Although there are developer notes on the WordPress.org repository, we’ve decided to maintain a page here where we can possibly show a broader range of information in the future, depending on the take-up of the plugin.

Template tags

Spots provides 2 template tags for developers named icit_spot and icit_get_spot.

icit_spot

This template tag echos out a spot:

icit_spot( $id_or_name, $template );

It takes the following parameters:

• $id_or_name: Required. A numeric ID or the name of a spot as a string.
• $template: Optional. A string used in a call to get_template_part()

icit_get_spot

This template tag performs the same function, but it allows the developer to specify wether to echo the result, or return it as a variable:

icit_get_spot( $id_or_name, $template, $echo );

It takes the following extra parameter:

• $echo: Optional. Defaults to false. A boolean to indicate whether to echo the spot content or just return it.

Basic Usage

You can use spots to replace boilerplate text in your themes. If you have areas in your themes where typically you would hard code the text you could use the following code:

if ( function_exists( 'icit_spot' ) )
    icit_spot( 'Copyright' );

The above code would output the contents of a spot titled ‘Copyright’. If the spot does not exist it will be created as a draft. Spots in draft mode are only visible to logged in users with editing capabilities.

Templates

The plugin will initially look for a file in your theme using the get_template_part() function. If you have a file called spot.php in your theme that will be the default template for all spots. The icit_spot() function can take a second parameter for the template part to use for example:

if ( function_exists( 'icit_spot' ) )
    icit_spot( 'Copyright', 'copyright' );

The above code will make the plugin look in your theme folder for a file called spot-copyright.php to use for the output. If not available it will fall back to spot.php and if that is not available it will simply output the spot contents.

Use templates when you want to display a featured image from a spot or if you require some additional/alternative markup for the spot. Spots are just like posts, so in the templates you retrieve the contents of the spot using the_content() just as would in the loop.

Basic spot template example:

<div class="spot">
    <?php the_content(); ?>
</div> 

Spot template with featured image:

<div class="spot-with-image">
    <?php
    if ( has_post_thumbnail() )
        the_post_thumbnail( 'medium' );
    the_content(); ?>
</div> 

Additional

There are many filters and hooks available to get even more out of spots, so drop by the plugin homepage or use the forums if there is something you need to do with spots but aren’t sure how.

1. Removing the auto capitalisation of ‘WordPress’

   When version  3.0 was released a fairly simple filter appeared called capital_P_dangit. This was committed to the core by Matt Mullenweg for the purposes of brand reinforcement. Suffice to say many in the community weren’t thrilled by this passive-aggressive pedantry for a multitude of very good reasons but that’s another story (you can read all about it in Justin Tadlock’s article on the subject).

   // remove capital_P_dangit
   foreach( array( 'the_content', 'the_title', 'comment_text' ) as $filter )
       remove_filter( $filter, 'capital_P_dangit' );

2. Change excerpt length

   The default excerpts in WordPress are reasonable but rarely fit with the design you are working to. Alter the number of characters returned in an excerpt with the following snippet.

   function theme_excerpt_length( $length ) {
       return 80; // 80 characters long
   }
   add_filter('excerpt_length', 'theme_excerpt_length');

3. Change the excerpt truncation text

   You can alter the text that appears at the point of truncation, ie. ‘[...]‘, to anything you want, including a useful link to the post page.

   function theme_excerpt_more( $more ) {
       global $post;
       return '&hellip; <a class="read-more" href="'. get_permalink($post->ID) . '">' . __('Continue reading') . '</a>';
   }
   add_filter('excerpt_more', 'theme_excerpt_more');

4. Adding contact methods to the user profile

   On every recent project we have had there has been a need for extra user data, such as Twitter username, FaceBook URL and so on. The user profile screen can be edited using a combination of action hooks but WordPress also has a very simple way to add extra contact methods.

   function more_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
       $contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter username';
       $contactmethods['facebook'] = 'Facebook URL';
       return $contactmethods;
   }
   add_filter( 'user_contactmethods', 'more_contactmethods' );

5. Removing the inline stylesheet from galleries

   By default WordPress spits out an inline stylesheet whenever the gallery shortcode is used within a post. The reasoning is that users can control the number of columns each gallery has and the sizes of the images within them as well as a few other options. While it is a noble quest to give users more power over their images it also allows them to screw things up in new and exciting ways when using a custom theme. Adding style tags within the body of an HTML document is also invalid markup.

