.

Having said that, the new CS6 Photoshop (32 bit) is much faster than the previous version.

Click to view

Here above an exaggerated tilt-shift blur on a picture taken this week at a basketball game (Panathinaikos vs Macabi which we won :-)); the feature helps to blur faces from excited fans allowing the publication of the image.

Click to view

Photoshop CS6 verdict

Yes, I like Photoshop CS6 simply because I love photography. Any tool helping to make the best use of a RAW or a JPEG file is welcome for as long as it helps to improve my photographic shortcomings. But CS6 goes further: it allows to apply filters to create effects which cannot be achieved just with photography without destroying pure photography. I am namely thinking of the blur filters.

Photoshop CS6 is better than most cameras out there and that’s another big advantage namely for people who don’t invest in high quality cams or who use just mobile phones to shoot pics and videos. The big question remains: is it worth while to invest into the upgrade? Put it that way: if you go for quality photo editing, Photoshop is THE tool and CS6 is a great step ahead of CS5. Together with Lightroom 4 and the latest OnOne Plugins you are well equipped to get the best out of your pics with an efficient workflow.

In as much as I am concerned, I guess I will not open my CS5.5 anymore.

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New Facebook Pages Publishing Concept

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:15:15 +0000

Facebook Page Publishing with New Timeline

Facebook Page Publishing with New Timeline

As from March 30, Facebook pages will change their look and features. I have presented the new options at last week-end’s Ycademy Seminar. In order to take advantage of the new features, companies, brands or people in general must adapt to the new format and can optionally expand visibility and interactivity using a well thought publishing concept. The concept I am talking about is the Semiomantics Facebook Publishing Concept.

Semiomantics Facebook Publishing Concept

Semiomantics has been focused on developing high performance scripts for online publishing since 2008. Originally the main target was SEO to reach Google Top 10 listings and to gain high visibility and traffic on and from search engines.

Semiomantics main concern has always been to control and secure content and to make it available online in the customer’s own rights, rather than to entrust third party sites such as social networks with the content and letting them handle the publication. The second most important concern is productivity and an efficient workflow, allowing to edit and publish on one place only all content for the web (including the mobile web) and to channel it then to the different target locations, networks and sites.

The Semiomantics Facebook Publishing Concept is in line with Semiomantics proven SEO.

The Semiomantics Publisher

In the center of the concept we position the Semiomantics Publisher, a WordPress based website expanded with all necessary bells and whistles to communicate with Search Engines and Social Networks as well as with the Mobile Web.

The most popular base is Semiomantics XO, the semantic framework and theme developed since 2008. It is not what you add to Semiomantics XO but how you add it that makes the difference when it comes to plugins and add-on software. That’s why Semiomantics XO is mostly used for Customized Websites by professional Developers and Designers.

For the purpose of efficiently publishing to Facebook (and other social networks) Semiomantics has integrated, optimized and further developed the best Facebook integration scripts out there, allowing to provide customers with an easy to use, homogeneous solution.

The Facebook Publishing Concept

Once expanded with Social Media Publishing scripts, the Semiomantics publishing framework provides custom taxonomies specially designed for FB Content creating, publishing and managing. The idea behind this concept is, that all content is published on our own website and when the Facebook page is called, the traffic hits our own site.

From the Dashboard we can set-up an unlimited number of such pages easily and quickly using the same editor as we use for WP dynamic posts or pages.

To get the pages hooked and deeply integrated into Facebook, we need to use the Facebook App and OpenGraph features. Don’t worry, it’s easy to handle once set up:-).

So, once we have created our FB Page content on our website, we create a Facebook App and then a Facebook Page. We link the App with our Website (from the Dashboard) and with the Facebook Page. Adding our App to Favorites on Facebook, we end up with a Favorites Tab on timeline (to the right below the cover image).

Facebook Timeline Page

Facebook Timeline Pages let us display 3 Featured Tabs on the first line, the Photo tab being fixed and cannot be replaced. Using the small icon on the right of the tabs, the page reveals another 8 tabs for additional use and display of apps. There we will lodge our additional pages created on our Website.

We end up with a Facebook page with highly visible tabs leading to content on our website, be it a shop, images, videos, sliders or any other content. By interlinking the so created pages and apps we offer easy navigation for our Facebook readers and can provide all the content you would never want to entrust Facebook with or share a license with Facebook, like for example on your graphics, logos and other content. (See Facebook’s terms.)

The following post will detail the set-up and procedure.

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How to Optimize your Impact on Social and Mobile Networks

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:15:24 +0000

Ycademy: Facebook, WP and the Mobile Web

Ycademy Online Seminar

This month’s Ycademy Online Seminar will take place on March 24 and 25, starting at 1 pm London (GMT) time and ending at 21 pm London time on both days.

Some of our developers have asked for a program covering Social Networks, namely Facebook and the Mobile Web and how to take advantage of them to distribute, promote and gain high visibility with own content.

The Seminar will cover the following areas:

1. Facebook and other Social Networks

Strategies for Individuals
Strategies for Businesses
Strategy for Brands

As you may know, Facebook will change the rules of the game on March 31, when the new FB pages will be released (again!). In fact the new FB page format will be similar to the timeline format and a few important changes will be of utmost importance to businesses and promoters.

New Facebook Cover Photo and Profile Image
Larger, Highlighted and Pinned Posts
Company Milestones
New Applications
Facebook Offers
FB Insights, Admin Panel and Messaging
Facebook Advertizing

If some of the above topics do not have a meaning for you, never mind: we will deal with them and make sure you are ready and up to date before March 31.

To the above Facebook on-board means we will add our own means.

The permanent changes of rules and features on Facebook have lead professionals a long time ago to structure and manage their assets outside of Facebook on a CMS or other appropriate website.

In as much as we are concerned, at the Seminar we will focus on consolidating our own assets on a WP CMS, typically XO or EVO by Semiomantics.

Publishing your Managed Content on Facebook

If you don’t talk about your business, someone else will do it — probably not the way you prefer. I guess there is no doubt in the business world about the necessity to take social networks seriously. Not for what they are, but for what users can do to your reputation. Internet promo often is based almost exclusively on testimonials and testimonials can take most any form and shape.

Word of mouth or viva voce has been a proven marketing strategy for ages.There are two principals to it:

A recommendation by a trusted person will trigger about the highest conversion rate.
A lot of people blowing into the same horn cannot be wrong.

Ad 1: The most important term is “TRUSTED”; it’s not a matter of numbers but of authority and trust.

Ad 2: 800 Million people are trusting Facebook … 800 Million people cannot be wrong! How does that sound to you? Yeah, we have heard such like about most any product. The fact that the masses use a product will attract new masses by building on the humans’ herd instinct’. And it works! Like Hype works and Spam works. If it didn’t work, fewer people would spam or hype up the junk they are trying to get rid of.

So, how can we profit ethically from the herd instinct and from word of mouth marketing in connection with Facebook?

Join the Seminar to find out :-).

