So, without further adieu…

The Mobile Version

3 important components come together to create the WP-Drudge mobile experience:

• A single-column, mobile page template that can be controlled with widgets
• A mobile prompt that can be configured to appear to certain users
• Better CSS and HTML across the site to support mobile users in general

The steps to create a mobile page are here and the new configuration options are detailed here. If you’re having any display issues or problems with this, please let me know.

Upgrade notes

If you purchased v2, you should receive an email with a download package today (Thursday, 5/17/2012). Upgrade steps are here. I’ve upgraded all of my WP-Drudge installs without any problems. I’m running the latest WordPress version, 3.3.2, and did extensive debugging.

It’s possible that your colors selected on the WP-Drudge options page, Borders and Colors tab, will get reset to defaults. Make sure, after you activate the new template, that you visit the options page, look for missing data, replace, and save.  The upside is that there is a color chooser there now so, hey, you might find a new color!

I added a new option for displaying the featured post on archive pages, explained on this page. You might want to double-check these settings to make sure that the featured post display is set how you want it. This will only affect people linking to their archive pages.

Other than that, all other settings should carry over. Content on the site will not be affected, as usual.

Changes and fixes

• Added mobile page template to create a single-column mobile-friendly layout
• Made several HTML and CSS changes to make the entire site more mobile friendly, including responsive CSS for main pages, smaller overall page size, and better meta tags
• Added “Mobile” options tab to the WP-Drudge options page
• Added color selectors to the WP-Drudge options page
• Fixed minor font issues for “Courier New” and Palatino Linotype selections
• Slight width change for triple columns to fill the entire width
• Posts that were sticky would show up as second posts in the featured area. This was not intended and has been fixed
• Improved contact page template and widget, including a complete re-write to help control spam and fix a few bugs
• Fixed the problem with featured stories showing on individual posts and search results
• Change how featured posts are shown on category and tag pages
• Added an option to show or hide featured posts on the date archive pages
• Fixed the problem with “Go to article” showing up on posts without a link
• Added a category ID class to all posted and static link widgets to assist with styling
• Added ID names to all widgets
• Fixed the date archive header display

So, whats next?

This is a big release with quite a few changes so I’m figuring on a clean-up release within a month or so. I have a few more features I’d like to get into place, like per-post over-riding for blurb/body text and adding the color selector to the link color.

My big focus for the next release, though, will be improving the documentation and working to make the template more developer-friendly. I’ll be adding hooks in various locations, developer-specific documentation, and more information about creating child themes.

Got a suggestion or a fix? Please get a hold of me. I take lots of user suggestions for improvements (that’s where most of the new features come from) and rely on the community to tell me where I’m going wrong.

Thank you and enjoy!

The Ask

So this doesn’t get lost in some of the technical stuff below, I’d like to ask current (and potential) WP-Drudge users to view the following pages on their mobile devices and give me some feedback in the comments below. I appreciate your time greatly and will use your feedback to make the best mobile template I can. The different pages are:

• New Mobile page template
• Home page
• Post page
• Category page

Use the comments below (or the contact form) to tell me if it looks good, any suggestions you have, and, most importantly, what kind of device you’re using. I use an iPhone so I know it’s looking good there. I’m guessing Android is good too but anything you can tell me is great! Thanks in advance…

The plan

I want to combine your choices with good mobile design and development to create a great experience for all mobile users. Here’s how I’m doing it:

• I’m creating a mobile page template which allows you to create single-column WP-Drudge pages in the same style as the rest of the site. These templates will function like the current WP-Drudge page template and give you a new widget area to add content blocks. It also provides a mobile menu area for static links at the top. Advertisements, if you’d like them to display, can be added just like widget-based ads now. Here’s my reasoning for this second site.
• This “mobile” display will be controlled using widgets, as mentioned, as well as a few new settings on the options page. I’m allowing images to be suppressed (to cut down on page size) and the featured item to be hidden (to cut down on vertical space).
• I’m also building in an option to redirect users to the mobile site automatically (you can turn this on or off). This uses user agent sniffing to figure out what type of browser is being used and send people to the mobile template (selected by you). I’m using the open source code from detectmobilebrowsers.com to make sure I’m as compliant as possible. There are a few problems with this method so I’m including a link at the top of the page to return to the regular page display.
• Lastly, I’m creating a way to easily add a link at the top of all pages to send people to your main mobile page. This can be dismissed, will display for small screen sizes (as well as potential mobile users instead of automatically redirecting them), and will save the preference as a cookie. As with everything, this can be turned off.
• The whole template is getting more mobile friendly in general. I’m guessing a significant portion of your users will opt to use the site as it is and we want them to have a good experience as well. Also, the only mobile-specific pages will be using the page templates; all the existing posts, content pages, and archive pages will all be on entity and need to be mobile friendly. I’m cutting load times everywhere and generally improving the template as a whole. You’re welcome :)

Whew, lots of information.

If you’re a developer or familiar with mobile development, I warmly welcome your feedback to my plan above. If you’re really looking forward to this mobile component and want to understand more about the above, ask in the comments, I’m happy to help explain.

The current state of things

I’ve got a mobile template up on the demo site, Cur8/Aggreg8, for you to take a look at. This is what the mobile template will generate (still needs a few tweaks). I’m leaving in images and leaving out the featured article. Also, there is no auto-redirecting or top-of-the-page prompt at the moment.

If you have a minute or two, please check out that link and let me know how it looks on your phone. If you could leave your phone type and what you saw in the comments (or email i@wpdrudge.com), that would be massively helpful!

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be adding the redirecting and prompts and I’ll need everyone’s help to test that as well. The more people that can provide feedback, the better this template will be.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?

Have anything to say about the above? Please let me know in the comments below or by email at the address above. Thanks in advance to everyone who can chip in a few minutes, I promise it will be worth your time once the template is mobilized!

This page is me trying to get ahead of them in the rankings so I can plead you, fair user, to purchase my template instead of downloading it for free. I give support, answer questions on the documentation pages, and offer free upgrades for one year. I’m not buying new cars and vacations with what I make from this thing, I’m paying my rent. Not trying to give a sob story, just telling the truth.

If you’re the person who posted my template on line, please, do the right thing and take it down. There’s no reason to steal someone’s hard work like that. If you’re someone looking for a deal or you’re just not sure, I trust you to come back and pay for a copy if you use it.

That’s about all I can do…

Here are a few things that I’m especially excited to announce. A big thanks to all the users who helped me figure out which features to add and how they should work…

• Built-in RSS feed aggregation: This was a big missing piece of the template, not because it’s impossible without my widget but because it’s hard to pick the right widget out of the many, many that are out there. I’m using the core WordPress RSS funtion (SimplePie) and added caching which means a page with a few of these widgets won’t get bogged down nearly as often. All the fun stuff I built into this widget was added to the Google News widget as well so they are both running very well.
• Administration page re-build: When I started developing this template I would have never guessed I would end up having half the number of options I have now. The single-page, endlessly long layout was tough to use and easy to lose your place. I implemented a tabbed browsing system here that saves where you left off so you don’t lose your place. I also added a few extra options like adding “nofollow” to outgoing links and spacing options (tight, medium [this is the default], and spacious).
• Contact widget and page: I added a built-in contact form widget that can sit on your homepage and collect submissions. I also added a Contact page template so you can add, well, a contact page. Both of these have some anti-spam controls built in but it won’t stop everything. Both will likely see a few revisions over time but give them a try and report back with any issues you find!
• Added features to the Posted Link widget: You can now show only featured links and set the category to “all” so you, effectively, can have a recent posts widget that takes the template’s style better than the built-in WordPress one.
• Social features: Nothing ground-breaking but I replaced the Google Buzz (RIP) icon in the subscribe widget with Google Plus and added a feature to allow Facebook commenting on articles. Facebook comments are an easy way to allow interaction while cutting WAY back on spam. It does, however, require a Facebook account so it’s not for all sites.
• Help links everywhere: You’ll now find blue links to help pages right in the interface. Helpful help, what a concept!