   Thanks to Safirul Alredha for this code:

   // remove gallery shortcode styling
   add_filter('gallery_style',
       create_function(
           '$css',
           'return preg_replace("#<style type=\'text/css\'>(.*?)</style>#s", "", $css);'
       )
   );

6. Replacing the gallery shortcode handler

   While the above snippet does a good enough job in many cases I still find the built in gallery shortcode function to be questionable. For example you can change what HTML tags the gallery outputs with (the default being a semantically poor series of definition lists) but there is no way to set theme defaults without parsing post/page content and adding the attributes to the shortcode programmatically. This is a bad idea for general use themes because it will screw up peoples sites if they switch to another theme in future.

   The shortcode can be rescued however by simply removing it and replacing it with your own callback:

   // replace gallery shortcode
   remove_shortcode('gallery');
   add_shortcode('gallery', 'theme_gallery_shortcode');
   
   function theme_gallery_shortcode( $attr ) {
       global $post, $wp_locale;
       // create your own gallery output...
   }

   You can alternatively use the built in shortcode’s internal filter ‘post_gallery’ to change the output and handling of the standard shortcode attributes.

7. Adding custom post types to search results

   Hopefully any custom post types that are set as publicly queryable will be included in the search results by default in future releases of WordPress but for now you can use the following code:

   function search_post_types( $query ) {
       if ( $query->is_search )
           $query->set( 'post_type', get_post_types( array( 'publicly_queryable' => 1 ) ) );
       return $query;
   }
   add_filter( 'the_search_query', 'search_post_types' );

8. Adding custom post types to the main RSS feed

   This can make sense for some sites if you want an amalgamated feed of all your content. We use an array filter in this case to get only those post types that have taxonomies so page-like content is ignored.

   function feed_post_types( $vars ) {
       if ( isset($vars['feed']) && !isset($vars['post_type']) )
           $vars['post_type'] = array_filter( get_post_types( array( 'publicly_queryable' => 1 ) ), 'get_object_taxonomies' );
       return $vars;
   }
   add_filter( 'request', 'feed_post_types' );

9. Enable post thumbnails

   This is one is pretty straightforward. Make use of WordPress 3.0′s post thumbnail feature in your theme.

   add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

10. Enable shortcodes in the text widget

    This little trick makes the text widget into a much more powerful tool. It’s used on this site to add an author list to the widget space in the footer, avoiding the need to code a specific author list widget.

    add_filter( 'widget_text', 'do_shortcode' );

Actually, I’ll rephrase it a little… it happens all the time!

It’s rather tricky. Clients are interested in us because we offer them something that gives them better efficiency, sales and returns. But what we do is complex and sophisticated.

As it’s myself that does all the sales work I often find myself giving over two hours of my time to a prospect in order to explain how the dynamic websites work. I’m educating them. For two hours.

How much would it actually cost to get an expert in any field to educate someone for that period of time on a one-to-one basis? £120? £240? Certainly it wouldn’t be cheap.

Yet there I am, explaining various elements of design, hosting and development… all for free.

Not only that, but many clients expect proposals, complete with mockups. For free too, of course. After all, we’re only selling.

And it’s a trap I think that all IT types need to be wary of. We’re natural born ‘pleasers’. We want to write cool stuff, but more importantly, we want people to acknowledge that coolness. It’s interesting that the concept of Open Source is so strong in IT. There aren’t nearly so many top photographers offering any of their materials with a right to free duplication as there are developers.

But here’s the thing… free doesn’t put food in the table. Each prospect may be the result of two hours of work before we even get to visit. On top of that is the two hours of free consultancy they end up receiving when we go and see them. Then there’s the proposal – that can be four hours for something simple, but easily a 16hr job. So we have up to 20hrs per prospect, before a sale is even agreed.

If we then assume a one-in-three conversion (because they’ll probably talk to three potential clients) that means up to 60hrs of work for each client won. I’ve actually estimated that by and large we manage on about 40hrs per client win.

Now here’s the funny thing – many of the websites we produce take less than 40hrs to build. Let’s say each is 30hrs of work to build – what with all the toing and froing of ideas, images and copy.