Form WordPress, to Mobile, to Facebook, to Local …

Focusing on one single platform or publishing environment is not enough. To reach out for a maximum of customers, readers or just interested visitors it is of paramount importance to build a strong presence on Search Engines and Social Networks. Equally important is to take into account the increasing importance of the mobile web.

Therefore we need to publish and interlink our content in an efficient way to display on mobile and static devices and at the same time we must optimize it for all sorts of Search Engines as well as Social Networks.

The Seminar will show you how to build an effective publishing network across platforms while preserving productivity.

Seminar Tickets

As usual, just click on the image to get your ticket. Discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros; for the discount code please contact Bianca: bianca(at)ycademy.com

Ycademy Online Seminar March 2012

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Windows 8 Hotkeys

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 06:29:11 +0000

Windows 8 Hotkeys

Hotkeys unchanged from Windows 7
Key combination	Windows 7 functionality
Windows	Display or hide the Start menu.
Windows-Left Arrow	Dock the active window to the left half of the screen (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Right Arrow	Dock the active window to the right half of screen (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Up Arrow	Maximize the active window (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Down Arrow	Restore/minimize the active window (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Shift-Up Arrow	Maximize the active window vertically, maintaining width (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Shift-Down Arrow	Restore/minimize the active window vertically, maintaining width (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Shift-Left Arrow	Move the active window to the monitor on the left (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-Shift-Right Arrow	Move the active window to the monitor on the right (does nothing to Metro-style applications).
Windows-P	Display projection options.
Windows-Home	Minimize all nonactive windows; restore on the second keystroke (does not restore Metro-style applications).
Windows–number	Launch or switch to the program located at the given position on the taskbar. (Example: Use Windows-1 to launch the first program.)
Windows-Shift–number	Launch a new instance of the program located at the given position on the taskbar.
Windows-B	Set focus in the notification area.
Windows-Break	Display the System Properties dialog box.
Windows-D	Show the desktop; restore on the second keystroke (does not restore Metro-style applications).
Windows-E	Open Windows Explorer, navigated to Computer.
Windows-Ctrl-F	Search for computers (if you are on a network).
Windows-G	Cycle through Windows Desktop Gadgets.
Windows-L	Lock your computer (if you’re connected to a network domain), or switch users (if you’re not connected to a network domain).
Windows-M	Minimize all windows.
Windows-Shift-M	Restore minimized windows to the desktop (does not restore Metro-style applications).
Windows-R	Open the Run dialog box.
Windows-T	Set focus on the taskbar and cycle through programs.
Windows-Alt-Enter	Open Windows Media Center. Note that Windows Media Center must be installed for this key combo to function; in many Windows 8 builds, it is not present.
Windows-U	Open Ease of Access Center.
Windows-X	Open Windows Mobility Center.
Windows-F1	Launch Windows Help and Support.
Windows-N	Create a new note (OneNote).
Windows-S	Open screen clipper (OneNote).
Windows-Q	Open Lync. Note that in Windows 8 the Search function overrides this key combo.
Windows-A	Accept an incoming call (Lync).
Windows-X	Reject an incoming call (Lync). Note that this key combo does not function if Windows Mobility Center is present on the machine.
Windows-Minus	Zoom out (Magnifier).
Windows-Plus	Zoom in (Magnifer).
Windows-Esc	Close Magnifier.

New hotkeys for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Key combination	Windows 8 functionality
Windows-Space	Switch input language and keyboard layout.
Windows-O	Lock device orientation.
Windows-,	Temporarily peek at the desktop.
Windows-V	Cycle through toasts.
Windows-Shift-V	Cycle through toasts in reverse order.
Windows-Enter	Launch Narrator.
Windows-PgUp	Move the Start Screen or a Metro-style application to the monitor on the left.
Windows-PgDown	Move the Start Screen or a Metro-style application to the monitor on the right.
Windows-Shift-.	Move the gutter to the left (snap an application).
Windows-.	Move the gutter to the right (snap an application).
Windows-C	Open the Charms bar.
Windows-I	Open the Settings charm.
Windows-K	Open the Connect charm.
Windows-H	Open the Share charm.
Windows-Q	Open the Search pane.
Windows-W	Open the Settings Search app.
Windows-F	Open the File Search app.
Windows-Tab	Cycle through apps.
Windows-Shift-Tab	Cycle through apps in reverse order.
Windows-Ctrl-Tab	Cycle through apps and snap them as they cycle.
Windows-Z	Open the App Bar.
Windows-/	Initiate input method editor (IME) reconversion.
Windows-J	Swap foreground between the snapped and filled apps.

Windows 8 Screenshot

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Spectacular Lightroom 4 Lens Correction Tool

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:13:23 +0000

Lightroom 4 Lens Corrections Sample

At last night’s call we were looking at some of the new features in Lightroom 4, namely the development module.

An extreme but interesting sample development lead to spectacular results.

Transform, Warp, Sharpen

Photo before development

The above picture could not be taken from another angle and considering time constraints, I thought that this shot was better than no shot at all. Not a good picture but a nice sample to test some of Lightroom’s power, namely when it comes to Lens Correction.

Detail selection of the picture

Note that the picture contains some interesting detail, such as the thin net in front of the scaffolding which results in an apparent lack of punch.

Using the transform tools, distortion, vertical and horizontal, as well as a slight rotation we get the following view:

After first Transformation

We notice that the image is “stretched” too wide compared to the original proportions. We therefore apply a shot of Warping:

The Picture after Transformation

Now we just need to sharpen the image which will also get rid of the thin net hanging in front of the scaffolding:

Final result

While the above sample is is a pure exaggeration, it shows nevertheless some of the power of Lightroom 4.

Learn all about Lightroom 4

The YORGOO-Ycademy calls of this week will deal with Lightroom and show, how to use Lightroom 4 for efficient Photo (and Video) management, editing and publishing.

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Lightroom 4 Screenshots and 4 New Features

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:22:52 +0000

Photoshop Lightroom 4

Photoshop Lightroom 4

The recently released Lightroom 4 by Adobe comes with a few new interesting features. Have a look at the following screenshots and see how version 4 can make your life easier. There are 4 main areas where improvements are spectacular:

Lightroom 4 Map feature

The new Map feature allows to position images on the (Google) map and to add thus GPS data to the image files. This is namely useful if your camera does not add GPS data automatically, or if you don’t run the GPS feature on your cam to save power.

Lightroom 4 Map

On the above screenshot you see that I have pined 17 pictures to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. You also can save locations for re-use.

Lightroom 4 Book

The Book feature, also accessible easily from the top right menu includes a book layout editor with hundreds of possibilities to style a digital or printed book. The feature connects directly to Blurb.com to upload your work and order a printed version. Alternatively a PDF version can be saved to the computer.

Lightroom 4 Book

Lightroom 4 Development New Presets 2012

The Development module features new improved local and global presets for better image editing.

Lightroom Presets 2012

Lightroom 4 Movie Editing

Hopefully this is just the beginning! The clip editor allows for correcting toning, exposure and the use of many other presets. Also you can cut frames or take screenshots of individual frames (to pull a photo from the clip).

