Bridge your WordPress Blog with a Simple Machines Forum is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have a few websites built using WordPress as my CMS but there is one feature WordPress is lacking and that’s a decent forum for robust discussion on topics with features like file sharing and all the other wonderful toys bulletin boards have to offer. BBpress.org is weak at best and not even compliant with the latest version of WordPress.

I have been using Simple Machines Forum for my message boards for over 2 years now and it’s a wicked piece of software you can download for free and build a great website with. I love the admin features you find in SMF and I really like the packages feature that allows you to so easily add on features and even updates. Downloading new packages and adding a new feature to your forum has never been easier and the online template mods make site changes fast and easy. The ease of use and numerous features has allowed me to make some heavy modifications to my default forum installations.

One of my favorite mods is to combine my two favorite site building software applications using some modified software bridges to join them. The first is a WordPress plugin that merges the WordPress login and creates a new forum member for each blog user who to join. The combined accounts allow one login to post comments on the blog and topics in the forum. This plugin is the one I use to bridge my WordPress blog users and SMF forum members but its modified using some tips I got here in the SMF forums and it only works by using the SMF_WordPress package installed in your forum that you can download here.

This setup allows my members to use both sections of the site with one login but they do still have two profile pages. The bridge links select fields from the WordPress users page with the SMF members profile. The SMF profile has more options but with a little custom coding you can add these to your WordPress blog and create a very customized look.

This worked fine for me until I came to realize that what I really wanted was for each new blog post to have a forum topic for discussion of each article and to handle comments from the blog. I found a plugin for wordpress that does just that and now I am hoping to have it customized to do even more. The SMF Commenter takes each new post from your blog and creates a new topic for your forum so long as they are installed in the same local database. It creates a link back between the post and the topic and helps move traffic from both sides of the site. I’m hoping to show the discussion of each topic on the blog home page with some future modifications but for now I have to settle for a simple link between the two.

It is however really nice to have the automatic topic creation for each new post. This only works on posts made from within WordPress Admin. If I make a post using something like Performancing for Firefox then I have to save it as a draft and then manually post from within WordPress to get the plugin to create the topic but that’s good enough for the sites I have that need this.

If you have any other ideas on integrating WordPress and Simple Machines please make a comment and let me know.

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WordPress blogs for musicians is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I’ve been building a lot of blogs lately with great success on most of my sites. I’ve been able to use them to kick start a number of new websites and boost traffic to what used to be some parked domains.

I started to work with some musicians here in Jamaica that were in need of more than a website. I’m hoping to use the blog as a communication platform for a group of Jamaican musicians who want to post their music, videos as well as sell music online. The music selling is going to be a trick I think but I’ll get to it over the next few weeks.

The first three sites are still in early content stages and I am hoping to have the artists and their fans help us with the content development because I simply cannot do it myself. My first blog was for my bredren Ras Slick who turned out to be a much better performer than I expected. His live shows are great and he has a way with the crowd that seems to set him above so many other musicians around here.

I’m looking for the best solution to allow music downloads from these blogs. Anyone got a tip on the ebst way to sell mp3 files in a wordpress blog?

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WordPress 2.3.1 in review is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have been using WordPress since Version 1.5 but most of my blogs were installed as 2.04. With the recent upgrade released I though it was time to upgrade some of my blogs. I have since moved ahead with updating them all as it was pretty simple really. No, I have not done this one yet but thats for other reasons. I have some custom work I’m working on before I upgrade this blog. Upgrading the others has opened up some pretty neat features and made me lose one plugin I really liked. I was really surprised to see whats happened with Ulitimeate Tag Warrior a former must have WordPress plugin and no longer operating under 2.3 because of the built in support for tags one assumes.

Aside from losing such a cool plugin everything else was great and the new software seems much better. I don;t know if it’s me but it seems posting is smoother and I get less errors or timeouts on my customized blogs. I added some new plugins to my list of faves and I’ll have to write some more about them soon. All in all I think WordPress 2.3.1 is a vast improvement over 2.04 and well worth the trouble for one or even 100 blogs.

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Switching from Photoshop to GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

In my quest to convert to all open source applications for running my business I seem to have overlooked one key software application that although did not cost me anything other than some time does in fact come at a hefty price to registered users. Adobe Photoshop has been a mainstay graphics manipulation program for web developers for a long time and will remain such but there are many alternatives taht are worth looking at and the leading open source graphics package is GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program.

GIMP was designed as an open source graphics application for Unix based systems but has been ported to run on my windows machine courtesy of some fans at Sourceforge. I installed it and it’s a very smooth running program with loads of tools and an easy replacement for Photoshop if like me you barely use all the features in it anyway. I don’t think it will be difficult at all to switch over full time but I’ll have to uninstall Photoshop first or I’ll never start using GIMP as I want to.

It looks like the project has some serious support and I expect things will get better fast. There are already a number of plugins available and it should be nice to see what comes with further development.

GIMP – Introduction

Introduction to the GIMP

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be  augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Features and Capabilities

This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features.