That makes 70hrs per website. If you’re going to make a modest, middle class income, and cover costs, then chargeable rates have to be around the £30 an hour mark. That’s about what most backstreet mechanics are charged at. So the very base price for a website built according to expectations above, has to be £2,100.

Read that figure.

£2,100!

For a basic, simple, custom website.

We’re working on developing techniques to get web developers away from this problem. Expectations are far higher than can be fulfilled economically. Check back to the blog regularly to see our up and coming announcements…

But what I do think is that there’s a significant chunk of people out there, with no clue as to the Web, what it’s for, and how it works, who currently seem to be desperate to jump onto the bandwagon. They sometimes actually have some pretty sound business ideas.

Thing is, they turn up at our office with these huge plans. And a budget of £250.

There then follows an awkward silence as we have to explain that £250, like in dentistry, doesn’t really buy you a great deal of cosmetic awe. Even if the underlying software is free, you still need someone with the ability and understanding to implement it correctly. And they’re in demand.

But then that brings up another issue – the one of the wannabe web designer. Very little understanding of the technology or business, but does have a copy of Frontpage, Dreamweaver, or worst of all – Flash and only Flash. And thinks they can design for the web because they’ve done some ok print jobs in their time. They over promise, often raising expectations, under-quote (causing pricing pressure) and under-deliver.

Not all are actually that bad in overall design terms either, but they have a habit of disappearing when things get difficult. If one of their sites is hacked they have absolutely no idea why, and can’t do much about it. They don’t understand what the difference between CHMOD 777 or 766 can mean to the security of their site. In fact, to make their life easier, they simply switch everything to 777. And they’ve got so little money from their £300 job that they most definitely can’t afford to pay a TruePro (my TM, maybe. Perhaps) to come in and get digging, and to configure their site correctly.

And clients sometimes need to accept that they can’t just say “gimme a website!” to a designer/developer and expect them to magically mind-read their true desires. For free, of course.

Thing is – how’s a client to know the difference between a good or bad web company? It’s no easier than knowing the difference between a good or bad engine design in a car. The only way people learn is by watching what or who gets the most reliable, dependable and economical cars out there. And if there are none, then eventually someone will come along and do just that. Like the Japanese did to the British motorbike industry, so, surely, will the good web companies overtake and close down the bad ones.

So to answer my own question – I actually think the web industry does suck right now. But it’ll get better – slowly, top web brands will move to the fore, and the rubbish ones will fade away. And it won’t be from expected sources either. For example, WordPress.com is likely to become a major force for many small business websites, with many moving to self-hosted WordPress sites once they need more control or uniqueness. Why does any startup in a non-tech field need to commission a custom site when there’s plenty of great, free or cheap designs available?

And that’s where the future website designing and hosting brands will come from. The small one man web companies need to adapt to this market and consider that the direct one-to-one model of web design & development is approaching its death knell. Instead, these small companies will become facilitators – finding the best solutions for the non-techie clients, setting them up, and then briskly moving on to the next client. The technical knowhow, fixing up and hacking will be concentrated in key points. They’ll set up or review systems like SugarCRM, Plone, WordPress, and more.

Bigger clients will of course still need their own web applications built to suit any unique business models they operate, and they’ll be able to afford the fact that few of these can ever cost less than five figures. So that business model will continue, and should pay more too as the solutions become critical to firms.

I know I’ve just had something of a ramble there – it’s purely a stream of consciousness thing. I think the web industry is on the verge of maturing. That doesn’t mean the days are over for specialists. Just that the mass market will move to commodity systems, while the specialised stuff will actually start to pay the kind of rewards that should be available to people who work with a difficult and challenging technology.

Go to a website – eg, http://www.marketsafeuk.com and it should all work fine.

But take out the www and go to http://marketsafeuk.com and it doesn’t.  You just get a time out as the DNS fails to resolve the request.

This happens on a remarkable number of sites, even those belonging to some web designers. And it’s poor because a lot of users have got used to not typing the www subdomain to many addresses. They expect the null subdomain to point to the normal website. How many customers would Amazon miss out on if going to amazon.co.uk didn’t work? Lots….

So – if your site experiences this problem go into your domain’s control panel and set up a new A record where the subdomain is left uncompleted. The ip address should be the same as your usual one. Most control panels should allow this.

Your webserver, in most cases, will be set up by default to serve a blank subdomain the same way as the www one. If not, you may need to talk to your hosts about resolving this.