Part 3: Using WordPress and Artisteer on a new Business website

The web site project is coming along.  WordPress is installed and working. The theme looks good. Now to get the details in place.  Just like most projects, the first 80% goes pretty well, then you start running into the final details that can go on forever without some good project management.  As my teams know, I am a “get it out the door” kind of guy.  So that is where we are on this website - time to finish up and get it out the door.

Each page on the website has a different picture in the side bar.  I didn’t want to use dozens of different WordPress widgets, one for each image, so I found a WordPress widget, PHP Code Widget,  that would allow some php inside it and coded it to select an image based on the post id number.  I am sure there are more elegant solutions, but in my “get it out the door” mode, this will work.  But of course I hit another hitch — the simple PHP “switch” statement I used didn’t work. After posting the question on the WordPress forum and in the comments on a few plugin sites, I learned that the PHP template tag (a WordPress function) I was using to get the page or post id didn’t work like I guessed. Yes, guessed. I had searched the WordPress documents for the tag I needed to get the page id and when I found one I used it without reading all the information about it. If I had done so, I would have saved my self several hours of grief. Once I had enough information about the problem, it was not too hard to solve. I had to add a global variable to get the page ID to use in the sidebar widget. Thanks to those in the forums that helped.

I also wanted to find a widget that would give me better control of the page navigation.  I found Flexi Pages Widget that lets me adjust how the menu expands on each page. I often see tweets about finding plugins to do something. I have had great success searching at WordPress for plugins or with Google. There are lots and lots of plugins out there. I have just about always been able to find one that will do what I need. That is pretty amazing.

I added a “contact us” form on a page and in a sidebar widget using Contact Form 7, so if someone wanted to buy what we are selling they could contact us.

I wanted to use a static page for the home page, so I copied the page template PHP file but it did not come up as an option to set the page to that template. I did a little reading and found I had to put some code in the template to give it a name.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Main Page
*/
?>

Then it showed as a choice in the drop down on the editing page to change the template for my new home page. I did some editing of the CSS and layout on this page template to make it look like our current home page.  I am no CSS guru, so it took me longer that I wished to get it just right.  Then of course it didn’t look the same in IE and Firefox, so more time. I spent eight hours total on the layout of this page, but in the end it did look and function just like I wanted.

I added a plugin, List Category Posts, that would let me include a specific category of posts on the page so we could have a news blog on the front page.

Finally, I worked with the marketing team to do some basic SEO work using the HeadSpace 2 plugin.

I think that’s it.   It is ready to go out the door.  All the above happened over several days, but overall it took about thirty  more hours (about three of those were solving the PHP code problem and six solving CSS problems).  That is a total of twenty eight hours so far.  Not too bad.  That is why I love WordPress.

Time to let the marketing folks review and revise the content.

Related posts:

1. Part 2: Using WordPress and Artisteer on a new Business website
2. Part 1: Using WordPress and Artisteer on a new Business website
3. Problem: Friend needs a website – Solution: WordPress
4. Best Plug-ins for a WordPress Blog
5. Making Your Own WordPress Themes with Artisteer
6. Joy and Despair with Technology
7. Seven things I learned at iThemes Bootcamp