• Painting
  
  • Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
  • Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
  • Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
  • Supports custom brushes and patterns

• System
  
  • Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
  • Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time

• Advanced Manipulation
  
  • Full alpha channel support
  • Layers and channels
  • Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
  • Editable text layers
  • Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
  • Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy and intelligent
  • Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
  • Transformable paths, transformable selections.
  • Quickmask to paint a selection.

• Extensible
  
  • A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
  • Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
  • Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats
    and new effect filters
  • Over 100 plug-ins already available

• Animation
  
  • Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
  • MNG support
  • Frame Navigator (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Onion Skin (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)

• File Handling
  
  • File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
  • Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
  • SVG path import/export

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Open source development for educational purposes is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have begun to really consider my use of open source software and my desire to go totally open source at some point in the future. I’m planning a working vacation to Jamaica beginning on June 1 and I planned to take a computer with me to show some kids how to build webpages and put themselves and their communities on the web. I’d like to grab a few dozen cheap digital cameras and turn them all into vloggerrs but that’s another dream.

For now I think I plan to show them some basic web access and development using open source tools such as OpenOffice.org and NVU HTMl editor. I think a basic intro to web browsing with Firefox and the use of extensions will for the base and then I’ll show them some basic coding with the html from websites we visit. The whole idea has me thinking about my move from Microsoft based operating system to a free OS like Ubuntu. I really want to learn more and offer a totally open source development platform for my business but I think I’ll need a windows machine for quite some time just to cover some of my windows software needs for the office.

Any thoughts on a Ubuntu laptop for my business needs?

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Custom Joomla templates make your website look professional is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

Building websites is now easier than ever before and all the tools you need to design, develop and even market a great website are available for free online. Website software applications run from simple html generator sites with simple standardized templates to more complex software and content management systems (CMS) which have become so popular recently. Building a robust full featured website is pretty easy with the CMS software programs available and the level of tools and modules available make them very popular with webmasters looking for a fast easy to build and manage software application.

Joomla is one of the webs most powerful and popular open source content management systems with literally  million websites using the popular software package. Joomla offers a novice webmaster a sure stable development platform for building large scale websites with easy to manage tools.

One draw back to CMS software programs is that many of the sites developed use default templates and begin to all look alike. Building a professional looking website with customized templates on popular CMS systems such as Joomla are taking over the basic template look of so many websites online. Custom Joomla Templates will help distinguish your website with a unique look that follows your websites own branding and allows your viewers to remember your site on return visits. The trouble is that not all of us are able to build a custom Joomla template and this is the reason so many websites are stuck with the same templates.

Now we have the ClubTVK Joomla Template Kit which includes over 500 great templates plus a fantastic 91 page e-book detailing in 5 easy steps how to create your own Joomla templates. If you’re serious about building a great Joomla website then be sure to check out the template kit from ClubTVK.com

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The Wonders of WordPress is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I built my first WordPress blog just a few short months back. I’ve had a blogger account up for a couple years now but I never built my own custom blog configuration. With some of my sites I even use blogger to upload files direct to my own domain but I never realized the power in installing my own WordPress blog until I got into ZuneMAX.com. This site grew fast and I know that the tools I used in the blog we’re an important part of it’s success and growth. With this site I have developed WordPress more into a Content Management System (CMS) by adding features such as the SimpleMachines.org forum and the CopperMine Gallery scripts. I’ll write more about those integrations at a later time but for now let me tell you why I love WordPress.

I guess the first things one notices with WordPress is just how easy it makes web publishing. I built my first website in 1997 and since those days it has become almost too easy for anyone to publish anything online. The rise of the blogosphere and power wielded by elite bloggers has been awesome. Bloggers have struck fear in the ruling power structure. Newspapers ar eon edge over lost strength in news and politicians ar flipping over what the influence bloggers have on elections. I don’t fancy myself a powerful blogger or political activist but I do understand business and WordPress is a business tool for me.

I have taken this free blogging software and adapted it to my own needs with a variety of free plugins from WordPress developers and the community as a whole. Another piece of beautiful open source software has established a strong business site for me at little or no cost beyond my time and efforts. I have learned quite a bit about web development in the past few months just by playing around with this tool and all it’s wonderful features. I think the SEO advantages to running a WordPress blog are worth the time and learning curve on their own. Built in features such as SEO friendly "PermaLinks" and "RSS Feeds" have shown a great benefit in getting the site spidered and content indexed properly. The Google Sitemap plugin and Ultimate Tag Warrior are awesome and powerful tools you can pick up for free on the web.

I’ll be going into much greater detail with the WordPress tools and Plugins tips on this blog for some time to come. I now feel comfortable with all the built in features and I’ll go over use of those some more but it’s the customization that makes this software so awesome and that’s what we’ll be showcasing here soon.

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Affordable Web Pro is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

Affordable Web Pro has been about affordable website development and marketing services since 1999. In that time this site has undergone many changes. Today we announce yet one more change and a new direction for AffordableWebPro.com in general. The old site is gone and has been replaced by this WordPress Blog you see before you. This new blog will showcase the development of the Affordable Web Pro network of websites and the tips adn tricks we use to make affordable websites.

Our primary focus will be on open source development platforms and scripts and aoftware used to power the Affordable Web Pro Network. Stay tuned to some great tips and articles on PHP, MYSql, WordPress, SMF and so manyother great open source projects.

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