Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress’

In a recent article on gHacks I’ve already explored if Wordpress 2.7 is better, and indeed my final verdict is that it is. I have some problems in functionality, since I think it could have addressed some functionaliy problems (video embeding, galleries) that could still use some work, but after using it full time for more than a week now I am quite satisfied with it, and the ease of use it brings to the admin area is astonishing.

A feature I have always wanted, and is the best one implemented for a while is the ability to quick-reply to comments from the dashboard. Since I am not a huge-mega blog yet, I get a maximum of 5-6 proper comments a day, which are easy to reply to right away. The ability to reply using an inline form that pops out is wonderful, this probably saves me a few minutes a day (that’s a LOT, considering the short time it would take to answer them anyway). Top marks for the WP team on this, such a simple thing when you think about it, but so useful!

The next best new implementation is the dashboard overhaul. As much as they tried in 2.5, the dashboard was never a go to place for me. It always seemed to revolve around Wordpress in general and didn’t have that much interactivity. Sure, it had comments at a glance, but if I have to go to the relevant section to answer them anyway, I won’t be bothered with the dash. Now it also has some easier to view statistics, a quick post writer and some other neat features.

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To all you Wordpress fans and users out there, version 2.6.5 of our favorite blogging patform is out. Get it while it’s fresh at the download site. There is one security fix (only affects ip based virtual networks) and three bug fixes. Nothing essential to get, but if you have the time I would upgrade.

Interestingly 2.6.4 was left out because of some phoney upgrade around the net with that name! 2.7 is still a bit away, and  is looking quite good, and 2.6.5 doesn’t offer too much in terms of visible change but it may still be worthwhile. If you can’t wait for the icontastique new 2.7 and can’t stop yourself from upgrading Wordpress (what fun!) then here’s your chance!

Twitter is one of the best tools for letting the world know what you’re doing at the moment and Wordpress is one of the most flexible and free blogging systems today. Combining the two you can create one of the most powerful organization systems, all this for free!

Preparations

You will need three things to get going with this system. First of all, you need to sign up for a Twitter account which will take you the best of 3 minutes. If you already have a username I recommend creating another one for this specific task. Since you are using this to organize and manage yourself, you might be sharing some stuff you don’t want to.

Second of all you will need a domain and an installed Wordpress blog. For those of you who already have one of these this is a simple step (since no work needs to be done), but for those of you who don’t this could take some time. If you don’t already have hosting please consider Bluehost, I use it for all my domains and if you sign up using my link I get some money which goes a long way for supporting Hack Your Day and my other sites. You will also need to install Wordpress, take a look at their site, they have excellent documentation. If you need help there, my new service, Blogtastique will install the blog and set up the plugin (see next paragraph) for you for free.

Last, but not least, you will need the Twitter Tools plugin by Alex King. This is the tool that will do the grunt of the work, capable of creating tweets from your posts or posts from your tweets, and adding all sorts of functionality on top.

The productivity method

The idea I had which sets the basis for this method is that I wanted a way to keep track of myself, of what I do, what I waste time on and so on, and also a way to easily browse, create statistics and so on. The first part was a given once I started to use Twitter. I can very simply write down what I’m doing, spending no more than 5 seconds on it between tasks. The second part proved a bit of a challenge. Twitter has a history, but nothing really powerful that can give you advanced filter functionality and so on. However, Alex King’s plugin and Wordpress give you excellent ways to manage yourself and get useful information from your day.

The workflow

The workflow defines what you do and how you do it, so please view this as my take, my method, feel free to deviate, explore and share. Basically, when you work, all you need to do is send a quick tweet about what you are doing. “doing marketing presentation”, “writing gHacks post”, etc are good examples, and as you will see the method works best if you document each and every action you do. You can use the Twitter website, but it may be more productive if you use a desktop tool, such as Twhirl, which is a handy Adobe Air application for quick desktop twittering.

You can stop there if you wish, but there is a lot more you can do. Right now you can’t add tags and categories, so what I do is go through all my posts the next day and give them tags, categories and additional notes if I have any more thoughts. Since I opted for the daily summary, I can quickly go through where I need to add tags, delete and so on.

Presentation

That’s basically all there is to the workflow, the other parts of this method just deal with the data presentation. I found a great Twitter-like theme named Bluebird for the blog and I have modified it to show data I need, take a look at my personal organizer. It will only be public for a few days, so hurry!

The great thing about this method is that not only does it give you a great way to present your daily log, but it also enables you to create a customized start page just for you. You can use Wordpress pages like you would on Netvibes and you can use the sidebar for quick links to your favorite site.

Of course your main concern will be presenting your actual tweets. Since the tweet is partially contained in the title and fully in the body, I have removed the titles, and I now only show the tweets, and the dates. There are endless options to modify the look and data volume you show, all you need is a little practice with Wordpress.

Further uses

There are numerous way you can use this method for personal organization. You can organize tasks as well as your activity log, because you can always go and edit the posts later on to add stuff, mark them as done, and so on.

You can also create an email log, so you won’t have to find individual emails you’ve answered for example. Just type “answered John’s email”, or simply “answered email” and you’ll find the answer without actually having to remember more than that.

