NASA GRC WordPress Users Guide

Recommended Plugins for NASA GRC WordPress Theme

Joe Banks — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:38:50 +0000

The following is a list of WordPress plugins that we use regularly with our WordPress NASA GRC Theme. Most of the plug-ins can be found, reviewed (and installed) by doing a search for their name right within WordPress administration via Plugins > Add New (*).

Clicking on a link below goes to the plugin author’s site; but if you require more information about a plugin, we recommend going first to the WordPress Plugins Repository directly and doing a name search there, or reviewing via Plugins > Add New, as mentioned above.

(*) Notes

We also use EventCalendar3 (modified version, for adding a calendar date to posts), WP-Super Cache (to improve performance of higher-traffic sites), and cforms (for complex form building).
The latest versions of Dagon Design SiteMap Generator and cForms, can only be downloaded at the authors’ sites, unfortunately.
We will also be recommending now recommend the External Links plugin, to save time by automatically tagging external links for policy compliance, once we finish now that we’ve finished modifying it to be more Section 508 compliant and work properly with the nasa.gov domain.

Admin Management Xtended 2.0.3
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
WordPress 2.7+ only. Extends admin functionalities by introducing: toggling post/page visibility inline, changing page order with drag’n'drop, inline category management, inline tag management, changing publication date inline, changing post slug inline, toggling comment status open/closed, hide draft posts, change media order, change media description inline, toggling link visibility, changing link categories

All in One SEO Pack 1.6.8
» Michael Torbert (url)
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. Options configuration panel | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist

Auto Thickbox 2.0
» Denis de Bernardy (url)
Automatically enables thickbox on thumbnail images (i.e. opens the images in a fancy pop-up).

Better Plugin Compatibility Control 1.0.1
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
Adds version compatibility info to the plugins page to inform the admin at a glance if a plugin is compatible with the current WP version.

Breadcrumb NavXT 3.3.0
» John Havlik (url)
Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor's path to their current location. For details on how to use this plugin visit Breadcrumb NavXT.

Broken Link Checker 0.6.5
» Janis Elsts (url)
Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.

Cleaner Gallery 0.7
» Justin Tadlock (url)
This plugin replaces the default gallery feature with a valid XHTML solution and offers support for multiple Lightbox-type image scripts.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator 3.17
» Dagon Design (url)
Generates a fully customizable sitemap

Enable Media Replace 1.2
» Måns Jonasson (url)
Enable replacing media files by uploading a new file in the “Edit Media” section of the WordPress Media Library.

External Links (NASA Mod) 4.0.2
» Denis de Bernardy (url)
Marks outbound links as such, with various effects that are configurable under Settings / External Links.

Google XML Sitemaps 3.1.9
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page

Page Links To 2.1
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.

pageMash 1.3.0
» Joel Starnes (url)
Manage your multitude of pages with pageMash’s slick drag-and-drop style, ajax interface. Allows quick sorting, hiding and organising of parenting.

Piwik Analytics 0.9.1
» Jules Stuifbergen (url)
This plugin makes it simple to add Piwik Analytics code to your blog

PJW Mime Config 0.91
» Peter Westwood (url)
Allows you to extend the list of mime-types supported by the builtin uploader.

Redirection 2.1.22
» John Godley (url)
Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors

Register Plus 3.5.1
» Skullbit (url)
WordPress 2.5+ ONLY. Enhance your Registration Page. Add Custom Logo, Password Field, Invitation Codes, Disclaimer, Captcha Validation, Email Validation, User Moderation, Profile Fields and more.

Reveal IDs for WP Admin 1.1.2
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
WordPress 2.5+ only. Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See Options Page for options and information.

Scissors 1.3.3
» Stephan Reiter (url)
Scissors enhances WordPress’ handling of images by introducing cropping, resizing, rotating, and watermarking functionality.

Search Regex 1.4.9
» John Godley (url)
Adds search & replace functionality across posts, pages, comments, and meta-data, with full regular expression support

Search Unleashed 1.0.5
» John Godley (url)
Advanced search engine that provides full text searching across posts, pages, comments, titles, and URLs. Searches take into account any data added by other plugins, and all search results are contextually highlighted. You can also highlight incoming searches from popular search engines.

