How to show post related content in a sidebar using the Custom Field Widget

Sometimes, for different reasons, you want to display blocks of information outside a regular WordPress post/page. In order to achieve this install the Custom Field Widget. This plugin will allow you to insert the desired information in a custom field and have that information displayed in a sidebar only on that specific page or post.

Adding custom blocks of information using the Custom Field Widget

Use cases for the Custom Field Widget:

Show a map for each post (make sure that you have the correct width of the sidebar when adding the embed code)
Show alerts or important information related to the post
If you are using guest authors display their information (including G+ authorship) without creating a new user
Showcase products related to the post content
Add some post specific downloads

Extra tips:

The widget is conditional. That means that you can create more than one custom field and add multiple widgets to the sidebar. Each time a matching custom field is found in a post, the content will be displayed
If you don’t want to show the whole custom fields section in the editor, use the More Fields plugin to have a nice area to entry your aside text.

NOTE: Even though the Custom Field Widget was last updated in 2008, it works perfectly in 2012 with the latest version (3.4)

Incoming search terms:

WordPress Subpages Menu Widget: How to handle a WP with hundreds of subpages

WordPress is one of the CMSs available on the market, but has its share of limitations. Unfortunately one of the biggest limitations is on the area where it stops being a blogging platform and you use it as a CMS.

The main difference between blogging and CMS is the first is focused on posts (time based articles) while the later focuses on pages (generic articles that are no time dependent).

WordPress has been built and in it is being built with a fairly limited number of pages in mind (Contact/About etc). With a standard installation you can go to an apx 5-10 of pages and if you use custom menus and dropdown menus is ok to go up to 25-30 pages (5 main pages each with 5 subpages).

But what do you do when you have, let’s say 300 static pages? The first answer will be: who needs 300 pages in a CMS? Well, on an academic website you can reach that number very easy. There are a lot of programs, departments, classes and staff and posts (or custom posts) are not the solution.

For this type of project I used a 3 columns theme and i wanted a simple feature: have one main menu on a column, and on a second column show subpages, but only when available. For a few years I have used a unupgraded version of GD Navigator. Once I have upgraded both the WP and the plugin a few errors started to appear: the GD Navigator widget was gone and when I have re-added it, no matter of the configuration random subpages kept appearing.

The best solution for WordPress Submenu Widget

Looking for an alternative wasn’t an easy job, most of the alternatives being either dead or too complicated. Finally I have found the simplest, working plugin, BE Subpages Widget by WP Consultant Bill Erickson . The plugin is extremely easy to use and has only two options:

Title – this one is optional and I don’t recommend you to use it. Basically you could put in there something like “Submenu”
Use top level page as section title. – Check this instead of using a title. It will show the parent page and can be used as a breadcrumb
Make title a link – Also check this to make the parent page act as a true breadcrumb

There. Problem solved. A working implementation you can see over here

Incoming search terms:

SubPage Widget

Stupid arguments: I own the comments

In the never ending debate of WordPress comments vs. Facebook comments one of the most idiotic arguments is: But I own the comments and I don’t want to give them to Facebook or any other entity.

Really? Do YOU own the comments made by OTHER people on your website? By proxy, does your hosting company own the blog posts you create?

Breaking news to you social media blogger expert: the comment creator is the most likely person to own the comments he makes. And FB comments are the easiest way to put the owner in control of his content.

Article pagination for SEO

On Webmaster World there is a pretty good thread showing a step by step guide on how to implement pagination for long articles (over 500-700 words) for SEO purposes.

Among the reasons you would want to do that:

Increase the volume of unique content
Increase the pageviews (if you are using a CPM advertising solution this would almost double your income)
Decrease the bouncerate on your website (call me paranoid but I bet the Google uses that as a quality factor in organic ranking).

Among the biggest issues with this, is how you handle comments. Basically you have to choose from 4 options:

Have the same comments on all the newly created pages (for wordpress i think this is the only available solution)
Have each part have its own comments (there is no plugin as far as i know for wordpress but in this case you can simply create a new post for each part and link them after you are done)
Have the comments separated from the content (similar to a forum, where the article title is the name of the thread)

Here are the main steps from the WW forum:

Page 1 naturally enough uses the overall title of the article for both its title tag and header, and has a unique meta-description.
Every internal page then has its own unique title and header tag h1. These are based on the first SUB-head for that section of the article. This means more keyword research and writing of subheads than would normally be the case. If the article is considered as a whole, then an h2 tag would seem more accurate semantically. But Google looks at the semantic structure one URL at a time, not for the overall multi-URL article. Most pages also include internal subheads, and these are style as h2
On each internal page, there is also a “pre-head” that does use the article title from page 1 in a small font. This pre-head does not use a header tag of any kind, just a CSS style. This pre-head article title is at the top as a navigation cue for the user.
An additional navigation cue is that the unique page titles each begin with the numeral “2.” or “3.”
Each internal page also has a unique meta description, one that summarizes that page specifically, rather than summarizing the overall article.
Every page of the article links to every other page at the top and the bottom. None of this anemic “Back | Next” junk. There’s a complete page choice shown on everywhere – 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6| 7 – and there is also a centered link at the end of each page: Next: Linked title of the next page goes here
The linked numbers that are used as on-page navigation also include a title attribute that matches the title tag of the target page. I’m still not sure what a title attribute does for Google exactly, if anything, but the tool tip that it generates is a major aid for the reader of a long article.
Those navigation numbers are very clearly coded to show which page is active. And the nav number for the active page is NOT linked. We don’t want the user to click and end up right where they started, and we don’t want to “waste” a link that has no real function.
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” link tags are also included in the section h2

Incoming search terms:

WordPress as an E-learning CMS

As you might know I’m a big fan of using WordPress as a CMS. There are different mods and plugins for different purposes but so far I haven’t seen a full CMS plugin for e-learning. Today i Have found out about ScholarPress Courseware a Buddy Press plugin that seems like that optimal solution for an Open Source E-Learning CMS.

Of course this, as many other e-learning open-source solutions might not be ideal for an university but here are a few cases where it might work perfectly:

Tutoring: If you are a teacher or a student that offers private classes and you want a low cost solution
Trainers: You started a small business on training others on various fields
Schools with low IT budgets
Online counselling

Below you will find a list of features and a presentation video. This project looks so good that I hope it won’t be abandoned and become incompatible with future WordPress releases

BuddyPress ScholarPress Courseware features:

Class Dashboard
Courses (Works for both learning models: European/United States)
Bibliography
- Web API’s integration with WorldCat/ISBNdb
- BibTex Import
Assignments
- Responses
- Forum integration
- Gradebook
- CSV Import
Schedules
- Calendar
- Month, Week, Day view
- Integrates with Assignment due dates
- iCal export
Customization using an external CSS