wordpress

Jun

2011

New Multiple Streams Theme (mst007)

Offer Closed

Update: Go back to your download page and pick up the theme! 🙂

Update: The person doing the conversion has disappeared, but my regular guy is going to pick this up right after some other work. It will probably take another week to 10 days. So as an “I’m sorry” I’ve decided to extend PLR rights out to everyone who bought in the pre-order sale.

If you purchased, check your email for details. there’s other good news about the image slider in there.

***

While we’re all waiting for the first version of Affiliate Click Pal to be officially released in the next few days, I thought we’d have another pre-order sale – this one for Multiple Streams Theme Seven (MST007).

Pre-order sales I’ve run in the past seem to be very popular, (especially so in the case of Affiliate Click Pal) so I’m continuing that tradition. 😉

Now you might be thinking to yourself “Hang on, didn’t I just get MST Eight a month ago? And this is now Seven?”

Well, yeah… There’s someone else been working on MST007 – actually two other people at different times – but that’s another story. It just needs to be said that Seven will probably be completed by Wednesday or Thursday next week.

At that time it will go on sale for $27, but in this PRE-ORDER sale it will be available to the first FIFTY customers for just $10.

Okay, what’s it look like and what features will it have?

[Middle click the image below to open in a new tab.]

As usual, it comes with a nice selection of pre-designed banners including blank JPEGs / PNGs and PSDs for them, plus umpteen sidebars, a selection of built in page templates, plus plugins (Ads Manager, Redirection, Squeeze Page Templates), and a set of theme options too.

The theme options allow you to turn on and off the header, top boxes and top and bottom ad areas, change footer text and add analytics code if you don’t have the Script Manager plugin. The theme also supports the WP 3.x features of custom menus and backgrounds.

And finally, we’ve included a slider area at the top under the menu where you can place presentational images, extra ads etc.

I know that in the image it looks like a carousel, but that’s an “artists impression” if you like and should be taken with a pinch of salt. I admit the design looks really cool, and if we can include a carousel style rotating image that will be great, but more likely is it will be a slider.

Here’s something interesting. (Oh come on, it’s ALL interesting.) 😉

While looking at carousels, we came across a jquery slider that looks really good, and I think we want to move to this.

(In case you didn’t know, jquery is much better to use than Flash as the CPU load is waaay lower, and that means that people using older slower machines will get the same experience as someone using a brand new one. Not so with Flash. Anyway, back to the plot…)

This jquery slider we found will slide images, text AND videos. Aha!

Now we think THAT would be something that a LOT of people would find very useful.

And the especially interesting thing to me is because it’s jquery, any text and links in the text parts of the slider will be picked up by the search engines. You can’t do that with Flash.

So what I’m now thinking is that if it all turns out to be good, we’ll move to this new jquery script and “retro-fit” MST008 with this slider instead of the original.

This is all TBC at the moment, but we’ll know in the next few days if we can do this.

One last thing.

WordPress Authors In Google Search

Just before sending this out, Ron M (hi Ron) sent me some info about author images that Google are implementing in search. (In fact they seem to have a LOT of new social stuff coming in at the moment, which ultimately means bye bye FaceBook.)

Please be patient if we can’t get this in for v1 of this new theme. It’s brand spanking new, announced today (June 30th) by Google.

What this new feature in search does is it displays an author image next to the search result in Google if the right tags are implemented within the theme. WordPress 3.2 will include full support for this.

Now you might be wondering why this is so important. It’s simple.

Tests have proven that people are more likely to bond or accept a page or site if a photo of the author/owner is displayed. I have one on my own site for that very reason.

Google are now offering to display a photo even before people get to the site.

That WILL improve click throughs.

Think about it. All of Googles search results are plain text apart from videos. Anything that highlights a post such as a thumbnail photo is going to make it stand out from the rest.

And it’s free.

As long as you get the right tags in the right place, AND you have a Google profile, your photo will show next it. I think it’s probably worth the one-off effort to get this sorted for yourself. I’ll be getting mine online in the next few days.

We’re not totally sure just yet as to how this works exactly, and if we can implement this in the theme before release, we will. I REALLY want this feature included, and if we can’t get it out for v1, we’ll add it in an update.

***

In the meantime…

The fifty copies only at $10 PRE-ORDER sale for MST Seven will go live tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST).