Lightroom 4 Movie Editor

Lightroom 4 on YouTube

There already a load of related videos available on YouTube. I prefer namely the ones Julieanne Kost, such as:

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National Archaeological Museum Athens Images

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:03:38 +0000

Free Images from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece

As I needed some pictures for my demo portfolio and photography site, I paid a visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens last Saturday. The idea was to come back with some photos of outstanding works from the permanent exhibition.

Mask 1500 BC found by Schliemann who thought it was Agamemnon’s Mask

Photos from the National Archaeological Museum

A first Gallery of Images from my visit you will find on the Portfolio site by clicking on the below screenshot:

National Archaeological Museum Photo Gallery

For better viewing, I have put the objects on a black background. All images from that gallery will be available for free download and use on non-commercial websites shortly.

Black and White Images from The National Archaeological Museum

For those who prefer black and whites, there is also a B&W gallery and again, the images will become available for download shortly for free use on non-commercial websites.

B&W Image Gallery — Archaeological Museum Athens, Greece

Free Photos and Images from the National Archaeological Museum

While I like to take pictures, I like even more to share them. Not everybody has the privilege to live as close to so many artifacts as I do, nor do many have the possibility to travel to Greece. For this reason I make all images from my portfolio available for free usage and download for the use on non-commercial websites. If you are publishing or re-publishing my work, I would appreciate a mention and/or a link back.

If you would like to make commercial use or to print any image for commercial use, please contact me.

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Windows 8 Personalization Screenshots

Yorgo Nestoridis — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 08:31:46 +0000

Windows 8 Customers Preview Release Images

Windows 8 Customers Preview Release Images

While in my earlier posts I have been shouting about the weird color scheme Windows 8 has been insulted with, you will find here below some screenshots focusing on personalization of the new Windows 8 UI. The main goal was to “neutralize” the desktop somewhat.

Windows 8 PC Settings

Ideal for touch screens, the bold yet minimalist design is user-friendly, namely for touch screens. In fact, Windows 8 is designed for (mobile) touch screens featuring the touch-friendly Metro interface and hot corners borrowed from the Mobile Win 7 Operating System.

Click to view

Personalize the Lock Screen on Win 8

The Lock Screen is on display when you log-out of your account; the Windows 8 Interface suggests a few full size images or the option to load your own image as shown here below:

Click to view

Windows 8 Start Screen Customization

Windows 8 offers 9 color schemes and 6 background patterns for the start screen. I could not find additional customization options in the Customer Preview release.

Click to view

Personalize your Windows 8 Account

As is previous Windows versions, you may add a picture or icon to personalize your account:

Click to view

Configure Notifications on Windows 8

Here we are really getting a typically mobile feature: Notifications can be brought to the Lock screen!

Click to view

More to come.

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Windows 8 Screenshots

Yorgo Nestoridis — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:55:58 +0000

Windows 8 Screenshots

Windows 8 Screenshots

Yesterday’s Windows 8 Customer Preview release triggered my curiosity and of course I had to install that new software.

First I was shocked about the ugly look of the new Windows, the lack of creativity and care of graphic design. Microsoft has still a lot to learn from Apple in this respect.

Windows 8 goes for Tiles

Windows 8 Start Screen with Tiles

Then I started playing with it and the more I saw and experienced, the more I liked the idea of getting a Mobile Type of Operating System and Interface here.

On this first image you see the new layout of the start screen with all these Tiles for easy access. On top of the right column you notice some tiles I have added to the screen. In fact, similar to a mobile surface, you can organize your Tiles (icons in Apple language) according to your needs and taste.

Note that many tiles refer to online features, like Gaming, Communication, Sharing features.

Windows 8 goes for Apps in stead of Programs

Windows 8 uses Mobile Terminology: we don’t get a list of Programs, but a display of Apps!

Windows 8 Apps

Note the ugly background color and then the load of icons …. horizontal scrolling will reveal all your Apps. This display replaces the “All Programs display on your Windows 7 Start Menu.

By the way: the good old Start Button does not exist anymore, just a link back to the Start Screen (image 1 above) and a right-click menu giving fast access to some basic functions:

Windows 8 Start right-click menu

New Settings Interface

The new settings screens are clean and easy to use:

Admin Settings on Windows 8

Large Icons for Image surfing

When searching an image from admin settings, the display is smashing, media gallery like, just … better. Unfortunately, there is still this ugly background :-).

Surf an Image Folder

Should you install Windows 8?

Microsoft recommends not to use Win 8 on your main computer. Right they are, as this is a Customer Preview release.

However, as the base is Win 7, most hard and soft you are using with Win 7 works. In as much as I am concerned, I had just to delete Security Essentials. All other programs run smoothly. Also for my DVD drive I needed to install ne drivers.

I am writing this post from Windows 8 and I will report here about issues encountered as they will appear. Also I will explore all the goodies from Win 8, namely connectivity issues, mobile web, interactivity and touch screen behaviors.

A second step will then be to look at the new SDK to develop Apps and to test them on Win 8. Let’s enjoy a nice journey with Win 8 and hope I will be able to change those ugly interface colors if the rest of the design cannot be modified :-).

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Showcase Portfolio Photo Theme for WordPress

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:09:04 +0000

Best Portfolio and Photo Custom Theme: Semiomantics EVO

WordPress offers a perfect backbone for Media Publishing and eCommerce on a single site.

Semiomantics Developments for WordPress assemble the best modules available to offer custom solutions to satisfy the needs of professionals. EVO is a theme base for custom design and development focusing namely on media producers, photographers, graphic and web designers.

Semiomantics EVO

Semiomantics EVO is based and inspired by the work of the best designers and developers out there who take advantage of the latest developments of WordPress, HTML5, CSS3, Java, Ajax and the mobile web.

Code and Scripts have been adapted and modified to satisfy Semiomantics’ highest standards of optimization for excellent publishing, targeting Search Engines and Social Networks.

Semiomantics EVO replaces the flash template Semiomantics Evo and constitutes a second cord on Semiomantics Arc.

Semiomantics Developments

The recent release of XO Edition 2012 remains the blockbuster product of Semiomantics in 2012; however we are working on a new XO which will replace XO 12. A new architecture will allow to eliminate some of the heavy plugins we are using at present with XO namely to satisfy the standards of mobile development.

Shoot, Share, Sell

Semiomantics EVO is the ideal platform for high quality editing, media publishing and eCommerce. Semiomantics Developers and Designers are invited to join the Ycademy February Online Seminar which is held this coming week-end.

Shoot Images and Videos with your camera or mobile device, load them to your EVO (can be done from the mobile device directly) and let EVO share your content with your friends and acquaintances on Social Networks without losing the control over your media or products. The shop is easily accessible, fully integrated and can also be added to your Facebook page for example.

Look out for more soon.

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Ycademy Online Seminar Photo Publishing with Evo for WordPress

Yorgo Nestoridis — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:37:20 +0000

Semiomantics EVO Developer Theme

2 years ago, about at the same time of the year, we have built Evo, an Action script driven Flash photo and portfolio website.