Subpage View 1.0.0
» Henrik Urlund (url)
A plugin for showing subpages on a given page. Insert into MCE by using [subpage-view attributes] an example [subpage-view depth="1"]. View WordPress Codex for shortcode help. A CodeWork plugin for WordPress.

Subscribe2 5.1
» Matthew Robinson (url)
Notifies an email list when new entries are posted. For support visit the Subscribe2 forum.

TinyMCE Advanced 3.2.4
» Andrew Ozz (url)
Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE.

WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

The latest versions of

Modification to TinyMCE for Spellchecking Behind Proxy

Joe Banks — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:14:14 +0000

1. TinyMCE, WordPress’ built-in visual editor isn’t discovering the NASA proxy (via http.php). Therefore, when upgrading to a new version of WordPress, be sure to change setting in following file to use the internal PSpell spellchecker rather than going outside the proxy to use the Google spellchecker:

/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/config.php

Uncomment out PSpell and comment out GoogleSpell:

// $config['general.engine'] = ‘GoogleSpell’;
$config['general.engine'] = ‘PSpell’;

Resolving Issue with Pasting from Word into TinyMCE Visual Editor, Extra Style Information

Joe Banks — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:11:26 +0000

Users who have pasted from Microsoft Word or HTML directly into TinyMCE Advanced visual editor window, without first clicking either of the “Paste from Word” or “Paste as Plain Text” buttons, have discovered a lot of confusing, Word-specific styling info carried over into your content. See example below. Skipping either of these “paste” buttons is easy to do, even for longtime GRC WordPress users.

What we ideally want to achieve is for users to get at least one of the above two button behaviors if the user pastes directly into the visual editor.

Note: This solution was for WordPress 2.7x and an earlier version of TinyMCE Advanced. Please see comments below for any updates regarding WordPress 2.8x and above.

Resolution: By changing both instances of the value “paste_auto_cleanup_on_paste” from “false” to “true” in the following WordPress file,

/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/paste/editor_plugin.js

we achieved the following button behavior, when pasting from Word directly into the visual editor, using the following browsers (on Windows, but we suspect these browsers will behave the same way in Linux or Apple):

Internet Explorer 7: “Paste fromWord.” To “Paste as Plain Text,” you must first select that button.
Firefox, Safari, Opera: “Pastes as Plain Text” dialog box opens; you must then paste again. To “Paste from Word,” you must first select that buton.

Sample of Styling Information Pasted from Microsoft Word

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Subpage View Plugin Allows Easy, Dynamic Child Page Listings

Joe Banks — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:13:50 +0000

The Subpage View plug-in, installed on GRC WordPress sites, uses WordPress shortcode [external] functionality to easily list sub pages (children of a parent page, a.k.a. pages that appear under a page in the navigation) in any Page or Post.

This shortcode can be placed anywhere in your text (preferably on its own, separate line) in either the visual or HTML editor, and it displays the pages as a bulleted list. Since this shortcode is a function, it will dynamically update the list as you update your Page arrangement (by adding Pages in the navigation, changing Page order, etc.)

A Few Notes Before We Show Some Examples

Shortcode: A special command that WordPress understands and processes, which you place in brackets like this “[ something ]” in the Visual or HTML editor in order to tell WordPress to do something.
Note: There should be no space after the opening bracket or before the closing bracket when you actually use the shortcode. The space is added in the examples below so you can actually see the shortcode used. Be sure to delete these extra spaces if you cut and paste the code below.

Why Use This?

The simplest example is below, say, if you need to list all underlying projects Pages on the Projects page without having to update the list as you add new projects, like so:

Our Current Projects

Project ABC
Project 123
Project Third
… List dynamically updates as you update pages, thereby saving you site maintenance time.

Common Usage Examples

[ subpage-view ]
Lists all subpages of the page the shortcode is placed on.

Looks like this:

[ subpage-view depth="1" ]
List subpages of only the first level. A depth of “2″ would go two levels deep.

Looks like this:

[ subpage-view depth="1" title_li="My Sub Pages" ]
One level deep and puts the list under a “My Sub Pages:” list item.

Looks like this:

My Sub Pages

[ subpage-view depth="1" child_of="203" ]
List subpages, one level deep, for the page with ID#203. (You can find the ID number of a Page on the Administration page: Pages > Edit)

Looks like this:

Also: You can exclude any page by simply adding exclude=”#,#” inside the shortcode, where the # are the numbers of the Page ID, separated by a comma. For example, using the example above, [ subpage-view child_of="203" exclude="297" ].