The template will be sent out directly to everyone who has purchased the version 2 template already and folks who have upgraded from the previous. If you don’t see your template by the end of tomorrow (Saturday, 1/28), contact us and let us know. If you’re still on version 1 and want the new features, we’ll be offering an upgrade deal around the time of the next release. If you really, really need one of the features above, however, I can probably be convinced to upgrade you know (will likely be $30 to upgrade).

Speaking of next releases… the next release will concentrate almost entirely on building a mobile site, including a customizable mobile-only version of the site. I want to give everyone lots of control and make sure I’m covering the gamut of devices so I’ll need to do a little research before I get started. Tips, suggestions? Get in touch!

Thanks everyone and have fun with the new release!

Version 2 is a big step forward for the WP-Drudge template. We added lots of cool features and made a few structural changes that will make modifying the theme in the future much easier (read: more features). The feature list looks like this:

• Built-in advertising manager
• Option to use home page right column on entire site
• Google News widget
• Implemented core WordPress comment form with additional styles
• Ability to add HTML code to the footer and header files
• Ability to link category headers to their aggregation page
• Improved SEO structure
• Slight spacing changes

The big thing, of course, is the built-in advertising management. The Advertiser Management plugin worked OK but there were two problems: one, maintenance had stopped and the plugin was removed from the repository and two, it didn’t work THAT well. So I put together all the ways it was good and the ways it was bad and came up with a simple solution that lets people easily put ad code or linked banners. Easy to use, easy to manage, and works great.

The other exciting additions, at least in my mind, had to do with widgets and site columns. First, you’re now able to use your right column on all pages of the site. This eliminates the need to rebuild columns for each section if you have a traditional right sidebar on your site. Also, I added a Google News widget that simply takes keywords and turns them into a feed of Google News articles. This is a simple way to add aggregated content to your site straight from one of the most efficient and complete aggregators out there.

In the “things that probably should have been there foam the start” category, I added the ability to put HTML code (or, really, anything) in the <head> of your document and just before the </body> tag. This makes adding analytics code, site verification, or javascript plugins much easier than before. The core WordPress comment form is now used on the post pages to help work with sites that require authentication and you can now link category headers to their category page (a great way to improve your whole site’s SEO).

All added features are now documented at wpdrudge.com/docs in their appropriate places but look forward to even more instructions on how to use this template to the best of its ability.

Thanks to everyone who put up with all the release notifications and a big thanks to Alexy for helping me find some of the post-release bugs!

Let me set the stage…

The WP-Drudge template allows for advertisements to be placed in certain areas of the template. This is handled by the useful (if a bit confusing) Advertising Manger plugin for WordPress. Add you code, choose an area, select a few other options, if desired, and away you go. Your can now be covered in unsightly, if potentially lucrative, advertisements.

I’ve been selling this template for close to a year now, all the while pointing people to this plugin. One day I get a note from one of my users:

“The link to the Advertising Manager plugin doesn’t seem to be working.”

I do double-duty as both developer and customer service agent for this template so it was up to me to figure out the problem. Sure enough, the link I had was just redirected back to the plugins homepage. Odd.

So I searched in WordPress plugins. Nada. Then I searched in a WordPress install (likely the same indexed content). Negative. Then I moved on to Google. Surely they would find something. Well, they did but it was the same page that was redirected back. What the heck?

The plugin had been removed! And recently! I recalled downloading it just a week or so previous to that… what was going on?

I had to do a little detective work and, in the process, figured out that this plugin was created by the OpenX group, the folks that make a full-featured (and free) advertising banner and campaign manager application. I couldn’t find word one about the how, when, or why this plugin was removed.

