Fun times working at the coffee shop

One of the last times we will all be physically in the same place. Good times.

Selling my entire collection of Wired Magazine, including most issue from September 1999 through June 2009. Page through 10 years of cool technology, neat ideas and interesting ads. Wired is jam-packed full of good graphic design ideas. Individual back copies sell on eBay between $4.99 and $17.99.

To make an offer, call (314) 477-4529. Starting offer is $160 or best offer. Need to sell by end of June, 2009 due to move.

For sale: Mint condition copy of the October 2008 SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION of Esquire Magazine that features an animated e-ink cover graphic.

Bid on it on Ebay here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180366379500

Click here to donate now

I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of our Vogon Poetry application for iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get it in the App Store for $2.99.

Click here to check it out!

Finally I’m going to SXSW in Austin, TX this year. Now I get to be one of the cool kids. Or something like that.

Pictures from the trip:

Quite excellent music video featuring space invaders and happy blip blops. Thanks to Kevin for pointing it out.

Widows are the typographic term for a single word on a line at the end of a paragraph. I thought about the solution to this problem (basically add a non-breaking space before the last word of a paragraph) and then realized probably someone had written a plugin to do exactly this.

I tried two different plugins and like this one the best because it doesn’t overwrite the rest of the excellent WordPress typographic niceties like converting straight quotes to curly quotes:

Widon’t Download latest version here

One of the neat things about WordPress is how easy it is to add custom metadata to a given page or post that you can then use in a template to display structured information. I’ve been using this technique for a while now to extend the basic WordPress elements of title, body, excerpt, etc and allow the creation of easily editable information-rich content.

Before now I’ve used the built-in WordPress Custom Field functionality in the Add New screen where you select previously created custom fields from a drop-down list that is limited to only showing 30 items. This is quite cumbersome as you have select each field you want to add to the entry and enter the value, click the Add Custom Field button, then repeat for however many custom fields you want to use. Needless to say, this can be frustrating to have to remember to do every time, especially for non-technical clients.

The Old Way:

During a recent site conversion to WordPress that involves 4-6 custom fields for each post, we finally decided that there must be a better way, and ended up finding a WordPress plugin that is so good that it should probably be added to WordPress core, it is so highly useful. The plugin is called Custom Field Template and is developed by Hiroaki Miyashita.

The New Way:

Using a simple set of options to define the template you want to use is easy. After downloading and activating the plugin, go to Settings > Custom Field Template to define your template. One is provided for you to show you the possible template values. You can set up two separate custom field template designs.

This is the code used to generate the Custom Field Template form shown in the screenshot above:

Template Instruction

<strong>Story Template Metadata Instructions <em>(All fields are optional)</em></strong><br /><br />
1. Use this form to enter metadata about this story.<br />
2. Each item will get assigned to the correct Custom Field for use in the display template.<br />
3. Click the <strong>Save</strong> button to save the values.<br />
<br />

Template Content

[summary_deck]
type = textarea
rows = 3
cols = 50
label = Summary Deck:

[byline_writer_name]
type = text
size = 35
label = Byline Writer Name:

[byline_writer_title]
type = text
size = 35
label = Byline Writer Title:

[byline_writer_picture_url]
type = text
size = 54
label = Byline Writer Picture URL:

[lead_photo_caption]
type = textarea
rows = 3
cols = 50
label = Lead Photo Caption:

[lead_photo_credit]
type = text
size = 35
label = Lead Photo Credit:

[lead_photo_url]
type = text
size = 54
label = Lead Photo URL:

Then set this setting to true by checking the box to make the form look prettier:

Next, I tweaked the Admin CSS settings to right-justify the labels:

#cft dl { clear:both; margin:0; padding:0; width:100%; }
#cft dt { float:left; font-weight:bold; margin:0; padding: 0 8px 0 0; text-align:right; width: 20%; }
#cft dt .hideKey { visibility:hidden; }
#cft dd { float:left; margin:0; text-align:left; width:70%; }
#cft dd p.label { font-weight:bold; margin:0; }
#cft_instruction { margin:10px; }


Click Update Options to save the settings and then go to Posts > Add New to see the form in action. You may need to go back and forth a couple of times to get your text field sizes just right and to put them in the right order you want them in.

Using the Custom Fields in a template

So how do these values get displayed on your page?

Simply edit your template PHP file to look for custom field values and then display them where you want them if they’re present.

This is how I do it for the Principia Pilot site. This code goes at the top of the template for single.php

<?php
// Retrieve custom meta values from post if they're present
$byline_writer_name = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_name", true));
$byline_writer_title = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_title", true));
$byline_writer_picture_url = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "byline_writer_picture_url", true));
$lead_photo_url = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_url", true));
$lead_photo_credit = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_credit", true));
$lead_photo_caption = htmlspecialchars(get_post_meta($post->ID, "lead_photo_caption", true));
$summary_deck = wptexturize(get_post_meta($post->ID, "summary_deck", true));
?>


Now each of the possible Custom Fields are available as PHP variables that can be checked for content.

This code example shows the “summary deck” being displayed on the page if it has been entered on the create content screen:

<?php
// Show summary deck if we have one
if ($summary_deck != "") {
    echo '<h3 class="summary-deck">' . $summary_deck . '</h3>';
}
?>


Using this excellent plugin, you can set up select lists, radio buttons, check boxes and more to help you populate your Custom Fields more easily if you prefer that to using simple text fields. You can also specify default values to use for the custom fields so you don’t have to type them in every time.

Plugin Default Template Options

These are the default options included by the plugin:
[Plan]
type = text
size = 35
label = Where are you going to go?

[Plan]
type = textfield
size = 35
hideKey = true

[Favorite Fruits]
type = checkbox
value = apple # orange # banana # grape
default = orange # grape

[Miles Walked]
type = radio
value = 0-9 # 10-19 # 20+
default = 10-19
clearButton = true

[Temper Level]
type = select
value = High # Medium # Low
default = Low

[Hidden Thought]
type = textarea
rows = 4
cols = 40
tinyMCE = true
mediaButton = true

Which displays a form that looks like this:

Summary

This plugin addresses a key need when using Custom Meta Fields in a WordPress custom template design — making it as easy as possible to enter values time after time on multiple pages or posts. There are a bunch of other neat options this plugin offers to make the authoring experience even easier. This is now on my “must install” list of essential WordPress plugins.

Please support Open Source by donating to the plugin author

If you use this and like it, I highly recommend sending a nice donation to the plugin author to help support ongoing development and to say thanks. This plugin will save you and your clients a lot of time and frustration. Thanks Hiroaki!

Requirements

Requires WordPress 2.1 or higher.

Click here to download Custom Field Template plugin from WordPress.org