If you play a lot of darts, poker, pool, or anything else competitive, you can log your progress and then search through it quickly and easily. You can also display results for March, or any other time period.

I’ve praised the new Wordpress admin theme in the past, but I’ve found a theme called Fluency that is so cool, I just have to show you. I first saw it at MUO when posting and it looks breathtaking. It has a darker approach, but I wouldn’t say the design has a dark feeling. In fact, I think it’s a lesson in design, since the only color type used is gray, and not even hundreds of shades, just about 5-6. It’s amazing that someone can create such a beautiful, simplistic, yet useful theme, out of just 5 shades of one color.

The biggest change you’ll see is that all menu options are now in a left side menu bar, which seems a bit more logical and drastically more contrasted, so you can find stuff more easily. Sub menus show up on the top, again in a tasteful, and very usable way. I know I’m ranting on and on about this too much, but this theme is so damn good.

I haven’t taken a very in-depth look, but it uses css a lot, so it should be customizable in the right hands. I may try and make it a bit more green to fit Hack Your Day later on, but right now I have it installed on my personal Ideas blog, which has a darker theme anyway. Since you just activate it as a plugin I really do recommend this, if you don’t like it, just deactivate and that’s it.

Over the weekend I had some serious fun, so I didn’t even write posts, and it seems I missed out on an important bit of news, Wordpress has secretly released 2.5 behind my back. I’m glad to say that it was released on my birthday, possibly as a present to me, I was waiting for the release for quite some time, so nice one Wordpress!

I will be installing it on the blog soon and will tell you guys what I think, from what I’ve seen it looks pretty awesome. From what I could tell without actually trying, version 2.5 mainly increases the admin’s ability to monitor and manage the blog by providing a better, more productive interface. It also makes the dashboard a widget page, much like you would see on Netvibes, I’m looking forward to taking it for a spin.

Productivity and organization are powerful tools, but there aren’t really any readily made applications to help you with them. If you want to create a log of your activities, what do you do? Task managers only enable you to track your to-do’s, what if you decide to do something else, will you create a to do list after the fact? It’s feasible, but not too practical. You can use applications like OneNote and Evernote, but personally neither are ideal for me. OneNote is too freeform for me, I get carried away in the details, and it’s also not the best for creating a searchable database. With Evernote I just feel that my stuff is all over the place. Also, I would especially love to keep my database online, which neither application can accomplish. To get around this problem, I just came up with a logging system that enables you to log any even in any way you want.

This tool is known as Wordpress. Yep, I am using a blog to track what I do. It’s quite simple really, basically I just installed a blog on one of my domain names (you can use a free Wordpress.com account as well, or any other blog) and each entry I write is a log. I then access the blog via RSS to give me all the info on my blog in a neat, concise way.This form gives you numerous advantages, here are some I use myself, but with the right plugins you can do anything.

How I add notes

I just create a new post to add log entries and I give it a very simple structure. The title contains as much info as possible in one line, the better titles you write the more info at a glance you can derive from your RSS feed later. The second part is a short summary of the item. I add a horizontal rule in the html code after that “<hr>” and write the long description (or paste the email) after the rule. If you don’t have this much info you can just leave out the rule and the long description of course.

Alternatively, you can also use the “<!–more–>” quicktag to cut off your post after the short description. This has its advantages, you will only see the short description in the RSS feed, but on the downside, you will have to click to another page in order to see the details. I am going with the first method at the moment by the way. If you want some added visibility, bold the short description and it will show well in the feed.

That’s all there really is to it, apart from adding categories and tags explained below. It takes about 10 seconds to write a short entry and about 30 to write a long one. This means that this method will take up 30 minutes of my day at most, but the benefits of productivity and really good organization, along with great search capabilities make this well worth the time.

Tags & Categories

Tags and categories give you endless options in organizing your log. Initially I am starting out by only using categories. I am using two sets, one is for assigning real categories like “Email” or “New feature” and so on, and the other is for the state of the log entry. This can be “done” or “follow up” or “waiting”, etc.

A crafty plugin I found that helps here is the Fun with categories plugin. It enables you to filter posts according to two categories at once. This plays into our hands nicely, as I can narrow it down to all emails waiting for follow up. Productivity is on its way with this plugin, but it also helps if you try to think of your category structure before hand, not just make it up as you go along.

Comments

Commenting is a great way to collaborate on specific items with a team or with friends. Wordpress essentially has built into it the structure for all those task management sites with a payment option. Lots of plugins exist to enhance comments, but even in its original state it will be great.

You can also use it yourself, to indicate any changes. You can create an entry as a task, and if you completed it in a different way you can indicate that in the comments, instead of changing the original post. This has two benefits, one is that you will see the originals of everything, the other is that you will see the exact dates because the original post will retain the posting date, while the comment will get a new date.

Plugins

I don’t really want to go into this now, let’s leave that for another post, but needless to say that the productivity you can achieve with addins for Wordpress is awesome. You can put a calendar on your blog and integrate it with Google Calendar, you can put Widgets to keep track of yourself, in other words, you can create the ultimate personal information manager, organization and productivity system, just with a simple blog. Take a look at the Wodpress plugins page if you need anything, and make sure to comment if you have anything to say (and Digg if you liked it).