This post is coming out of MarsEdit. Seems relatively harmless if not nice.

ImageManager by Per Soderlind
Holy smokes. This is an incredible plugin. It is a total must-have for any wordpress installation.

PHP Exec by Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo
PHP Exec allows your users to execute php code from within the body box of a post or plugin.
Where you’ll see it: The Emergency Readiness and related pages are generated in an interesting way: CERF staff bookmarks resources as they find them using delicious and a bookmarklet. We then use Feeddigest to create nice little html listings of the feeds coming from the group delicious account, and spit them out onto the page using PHP Exec. The client went nuts over the ease of use.

SpotMilk by Sunghwa Park
Spotmilk is a beautiful overhaul of the default Wordpress admin interface. Highly recommended.

Search Pages by David B. Nagle
A nice, solid plugin that allows the default Wordpress search engine to search page content as well as post content.
Where you’ll see it: Try searching any page or check out these results.

Search_Hilite by Georg Leciejewski
Search Hilite does some nice context highlighting of search results, allowing the user to more easily comb through results. Works hand-in-hand with Search Excerpt (below).
Where you’ll see it: Try searching any page or check out these results.

Search Excerpt
Search excerpt modifies the default search results so that the users search phrase is shown instead of an excerpt from the top of the post/page.
Where you’ll see it: Try searching any page or check out these results.

WP Admin Bar 2 by Matt Read
Another must-have and staff favorite. WP Admin Bar places an unobtrusive menu across the top of all site pages and posts. It allows for easy access to common user functions especially an edit button that jumps to the edit screen of the post/page you are viewing. Hot.

Wp_list_pages Reloaded by Cam Fraser
Ah, our buddy Cam is back with this wonderful solution. Wp_list_pages Reloaded works hand-in-hand with Collapsing Page Menus - Vernal Creative Edition to throw a specified class on every menu link that is a parent of the page you are viewing. The last hole in Wordpress menu management has been plugged.
Where you’ll see it: Visit anything at CERF and notice that nice menu hiliting action.

That’s a mighty fine list of outstanding ideas and generous people. I love the creativity and drive of the Free software. Thanks to everyone everywhere that participates in our wonderful community.

In the original site the architecture was built upon a hybrid system of diverse content types (primarily pages, stories, and many custom types using Flexinode).

I needed to mimic the Drupal Flexinode system by allowing Wordpress pages to be made up of entries from a given category. I needed this system to be simple and easy to use by the client. Enter Directory Pages.

What is it? How does it work?

Here is what it does:
This is a Page template (compatible with WP 2.0+) that will display the contents of a page but also all posts that exist within a category of the same name as the page. And you can re-use it over and over on your site.

Here is how it works:
Download the template (above)
Put it in your themes directory
Write a new Wordpress page and give it a title. We’ll call ours Staff. You can also give the page whatever content you want.
While editing this page you will see a new page template is available in your Page Templates menu. It is called Directory. Choose it.
Save and publish your page.
Create a new category and name is the exact same thing as your previously created page. Case sensitive, the whole deal. And yes, the code can deal with spaces between words.
Publish a few posts within your newly created category.
View your page and you’ll see the posts showing up within.

So this seems pretty simple and elementary but what is nice about it that you (or your clients) can now create new directory pages at their whim and it’s really easy to do.

Special props goes to Cam from Sporkfancier Consulting for his l33t coding on this one. Top notch.

What makes this a gem is the solution: a good ol’ fashion hammer.

It’s a nice reminder about technology, that a hammer is just as valuable of a tool as a bluetooth sniffer and hex editor… and in this case is a much more effective one… and that the semantics of the word technology sometimes get screwed up in this online world of ours. Axe, Shovel, or Mouse, tech is tech.

The secondary navigation spec for CERF states that a few things must happen:

1. When a user is visiting a site area (About Us, for example) the name of that site area must appear above the secondary nav. This gives the some good orientation about where he or she is in the larger context of the site.
2. The child pages of that section (Our Staff, Our History, etc) must appear below the heading.
3. The child page that the user is currently visiting must retain an active state (to further give notice of where the user is).
4. Any grandchildren or great-grandchildren must be displayed when viewing their parent or grandparent (facilitating the display of third and fourth level pages).
5. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren must display an active state upon display

Out of the box Wordpress provides some pretty nice menu features (using the get_pages function) but this spec is a little beyond what is available.

My hunt for a plugin left me passing up the popular Fold Page List plugin and moving onto Collapsing Page Menus by Cam Fraser. It was nearly what I was looking for.