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2011

3 For 1 Weekend Sale

This weekend for 72 hours starting at 6.00pm GMT, I’m doing a final sale of 3 complementary WordPress plugins before placing them on their individual sales pages and adding them to the affiliate scheme.

(I *have* already pre-released all 3 to a small number of people and so you may already have them. This is a final sale for those people who don’t…)

I call them my “control” plugins and I use all 3 of them on most if not all of my blogs. Combined together, they move WordPress closer towards being a full blown CMS. I believe they should actually be part of WordPress and not just plugins, but there you go. One day maybe.

#1 – Ads Manager

The first of these three control plugins is “Ads Manager” and is incredibly powerful. It allows you to display ads and other text and HTML in widgets depending on lots of different rules you can set.

Here are some of the features and the kind of thing you can do, it’s not an exhaustive list.

o Stop an individual ad from showing to your regular visitors who would probably already have “ad blindness”.
o Only show a particular ad to visitors who have come from search engines.
o Only show the ad on posts that are more than 2 weeks old.
o Use WordPress Conditional Tags such as is_front_page() so your visitors only see the ad on the front page of your blog.
o Use is_single() and your visitors would only see the ad on a post and not on your front page.
o Use is_page() and the ad would only appear on pages, and so on.
o Specify individual posts and pages, or put another way, it enables you to show different ads on different posts and pages.

It’s very cool and is one of my favourites.

#2 – Widgets In It

This plugin allows you to place ANY WIDGET in any POST or PAGE, not just in the sidebars.

When you activate the plugin, it creates a new sidebar on the widgets page. You can then drop any widgets you want into it as normal.

Then when you create or edit a post or page, there’s a new drop down appears on the edit page which contains all the widgets you placed in the sidebar.

This means you now have ultimate flexibility and control over your ads by using these two plugins in combination.

Simply…

o Ads Manager lets you set rules for displaying ads.
o Widgets In It allows you to place widgets (including ads) inside your posts and pages.

There’s a video that shows you how Widgets In It works on this page here:-

http://www.multiplestreamsthemes.com/multiple-streams-themes-videos/

#3 – Contextual Widgets

This final control plugin “Contextual Widgets” allows you to decide which widgets will appear on which parts of your site. It works with ALL standard widgets, not just the ones I’ve released.

Now I know you might still be wondering a bit at the moment, but I’ll try to explain.

You know how a WordPress theme allows you to drag and drop widgets into the sidebars? Well it’s usually a case of all or nothing. Once you’ve dropped them there, all you have is the same widgets in the sidebar on *every* page and post on your site.

There’s no way of saying you don’t want to see a particular widget on a certain page.

Until now.

With “Contextual Widgets” you can choose exactly in which context each widget will appear.

So you may decide that you only want to place a particular ad in a sidebar on a particular page (context).

Example #1

You write a blog page that discusses the importance of building a mailing list (the why), but you don’t put in any details about the steps they need to do it (the how). Over in your sidebar are your affiliate ads for an ebook on list building and an autoresponder service that only shows on that page, i.e. in that particular context.

Example #2

A visitor arrives at your site via a search engine and lands on one of your tag or category archive pages. They see an ad that’s nowhere else on your site.

Example #3

A visitor to your home page sees links to some of your best articles in the top of the main sidebar. They click on one of the links and end up on the page they’re interested in, with a strongly related ad to the article, while your list of articles has been moved further down the sidebar.

***

Aha! Get it?

There are plenty of contexts built right in:-

o Home – Your site’s blog page if it isn’t set to your front page.
o Front Page – Your site’s front page which can be different to your blog.
o Post – Individual posts, ie not your home/blog page.
o Attachment – For your attachment pages, e.g. movies, audio and images.
o Author – Author archive pages.
o Category – Category archive pages.
o Date – Date archive pages.
o Tag – Tag pages.
o Search – Search results pages.
o Page not found – Your 404 error pages.

Plus every single page you create gets auto-added to the list of contexts. So every page you write about any topic can be set to show its own unique ads.

I hope by now you can see how powerful this third plugin is, and how it gives you an extra level of control over your blog that a standard WordPress installation doesn’t. 😉

***

Starting tonight at 6.00pm and until Monday morning you can get all three plugins for just $17, then that’s it. The chance are the next time you see these for sale will be individually at $27 each, so this is your final chance to get them if you don’t already have them.

