It’s available from the WordPress plugin repository. To install, please just search for it in your WordPress admin interface and install like any other plugin.

This plugin allows you to do the following things:

• Add users of role ‘Client’
• Groups Clients together
• Restricted content to a user or group
• Add custom fields to Clients.

Jump to section:

• Clients Area
• Group Management
• Client Management
• Client Setup
• Shortcodes and Restricting Content
• Login Widget
• Client Area/My Area

After installing the plugin, you should find the following menu in your WordPress panel as shown on right.

Clients Area

To go to the general plugin options, click on ‘Clients Area’ . This will show you any general options available to the plugin. Currently, the only option that can be changed is the redirect location on logging out.

More options will be added to this section in later releases of the plugin

Group Management

Group Management

The group management section allows you to add, edit and remove groups. This is also where you can add or remove users to a group.

Add the bottom of this section all the existing groups are listed. To add or remove users to a group click the edit button.

Editing a group

When adding a user, just type their username and click on the result below to add. To remove, just click the ‘x’ next to the username listed.

N.B. Only users with role of ‘Clients’ can be added to a group.

Client Management

Client Management

Here you can view all users with the role of ‘Client’ and see the groups in which they are a member. Click on the username will allow you to edit the user; this is in fact a link to WordPress’ edit user page.

Clicking on delete will take you to a page where you can delete the user.

Client Setup

This is were all custom fields can be added to users. See example below:

Client Setup

Each field that is added, will be added to the edit user page. You can add whatever fields you like

There fields will allow the data to be stored as user-meta and therefore can be retrieved in your WordPress template like any other user-meta.

Shortcodes and Restricting Content

The easiest way to restrict content is when creating/editing a post/page. There is a metabox (shown below) in which will make the post only accessible to users which are members of the selected groups. If no groups are selected, the post is viewable to everyone.

Restrict Groups Meta Box

You can also use shortcodes to restrict content within a post/page:

• Exclude content to all users not logged in:

• [escl_logged_in]content[/escl_logged_in]
• Show content to only one user:

• [escl_logged_in user="joebloggs"]content[/escl_logged_in]
• Show content to only specific groups (if using multiple groups, they should be separated with a pipe (‘|’)):

• [escl_logged_in group="group1|group2"]content[/escl_logged_in]

Login Widget

Login Widget when logged in

Client Area/My Area

Need to keep track of what files are downloaded the most form your WordPress website? This plugin integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

Features include:

• View last 7 days, last 30 days, Top Ten
• Search for download within a user specified range.
• Specify which file types to track (i.e. pdf,jpg,etc)

Potential uses could be:

• Musicians who want to know how many downloads there are of their free tracks
• Authors who want to keep track of ebook downloads.
• Artists who want to know how many people are downloading their images.
• Programmers who want to know how many people are downloading their source code.

Planned Upcoming features:

• Implementation of shortcodes so that download counts can be displayed in WordPress front end.
• Flush table option to reset download count.
• Any other suggestions are very welcome.

This plugin can be downloaded from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/electric-studio-download-counter/

Happy Downloading!

The administration panel for this plugin that allows you to choose which post type (including custom post types) you would like to the plugin to be available on.

The Auto Post Expire plugin is great when you have posts about events, offers or other time sensitive information that needs to be automatically removed from your website.

You can download the plugin at the official WordPress site.

You will need 2-5 years of previous experience in web design and development, and experience using:

• PhotoShop or Fireworks
• Illustrator
• DreamWeaver
• HTML and CSS

We’d also appreciate it if you have some understanding of usability, accessibility, information architecture and building to W3C standards. App development for iOS and Android knowledge would be incredibly advantageous. Mac or PC, your choice.

Your role will be to create and deliver websites and other digital assets. You will be required to: Create website designs and email marketing campaigns, and develop the same; Create web banners and all digital display broadcast ready artwork; Support existing websites and add/edit content, tweak functions and other related tasks. You will be responsible for taking ownership of your development and liaising with the creative team to continually enhance knowledge and skills. Electric Studio will also offer you to go on courses to further enhance your skills.