Unfortunately, to this day, I’m still not sure exactly what happened but I think it have something to do with Matt Mullenweg’s announcement during State of WordPress 2011. He said that plugins that have remained unchanged for a few years would be removed from the repository. I’m guessing this happened since I’m not sure when the last update was.

So, that’s that! In the meantime, I have the Advertising Manager plugin package hosted myself for those looking to continue using it. For WP-Drudge users, the theme will have built-in advertising capabilities very soon so stay tuned!

How it works

What I came up with, after many more hours than I expected, was a flexible, easy way to post links (and blog posts) with enough options to create a unique look. Posting links is as easy (actually, easier) as posting a blog post and static links are created as bookmarks. Both use user-generated categories to organize and combine like topics (or display areas). The whole front page is controlled using WordPress widget functionality so pieces can be moved around, changed, shifted, and altered on the fly.

The WP-Drudge theme simply takes links you want to display and organizes them by category on one page. It also lets you place static links in groups on the same page page. When you want to place a new link, just add the links and any additional information you’d like to display (a description of an image), put it under a category, and publish. Now the link appears on your homepage! Want static links to appear? Just add them as bookmarks, make the link box visible on the homepage, and there it is! You can also post blog posts and pages like a standard WordPress install.

As a side note, this document talks a lot about a lot of different kinds of links. There are posted links, the timely links to news articles that only show for a limited time, and static links, the links that stay there for as long as you allow them to. I’ll try to keep them as separate as possible.

What is curation/aggregation?

This concept takes on so many forms and means different things to different people. Collecting, sorting, filtering, and sharing links is something people have done since the inception of the internet. If you’ve ever emailed a link you like to someone, shared on Twitter or Facebook, or told someone about a specific page or site, then you’re most of the way there.

This idea of gathering up and distributing the best information you come across is basically a product of the amount onf information now available to us. This is often called “information overload” but I like Cly Shirky’s idea better: we are suffering from filter failure. The problem isn’t an excess of information, the problem is how difficult it is to find what we really need at any given moment. Enter the content curator.

This template was designed to help people collect, sort, and share links that they find around the web. I would call this an “advanced curator tool” for people who want to (a) have near-complete control over the presentation and (b) believe that their efforts have a value beyond a conversation starter. Your website and the content you collect is both a valuable asset, a badge of honor, and a critical resource for the right audience and there’s no better way to keep, share, and archive it than WordPress (with a proper backup system, of course).

Who does it?

There is this interesting, disconnected group of people who have the urge to collect and curate links, blog posts, and pages for a variety of different topics. I gained a few clients, sold a few downloads, and got to meet a few interesting people. During the course of this little journey, I talked to many, many people who wanted to do this in WordPress, the popular and open-source blogging platform. I do most of my work in WordPress and thought it would be a great combination of my skills so I went to work building a news aggregation theme based on the input of several different people.

Filter failure affects us all and what was the most surprising to me was just how many topics this affects. I’m used to reading about programming, social media, SEO, and other web nerd topics, all of which have more than enough posts, pages, and pictures to keep you busy many lifestimes over. What’s fascinating, though, is that almost any topic you can think of has a long, long list of information sources pumping out news, alerts, events, ideas, images, videos, and everything else. The amount of information created daily is astounding, even for each little tiny niche topic.

Human aggregators (meaning people who collect and filter links based on their preferences rather than through an automated process) are people who are able to take this big, huge pipe of information, find the best pieces, and share them for others to consume. It takes a special person to stay on top of just one topic, let alone two or three. You need tools (RSS readers, Twitter searches, Google News Alerts) and tactics (advanced skimming, patience, attention to detail), both of which come together into a schema that is unique for each person. I doubt that there is any one curator out there that does exactly the same thing as someone else. That said, I’m sure that they could all learn from each other.

Creating this template was not only a lot of fun and a great excuse to learn even more about WordPress, it also connected me with a lot of people doing some very interesting aggregation out there. I’ve gained quite a few recurring clients and explored this concept very broadly. A big thanks to all the customers, clients, and conversationalists that I’ve encountered along the way!