Hopefully if your reading this you have some understanding of how WordPress works, and fingers crossed you are aware of the WP Loop that pulls your posts to display on your site. If you are not familier with the Loop then this page will be very usefull to you in your quest to conquer WordPress (http://codex.wordpress.org/The_LoopClick).

You can define a custom field for each post and set its value to be anything, for example, a URL of an image you want to display, a URL of a site you wish to link to, or just some random text. Okay, this may not make sense yet, but the easiest way to explain, is to show you how I use the Custom Fields on Self Conclusion.

So first things first, where do I use these ‘Custom Fields’ on my site? Well when you visited my blog you will have noticed the featured section of at the top of the page just below the Twitter section. This currently displays three posts, along with an image, and a short excerpt of what it contains. Custom Fields are used here to display the Image for that particular post. You may be wondering why can’t I just call the images I want to display manually and change them as and when I write a new feature post? Well this method isn’t as effecient removes some of the dynamicness (not sure if that is a word by the way) of your site. Lets face it, we use WP to allow us to manage our content better!

How do we do it then Stu? Well it is really easy, first you need to assign a custom field, in my case a link to a thumbnail image that I want to display above the post title and excerpt.

In the Custom Field section you have two options that require your attention, the Key and the Value. The Key can be anything, but its a good idea to keep it fairly simple as you need to call it later on, try call it something relevant. Think of the Key value as a variable name, so for this example I will call it post_image because suprise suprise I am going to be using it to display the post image! (clever I know). In the Value field you need to put whatever it is you want to display, in this example a URL which links to an image. Once you have filled in both parts, click on ‘Add Custom Field’.

Next we need to ammend the WP loop to include this new field on your site. Before I implemented an image to my feature posts, I just had the Loop pulling the Title and the Excerpt, and my code looked like this…

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
 
<div class="feature">
 
<p class="feature-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" 
title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></p>	
 
<p class="feature-preview"><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
 
</div>
 
<?php endwhile; ?>

We need to add a bit of code for the custom field. The key part is the get_post_meta part, because this calls the custom field and outputs what you set in the WP Admin area, in this case it will output http://selfconclusion.co.uk/images/posts/image1.jpg. Notice the post_image, this needs to be set to the name of your custom field which you should have set earlier. Finally, we need to place the code around an image src tag to ensure the image is displayed on the page, see below…

<img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "post_image", true); ?>" 
alt="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" />

Very simple indeed! Now when I add this bit of code into my WP Loop you get the following…

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
 
<div class="feature">
 
<img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "post_image", true); ?>" 
alt="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" />
 
<p class="feature-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" 
title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></p>	
 
<p class="feature-preview"><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
 
</div>
 
<?php endwhile; ?>

Here is what you see on screen in my case…

Well thats about it for now, but let me know if this has come in handy for anyone. It really is a simple process and so easy to implement on your website. If you have used custom fields on your WordPress site then leave a link in the comments.

For someone who loves to discover new artists/albums, I hope some of the following artists have the same effect on you guys. The albums mentioned below cover a wide range of Genre’s so possibly something for everyone…

Artist: Secondhand Serenade
Album Title: A Twist In My Story
Genre: Acoustic
Favourite Songs: Your Call, Fall For You, Stay Close, Don’t Go
Listen: MySpace | purevolume
Rating:

Artist: The Cab
Album Title: Whisper War
Genre: Pop Punk / Powerpop
Favourite Songs: One Of THOSE Nights, I’ll Run, Risky Business
Listen: MySpace | purevolume
Rating:

Artist: The Courteeners
Album Title: St. Jude
Genre: Indie Rock
Favourite Songs: Bide Your Time, Please Don’t, Not Nineteen Forever
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: The Kooks
Album Title: Konk
Genre: Indie Rock
Favourite Songs: Sway, Gap, Mr Maker, Shine On
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Marie Digby
Album Title: Unfold
Genre: Pop / Piano Pop
Favourite Songs: Say It Again, Beauty in Walking Away, Better Off Alone
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Augustana
Album Title: Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt
Genre: Piano Rock
Favourite Songs: Sweet and Low, Twenty Years, Hey Now
Listen: MySpace | purevolume
Rating:

Artist: The Subways
Album Title: All or Nothing
Genre: Indie Rock
Favourite Songs: Alright, Shake! Shake!
Listen: MySpace | purevolume
Rating:

Artist: Boyce Avenue
Album Title: All Youre Meant To Be
Genre: Rock
Favourite Songs: On My Way, Dare to Beleive, All The While, Change Your Mind
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Jack’s Mannequin
Album Title: The Glass Passenger
Genre: Alternative Rock
Favourite Songs: The Resolution, Spinning, American Love
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: The Script
Album Title: Self Titled
Genre: Pop Rock
Favourite Songs: Before The Worst, Breakeven, If You See Kay, We Cry
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Kings of Leon
Album Title: Only by the Night
Genre: Rock
Favourite Songs: Use Somebody, Manhattan, Sex On Fire
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Taio Cruz
Album Title: Departure
Genre: R&B
Favourite Songs: Like A Star, I Can Be, I Just Wanna Know
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Sara Bareilles
Album Title: Little Voice
Genre: Pop
Favourite Songs: Love Song, Vegas, One Sweet Love
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: The Offspring
Album Title: Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace
Genre: Pop
Favourite Songs: Love Song, Vegas, One Sweet Love
Listen: MySpace | Last.fm
Rating:

Artist: Driving East
Album Title: The Future Of The Free World Is Riding On This One
Genre: Pop Punk
Favourite Songs: Hey, Come On Come On, Baby (Just A Little Bit), Backseat
Listen: MySpace | Purevolume
Rating:

I just wanted to say thanks to Graham Smith of ImJustCreative.com, for been the legend that he is and allowing me to put some content up on his site, as well as the promoting he has been doing for the post too!. Check it out for yourself at http://imjustcreative.com and let me know what you think

Alternatively spread the word using any of the following…

• Stumble - http://is.gd/6Yo5
• Digg - http://is.gd/70N8
• Float - http://lin.cr/8fz
• Bump - http://is.gd/70M5
• zaBox - http://is.gd/6YeK

Thanks to all who have already started spreading and/or leaving feedback! So far I’ve had good comments! If you have any things you think would go well on (Nerd)Press let me know by adding me on Twitter (@stugreenham)

The most annoying thing is that, although it can take, even edit  (thanks to certain apps) photos, it lacks the ability to send them to my mates via MMS. Fair enough, I could still take a snap and Email to a friend, or maybe even upload to my Facebook for everyone to see, but there have been many times where I have needed this function.

Fortunately I am not alone on this, the guys over at http://iphonemms.net/ have developed a Web App for the iPhone which will allow you to send MMS, but unfortunately it isn’t free. They also have an actually Application in the works which will no doubt soon be appearing on the iTunes App Store. I have a few friends who have used this service to date and they have confirmed it does work.

…I still cannot get new ringtones because I’m from the U.K!

I am someone who likes a different ringtone each week, my song tastes are changing so frequently that my iPhone needs to keep up. If you have ever tried to create a Ringtone in iTunes, you may have experienced the following error message…

According to Apple, this is not because of a Network Connection, but in fact due to the fact I live in the UK and ringtones aren’t availble for me. Six months after first noticing this error, I am still no further on! If it hadn’t been for a great bit of software called iToner, my iPhone would still be blurting out that same noise that would of eventually led me to insanity.

…the Battery life ain’t pretty!

Now a decent Battery life is essential to any decent gadget! I will admit, since upgrading to the 3G version, the battery life seemed better, but not great! I am finding myself nervously worried about using any of the newer features like the built in GPS, purely because it sucks the life out of the thing! this leads me onto my four and final moan of the day…

…the Google Maps doesn’t auto move to the next direction!

This isn’t major as I don’t really use the Maps app unless in emergency travel situations, but it frustrates me because Google should have thought its users would need this feature. For example, If you are driving and you have your iPhone nicely cradled on your cars dashboard showing you where your heading, the last thing you would want to do it have to click the -> arrow everytime you want to see the next turn, because this is dangerous! The location based service should automatically move to the next set of instructions allowing you to concetrate on the driving side of things.

…now I’m tired and off to bed

Well I am tired now so I’m gonna end here, for today anyway! Okay Okay, this may seem like a negative post, and for any people reading who have been umming and arring about whether or not to get an iPhone, please don’t let this put you off! This truely is the best phone! and the pro’s outway the negs by sooooo many! But these are a few things that I feel let the side down on Apple’s end. So come on Jobs get it sorted!

Finally, I came across an interesting site whilst writing this post, which is http://pleasefixtheiphone.com, which shows me that I am not the only one. The site, based around its users submissions, focuses on how the iPhone could be ‘fixed’, check it out if you are an iPhone user with issues. I personally don’t think the iPhone needs fixing at all, I would probably have called the site http://pleaseupdatetheiphone.com or something along that line! Anyway’s let me know what you think about the iPhone and if you want me to add anything onto this post. Woop!

