Underground Web Designs Blog

Recently I created two plugins for Tiny MCE, the WYSIWYG editor that MODx uses that allow you to easily add contact information and event information to your posts and webpages, using the hCard and hCalendar microformats. Unfortunately, installing these plugins on MODx is not quite as streight forward as it might be, so here are some step by step instructions:

1. Download the TinyMCE hCard and hCalendar plugins from UndergroundWebDesigns.com. Once the files are downloaded, unzip them. Inside the unzipped folder you will find a folder with the name of the plugin, and a readme file.
2. Download the TinyMCE 3 plugin for MODx and install it following the directions on it’s site. This is fairly easy, you just upload the files and run an install program.
3. Once TinyMCE 3 is installed on your MODx site, open your favorite FTP program, and upload the hCalendar and hCard folders you downloaded and unzipped in step 1 into http://www.yoursite.com/assets/plugins/tinymce309/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/
4. Log in to your MODx Admin area, and click on “tools - > configuration”.
5. In the configuration screen, click the “Interface and Features” tab, and scroll down to the bottom where the TinyMCE settings are.

6. Make sure the TinyMCE Theme is set to “Custom”
7. In the “Custom Plugins” box, move to the end of the list of plugins and add “hcard” and “hcalendar” (no quotes), to the list, separated by commas.
8. Add “hcard” and “hcalendar” (no quotes) to one of the “Custom Buttons” boxes, again separated by commas.
9. Save your changes.
10. Open a page to edit. You should see two new buttons in the Document Content edit window… one to insert hCard data, the other to insert hCalendar data.

Automation is a big thing in the manufacturing industry. Factories use robots and other “smart” machines to weave cloth, build cars, and almost everything in between. But automation has just as many applications for the small business as it does for a factory — the difference is that small business don’t know about it, or think it’s too expensive.

Now, I’m not suggesting you purchase a robot to handle the paperwork, but I am suggesting that if we made better use of the computer power we all have on hand to automate certain tasks, our lives could be much less stressful, and much more productive.

Many people can dramatically increase their work efficiency by simply teaching their desktop computers to help them keep organized. E-mail rules and calendar synchronization are great examples. If enough people use a service like Google calendar, you can even subscribe to those that are important, so that your own calendar is always up to date.

One thing I’ve successfully automated has been the synchronization of my cell phone with my computer. Since both my Mac and my phone support Bluetooth, the computer simply connects wirelessly to my phone each day and the two devices update each-other with any changes. This keeps my contacts and calendar updated, without me having to enter the same information in 2 different places.

Or what about our websites? What if you used RSS feeds to put the latest 5 blog posts from your blog on your home page? Or what if you could pull up ANY blog posts on a certain topic, and reference them on your site — without you doing a thing? Both are possible and easy to set up, yet few people use them.

Could you help automate things for your customers as well? Microformats such as hCalendar and hCard allow websites to display event and contact information in a way that both humans and computers can understand. By providing your business’s contact information as an hCard on your “about us” page, you can make it that much easier for those who use hCard enabled web browsers to get in touch with you: instead of having to write anything down one click puts your contact information in their address book!

Next time you sit down at your computer, think about 5 tasks you do every day, and then spend 30 minutes researching how to automate them. They may take some time to set up, but in the long run automation is always well worth the setup time.

At the Webvisions conference I attended a couple weeks ago, there was a lot of talk about microformats and open protocols that would enable the next generation of internet applications to not only share data, but to understand more and more data that resides on ordinary webpages.

Indeed, standards such as microformats are not new, they just haven’t been used too much. Now is, I believe, the time to start changing that. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I’ve been working on creating some plugins for systems already in use so that they can benefit from the use of microformats. Today the first of these plugins was finished, and has been released.

The plugin is an hCalendar plugin for TinyMCE. TinyMCE is the WYSIWYG editor used in many popular content management systems and blogging softwares, including MODx, my CMS of choice, so I hope that by making this plugin available to such a wide audiance, many more people will be able to use microformats on their webpages and in their blogs… even if they don’t fully understand how they work.

The plugin works by opening a dialog box where a user can input event details including the event title, location, url, dates and times, a description, and some tags, and then encoding that data into an hCalendar event on the page. Once the data has been encoded into the hCalendar microformat, any software that supports hCalendar can extract the event details and add it to a calendar, run a search for similar events, or anything else.

To download the plugin for your own website or blog, please visit the hCalendar plugin page on my main site.

I would love to hear your feedback about this plugin in the comments. I hope to create some more plugins, including plugins to handle hCard data and Geo data once I have some more time.

Content Management Systems (or CMS’s) may be the biggest breakthrough in website maintenance since HTML, and yet many site owners don’t know what a CMS is… let alone how to use it. If you’re one of them, let me explain what content management systems are, and how you can use them to boost your web productivity.

First of all, a content management system does exactly what its name implies: it manages content.  In the old days the only way to update a website was to open an HTML file and edit the HTML code by hand. (If you were lucky, you had a HTML editor to help with this). Then, you had to use an FTP account to upload those changes to the website so everyone else could see your changes. Now, this is just fine if you’re a tecky person and are willing to learn HTML, but what about everyone else? Until content management systems came along, they were stuck hiring techy webmasters to update their sites for them.

Not so anymore. Content management systems are pieces of software that install on a web server and help you manage the contnet of your site. They do this by allowing you to log in to the program and then providing you with an interface you are familiar with to edit the pages of your site. The end result is that making upadtes to a page of your site or even creating a whole new page can be as easy as editing a word document.

In fact, chances are you’re already familiar with a type of content management system: the blog. Yes, blogs are really just mini content management systems. Once a blog is set up you can easily log in and write posts, create categories, tweak settings, or re-arrange the menu. Same with a CMS. The only difference between a blog and a content management system is that CMS’s are designed to run a whole site, not just a little blog. They are much more powerful and have added features that make it easy for you to create any kind of site you can imagine.

Some of the most common content management systems available are Joomla, Drupal, and Typo3. Each of these systems is open source (meaning you can download and use it for free). They are also actively maintained and developed, so there are constantly new features being added. My personal favorite content management system is called MODx, a relatively new but very powerful and easy to use CMS. For an example of MODx in action, view my main site at Underground Web Designs.com.

As great as content management systems are, there are a few things to keep in mind when using them.

1. Because they are programs in their own right, it can sometimes be hard for a programmer to integrate a custom program your site may use with a CMS. However, more and more content management systems are using a “pluggin” interface, which can actually make adding extensions easier for programmers. Before choosing a CMS, it is a good idea to have a programmer you trust look at it, and determine how extensible it is.
2. Integrating advanced website designs (often called “themes”) can be tricky. If you currently have a website and want to keep the same design but move to a content management system, contact your web-master and ask him how hard it would be to move your current design to a specific CMS. Different CMS systems handle design in different ways, so be as specific as you can.
3. CMS systems often have lots of settings. While this is a good thing, because it gives you flexibility in how you want your site to operate, it also makes it worth having your web-master or other knowledgeable individual explain all these settings. This way you will be sure of getting the most out of the CMS, and also you can be warned which settings should be left alone

I hope this introduction has served to explain some of they mystery surrounding content management systems and how they can be used to increase your productivity in managing your website. Please post any questions you have in the comments section, and I will do my best to answer as soon as possible!