A Fresh Start
I made the decision to migrate this website over to another hosting account a few weeks ago, and wanted to find a better way to manage the site. I had worked with WordPress recently on a project for a friend, doing the initial install and upgrading it twice.
On a side note, I had "test-driven" WordPress a few times over the years, but it never really quite did what I needed at the time. However, this time around, I was impressed with what WordPress has to offer, so I decided to use it to rebuild the site on the new server. This post details all that went on to make it happen.
The old site was static, built by hand using numerous php includes. With all of WordPress' capabilities, I now have a solid publishing platform, allowing me to manage the site much more efficiently.
I created the site using the Pages feature heavily, with the posts being assigned to a page called Blog. A special permalinks structure has made it possible to almost match the URLs on the old site. A variety of plugins have been installed and fired up that give me most of the same functionality and control that I had when I was hand-coding the old version.
Here's the lineup that provides the front-end functionality for the website:
- Access Keys 1.0 by Aaron Harun: I am a supporter of accessibility, and wanted to maintain the system of access keys that I had already established on the original version. This plugin has allowed me to assign access keys to each of the primary site pages. A list of those access keys can be found on the Accessibility page.
- Core Sidebars 1.0.0 by Daniel: The old site had different content in each of the right sidebars. I spent hours scouring the WordPress Codex, trying to understand the code used in sidebars in order to have each one be different and work up the code to accomplish that -no easy task with 17 different sidebars. Daniel's plugin made the job very easy. Within about 20 minutes of installing this, all of my sidebars looked identical to the old version.
- Dagon Design Form Mailer 5.4 by Aleister, Dagon Design: I had used this script to power the Contact and RFQ forms on the old site. It was easy to work with then, so it was a given that I'd be using the plugin version to power the WordPress versions of the forms.
- Page Link Manager 0.3 by Garrett Murphey: I read up on how to accomplish the exclusion of certain pages using the wp_list_pages() function, and could have done it that way; however, Garrett's plugin makes it "easy as pie" to do the same thing. No messing with the template files - just a few checkmarks in the right places, and it "just works."
- SEO Title Tag 2.1.3 by Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts: Once again, I spent hours scouring the WordPress Codex, trying to find a way to have control over the title of each page. Then I discovered Stephan's plugin, and about 30 minutes later, I had everything the way I wanted it to be. Lazy? Probably, but I did learn a lot while doing the research that I will be able to apply to other projects.
- Page Hover Titles 0.1 by Mark Jaquith: One of the things that WordPress is lacking is the ability to change the content of the link title attribute of the site navigation links. I needed to be able to include the access key information as well as expand some of the titles that display in the link tooltips. I did a thorough search of the entire WordPress site (plugins, Codex and forums) with no solution found. I then took the search to Google, where I found Mark's plugin. It was supposed to allow me to use custom fields to set the hover_title value for each of the links, but it didn't work. I sent an email to the author in the hopes that he can help me get it running on WP 2.5.1. (Hi Mark, hope you got my email!) Update: In a trackback to Mark's blog, I found a link to a discussion over at theblogexperiment.com, within a post from Sarah G, looking for the same functionality. She was unable to get Mark's plugin to work either, so she wrote one of her own (Custom Title Attributes 1.3 by Sarah G). I've downloaded and installed it, and it works like a charm, as you can see by hovering over the links in the menu bar. Thanks Sarah!
- WP 2.5 Gallery Lightbox 1.3 by Sam Burdge: I had incorporated the Lightbox script on the inactive website pages to present screenshots of the site layouts, since they were no longer available online. Sam's implementation of the Lightbox script allowed me to continue that functionality with relative ease.
A new addition to the site is the blog you are currently reading. I wanted someplace where I could write from time to time. There are a few plugins that I am using to add some nice features for the commenters:
- Comment Relish 1.0 by Justin Shattuck: An email is automatically sent upon comment approval, which provides me with a way to thank first-time commenters on this blog for taking the time to submit their thoughts and opinions, and encourage them to come back.
- Filosofo Comments Preview 1.0.5 by Austin Matzko: Having taken the time to write out a comment, I wanted my viewers to have a way to preview their remarks before submitting them - this plugin does just that, plus it helps slow down any spammers that might wander in here by forcing a preview before a comment can be submitted.
- Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2 by Mark Jaquith: Great for anyone who doesn't use a feed reader, as they can be notified by email whenever a new comment is submitted to a post they have subscribed to.
Rounding out the list, I also have several great plugins that are helping out behind the scenes:
- Admin Big Width 1.0 by Xorax: Just because I like the admin panel to stretch across the whole page rather than a fixed-width on the left.
- Akismet 2.1.4 by Matt Mullenweg: I've been using Akismet on my photoblog to cut down on spam, so it was a natural that I use it here as well.
- Article Templates 1.04.0 by Binny V A: This allows me to set up templates that are used routinely for creating similar pages or posts - a real time-saver.
- Batch Categories 1.4 by Rob Miller: This allows me to easily reorganize the post categories, rather than having to go through them one at a time to change the categories. This one falls in the "planning for the future" category.
- Better Comments Manager 1.5.1 by Keith Dsouza: This plugin expands my ability to approve, filter and respond to comments from within the admin panel.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3.1 by Steve Smith & Feedburner: I wanted a way to consolidate all of my feeds into one so that I could track my subscribers via Feedburner. FeedSmith does just that.
- WordPress.com Stats 1.2.1 by Andy Skelton: This plugin replaced the stats program that I was using with the old version.
After getting the site up and functioning the way I wanted, that only left creating a WordPress theme that incorporated my old site design. Starting with my original template, I added the necessary WordPress code in the right places to display the content the way I wanted it to be, then split it up into the different template files that WordPress requires. I looked at a lot of templates, trying to learn as much as I could about how a template works before beginning the task, and that research paid off handsomely. I was able to recreate my design with a minimum of hassle.
I know this has been a long read, but if you've gotten to this point, I want to let you know how much I appreciate your time. If this helps another WordPress user to get started or to accomplish something similar, then the time it took to write this has been worthwhile.
I would also like to give a huge thanks to the WordPress development team, plugin and theme developers, and the community for their hard work, dedication, and the excellent documentation which allowed this WordPress newbie to dive right in and learn what was needed to bring this project to fruition. Thanks!
Until next time…