This time we will make use of HTML5, CSS3 and Java Script to customize Semiomantics EVO, a Semiomantics development for Developers.

Semiomantics Evo

Flash is not anymore a smart option for development for as long as Apple mobile devices are as popular as they are and for as long as mobile Apple devices will not display Flash. Therefore we have been looking for an alternative to produce smashing and eye-catching sites based on HTML5.

Of course the good old Evo Flash driven sites still look great. As a lot of work has been put into them we will try to use namely all the edited images and footage in the new EVO version.

Semiomantics Evo Flash Version 2009

Semiomantics EVO Version 2012

The biggest changes are:

EVO is now powered by WordPress
EVO does not use any Flash but is a responsive HTML5, CSS3 and Java script theme.

The new EVO assembles the ultimate in WordPress design and features for modern media display. Ideal for photographers, EVO features not less than 6 different Gallery Types. Galleries can be displayed most anywhere and the number is unlimited.

EVO can also display EXIF and location data.

The high resolution background slider will assure clean display also beyond resolutions of 2500 px equivalent.

Custom sidebars for pages and categories.

Finally: the script is eCommerce ready!

Semiomantics EVO 2012 Developer Edition

Semiomantics EVO 2012 Developer Edition Light

Goals of the Seminar

Become familiar with a new generation WordPress Theme and develop on the given bases a personal template for further customization.

Learn how to replace the existing Evo sites with the WordPress based responsive EVO.

(More to come.)

Materials

Licensed Software is provided.

To build the new site, add a sub-domain to your main site (author blog) and call it for example media, photo or portfolio or similar. (We will discuss this at the pre-seminar call on Tuesday February 21, 2012.

Tickets

Ticket price $85, the usual discounts for Ycademy Pros apply. Please ask Bianca for the discount code: bianca(at)ycademy.com.

Click to Get your Ticket

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Image Styling on Semiomantics XO

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:21:21 +0000

Image Borders, Padding, Captions on XO Theme Thumbnails on WordPress

There are two kinds of thumbnails produced on your XO site: the native WordPress thumbnails and the thumbnails generated by XO for the purpose of display throughout the theme where the WordPress thumbnails don’t fit.

WordPress Thumbnails

Thumbnail sizes are set in your dashboard under Settings > Media. When we change the thumbs’ sizes, the change will apply only to new content. These thumbnails are used by default in the XO Basic Home Page Layout.

In order to modify thumbnails created previously to a change in WordPress settings, we use the “Regenerate Thumbnails” plugin; install from your dashboard and then just run it: this will create thumbnails corresponding to the new WP Media settings for all images in the library and galleries.

The Regenerate Thumbnails plugin will have no impact on syndicated posts unless you also pull in the images to your library when syndicating.

XO Theme Thumbnails

When we upload an image from our dashboard in XO, XO creates 12 thumbnails adapted to the needs of the site and stores them in the default uploads folder for faster loading. If we change the layout settings in XO advanced home page settings, or if we change thumbnail sizes under the layout settings, the previously created thumbnails may not fit anymore.

Using the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin will create a new set of thumbnails corresponding to the new settings. Syndicated content will not be altered by the plugin, unless you pull in the images while syndicating and store them in your library.

Styling Image Display in XO

Basically we are looking at two elements: the image and the caption.

Also XO allows for different styling of images

Yorgo Logo

inserted into a post and galleries or images and thumbs used in Custom Formats, such as Images and Gallery Posts.

The example shows XO default style which sets borders with rounded corners, a background and some padding.

These settings can easily be modified with custom CSS, for example by adding and customizing a CSS3 property, such as some shadow:

.storycontent img{border:1px solid #666666;padding:5px;box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9) inset;padding:10px;} .storycontent img:hover {opacity:0.7;}

This example uses inset box-shadow and a hover effect decreasing opacity by 30%.

For box-shadow to work in IE, we use the PIE support:

box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); -pie-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #ccc; behavior: url("http://typography.ycademy.net/wp-content/themes/typography/PIE.php");

The example pulls in the PIE script; as done in previous examples (on the menu) make sure that you load the PIE.php and PIE.htc files into your child theme and link to the absolute or relative URI with the behavior property.

Captions

Captions can be customized by modifying the following selectors, for example:

.wp-caption,.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text, .gallery-caption {text-align:center;background:none !important;font-size:14px;}

You could of course chose a font-family, display the text with a reduced, fixed width or pull the caption into the image using a semi-transparent background and a negative top-margin. The limit is … your imagination.

Gallery Thumbnails

To style Gallery Thumbnails just customize, for example:

.gallery-thumb img, #maincontent .pformat img { margin: 0; padding: 10px; border: 1px solid #333; background: #eee; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -khtml-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; width: auto\9; /* IE 8 Hack */ }

WordPress Date Styling Meta Tag Styling on WordPress

The Image Caption Style

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:00:53 +0000

Enjoy your Valentine! No related posts. No related posts. Related posts:

Happy Valentine

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:39:13 +0000

Enjoy your Valentine!

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renaldo ricketts

Meta Tag Styling on WordPress

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:17:51 +0000

XO Theme for WordPress Styling After each post, we display Tag, Category and RSS references. They are not part of the actual post; they are of a rather technical nature and may help visitors to find contextual content on the site. The SEO impact of publishing such Meta Information is discussable. Styling the Author Name We want to display the author’s name underneath the main title in small but remarkable fonts: .post .meta, .hentry .meta,.post .meta a, .hentry .meta a { color:#111111;letter-spacing:5px; } Note: we just use letter-spacing to gain visibility. Bottom Tags Usually these meta tags are printed in small print, often difficult to read. For the purpose of this exercise we have switched to a serif font (Times) and increased letter spacing for better readability: .storycontent .postmetadata, .storycontent .tags { font-family: Times, "Times New Roman",serif; font-variant:small-caps; font-size:16px; line-height:1.1em;color:#101010; letter-spacing:2.5px; } .storycontent .postmetadata a, .storycontent .tags a{ color:#000000; } Nothing really exciting here: we are using small-caps (alternatively upper-cases) and letter-spacing of 2.5px.Note that letter-spacing can take decimal values. The fun is in experimenting with font, colors and styles! Related posts: WordPress Date Styling Custom Typography on Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress Related posts:

XO Theme Typography

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:25:15 +0000

Font Styling on WordPress Related posts: Custom Typography on Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress Related posts:

Custom Typography on Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress

How to Customize your WordPress Typography

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:32:49 +0000

Basic CSS3 to Customize your WordPress Theme

With the increasing browser compatibility of CSS3, additional customization of websites is in the reach of most anyone (Even a Monkey can do it, according to Nikos Advertizopoulos …). Tonight we will start with a series of calls to become familiar with the possibilities arising from the use of CSS3 on WordPress to improve typography and font styles.

You may follow the progress of the work at the Ycademy Demo Site which features the Semiomantics XO Theme.

Looking forward to seeing you on YorgoLive tonight.

