Medill WordPress Users

Let your students know their post is live

SB Anderson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:49:38 +0000

If you work with drafts from students and then publish, here’s a bit of code for functions.php that will send the author an e-mail once the post is live.

function wpr_authorNotification($post_id) {
   $post = get_post($post_id);
   $author = get_userdata($post->post_author);

   $message = "
      Hi ".$author->display_name.",
      Your post, ".$post->post_title." has just been published. Well done!
   ";
   wp_mail($author->user_email, "Your article is online", $message);
}
add_action('publish_post', 'wpr_authorNotification');

SOURCE: WPRecipes.(via Cats Who Code)

Google Docs / WordPress workflow

SB Anderson — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:39:28 +0000

Good overview of how to integrate the Docs to WordPress plug-in into your WP workflow. Layer in EditFlow — and in the case of the Bangor Daily News, hooks to the print production CMS — and you’ve got a pretty impressive (and cheap) CMS for your newsroom. Here’s William Davis of Bangor giving a quick tour of the workflow.

Good recap story on Bangor’s integration from WordPress Publisher’s Blog.

Nice new set of basic WP tutorials

SB Anderson — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:00:45 +0000

The Knight Digital Media Center has to together a nice basic set of tutorials aimed at WordPress newbies. “While the focus of some tutorials is on technology and journalism, most are general enough to be of use to anyone.”

A good primer on multiple WP tools and functions

SB Anderson — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 12:53:28 +0000

Even if you don’t want to create a media-based site in WordPress, this tutorial from Smashing Magazine is worth a spin because it gives you the basics of some key tools and funtions, some of which are new with WP 3.x. What’s included:

Custom post types
Custom taxonomies
Custom fields
Media storage / rendering options
Custom post templates

The latest from our tumblr feed

SB Anderson — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 12:36:43 +0000

→ Visit medillwp.tumblr.com

The iPad, as envisioned by Knight-Ridder in 1994

SB Anderson — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:12:37 +0000

Via ReadWriteWeb and paleofuture.com

YouTube turns to cartoon characters to explain copyright

SB Anderson — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:39:04 +0000

YouTube will require copyright violators to watch this silly video about copyright, Mashable reports. I don’t think I’ll be replacing my 60-minute interactive legal issues lecture with it anytime soon, though. (What’s next? Toonces — the cat who could litigate?)

Feed me

SB Anderson — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:54:31 +0000

All the cool kids have our Medill WordPress Users News Companion tumblr feed in their RSS readers.

Photoshop how-to

SB Anderson — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:55:01 +0000

I’d linked earlier to a nice multi-part Photoshop how-to from Lifehacker’s “Night School” series. Here is a PDF with all five parts in one place, including links to the original videos. (Added bonus: A Lifehacker “Night School” how-to on Linux.)

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Ridding the world of IE6

SB Anderson — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:16:44 +0000

IE6, the bane of web developers worldwide (3% of U.S. users still use it; 35% in China), is ever so slowly vanishing. Microsoft this week launched a site to help hasten that. The “Internet Explorer 6 Countdown”

The site includes a continually updated map of where IE6 is being used, and a code snippet (below) that lets you intercept IE6 users to your site and urge them to upgrade. ”This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide,” the site says.

On WordPress, you can use a plug-in to handle the intercept for you.

For good measure, the IE6 countdown site even has a nice table explaining the differences in functionality and features for IE6, 7. 8 and 9.

IE6 Countown Map