MJB Notes

My to-do list to finish:

  • Provide ajax feedback for error messages on the comments
  • Put form error messages into a pop-up
  • Finish styling of the calendar plugin and figuring out what BRAF wants to do.
  • Get Slickr Flickr Pro license so that we can have more than 20 images from flickr in the gallery.

Current site map: 4/22:

  • This is available for drag and drop management at:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=page&page=order-page
  • Each of the top-level menu items in the site corresponds to a section.
  • Note that the order of pages in the site map will determine the order of pages displayed in the site navigation in any of the sidebar widgets.
  • The sidebar navigation (see below) will use the pages and page order from the site map to build the section listing of pages.
  • There are three sections that are of special interest:
  • The “Simply Exclude” plugin is used (and displays as a widget in “Edit Page”) to exclude specific pages from search results.  For example, the subscription handling proxy, download, and the various sample pages and notes.  The subpages for Home that are used to make it easier to edit the content for the tabs on the home page have been excluded from search (this content is just a summary of content in other places on the site and is provided on the home page as a quick way to get to a short version of that content).  All of the pages in the Tools section and the DEMO and TEST PAGES section have been excluded from search.  The section “UNUSED STUFF TO PUT SOMEWHERE OR DELETE (Eli, Josie, etc.) ” has not been marked to exclude from search — those pages should be moved to the appropriate places, filled with content, or moved to the trash.
  • Home                      <– This is the home page and
    • Donate                <– the content for the 4 tabs on it
    • Volunteer
    • Join
    • Sponsor
    • Contact
  • About Black Rock Arts
    • Sponsors
    • Get Involved
    • Press
      • Press Releases
      • Press Received
    • Tax Information
    • Case Statement
    • Learn More
  • Participate
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Donate
      • RGR Sponsor Benefits
    • Volunteer
    • Become a Member
  • Events
    • Future’s Past Opening Reception
    • Past Events
  • Projects
    • Civic Arts
      • Future’s Past
      • Market Street Blooms
      • The Bike Bridge
      • BRAF-Reno!
      • Bliss Dance
      • Ecstasy
      • Celtic Forest
      • Detroit Temple
      • Homouroboros
      • Stan: The Submerging Man
      • Finley Friar’s Stan: Submerging Man
      • The Dreamer
      • Passage
        • Flock
        • Opening for Michael Christian’s Flock
      • Hayes Green Temple
        • David Best Hayes Green Project Fund
      • Monicacos
      • Tree Spire
    • Grantee Projects
    • Scrap Eden
      • Scrap Eden 2010
      • Scrap Eden Playa 2008
      • Scrap Eden 2006
  • Grants
    • 2010 Grants
    • 2009 Grants
    • 2008 Grants
  • Gallery
  • News
  • Contact
  • Tools
    • subscription proxy
    • Download Subscribers
  • UNUSED STUFF TO PUT SOMEWHERE OR DELETE (Eli, Josie, etc.)
    • Something about the Raygun Gothic Rocketship
    • Bliss Dance
    • Grants
      • Grants 2010
      • Grants 2009
      • Grants 2008
      • Grants 2007
      • Grants 2006
      • Grants 2005
      • Grants 2004
      • Grants 2003
      • Grants 2002
    • Join Our Mailing List
  • DEMO and TEST PAGE
    • DEMO SUBPAGE INDEX
      • DEMO SUBPAGE 3
      • DEMO SUBPAGE 1
      • DEMO SUBPAGE 2
    • SAMPLE Grantee Project Page
    • MJB TEST PAGE
    • Example Subscription/Join Page
    • Project Title – H1 (Volunteer Cheat Sheet!)
    • Silvia – Burner Ipsum Test Page
    • Example Project Page (Raygun Gothic Rocketship)

Content management:

  • Use page tree view to organize pages or see how they’re organized:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=page&page=order-page
    This displays a tree-view of all the pages in the system
  • The tabs on the home page are populated using content from pages that are sub pages of the home page.  This makes it easy to update the content of these tabs.  If you are logged-in, then the tab will each have an ‘edit’ icon that will take you to the admin page for editing that particular page.  Since these are pages, then shortcodes can be used  as well.
  • The content in the top right-hand corner of the home page is generated from posts that have been tagged with the tag ‘homepage’ in descending date order.  Currently it’s showing the latest three posts.  If you set a featured image for the post, then that featured image will be used as the picture for the excerpt.  Note that the first several words from the post are used, unless an excerpt is provided.
  • The content in the bottom right-hand corner of the home page is generated from posts that are in the category ‘news’.
  • All pages are configured with comments/discussion off.  All posts have comments/discussion on by default.
  • Plugins are listed here:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/plugins.php
    Note that the plugin “Plugin Notes” has been used to annotate the plugins.  Do not delete plugins unless you know what you are doing.  Uninstalling and deleting a plugin may delete the database entries containing valuable installation information, making it difficult to recover.  Additionally, WordPress provides links to the plugin page on wordpress.com as part of each plugin’s description on this page.
  • Configure  the top-level menu:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/nav-menus.php
    Note that changing this may require changing the CSS min-width for the content, otherwise the menu may collapse onto two lines if the browser window is made too small
  • Implemented shortcodes (in the dashboard):
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/index.php
    This is a widget showing the shortcodes (excluding slickr-flickr) that are used on the site should be in the dashboard; if not, use the screen options tab on the top right to enable the widget display.  These shortcodes include, for now:
  • Using slickr flickr shortcode
    http://www.slickrflickr.com/56/how-to-use-slickr-flickr-to-create-a-slideshow-or-gallery/
    This is used to display the square thumbnail galleries at the bottom of grantee/project pages:
  • The Events Calendar
    http://tri.be/wordpress-events-calendar/
    is used for managing the calendar and events data for the BRAF site.
  • Using the Subpages Extended widget
    http://shailan.com/wordpress/plugins/subpages-widget/
    This is used to create the list of Civic Art Projects widget in the sidebar from the page titles in the Civic Art Projects section
  • Managing what sidebar widgets show up in what pages:
    The best way to do this is to go to:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/widgets.php
    and examine the widets that we are using on the site.  There are several plugins that add the following abilities to the widgets:

  • Categories!  and why they’re important:
    Categories are managed at this page:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category
    Categories are like front-of-the-book table-of-contents, or file folder tabs.  They are used to organize
  • Tags! and what they’re used for:
    Tags are managed through this page:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=post_tag
    Tags are used to provide extra key words for a post, that may not necessarily be used in the post itself.  They can also be used like categories to retrieve all posts that are tagged with the given term.  The former reason is probably the most important, since this will help on search.  The latter is often used to extract and organize pages, much like categories, but I’d recommend avoiding using them for that purpose.
  • Missing  pictures in the blogger import:
    Many pictures could not be imported from the blogger account.  I’ve imported all of the posts that were there.  This was done awhile ago for testing purposes and will be re-done right before launch.  I used another plugin to search the posts and finid all blogger-urls (for images and such) and retrieve images and copy them into the BRAF WordPress site.  In some cases, this was not successful.  We will need to review the posts (~850) after launch and bring the missing images down as they are found.
  • Configuring the calendar plugin:
    STILL TO DO

Sample/Demo pages:

Templates:

  • Templates are used on WordPress to define the look-and-feel of a page.  A default template is assigned to each page, with special templates assigned as needed.  Templates can also be functional code that the server implements when a particular URL is visited.  Here are the templates used on the BRAF site:
  • BRAF Home Page:
    Is used to define the look-and-feel of the homepage
  • BRAF Grantee/Project page:
    Is used to define the look-and-feel of a Grantee/Project page.  There is a sample page at http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/demo-and-test-pages/sample-grantee-project-page and note that the displayed title is always “Grantee Projects” and the page title is output with a heading level of h2, in a contrasting color, right below “Grantee Projects”
  • BRAF Excerpt-only Index Page:
    Is used to generate an index page, useful for search results and grantee and project pages (section header pages that have multipe subpages) that displays a short excerpt and possible featured image.  Similar to the news and featured items on the right-hand side of the home page.
  • BRAF Subscription Handling Proxy:
    Is used by all pages that process the subscribe/join form and stores the information into a database table.  For example, look at this page: http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/about/get-involved or this page: http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/volunteer-2/subscribe
    These pages contain forms that direct the form input to the BRAF subscription handling proxy, which then collects the data and stores it into the database.  Please look at this form.  And let me know which fields are mandatory and which checkboxes should be checked by default.
  • BRAF Export Subscribers Page
    Is available to admins and named persons only and when visited will download an Excel spreadsheet of all of the subscriber information: http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/tools/download-subscribers
    Note that this page and the Subscription Handling Proxy are all under the ‘Tools’ page (see the page tree view note at the top of this note).

Tool Pages:

  • Download Subscribers
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/tools/download-subscribers
    which will download an Excel spreadsheet of all of the subscribe/join form content
    (note that this is only available to admin users and users whose names are added to the custom field for the page with the name ‘listsubscribers’.  The current authority list is: eli,josie,barbarino,silvia

Administration:

  • Use of WTC text widget and widget logic:
    TO WRITE UP
  • The php error log
    Is located in the dashboard.  This gives me a quick view of any code errors that need to be fixed. Once in production, if there is a large number of errors in this viewport, please let me know.
  • Automated backup (BackWPup):
    The contents of the BRAF website, including theme and style files, and a database dump, are all compressed and uploaded to Burning Man’s Amazon S3 account on a daily basis while we are under development.  Once we are in production, this backup will be switched to a weekly schedule.
  • Comment/spam handling:
    Provided by the Antispam Bee plugin.  Usage documentation here:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/antispam-bee/
    Settings are specified here:
    http://bmbraf.wpengine.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=antispam_bee
    The BRAF site is configured to hold spam, undeleted, for 30 days and then delete it.

Common errors:

  • Do not cut and paste from a web page into the visual mode of the editor.  Use the T button in the visual editor to strip all markup from content in the clipboard before pasting into a new page or post.
  • Do not add your own <div> tags unless you really know what you’re doing.  You’ll probably mess up the entire site.