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Semiomantics XO Transparent WordPress Drafts

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:19:44 +0000

Transparent WordPress Custom Theme

Playing with the XO Theme Version 3.3.x from Semiomantics and CSS3, I notice how easy it is for most anyone to customize the XO Theme by adding transparencies and other CSS3 elements. Here below you find some drafts. You may visit the test site from : http://globalthebrand.com.

Transparent WordPress Gallery

Scripts and Plug-ins

On the test site we use the Semiomantics Widgets and Theme Handler plug-in as well as a modified Supersized plug-in; the latter needs some more work to make it more responsive. Also we use TubePress which behaves fine also on mobile.

The Theme is Semiomantics XO with 3 custom child-themes; any theme can be associated with any page, post, category, tag or sidebar.

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The 1001 Faces of Semiomantics XO

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:31:43 +0000

New Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress

The above Screenshots represent just some of the pages, features and looks the 2012 Edition of the high performance XO Theme for WordPress has up its sleeves. The above site is the fruit of the 2 Days Ycademy Online Seminar for Semiomantics Developers and designers.

XO Theme Features

The 2012 Edition of XO is focused on even more flexibility in as much as editing, cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility are concerned.

The Site displays perfectly on Mobile devices, showing responsiveness also of the plugged in scripts chosen of which some have been adapted to satisfy the high standards of Semiomantics Publishing Scripts for Excellence.

The site elaborated at the Ycademy Online Seminar this past week-end features some smashing features, such as:

Background Slideshow, customizable for each page, post or archive
Built in Directory
Media Library for YouTube and Vimeo
Pro-sliders which can be deployed anywhere on the site
In addition to the responsive design, a separate light Mobile Version is available
Bold and Efficient Navigation
Built in Custom Fonts
Social Network connectivity and publishing
and much more.

XO for Developers

The XO script is well commented and offers designers a clean and straight forward environment for custom developments. XO uses best practices for WordPress development and makes the best use of the possibilities offered by the WP back-bone, assuring smooth integration and optimized conflict handling.

XO for Designers

XO is a great playground for designers. The DIY version allows anyone to adapt layout and colors to taste right from the back-office; there is no need to have any knowledge about coding or designing. The theme behaves like a Chameleon and adapts to specific needs with just a few clicks of the mouse: pre-configured layout elements transform your XO quickly into a Magazine, Newspaper, personal Author Blog, a Media Hub, a Shop, a Marketing Machine, a Social Media Publisher, a Product Promoter or a Fan Site or most anything your imagination dictates.

For the professional designer, XO offers a well commented environment. Custom code can be added right from the dashboard or, as I prefer using a child theme. XO is tuned for HTML5 and CSS3 use, making it a modern and inspiring framework for exceptional design effects.

XO out of the Box

Out of the box, the XO Theme for WordPress provides a stable and reliable, robust and optimized solution for common use. It provides built in features such a slider with multiple transitions and a one click selector for easy use.

Layouts can be easily adapted to needs and purpose of the site. In fact, most custom designers rely on the theme engine to format efficiently layouts.

Custom XO

The site featured in the above gallery uses a few pro plug-ins to add functionality in function of customer requirements. The integration of such add on scripts is a relatively simple process for designers and developers.

Customization of the XO Theme

XO has been developed for high performance, productivity, excellence in publishing and flexibility. For the professional users, the XO Theme constitues a solid base with a huge potential for customization and creative artistic expression.

Semiomantics XO 2012 Release

The release of XO Version 3.3.x is planned for the first week of February. The present Release Candidate has been thoroughly tested. A few minor issues will be taken care off before XO will be available to the public.

Upgrading existing XO installations

If your site is running on Semiomantics XO suing basic customization, the theme can just be overwritten. (Save your custom CSS beforehand.)

If you are using a custom version with custom developments or a child theme, some of your customization will need to be adapted to the enhancements of XO 2012. This concerns namely custom headers and footers as well as custom functions.

Support for developers and designers is available as usual at our Ycademy Online Calls and Seminars or through Semiomantics Pro Support.

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How to make WordPress Themes Responsive

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:29:35 +0000

Responsive Themes for WordPress

Responsive Websites become a must in 2012. This tutorial demonstrates how to make your WordPress Theme Responsive.

What is Responsive Web Design?

In very simple terms: Responsive Web Design aims to display content adapted to the visitors screen size. This means namely that the layout width must be fluid, i.e. expressed as a percentage of the width of the screen, typefaces expressed in em and images must be scalable.

Responsive WordPress Theme XO by Semiomantics

Practically speaking: a responsive designs can be viewed on a smart-phone or on a large PC screen, the display will always be the same and adapted to the size of the screen or browser window. n stead of using multiple style-sheets for different screen sizes, designers use Media Queries which allow to create multiple layouts using the same content. To achieve scalability, CSS media queries, such as min-width or orientation are used.

Make your WordPress Theme responsive using a Child Theme

A quick and easy way consists in creating a child theme; this allows you to upgrade your theme as the case may be without altering your customizations.

How to create a responsive child theme?

1. Create a new folder in your wp-content/themes folder and name it anything you like; for the purpose of this exercise I call it “responsive”

2. Create a style sheet in your new Child Theme folder (call it styles.css).

3. Suppose your main theme is called “wptheme”; paste the following into style.css

 /*
 Theme Name: wptheme Child
 Theme URI: http://www.yourdomain.com/
 Description: Child theme for wptheme
 Author: Your Name
 Author URI: http://www.yourdomain.com
 Template: wptheme
 Version:1.0
 */

The only line you really need to respect is Template:wptheme; this line refers to the parent theme folder.

4. Import the parent themes style-sheet by adding now the following line to your new style.css:

@import url(“../wptheme/style.css”);

5. Define the screen sizes you design for. (Smart-phones, tablets, PC) To test the result we just create different h1 color values for the different screen sizes:

@media screen and (max-width:320px)
{
h1 {
color: #ff0000;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:321px) and (max-width:768px)
{
h1 {
color:#00FF00;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:769px)
{
h1 {
color: #0000FF;
}
}

Having set these basic parameters, you can now apply styles and layout values to taste, such as vertical navigation display on small screens.

How to make Images responsive

To make images responsive we will need to take some WordPress specifics into account and there fore we will intervene with CSS3 and Media Queries and modify styles.css and functions.php of our theme.

Add the following to your style-sheet to make images scalable:

img{max-width: 100%;}
img{ -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; }

Now the images will be re-sized to fit horizontally, while the vertical scaling is still defined by WordPress. We need to remove WordPress image height and width values to scale our images proportionally.

In WP, image classes come with a with and height properties; we delete these properties like so:

change in your WP editor:

to this:

< img class=”imgclass” src=”../images/imagethumb.jpg” alt=”” />

This will work for your post and page images, however not for the images created by WP dynamically, such as post thumbnails. We need to delete with and height properties dynamically with a function.

Add to functions.php:

function remove_wp_width_height($string){
return preg_replace(‘/\/i’, ”,$string);
}

Now you need to make a final modification in your template and replace:

the_post_thumbnail();

with the following:

echo remove_wp_width_height(get_the_post_thumbnail(get_the_ID(),’large’));

That’s all!