To remove this border, all you need to do is add the two lines of code shown below to your sites Stylesheet and wahlaaa, gone! Many of the big sites haven’t even bothered to do this, a few to mention are Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.

Anyways, here is the code…

a:active { outline: none; }
a:focus { -moz-outline-style: none; }

I would be greatful if you could take a second to help promote my blog and share this link with any of your favoured networking sites using the link below…

Akismet

I will start with the Self Conclusion Plugins, I just briefly want to mention the first plugin, which is actually one that comes built into WordPress. The Akismet plugin is often missed by alot of newcomers to WordPress but it is infact very useful for filtering out the dreaded SPAM comments. Once activated, you are required to register for a WordPress.com account, so you can retreive an API Key which will need to be entered into the Akismet Configuration page.

The image above is just a snippet from my Akismet page and you can see that two messages there are clearly junk, and Akismet has marked them as Spam, meaning I don’t have to deal with them.

The next set of plugins are by Ricardo González over at Rick’s HideOut. They deal with Twitter, Last.FM and Delicious Feeds, and require minimal setup.

Twitter Plugin for WordPress

I use this plugin to display the large ‘Twitter’ text at the top on my Homepage. The plugin doesn’t deal with the formatting of this text, it simply grabs it from your Twitter account and displays it on your blog. To install, download the plugin from the link below and upload it to your WordPress Plugins directory (eg. http://www.domainname.com/wp-content/plugins). Now go to your WP Admin area and activate the Plugin. To Display your Twitter status, simply insert the following code between a set of PHP Tags into your page, replacing the username:

twitter_messages('username');

This ofcourse is only the very minimal settings on this plugin, as there are many attributes you can tweak which can be found on the Plugin page here http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/twitter/.

Last.FM for WordPress

Similar process to the Twitter plugin, but this displays the recent tracks Scrobbled on your Last.FM account, in my code, I set it to display the latest 7 tracks. To install, download the plugin from the link below and upload it to your WordPress Plugins directory (eg. http://www.domainname.com/wp-content/plugins). Now go to your WP Admin area and activate the Plugin. Inserting it into your blog couldn’t be easier (Don’t forget the PHP Tags):

lastfm_tracks('username');

Again, there are many other attributes which can be set such as how many tracks to display. These can be found here http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/lastfm/.

Delicious for WordPress

The final plugin I want to mention from Ricardo is ‘Delicious for WordPress’. I won’t go into to much detail because the process of setting it up and building it into your blog is exactly the same as the previous two plugins, but using the following code (again put this code between a set of PHP tags):

delicious_bookmarks('username');

Like the previous two Plugins, the code above only deals with the default values, to tweak it further, visit the following page http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/delicious/.

More To Follow….

Right, thats it for this post, be sure to keep checking for Part 2 when I talk about the other Plugins I use on Self Conclusion, and other more favoured Plugins I have used in the past. I’d love to hear about any plugins you guys use or if you also use some of the ones I have mentioned and what you think of them.

I use Lorem Ipsum to generate text to bulk out my design and give me a more realistic feel of how it will look live, which is great. When I come to integrating the site into the WordPress CMS I end up left with a kind of ‘blank canvas’ containing just the default ‘Hello World’ post! Having to continuously create fake posts/categories/tags/comments to check it all works within WP is well, Very Frustrating

For anyone else who has the same problem as me, this ones for you. Download the .XML linked below and import this into your WordPress installation and problem is sorted, the .XML will import the following:

• 5 Pages, with full content
• 10 Posts, with content, including Tags, Categories and Excerpt
• 21 Unique Tags
• 11 Unique Categories
• 10 Unique Comments, including several from the ‘Tester’ user (Administrator)
• 7 Default Links
• 1 Post (under category ‘Bullet List’) contains a Bullet List
• 1 Post (under category ‘Numbered List’) contains a Numbered List
• Various Lengths on each posts content and title

If you are not familiar with Importing an .XML file into Wordpress then follow this quick guide (based on the 2.6 version of WP)

1. Unzip the .XML from the downloaded archive
2. Log into your WP administration area (http://www.sitename/wp-admin)
3. Select Manage from the main menu
4. From the Manage sub-menu, select Import
5. You will be provided with a list of Blog types you wish to import from, select WordPress from the bottom of the list
6. Next select Browse
7. Locate to the .XML you downloaded from the link below, select Okay
8. Finally, select Upload File and Import

Any problems let me know, but should be fairly straight forward! Finally here is the download link:

Download: WordPress XML Import | Help spread this post by Digging It

The name of my first WordPress theme is (Nerd)Press, inspired by the TV show Chuck which I was watching at the time. So far I have working index and single-post pages, as well as working navigation, sidebar and footer sections, and finally a hugggee search bar panning 800+ pixels but looks very neat. The searchbar itself slides down using the ever popular jQuery which I am loving! I have also registered http://nerdpress.co.uk for when its ready to go public, at present there is only a centered logo up there but I plan on having an Email submission box up soon for anyone wanting to receive updates on my progress.