I wrote to Cam and he agreed to make some quick modifications to the code. The world now has a very-reusable Wordpress menu manager that fits the bill for intuitive and accessible site navigation. Cam tells me he will be rolling the new features into the next version of his plugin. Look for it at his site. If you are in a rush contact me and I’ll send you what you need.

What’s next…

Coming up I’ll write about my solution for building the entire site information architecture using Pages while still allowing users to enter content using Posts (and making sure the right posts are aggregated on the correct pages). The solution is wonderful and really increases the flexibility of using Wordpress as a CMS. Once I clean the code up a bit I will make it available. For sure.

I have begun work converting an existing Drupal site to Wordpress in the name of simplicity, sustainability, and cost savings.

I’ve long preached the content-management power of Wordpress as an effective and sustainable solution for small to mid-sized organizations. This should be a good demonstration of what it can do.

The project aims to:

Make it easier for CERF staff to manage content (using either the web interface or a desktop client)

Reduce hosting and maintenance costs (no nasty plugin incompatibilities and core hacking to make things work here…)

Increase the semantics and accessibility of the XHTML (I’ll be saying goodbye to wrestling html that is embedded within core php code)

Allow for easier image management (Say hello to drag-and-drop ajaxed-out image placement and manipulation…. nothing i’ve seen for Drupal can hold a torch to this stuff)

Create a platform for future growth at a fraction of the costs of previous development cycles

Well, this is going to be fun.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be documenting the process, pros, and pitfalls of the whole experience. It should be hot.

There is a lot to say about it. I first question I am getting from people is why are you leaving Eggplant? You are Eggplant. Your nickname is EGGIE after all…!

The answer to that is really, really long and I’m still trying to work it out myself. The story gets ugly here and there and I won’t pretend it’s pretty.. but the large-picture is that ultimately Eggplant was an experiment. It had never been done before. It hasn’t been done since. We had no peers and we had no role-models. We had a ton of inspiration, talent, and ambition to change the world. That was enough to cruise on for 5 or so years but ultimately the challenge is too great for me. I’ve been the driving force behind Eggplant for far too long and am ready to hang up my hat. Here is how the challenge stacked up:

We were trying to create workplace democracy and a cooperative amongst a group of anti-capitalist geeks that were living in every corner of the world using primarily text-based communication methods (email, chat). Oh, and not one of them had a lick of business background. Ah we learned as we went and managed to to overcome most every obstacle, but really I think that if I have learned anything after six years it is in order to have true workplace democracy you need to be together. In a room. Face to face. Maybe eating pizza and laughing. If I were to try again I would do it no other way.

I can’t believe we made it this far.

This too has been an exhausting and sometimes impossible venture. It has been really heartwarming and inspiring at times. I’ve loved everyone I’ve worked with in one way or another… there have been many wonderful people involved here. We have even inspired many, many people to follow our lead. However, I think that it is time that I hang up my hat and close the door on that big purple vegetable.

At three different times in the history of Eggplant we have identified that fostering workplace democracy in a virtual environment is really tought to do. We keep identifying it, and alas, it keeps defeating us. It’s really bit us in the butt this time. Well, add me to the pile. I’m baba-ghanoush.

As far as I can tell the remaining three members of Eggplant (Jessi Berkelhammer, Micah Anderson and Linda Setchell) are going to keep plowing ahead with things. There are some great projects lined up and lots of fun assets to play with. I hope they do well with them.

I might have more to say on the subject as time goes on. For now I’m looking ahead and am in love with the idea of working alone for a while. I’ve been having fantastic day-dreams about spending time going clickety-click on straight-up design projects. I’ve got some good ones brewing, too. And then there is a really fun web-app I’ve been dreaming about for two years that might get to see the light of day…. Let’s hope so.

We created a standards-compliant and beautifully crafted website for Hellerwork International that effectively meets it’s goal of being beautiful, useful, and communicative.

Rural Vermont is a nonprofit farm advocacy group here in our hometown of Montpelier, VT. In the early part of 2005 we worked closely with them to create a standards-based website and content management system that would look sharp on new computers but gracefully downgrade on the older computer equipment of many rural vermonters.

The site features action-alerts, breaking news, legislative information and archives of their previous newsletters all rolled into a nice autonomously-managed and beautifully crafted website.

Chelsea Green Publishing is a Vermont-based publisher of books on sustainable living and, more recently, progressive politics. They are the publisher of the renowned book Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff.

The ever-expansive chelseagreen.com sports a Vernal design and quite a lot of strategy as well.