Looking for more variables? Consult the WordPress.org documentation on the wp_list_pages function.

Contemplating WordPress 2.8 upgrade, TinyMCE Advanced Plugin

Joe Banks — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:19:07 +0000

You may have seen that WordPress has been upgraded to 2.8. Will we upgrade? Not at the moment. We’ve found it pays to wait until a 2.x.1 or 2.x.2 version to begin fully weighing the benefits of the upgrade and to begin testing the core plugins we use here. We skipped the entire 2.5 versions and found it to be very worthwhile to just wait.

The key benefits to 2.8 we see are an overall optimized performance and better widget usage. The NASA theme we use isn’t overly widgetized to warrant the upgrade, but we do look forward to the speed increase.

In the meantime, we have found that TinyMCE Advanced visual editor enhancement plugin has been upgraded to 3.2.4 (we use 3.2.0); however, that is a 2.8-only version. Automatic installs of the TinyMCE Advanced plugin will result in installation the 3.2.4 version. You can do a manual install, by downloading the 3.2 zip file from the WordPress repository locally to your computer and from the Add New/Install Plugins page, follow the instructions from the page where it reads, “Install a plugin in .zip format.”

Google Gears Appears to Crash Firefox

Joe Banks — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:43:02 +0000

If you decided to install the Google Gears add-on for Firefox to enhance the speed of using WordPress, you may be experiencing crashes when uploading photos or files or attempting to install plugin upgrades. If this occurs, please simply uninstall Google Gears from Firefox. This occurs while using Firefox 3.0.10.

We haven’t noticed a significant speed increase in using Google Gears with WordPress to warrant keeping it installed for the moment. A WordPress support item (#267278) is currently following the issue.

Photo Gallery Tutorial

Joe Banks — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:21:01 +0000

WordPress 2.7+ includes the ability to render a photo gallery very easily, based on the images you have uploaded to a particular Post or Page.

Here’s how.

Quick Summary

1. Place your cursor on a separate line in the text editor where you want the gallery to go.

2. Upload all your photos into a particular page via the built-in WordPress image uploader, as seen below:

3. Order the images via the image uploader interface (see below).

4. While still in the uploader interface, select the following options under Gallery:

Link Thumbnails to: Image File (Choose “Attachment Page” if you’re not using Thickbox capability)
Order Images by: Menu Order (Choose “Name” or “Date/Time” for an alternate order)
Order: Ascending
Gallery Columns: 3 (3 is the default and is generally the best option for the NASA GRC WordPress Theme.)

5. Save or publish the page and preview it.

Bonus: After you have performed the above, whenever you add/update any of your Page or Post images via the WordPress image uploader, the gallery is automatically updated!

Demonstration

Notes:

For customization of the Gallery display, such as how many columns (the default number of columns is 3) or how to display a photo gallery from another Post or Page, refer to the Gallery Shortcode overview on WordPress.org
We also support the use of the Cleaner Gallery plugin to clean up the rendered code to be more accessible and to automatically integrate the Thickbox capabilities built into WordPress.
Wishlist
- The ability to customize the photos included in the Gallery so it’s not just all or nothing. Adding the “gallery” shortcode will add all photos attached to that post or page to your gallery.
Note: Two visual editors are currently being used by NASA GRC WordPress websites: CK Editor and TinyMCE Advanced (the latter which provides extra functions to the visual editor built into WordPress, TinyMCE). The CK Editor works differently in how images are inserted and their attributes edited after insertion; if you don’t get anticipated results as shown above when working with galleries and image insertion with the CK Editor, we recommend switching to TinyMCE Advanced.

Upgrade to WordPress 2.7.x/2.6.5 in Progress

Joe Banks — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:12:07 +0000

We are currently working to done with the upgrade of GRC WordPress sites to either the latest version 2.7.x or prior version 2.6.5, depending on the compatibility of the plug-ins on which the WordPress site is dependent.

If your site does not require a great deal of plug-in functionality, then we recommend going straight to 2.7.x from your current version. Josh has completed updates to make this version work behind/through the NASA proxy, and he finished programming updates to the NASA Affinity 2005 WordPress Theme to make it 2.7.x functional.