Hopefully the above will help you to do additional customization wok and as the case may be, to adapt your great themes to the requirements of 2012 Web Design.

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Ycademy Online Seminar January 2012

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:40:09 +0000

Semiomantics XO with CSS3 and HTML5

Time has come to learn about new technologies available for web designers and developers. All common browsers are increasingly able to read and interpret CSS 3 and HTML5 and about all computers are equipped to read java and jQuery. Therefore new possibilities become available to XO developers which we will focus on during the January Seminar.

XO Theme for WordPress

XO has evolved over the past 4 years along with WordPress Developments. The theme has become responsive and shows perfectly on smart phones and tablets.

XO Edition 2012

Subsequent to the release of WordPress 3.3.x XO needed some adjustments and updates which we have implemented and tested. New design functions become available for advanced customization. XO remains the most flexible theme for custom development, accessible to most anyone.

The XO Seminar

The goal of the seminar is to become familiar with XO and it’s new features as well as to learn how CSS3, HTML5 and jQuery allow to adapt XO to most any customer’s needs.

Some of the technical issues we will have a detailed look at are:

Transparencies with CSS3
Background Sliders
Mobile Verions using WPTouch Pro
Content and Frame sliders with Pro Slider and SlideDeck Pro
Social Network connectivity with FacePages
How to make a WP theme responsive (adapting to different screen sizes such as Smart Phones Tablets and bigger)

How to expand XO functionality?

The most obvious expansions are via plug-ins. We will show how to make the best use of plug-ins for the Mobile Web, Social Networking, Social Media Publishing, Social Network Marketing as well as for more attractive display. Time permitting we will look into additional functions, such as shopping cart or marketing specific scripts.

We also will start looking into another important chapter:

How to convert your XO sites into a Mobile App!

Build an extraordinary Site

In order to make the understanding easier, we will build a new site during the 2 days event. Please join our pre-seminar call on Thursday to prepare the event by setting up a new XO powered site.

Materials

All materials will be provided. You will just need some images/photos, videos and other content you may want to use to populate the XO site.

Schedule

Saturday and Sunday, 28/29 January, 2012 from 1 pm London time till 9 pm London time.

Tickets

Tickets are available on our new shop at HIOD.com. Please click on the below image to order.

Discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros: Please mail Bianca at bianca(at)ycademy.com for the coupon code.

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Semiomantics XO 2011 for WordPress

Yorgo Nestoridis — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:03:35 +0000

A clip with XO 2011 Sites

The clip presents some of the custom sites built on Semiomantics XO 2011.

Semiomantics XO 2012 will be released in January to catch up with the latest WordPress developments.

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semiomantics xo wordpress

12 Principles of Animation with After Effects

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:31:10 +0000

Animation for Beginners with After Effects

Since Disney’s hand-drawn animation, nothing has changed when it comes to the basic principles of animation. The success of Disney was not just in the design of Mickey and friends but in the way the characters were put into motion.

At Saturday’s Ycademy Seminar we will explain the

12 Principles of Animation

and see, how to apply them with After Effects.

1. Slow in — slow out

Acceleration and deceleration is created with Easy Ease in and out functions is AE. The effect creates fluid motion.

2. Anticipation

Anticipation designs the action leading to the actual movement, like the backwards swing before hitting a ball with a golf club. Anticipation prepares the viewer for the action which will occur. Surprise actions can be more effective without anticipation.

3. Squash and Stretch

Squashing and stretching blows life into a volume. The rule is, not to change the volume while designing the effect: a vertical squash goes with a horizontal stretch.

4. Arc

Objects tend to move along an arc, rather than along straight lines. In After Effects we animate along a path.

5. Straight Ahead Action vs. Pose to Pose

Straight Ahead Action refers to drawing frame by frame, while Pose to Pose refers to designing first the key-poses and then filling in the frames in-between, hence the terms of “keyframe” and “tweening”.”

6. Staging

Staging refers to the act of drawing the audiences attention to important actions or events in the movie. It has to do with camera positioning and handling and composition.

7. Exaggeration

Well placed exaggeration can make movements more interesting.

8. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Follow Through refers to the motion of objects after the action while Overlapping Action means that an action does not have to stop when or before another starts.

9. Secondary Action

Secondary action makes the principal action more interesting. While the principal action may be a man walking, secondary actions could be arm swinging, movements with the head and so on.

10. Timing

Speed of action impacts on perception and emotion created. One of the most difficult principles to master, often expressed with the distance between two keyframes in After Effects.

11. Solid Drawing

This does not really refer to After Effects but to other programs you may use to draw objects, such as Photoshop.

12. Appeal

Objects need to be appealing to draw in the audience. This is not only true for animated characters. The best animation is not eye-catching if what you show is not designed in an appealing or charismatic way.

After Effects is not just about motion, it’s about expression, design, appeal and emotion created. An animation designer is therefore a multi-tasker and the best are multi-talents!

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After Effects Openers for Global Sports

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:19:36 +0000

After Effects Openers for Global Sports

Two simple and bold openers for Global Sports US. The opener will be used on the Season 2 fashion presentation clip by Listen Up London.

Final Version

Draft Version

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Happy New Year After Effects

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:23:04 +0000

After Effects Happy New Year

Tonight at YorgoLive we will focus on editing Inkman’s Christmas After Effect Template. This is a first simple adaptation; in fact the project can be further transformed namely by changing colors and backgrounds. The goal is to become familiar with simple changes of an existing After Effects project.Of course we will show participants how to embed the movie into a Facebook page for sharing with friends and fans.

Happy New Year by Semiomantics

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Christmas Media Design Seminar

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:35:40 +0000

Christmas Media Design at Ycademy

The Ycademy Seminar in December will focus on Christmas Media, namely on working with Adobe After Effects.In stead of producing static Christmas cards participants will be able to add motion, sound and other effects to produce a stunning customized Christmas Clip.

The above draft for a UVUYO video is a typical example for what After Effects can do for you.

Schedule

The Christmas Media Design Seminar will take place on December 17, 201, starting at 1 pm London time and closing at 9 pm London time.

As we have only one day available for the December Seminar, we will use all Daily Call sessions for an introduction into the secrets of After Effects. All pre-seminar calls will be recorded as well and video tutorials will be made available to seminar participants.

Goals

Acquire enough After Effects related knowledge to be able to work with After Effects templates and to customize, adapt or modify them.

All participants will create a customized Christmas Clip.

Materials

Participants need Adobe’s After Effects, preferably CS 5.5 64 bit version, however CS4 running on 32 bit will do.

For Customization, you may want to use some of your family photos or, if you create a business clip, some business related pictures , screen-shots or graphics.

All other materials, namely professional templates, will be provided.

Tickets

Special Christmas price: $45

Discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros.

Click to get your Ticket

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Eugenides Foundation Exhibition

Yorgo Nestoridis — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:28:25 +0000

Eugenides Foundation Technology Exhibition

Chemical clock Belousov-Zhabotinsky from Eugenides Foundation on Vimeo.