Electric Studio is an expanding web design company based south of Oxford. Our client include, Oxford University, Oxford University Press, NHS, Gilles Peterson, UKAEA, Suzy Lamplugh Trust and many more.

Send your CV to cv@electricstudio.co.uk and make sure to include some links to previous work you have been involved in stating your role in each project.

NO agencies please.

Electric Studio are very excited to announce the launch of Electric Hosting, our premium web hosting company offering a 99.9% service level agreement, SLA.

We spotted a gap in the market for our customers in need of business grade, reliable and fast web hosting that didn’t require any knowledge of managing dedicated servers or virtual private servers.

So when you’ve outgrown shared hosting, but can’t justify the expense and don’t have the experience or time to manage a dedicated server or VPS, our Shared Cloud Web Hosting is for you.

We utilise the many benefits of a VPS solution rather than a single server and each VPS server hosts no more than 50 sites, compared to an industry standard of at least 500 per server. Every account comes complete with their own cPanel control panel allowing full control of emails, databases, FTP accounts and much more. If your website is vital to your business, then you can rely on our premium hosting solutions to provide the highest uptime. It’s also fully backed up just in case.

You can order Cloud Web Hosting on-line today

This new plugin pulls in the latest images from your Flickr RSS feed, and then shows the thumbnails as a mosaic. You can place this function either in the sidebar or anywhere in your template file you wish to show it.

When a thumbnail is clicked, it pulls the large image in from Flickr and shows it on top of your website using a JavaScript FancyBox function.

The size of the thumbnails and the Flickr RSS url can easily be change from WordPress’s Admin Panel.

To install the Electric Studio Flickr Mosaic WordPress plug-in, go to your WordPress administration panel, then ‘Plugins’ and ‘Add new’, search for Electric Studio Flickr Mosaic. You will now see the plug-in displayed, just click ‘Install’ and WordPress will install it for you. You can also download it directly from WordPress.

Once the plug-in is installed, insert the following line into your template where you want the thumbnails to appear.

< ?php if(function_exists('ES_fm_show')) {ES_fm_show();}?>

Your plug-in is now installed!

The Electric Studio Flickr Mosaic admin panel:

Zooming in on an image (using ‘FancyBox’):

1. Getting the core settings rights

When you install WordPress for the first time, there are a few things you should do to ensure a smooth ride up the rankings.

1.1. Activate permalinks

Permalinks take advantage of a server function called mod rewrite to convert your URL’s to a human readable structure based on a hierarchical structure for pages, or a date, category and tag based structure for posts. Without it the URL’s will show a PHP search string like  ?p=6 rather than /parent/child/grandchild which is much more user friendly and better for SEO. You activate permalinks under Settings > Permalinks. We usually choose the Months and Name option.

1.2. Allow search engines to crawl your site

WordPress can be shown or hidden to search engines very easily. Usually during development, we hide WordPress from search engines simply by not allowing them to indexing it. To make sure the website is indexable by Google etc, go to Settings > Privacy and select I would like my site to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers.

2. Take advantage of some free plug-ins

One of the many beautiful things about WordPress are the thousands of free plug-ins available to download and install. If you need a function on your website, like Twitter, Facebook or Linked in connections, there’s a very good chance you can download and install all functionality for free thanks to the wonderful WordPress community. Besides the social plug-ins, which also are great for SEO, we at Electric Studio never develop a WordPress website without installing the All in One SEO pack and Google XML sitemap generator.

2.1. All in One SEO Pack

(wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/)

This free plug-in is absolutely key for taking on the search engines. It adds the META description and keyword field. The latter might have diminished in value the last years, but the description field is vital. You can even have the plug-in auto-generate the description field. This plug-in also generates better page titles.

