I Am Blogie

In continuing my advocacy for the adoption of the world’s #1 blogging sofware & CMS across Mindanao, I’ll be conducting an advanced training seminar on the deployment, utilization & management of WordPress this 25th of July (Saturday) at Cagayan de Oro City.

Specifically, the following are the topics to be covered:

• WP installation & maintenance
• Web hosting fundamentals for proper WP deployment
• Understanding WP theme templates
• Choosing & managing useful WP plugins
• Managing content on WP
  • Recommended usage of categories & tags
  • Publishing best practices
  • Fundamental SEO techniques
• Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense (for confirmation)

Cagayan de Oro is a wired city, with lots of free-wifi hotspots all over the place, and a growing number of bloggers and online content writers — the perfect setting for promoting the use of the most flexible content management engine there is. Moreover, the city is the appointed host of the 3rd Mindanao Bloggers Summit, which will be happening on 24 October 2009.

The WP training seminar will be held at Coffee Works, from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. (Please bookmark this post for updates.)

Registration fee is ₱500 per person (to be collected at the door on the seminar date). Please click here to sign up!

I look forward to meeting with the CDO Bloggers very soon!

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

This is especially useful for corporate or community websites that make use of WordPress as a content management system: a custom login / registration page for your WordPress-powered site. For websites with multiple authors or subscribers who log in to the dashboard a lot, don’t you think the default login screen below is rather bland?

If you agree with me, then it’s time to skin that screen, and get something like this:

Think “branding” and “user experience”.

For some of my WordPress deployments, I now use the plugin called, aptly enough, Theme My Login. What it does is, it replaces the default WP login page with your active theme’s page template, where it embeds the login or registration interface. The new look and feel of your site’s login screen will surely build more loyalty and promote a feel good experience among your subscribers.

The plugin’s compatible with WP2.8, and lets you define the messages that appear on the customized page. I just wish that the plugin author would add more options in succeeding updates. For sure, the ability to apply layout settings and stuff, without having to do code, will be most welcome to plenty of end users.

Still, this plugin is much better than Register Plus, a similar plugin that I’d written about before. It even generates a widget for you to put a login box on your sidebar. When logged in, the widget can show your Gravatar and links to the dashboard, etc.

Have fun with your login pages!

[Updated: 2 July 2009]

Two seminars on WordPress will be held this month in Davao City. One is for bloggers, and the other one is for Web developers who are looking into using WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

Here are the schedules:

Lane Systems locator map

Seminar 1: WordPress as CMS

Date: 3 July 2009 (Friday)

Time: 5:00 – 8:00 P.M.

Venue: Lane Systems conference room, Wheels n’ More Drive, J.P. Laurel Ave., Bajada, Davao City (in the compound where Urban Club & AutoShop are located)

Fee: ₱450 per person

This seminar will tackle the fundamentals of the WordPress engine: the templating system; built-in PHP functions for delivering & manipulating content; design elements; introduction to theme & plugin design. Installation and maintenance best practices will also be included. Prerequisites: PHP, XHTML & CSS.

PhilNITS locator map

Seminar 2: WordPress for Bloggers

Date: 4 July 2009 (Saturday)

Time: 2:00 – 6:00 P.M.

Venue: PhilNITS Lab, 5/F Mintrade Bldg, Monteverde cor. Sales Sts. (this is the building where DTI-11 is located; at the ground floor is PNB)

Fee: ₱300 per person  |  Student rate: ₱150

The seminar for bloggers will feature advanced coverage on WordPress deployment & utilization: how to make the most out of your self-hosted WordPress installation. Important topics: theme management; plugin management; SEO basics; introduction to the world of server hosting. Bonus topic: AdSense integration and optimization, c/o Lyle Santos.

The seminar fees will go towards renting of the venue and cost of materials. Payment will be collected at the door.

To join either of the seminars (or both), please register by fillling out this form.

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

WordPress 2.7, which introduced major changes to the platform’s core, was released only recently, and now there’s another significant upgrade on the horizon: version 2.8. It’s still fresh in beta 1 status (Matt hasn’t even chosen a jazz musician to name it after yet).

Still, WP2.8 is already looking to be a very welcome upgrade. Number one on the list: automatic theme installations. I’m beta testing it now, and the built-in theme installer seems to be working just fine. Much like the automatic plugin installation functionality, the theme installer lets you search for themes (that exist in the WordPress.org directory) from within your dashboard, and get your chosen theme up & running in no time. The theme search facility is pretty accurate, too. You can search by keyword, tag, and/or author, either by manually entering the keywords or selecting predefined values.

There is also a way for you to upload and install theme .zip files that are already sitting in your hard drive. No need to go to your web host’s control panel file manager any longer. Whew! Now that’s what I call a content management system to beat!

More on WP as a serious CMS: themes templates and plugin codes are now presented to you in technicolor. OK kidding aside, editing theme templates are now easier on the eyes because of what Automattic calls CodePress syntax highlighting. It’s now easier to sift through templates’ codes, thanks to basic color differentiation of PHP, HTML and normal text. Nothing like what you might expect in industry-strength code editors, but it’s a start.

All in all, WP2.8 will be a major enhancement and a collection of bug fixes and security patches — all in the effort to make using WordPress much more user-friendly and yet powerful. Here’s a list of the new features we can expect from this upcoming upgrade. Can’t wait for the final release!