The experiment will show how a complex solution changes color in a circular manner, acting as a chemical clock.

“Chemical clock Belousov– Zhabotinsky” is a demonstration performed by staff of the Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition, Eugenides Foundation. The demonstration is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.sciencetweets.eu.

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Eugenides Foundation Science and Technology

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:14:07 +0000

Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition

Eugenides Foundation Physics Experiment Collections and Technical Exhibits

The Eugenides Foundation’s Physics Experiment Collections and the Technical Exhibit Halls were created in 1966 and operated at the Foundation facilities on Syngrou Avenue until the mid-1990s. Their goal was to fill the gaps in experimental equipment at the institutions of technical education in post-war Greece and to more adequately carry out the essential educational function in the technical and scientific fields.

Two new wings were added to the Foundation in September 2003; one of them houses the New Digital Planetarium and the other, in a section of the building symmetrical to the Planetarium, houses a unique exhibition hall, the “Marianthi Simou” Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition Hall.

The first periodic exhibition, titled Science of Sports, was held there in November 2003, staged by the General Secretariat for the Olympic Games in cooperation with the Eugenides Foundation in light of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Permanent Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition

A permanent Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition has been on display in this new exhibition wing since December 2006.

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Foundation technology

What is a Facebook Business Account?

Yorgo Nestoridis — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:00:37 +0000

Facebook Business Account

What is the difference between a Business and a Personal Account? Which is the ideal solution for you and what are the implications of your choice?

First of all, be aware that according to Facebook rules you are not allowed to use multiple Facebook Accounts. However, you may create multiple Advertizing Accounts as a Managed Advertiser having a dedicated Facebook Representative.

What is a Facebook Business Account?

You can set up a Facebook Business Account, if you don’t already have a standard account,

Business Accounts are mainly designed for Advertisers and to manage pages.

How to create a Facebook Business Account

To create a business account you start by setting up a Facebook Ad or a Facebook Page.Once you have provided the required information, you will be taken to the log-in page and you will be asked if you have already a Facebook Account. Select “I do not have a Facebook account” and continue by providing email and date of birth.

What can you do or not do with a Business Account

As the owner of a Business Account you can view and edit your pages and ads, add photos or videos and consult stats relating to your pages and ads.

You cannot see other users profiles or timelines as Business Accounts have limited access to information of Facebook.

You cannot see Facebook content that does not live on your pages.

Business accounts cannot be found on search or added as friends.

Business accounts cannot send or receive Friends Requests.

Converting Business Accounts

A business account can be converted into a regular account. Once done, the process cannot be reversed.

Note: The Big Disadvantage

The big disadvantage of Business Accounts are their absence from the internal search and friend feature, making it almost compulsory to spend big time and/or money to promote the content.

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Eugenides Foundation

Yorgo Nestoridis — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:28:46 +0000

Eugenides Foundation Images

A simple iPhone photo with variations.

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Eugenides foundation

Facebook Strategy with WordPress

Yorgo Nestoridis — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:51:29 +0000

10 Steps to Implement your Facebook Strategy with WordPress

Implementing your Facebook Strategy will be at the center of the November Ycademy Seminar. This hands-on Seminar and Workshop will stretch over two days and build with participants an eye-ball-twisting Facebook presence. See the seminar schedule at the bottom of the post.

The Seminar is designed for WordPress Developers and WP users who are looking for high productivity and customized publishing and marketing solutions.

11 Efficient Facebook Strategies

This topic deals with efficient strategies which will efficiently improve your Facebook presence.

Visit the Semiomantics Facebook Page

7 Ways to jeopardize your Facebook success for sure

Surfing through Facebook we notice some common errors well intended people commit when building their Facebook presence. We will discuss these issues and show you how to eliminate them from your personal or business Facebook.

4 Important Facebook features to focus on

While content is king, there are different ways of making it accessible to visitors. We will discuss the recent changes Facebook has implemented and show you where the focus should be in order to improve your visibility, traffic and business or network expansion on Facebook.

Facebook Privacy and Accessibility settings

Function of your strategy we will define and optimize privacy settings in order to grant potentially interested visitors access to relevant information. Privacy, Accessibility and List-building as well as Targeted Communication are the essentials of this key session.

Workshop: Information and Profile

For people looking for you, your business, services or products, your Profile and Info page are of the utmost importance, the more that your info is visible from outside Facebook and therefore Google efficient. We will set up with participants an efficient Info Page.

Friends, Fans and Subscriptions

We will discuss the recent changes implemented by Facebook and how they impact on our strategies. Friends, Fans and Subscription features impact on the way we expand our network and influence on Facebook.

Facebook Pages

Overview of the Facebook Page feature. Integration techniques, Apps, Content, Canvas and Pages.

Workshop: Build a simple Facebook page

The focus is on the technical set-up of a Facebook Page. As content we will use a graphic, picture of video.

Creative and useful Facebook Page Content

What is it you actually wish to display on your Facebook page? In fact there is no limit and it depends entirely on your strategy.

Integrating WordPress with Facebook

This is the center piece of the seminar. Creating Facebook Page right from your WordPress site is now possible. We will set up a reveal page and different Facebook pages depending on participants needs. In fact we show you how to create a whole website in Facebook, straight from your WordPress.

While this works with most any WordPress 3.1 enabled Theme, we will demonstrate the integration with Semiomantics XO.

In fact we will work with a professional plugin modified for Semiomantics XO.

Workshop: Build your Facebook with WordPress

The Seminar will guide you to master the following and more:

Create Unlimited Facebook Fan Pages with WordPress
Increase Likes by 150% with Reveal “Like” Tab Gateways
Unlimited Customization Options When Designing Your Fan Pages
Create Unlimited Custom Pages with the WordPress Page Editor
Create Custom Menus and Navigation with Just a Few Clicks
Comments, Like, Send and Over 50+ Custom Shortcodes for Enhanced Customization
Facebook Open Graph Integration for Enhanced Facebook Integration and Google SEO
Auto Post to Facebook From Your WordPress Blog
Use Your Facebook Albums and Photos on Your Blog and Fan Pages
Add Google Maps to Your Facebook Fan Pages
Create Squeeze and Sales Pages with Just a Few Clicks on Facebook

Workshop: Add Social Network features to your WordPress

Add Facebook related widgets to your front and/or content pages. Google+ and Twitter buttons. Pull in Facebook Albums, Events, like Buttons and more. Use Facebook Connect to log in to or to register with your blog.

Selective Access to your FB Content

Create content which is only accessible after visitors clicked the “Like” button. A smashing filter which allows you to manage accessibility right from your XO.

Seminar Schedule

Time

Saturday and Sunday November 26/27, 2011.

We start at 1 pm London Time and end at 9 pm London time both days.

Materials

You need a WordPress blog preferably with FTP access.

Scripts and all other materials are provided.

We will install the necessary scripts for you previous to the Seminar; please get your Tickets early. If we are not yet in possession of the FTP access to your site, please send it by email to Bianca Gubalke at bianca(at)ycademy.com.