2.2. Google XML Sitemaps

(wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/)

Installing this plug-in is only half the job done. Once activated, you need to submit the link to the generated sitemap.xml feed to Google Webmasters (www.google.com/webmasters), and add a link to it from somewhere on your website. Google can then see all pages you have and this helps with getting more of your pages indexed. Add a link to this from your 404 page too.

2.3. GUAR Google XML Sitemaps

(www.getupandrunning.net/2010/06/adding-custom-content-types-to-the-sitemap/)

This is a plug-in that adds custom content type URL’s to the sitemap generated by Google XML Sitemaps, and you only need this plug-in if using custom content types as made available in WordPress 3.0.

2.4. Breadcrumb NavXT

(wordpress.org/extend/plugins/breadcrumb-navxt/)

What? A breadcumb generator for improving SEO? Yes, I know what you’re saying, but it adds both internal links and improves the usability.

2.5. Access Keys for WP Navigation Menus

(wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-nav-menus-access-keys/)

Accessibility is a key factor when Google rank your website. Access Keys might only be a part of that, but it’s so incredibly easy to add using this plug-in and adds so much value for people with disabilities, so there’s no reason not to install it.

3. Content, content content + social media = success

Ok sparky, so you now have a great website, all optimised and ready for Google and Bing, now what? Simple, add content, internal cross-links and allow for people to share, comment on, and bookmark your beautiful content.

3.1. Adding Content

First and foremost, WordPress is an incredibly powerful Content Management System (CMS), so you should take full advantage of it and add as much quality content you can. Add blogs about anything you think will add value to your site visitors  (like this post I hope) and  add individual pages for each service area, product and solution you offer and don’t cram it all in on one page. when adding content, make sure you mention the keywords in the title, and provide a sort summary at the top containing all the keywords, Google only read the first paragraphs of each page.

It’s also important to take full advantage of the built in tag and category function when adding content. Look at the tags and categories and keywords and remember to be honest, eg. don’t use tags and categories that aren’t relevant to the content,  when adding tags and categorising your blogs. Google is clever and will spot it.

3.2. Allow people to share, comment on, and bookmark your content

Social media is all the rave today with Facebook and Twitter making the headlines everyday, and LinkedIn being a must have for any executive, high flyer, so don’t make it hard for your visitors to share your content on these platforms. There are multiple options, most free, that easily integrate in WordPress.

Commenting is also a great inviter for people to participate in your community. We use the standard WordPress commenting system (with Aksimet activated to prevent spam) on this website, but are starting to look more and more at Disqus (www.disqus.com) as this allows your site visitors to use a standard login, and see all replies on the Disqus website.

3.3. Measuring success

The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/). If you don’t use it today, you’re not taking your website seriously. If you don’t use Analytics today and think you should wait until you have that new shiny website before installing it, don’t. Install it now. Then you have the possibility to track how your current website is doing so you can compare it with your new shiny one. This is also a very good way to see if the money spent with a web design company actually was worth it from an SEO perspective.

The plugin finds every instant of a page title in all other page entries, and creates a link back to that page. An example would be on a website with pages about animals, on a page about dogs it would state that dogs are mammals; the word mammals would get turned into a link that goes to the mammals page.

We developed this plugin was because we needed this functionality on one of our projects, but were unable to find anything suitable in the list of WordPress plugins. We decided to make it into a plugin rather than hard code it so that I could use this again on future sites, and obviously share it with the fantastic WordPress community.

It’s available as a free download from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/electric-studio-cross-linker/, and the latest version is compatible with WordPress 3.1 and newer. You can also install it straight from your plugin interface (Plugins > Add New), just search for Electric Studio.

Here’s a screen shot of the administrator’s interface:

And this is the final result:

New telephone:
01235 436262

New address:
68J Milton Park
Abingdon
Oxfordshire
OX14 4RX

Please feel free to stop by for a cuppa, it would jolly nice to see you (ps; please do let us know in advance!).

For those of you who can’t make it, here’s a few photos.