I recently developed a website for Puritee Designs. Among the items for sale on the site is this burnout tank, sporting a runner design. I think she’s really cute!

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I recently migrated the vast majority of famvin.org sites in to a Network (multi-site) WordPress installation. There were, and continue to be, hitches along the way. And there were lessons learned that can be applied in other situations. For example, I use a child theme I developed for the site(s) based on WooThemes Headlines theme. The latest version of Headlines now includes the framework code to allow on to easily add custom options to a theme — and in particular to a child theme. Since child themes are my preferred customization method, this is a wonderful enhancement to the various themes from Woo that I find myself using.

The issue: When we moved to a network installation, one of the benefits was that one theme/child theme could be used for several sites, thereby simplifying upgrades and enhancements by allowing a “fix it once, apply it to all” way of working.  The down side was that I had to rethink some of my header customizations so that they used options instead of some sort of hard-coding that existed in the old multiple installation scenario. Keep in mind, the various sites using the theme are in various languages (english, french, italian, polish and spanish). The particular fix I am talking about here is to allow an individual site to use a specific custom Google Search if it is set up and revert to the standard search if not. Furthermore, the titles, text and responses need to be correctly translated into the appropriate site language.

What to do? The current Woo Framework makes it fairly easy to add options to the Theme options panels that are a part of the admin interface for the themes. So, after scouring the Woo Codex and forums, I added 4 new options to my theme:  woo_use_google_search (check box), woo_google_search_id (for the particular Google Custom Search ID), woo_google_results_page (the full URL for the page where search results are displayed) and woo_google_language (the site language so that it can be passed to Google and have google use the correct language in the results).  That language thing is a must for me, especially since one of the sites is in Polish, and far be it from me to successfully translate anything in to Polish!

Insuring that the parent theme was properly up to date so that I could use the woo_options_add() function, I proceded to add the following code to my functions.php in my child theme directory:

function woo_options_add($options) {
 $options[] = array( "name" => "Google Custom Search",
 "type" => "heading");
 $options[] = array( "name" => "Use Google Custom Search?",
 "desc" => "Check here to use a Google Custom Search instead of the built in search",
 "id" => "woo_use_google_search",
 "std" => "",
 "type" => "checkbox");
 $options[] = array( "name" => "Google Custom Search ID",
 "desc" => "Your Google Custom Search ID",
 "id" => "woo_google_search_id",
 "std" => "",
 "type" => "text");
 $options[] = array( "name" => "Results Page",
 "desc" => "Your Google Search Results Page(full URL)",
 "id" => "woo_google_search_results",
 "std" => "",
 "type" => "text");
 $options[] = array( "name" => "Language",
 "desc" => "Language code for your pages (en, es, it, pl, fr)",
 "id" => "woo_google_language",
 "std" => "",
 "type" => "text");
 return $options;

This created a new Options Tab named “Google Custom Search” in my Theme Options panel in the administrative interface for any site using the child theme. Sweet.

There are 2 files in the child theme folder that needed modification to make this have any effect: header.php and my very own template-search-results.php which controls the layout of the google search results page for a site.

A couple of decisions needed to be made:  what happens if there is no Custom Search engine appropriate for use on the site? and, what if the admin forgets to set a language? Case 1: the google custom search is only used if the check box “Use Google Search” is checked; and being anglo-centric, if you don’t give a language code, you get english.

With those decisions settled, the header.php was modified to include the following code:

<!--?php if ( get_option('woo_search_disable') <--> "true" ) : ?></pre>
<div id="search"><!--?php if ( get_option('woo_use_google_search') == 'true' ) {  ?-->
<form id="cse-search-box" action="<?php echo get_option('woo_google_search_results'); ?>
/">
<div><input type="hidden" name="cx" value="<?php echo get_option('woo_google_search_id'); ?>" />
 <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" />
 <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
 <input id="s" type="text" name="q" value="<?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?>" /> onfocus="if (this.value == '<!--?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?-->')
  {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '')
 {this.value = '<!--?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?-->';}" />
 <!--    <input name="q" size="31" type="text" />  -->
 <input type="image" name="sa" value="Go" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/ico-search.png" /></div>
</form>
 <!--?php   } else { ?-->
<form id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" method="get">
 <input id="s" type="text" name="s" value="<?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?>" />  onfocus="if (this.value == '<!--?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?-->')
 {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '')
 {this.value = '<!--?php _e('Enter keywords...', 'woothemes') ?-->';}" />
 <input type="image" value="Go" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/ico-search.png" /></form>
 <!--?php }  ?--></div>
<pre>
<!-- /#search -->
 <!--?php endif; ?-->

This code decides if you want a search box or not. It then checks whether to use a google custom search or the standard search. If the google custom search is needed, it creates the search form with the appropriate parameters; if not, it simply posts the standard search box that came with the theme.