At 6.00pm tonight this post will be updated and the payment link will automatically appear. On Monday at 9.00am, the payment button will disappear (powered by the Content Replacement plugin).

-Frank Haywood

May

2011

New Multiple Streams Theme – MST008

Update 6th July 2011:

The videos for this theme have *finally* been completed and you can see them here:-

http://multiplestreamsthemes.com/videos/mst008-videos/

Update 22nd June 2011:

MST008 has been updated to v 1.0.1 due to an easy to fix but annoying bug…

Some people may have been having a “headers already sent” problem with this theme. We didn’t see this on our test bed, so maybe the server(s) we’re using are more forgiving than others. It happens when some spaces or blank lines get inserted into a PHP file where they shouldn’t be.

Happily, WordPress know about this issue, and there’s an explanation of it here if you ever come across it yourself.

Just go back to your personal download page and grab the latest version, we’re sorry about any inconvenience.

Update: I’m sorry for the delay, the theme and plugin bundle is now available. There were a number of small issues I had with the theme, now all resolved. Please go back to your personal download page and you can grab it from there. 🙂

Offer Closed

***

The latest in the Multiple Streams Themes (MST008) is now *almost* complete, and on Friday 26th May at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) I’ll be running a 48-hour 50-copies-only PRE-ORDER sale at $10.00.

It comes with a nice selection of pre-designed banners including blank JPEGs and PSDs for them, plus umpteen sidebars, a selection of built in page templates, plus plugins (Ads Manager, Redirection, Squeeze Page Templates), and a set of theme options too.

The theme options allow you to turn on and off the header, top boxes and top and bottom ad areas, change footer text and add analytics code if you don’t have the Script Manager plugin.

And of course the theme supports the common WP 3.x features of custom menus, and background. That second one allows you to further lighten the feel of the theme or darken it down if that’s your preference.

And… after several requests we’ve added an extra “ad sidebar” at the top, so instead of the usual 3 ad blocks for sign ups, freebies, etc, there are now FOUR.

And finally, we’ve included a slider area at the top under the menu where you can place presentational images, extra ads etc.

It’s really nice, very businessey, probably the most professional looking theme so far… 😉

More on this tomorrow, but just in case you’re thinking “Hang on! I’ve bought all of them – what happened to MST007?” Well, someone else is working on that one, so they’ve got a bit out of order. When it’s done I’ll release it don’t worry. 😉

For now, MST008 isn’t quite ready as I’ve asked for a couple of under-the-hood changes and I’m expecting to get it in the next few days.

You can get a sneak preview of the theme here:-

http://mst008.multiplestreamsthemes.com/

The pre-order sale starts tomorrow at 6.00pm BST (British Summer Time, which is GMT+1).

-Frank Haywood

May

2011

WordPress Updates RSS Feed

Update: The sale is now LIVE and is currently $15.00.

Sales from 101 onwards will be $27.00 until the plugin goes officially live.

***

~~Tomorrow~~ Today Wednesday 4th, I’m going to be pre-releasing a cracking little plugin that I can’t believe no-one has done before.

Again, it was James Dunn who wrote to me asking if it was possible that we could supply him with a smart phone app that could somehow pick up plugins etc, that needed updating on WordPress blogs.

He wanted it to be able to keep an eye on a selection of client sites and then notify him when a theme or plugin or WordPress itself needed some update attention.

My first reaction was to say no, but I thought it would be a good idea if WP blogs could somehow tell us they needed updating in some way. (Apparently there are some expensive monthly services that will do this.)

So I had a little think and did a bit of research, and this is what we came up with.

The plugin will create a new RSS feed on your blog, listing everything that needs updating. You specify an obscurely named feed, and a URL is generated from that name.

Then all you have to do is use the RSS feed reader of your choice.

Most new smart phones have RSS readers pre-installed as free apps, or you can get them at very low cost from the relevant market places.

OR…

You can get yourself a PC based RSS reader, and there are even small free apps that sit in your Windows system tray and monitor feed activity.

Whatever your choice of platform, when the feed gets updated, you get notified and you can then go give the blog some update love by following the admin link in the feed. 😉

Really cool huh? And blimming useful too – I already have it installed on a dozen different blogs…

Anyway…

Tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT, I’m pre-releasing it at just $10.00 for the first 50 buyers.

Be there or be square. 😉

-Frank Haywood