Thats about it for now, but here is a screenshot of what I have so far.

Facebook - As a Facebook addict, this is the application I was looking forward to most, partly because my job often requires me to be out the office, and how else would I keep up to date with everyones business! Facebook have developed a nice clean user friendly app here, and already released version 1.2 update which brought several more features such as photo comments, more detailed profile view.

A cool feature is the ability to upload a picture straight from the application either by selecting a picture from your current photo’s, or using the built in Camera! Finally, this is free, so if you have an iPhone I don’t understand why you would have this! get it from the iTunes store right now!

Google - Another free app, and one which I thought would be available to everyone on release day, but only the US were treated. A simple application that lets its user search not just straight to Google, but also the content on the iPhone, Locations, Images, News, Shopping and Wikipedia, which is awsum! and very handy! There is also a page on the App that gives you links to all of the other Google web apps available, like there Calendar, Reader, etc. Check it out, its a must!

Remote - Final App for this post, but probably the most useful so far, and made by Apple themselves! The Remote application acts as the name states, as a remote, but for what you ask? well as long as your iPhone is connected to your Wireless network, it can control your iTunes without the need of getting up of your sofa to change a track. As shown below, you get full Artwork straight from your Library, and have access to all the content, and you are able to scroll through the Playlists, Artists, Songs and Albums. I think that one nice addition would be the coverflow then it would truely be a killer app!

]]> http://selfconclusion.co.uk/2008/08/favourite-iphone-apps-so-far/feed/ http://selfconclusion.co.uk/2008/08/moving-mail-apple-to-pc/ http://selfconclusion.co.uk/2008/08/moving-mail-apple-to-pc/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:30:04 +0000 Stu http://selfconclusion.co.uk/?p=90 Well I can safely say I have broke the record for the amount of time spent copying email between computers! So far, 15 hours and counting. Thats right, 15! Why? Well partly because the guy I am doing it for has literally thousands of emails dating back to 1999 (there all over the place, fortunatly organized, but to a point where there are so many folders!), and partly because Entourage is crap.

Entourage, if your not familiar with, is the Email client that comes with Mac versions of Microsoft Office Packages, something I have never understood! I think it falls so short on the mark compared to Microsoft’s Outlook, and I would personally use Outlook on the Mac as I have an Exchange account setup with my work.

The whole reason behind this transfer was because the company I work for had just installed a Server and as a result all the users were put onto Exchange Email. Previously, Email had been coming in using POP3, so there was no possibility of downloading all the email straight onto the Exchange. I located the Email from Entourage which Microsoft store in a folder called ‘Microsoft User Data’ within the User Documents folder. In here each folder is stored in a .mbox file, which suprise suprise Outlook doesn’t like.

Next I searched for a method of transferring .mbox into a format that Outlook would take kindly, but it soon became apparent that I was fighting a lost cause! So I decided I would enable IMAP (Entourage 2001 doesn’t allow Exchange accounts) on the Exchange account and setup the new email address straight into Entourage at which point I would begin transferring files straight over, simple right? Not exactly! It wouldn’t allow me to drag the folders from the POP account into the IMAP one, meaning I had to do create each folder and copy its content manually. Here are my steps that I took to ensure mail was properly transferred from a POP account in Entourage 2001 to an Exchange Account in Outlook:

• First, enable IMAP on the server Exchange Account
• Next, Add the IMAP account into Entourage as an additional Mailbox
• Under the IMAP account folder list, right click and add relevant Folders and Subfolders, as it looks in the POP account (for example, if the POP account has folders ‘Work’ and ‘Personal’, then these will need to be created in the IMAP account)
• Select one folder at a time, highlight all the emails within that folder and drag onto the same folder in the IMAP account, this was very sluggish for me, especially folders with several thousand emails in.

This method is very time consuming and possibly not the most efficient way to get the mail transferred but it was the only way I could assure the whole of the mail content would move across in tact. If anyone knows of an easier method I would love to know! Till then we have to deal with the fact that Entourage is not friendly to Outlook even though they are both Microsoft! Daft I know!