We recommend WordPress 2.7.x for the overall enhanced usability of its administration interface. Video help files on WordPress.tv also correspond to this version. Additionally, plug-in updating is made fully functional behind the NASA proxy as well; we’ve observed that proxy support has been addressed in 2.7.x and more fully in the forthcoming 2.8.

Meanwhile, a number of weeks ago I finished updating the theme to take advantage of the full range of possibilities of using WordPress Posts (and the ease of creating dynamic/customized content based on Categories or Tags), rather than relying heavily on static Pages for content. This was done by simply utilizing all the theme files that are included in the most recent Sandbox theme, on which the NASA Affinity 2005 WordPress Theme relies.

Overall, Josh and I feel the above changes will make the process of keeping up with new WordPress versions much more rapid.

Note: Some work will need to be done on the comments portion of the NASA theme with how it displays threaded comments; if your site relies heavily on commenting, you’ll still see user comments correctly, but the site won’t take full advantage of how threaded comments are displayed.

Update to Issues and Changes with Upgrading NASA WordPress Theme to WordPress 2.3

Joe Banks — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:21:18 +0000

Regarding previous post about WordPress 2.3 issues.

TinyMCE Advanced 2.1: A simple reset of the CSS styles from within the TinyMCE Advanced management page will fix the page-rendering issues when using the TinyMCE Advanced editor: To fix, access the Tiny MCE Advanced settings via “Manage > TinyMCE Advanced,” then select the checkbox next to “If the editor doesn’t look right, reset some of the CSS styles,” then select the “Save” button. Also refer to this graphic (TinyMCE Advanced 2.1 Reset Illustration) for a quick visual guide. We still recommend being careful when editing/re-editing complex tables. Feedback on this table issue is welcome.
WP Last Posts 1.1: We will continue to use the old version (1.0) of this plugin for the time being. Be sure to use the version that Josh configured for this site until a more elegant solution is devised for including posts on a static homepage. To get a copy of the 1.0 version of the plugin, download WP Last Posts 1.0 Revised and install.
News a.k.a. Posts Page, including Archives, Categories and Search Pages: The issue where the left navigation disappears on these pages has been fixed in the new version of the theme (now revised to version NASA GRC WordPress Theme (for 2.3) 1.2).

Issues and Changes with Upgrading NASA WordPress Theme to WordPress 2.3

Joe Banks — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:26:15 +0000

The following issues have been found when upgrading the NASA WordPress template to WordPress 2.3. With the upgrade to 2.3, all plugins were also updated to their most recent versions, based on recommendations provided on the WordPress.org site and respective plugin sites. (This NASA GRC WordPress site will be upgraded after issues have been resolved.)

TinyMCE Advanced Plugin (v 2.1): The content form area takes on the background color of the body (black); hence, editing text is made impossible. We currently recommend turning the plugin off. With the table editing function now unavailable, however, we’ve also found that existing tables do not get “wiped” or irreversibly/destructively altered when editing a page with a complex table. Current Recommendation: Keep the plug-in deactivated until further notice, and edit data tables in a separate HTML editor (then paste into your WordPress site). Most other common editing functions are available in the built-in editor. Update/Resolution: Upgrade to v 2.2)

Breadcrumb Navigation XT (v 1.10.0): This plugin has been updated for WordPress 2.3 and the plugin’s administration options now work correctly, so the specific programming to get this plugin to work correctly in the NASA WordPress theme has been removed from the 2.3 theme. The simple, basic usage found on the Breadcrumb Navigation XT website should suffice. However, the plugin’s administration options will need to be documented to ease both creation of new sites and configuration of existing ones. Screenshots to ease configuration will appear here shortly in the documentation section. Update/Resolution: Upgrade to latest version of plugin.
WP Lasts Posts (v 1.1): The new version no longer insert posts inside a page. The plugin now provides a template tag instead to put inside the “Landing Page” template. However, both this version and the previous version do not work with WordPress 2.3 in the NASA WordPress theme. We will take a look at revising this plugin (again!) or looking at alternate options. I suspect that the current version simply needs the code tweaked to a) work with the “Landing Page” template page and b) the code cleaned up to not break the page. Update: Investigating alternate solution with new version of plugin.
News a.k.a. Posts Page, including Archives, Categories and Search Pages: Navigation disappears or other errors. Currently investigating. Update: Fixed in theme.