Now, fix the template for the search results… the post div of the template now looks like this:

</pre>
<div>
<h2></h2>
<div>
<!--?php the_content(); ?-->

<!--?php $glang="en";<br ?-->
if (get_option('woo_google_language') <> "") { $glang = get_option('woo_google_language');} ?>
<form id="cse-search-box" action="<?php echo get_option('woo_google_search_results'); ?>
/ ">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="<?php echo get_option('woo_google_search_id'); ?>" />

<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" />

<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />

<input type="text" name="q" size="31" />

<input type="submit" name="sa" value="<?php _e('Search', 'woothemes'); ?>" /></div>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&lang=<?php echo $glang; ?>"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";

var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";

var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600;

var googleSearchDomain = "www.google.com";

var googleSearchPath = "/cse";
// ]]></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js">// <![CDATA[

// ]]></script></div>
<!-- /.entry -->
</div>
<pre>
<!-- /.post -->

After saving these files, I have a situation where sites that fill in and save the Google search parameters use the google search and get results in with google using the appropriate language. And sites that don’t have or need that feature, get the standard WP search, in the appropriate language.

Nice.

It seems that there is an iPad in my future. I own a Kindle. I’m looking into publishing some materials from some of our websites for these formats. So, here goes my research!

Learn about the formats:

Start with Wikipedia information: A Comparison of E-Book Formats

Learn about the Readers:

E-books readers include:

• iBooks: this app for iPhone, Touch and iPad can use ePub formatted books. Maybe others, but this one for sure.
• Adobe Digital Editions: Free download from Adobe; handles pdf and ePub for sure. Other formats have not yet been explored.  I’ve got this one my iMac desktop.
• calibre: Free download for Windows, Mac and Linux. This is a jewel of an application. It manages and e-book library and also does the conversion from many formats to many formats. You can bring in pdf (not so great), or html or word docs, etc and create ePub or mobi (Kindle) etc output.
• Kindle: I have really enjoyed my Kindle 2 which can read the amazon format (azw — a type of mobipocket), mobi files and pdf’s.
• Nook and Nook Color: I’m pretty sure this uses ePub, but I’ll have to look further.

This is all wonderful information. But, I want to create my own e-books, so I had to continue my research to understand how one actually creates the content in the proper format.

Some basics to consider:

• PDF often does not convert to either .epub or .mobi gracefully because PDF is wonderful for materials where presentation and layout are important. This formatting just doesn’t translate well to the text focused e-book formats. So, it is good that many of the e-book readers will read and present native PDF files.
• Page numbers are irrelevant for e-books in general. Because the text flows and can be resized by the reader, pages are not really that defined. So, if you want that paged layout and care deeply about it, then go with PDF.
• If you want to use wordprocessing files as input, this is great. Just keep it simple. Inline your images. Use specific styles.

Tools for creating your files:

I’m a mac user, so I was delighted to discover several tools that run on the Mac:

Calibre not only provides a reader and  library management, but it can do the conversions for you! And, it can be set up as a content server.

Pages, the wordprocessor in the iWork suite can export to the ePub format. Apple even has a document to help you get started with this (Creating ePub files with Pages)

For more ePub formatting power, look into the opensource project called sigil.

There is a nice summary here at Lexcycle. (I’m not in to reinventing the wheel or stealing content, so live with the plethora of links!)

I’m doing battle with TwitterTools — on one site I cannot get the blog posts to tweet. So, here I sit trying to get it to work on a different site to see what might be wrong.

I’m not sure I need all this connectedness, but some folks are really into this stuff, so I’ll learn to use it.

Try a Bing search for the English Famvin sites:

Also, there is a series of articles at Far In Space on metabox creation and display.

It started with my new iMac (20″, with the built in camera). Then my friend Freda was ready to get a new computer, and decided to go Mac. And my collaborator on the various FAMVIN sites finally worked out a way to get past some firewall issues with his MacBookPro, and we were off to the races… the fourth party is also a Mac person in Denver.

Details: we are using AIM accounts (I think .mac accounts would work as well); My old router had to be replaced with one that would allow the proper ports to be opened (the old one is EOL – and had no clue that this was a possibility!); Freda had to do nothing except remember her AIM password;

Yesterday we had a 3-way “conference” going for a while. And right now I’m on with the friend in NY.

Issues: Sometimes the pictures aren’t very clear – my guess is bandwidth; I need better lighting, because the current setup makes me look like a purple people eater. I have to be sure I’m semi dressed for the day when I answer a call. And, how on earth do we get this to work with the folks on PC’s?

I found this link on scriptygoddess
.
One of the things that drove me to WordPress was the fact that it was
PHP based. It leaves the doors wide open for you to do practically any
kind of hack you could possibly think of.

So – I’m wandering around and came across an article on AListApart – cssdropshadows – and I thought I’d try it out.
I really find this rather fun and interesting… and it works on different sized images without having to create the shadows in Photoshop or Fireworks.