DIY Website Update

I had a free week, (this week that just passed), and spent it all on updating and managing the content on the DIY Website. I have been busy making other websites and have not had time to continue with the 29 steps or to do any maintenance here or add any new tutorials.

29 Steps Continued

First, I managed to write the basic articles for Steps 18 – 22. These articles still need improving with images perhaps and focusing a bit, but the steps are there to explain a key concept. This also reminds me to look for new specific tutorials to relate to the step.

As I was closing on my 29 step limit and knew that the final steps are about website promotion, I needed to look very carefully at the original plan, especially at the categories and tags I was using and work on bringing it all together on the website.

This meant broadening the DIY Website categories to more general area groups, and making tags more topic specific. I converted the broad tags to categories, in order to retain the posts within them. Then I re-named and regrouped the categories so that all the tutorials were  together, (and the ramblings and reviews were separate from these). Then I checked that there were no unnecessary duplications between categories and tags. Finally I used the mass edit function of Simple Tags Plugin to check each post and page had tags and were in the correct category if applicable.

This clarified everything and also helped me slightly modify the last of the titles I need to write for the 29 steps topics. I hope that this series will now (broadly) cover everything that is important to make a WordPress website. I know my own knowledge is still insufficient on many of these steps but as I learn, I can reference where I learned from and pass this on to readers.

To quote Procol Harum  – “…just taking turns on trying to pass things on…”

DIY Now Using Custom Sidebars

Secondly, for a long time, I have been looking for plugin to make different widget areas viable.

I have tried several “widget area plugins” but became confused or lost trying to make them work. I have found one now that is truly logical and awesome. A lot of the time this week has been spent setting this up to improve related posts navigation. It’s called Custom Sidebars and I have also installed Widget Entries from the same plugin author.

I’ll write a post about this plugin soon called Custom Sidebar Per Page .

Which reminds me, I have to go and give this plugin 5 stars in the plugin repository!

Facebook iframe app WP Plugin

Thirdly, I have a new plugin for sale that may interest a lot of people. This WP PLugin makes it possible to make a page on your WordPress website and have that page appear as a tab on your Facebook Page in the new iframe format that Facebook implemented in March. See this post about the Facebook iframe app WP Plugin

There are still many things to do yet, but I’m happy with what I achieved so far – but a week is such a small time span to get things done!

 

Tagged with: Update

Filed under: Personal Ramblings