Tickets and Price

The Price for Participating, Materials and access to recordings is $85.

Click to get your Ticket

Discount as usual for Ycademy Pros. Please contact Bianca Gubalke at bianca(at)ycademy.com for the code or any other question you may have pertaining to the Seminar.

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WordPress 3.3 Update

Yorgo Nestoridis — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:34:24 +0000

WordPress 3.3 Update for XO by Semiomantics

Semiomantics XO users: update to WP 3.3 and appreciate the new admin bar featuring also your XO theme menu. Also new: the drag and drop media up-loader as well as the admin menu :-).

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DuSunnah Bookshop

Yorgo Nestoridis — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:13:29 +0000

DuSunnah Online Bookshop

The DuSunnah Bookshop will shortly go officially online. This new Shop is an extension of the Masjid Daar us Sunnah in London. From a developer’s point of view, the shop is a challenge in as much as it has to fit into an existing online infrastructure. This post will show a possible concept about how to interlink various social networks with different websites and script for the purpose of serving the community in the most efficient and accurate way.

Dusunnah Bookshop

Let’s start with an inventory:

Daar Us Sunnah — DuSunnah Websites

1. Dusunnah.com is a Joomla based CMS which up to now was the online presence of the Masjid in its own right.

2. Dusunnahbookshop.com is a new X-Cart based online shop.

3. Dusunnahbookshop.com/blog is a WordPress based blog under construction.

DuSunnah online Social Networks

DuSunnah has built a solid presence on Social Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well as a Newsgroup, reaching out to thousands of friends and subscribers.

Time has come to consolidate all these efforts and achievements and to streamline the online activity by integrating all pieces and bits into an efficient communication and publishing concept, targeting and expanding the existing communities.

Linking Joomla and WordPress

While Joomla has for a long time been recognized as the most powerful Content Management System, we at Semiomantics have always felt that its performance is way inferior compared to WordPress when it comes to search engines. For this reason we have always privileged WordPress, ready to make concessions on the CMS side; WordPress has made and is making progress on the CMS front and with WP 4 we are expecting namely better media management as well as a more user-friendly admin area.

Joomla may be easier to use for non professional users, however it lacks the real power to gain high visibility we can achieve with WordPress. I guess Joomla users are good customers of all sorts of ads networks, while Semiomantics is specialized to build WP based sites which show on the left side of Google top 10 search returns, saving thus thousands of advertising bucks.

While there are some developments available to integrate WordPress into Joomla as a Joomla component, for example by Corephp.com, we prefer the flexibility and power of a self-hosted WordPress site separate from Joomla as Semiomantics Optimization for high performance conflicts with Joomla and would thus reduce the power of WordPress.

Having said the above, the WP extension by Corephp remains a brilliant and cheap solution to improve Joomla.

In as much as our publishing concept is concerned, we keep both sites separate, on separate servers and we create the link using RSS Feeds and technology, whereas we will stream the Joomla content into WordPress and use WordPress as the striking arm for SE targets.

Linking X-Cart and WordPress

When combining WordPress with e-commerce we always have preferred to separate the active WordPress site from the shopping site, even when using WP e-commerce plugins. The reason is simple: the purpose of both sites is not the same: a shop must provide a smooth shopping experience, while WP must first of all perform and gain high visibility on Search Engines.

The architecture of shops is not designed to reach high impact on search engines, they are a sort of a content management system for products integrating check-out and payment gateways. These features require configuration which conflicts with what we consider optimized semantic configuration as used on Semiomantics powered WordPress scripts.

We deal therefore with X-cart as we do with Joomla, we create a product stream targeting WordPress.

WordPress the central Marketing Tool

As you can deduct from the above, WordPress is the central element in our Publishing and Marketing strategy. The main reasons for this are:

the powerful optimization by Semiomantics
the aggregating possibilities of all content produced on all sites and networks
the publishing power to reach Google top 10 rankings
the publishing power to reach out for social networks
the easy sharing of any kind of media, namely also YouTube
the possibility to keep a maximum of traffic in stead of giving it away to third parties

The use of Semiomantics powered WordPress replaces to a large extent marketing budgets for Google Ads for example as we can bring our content and products right to the top of Google. The WordPress based site will be linked directly with all own sites as well as with the newsgroup and all social networks. This simplifies the work and publishing flow and assures optimized publishing.

The described concept has proven to be highly efficient for our own purpose as well as for our customers. Our publishing and marketing networks are custom built and fine tuned for the purpose of each respective customer’s needs and purpose, whereas we aim to provide time and money saving solutions achieving thus optimized productivity.

Art Vision Opinions

Ycademy Online Seminar May 2012

Learn how to Build a Mobile App for iOS, Android and Windows

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 3

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

Contents

Some basic WP Settings

Custom Posts and Child Theme

Child Theme functions.php

Define Post Types in posttypes.php

1. Custom Post Types

2. Add advanced Variables

3. Add advanced functionality

4. Change the menu position

5. Add Custom Post Type Icons

Resulting posttypes.php code:

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 3

Customizing WordPress Child Theme

Contents

Some basic WP Settings

Custom Posts and Child Theme

Child Theme functions.php

Define Post Types in posttypes.php

1. Custom Post Types

2. Add advanced Variables

3. Add advanced functionality

4. Change the menu position

5. Add Custom Post Type Icons

Resulting posttypes.php code:

How to build a Custom WordPress Site 2

Build a Custom WP with Semiomantics XO

Adding a Theme

Create a WP Child Theme for Semiomantics XO

How to Create a Child Theme step by Step

How to build a custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Design and Developments

The WordPress Custom Project

The Architecture of the site

The Developer’s environment

SuperMoon 2012 Image

SuperMoon 2012 Image

Incoming search terms:

How to shoot the Moon with a Point and Shoot Camera

Vouliagmeni Moon Photo with Point and Shoot Camera

Vouliagmeni Moon May 4, 2012

Vouliagmeni Full-moon May 5, 2012

Vouliagmeni Moon Variations

Incoming search terms:

How to Preview your Mobile WordPress for iPhone and iPad

iPhone Simulator or Emulator for WordPress?

iPhone Simulator

iPhone Emulator

Preview your iPhone, iPod and iPad App in your Browser (Mac and Windows)

Other Solutions

Conclusion

Incoming search terms:

Give WordPress an App Look

App Look for WordPress

Screenshots — under development

Mobile Developments for Small and Home Business

Mobile Developments for Small and Home Business

Conversion and integration of web content into an App

Publishing on Multiple Platforms

App Store Optimization and Marketing

Incoming search terms:

Customizing CSS in WP Mobile Theme

Common Changes

Contents

Remove the Page Title Area

Remove reflection on calendar icons and post-thumbnails

Change the size of the Post Thumbnails

Remove rounded corners on Post Thumbnails

Remove “Comments are closed” text when comments are disabled in WordPress

Remove comments completely

Remove comment # bubble

Remove ‘breadcumb’ text in category and search pages

Use custom color for the mobile header

Remove “HelloBar”

Eval base64 Hack Solutions

eval base64 on WordPress or other Sites