WordPress – Simply Good for Business

In this blog post I am going to show you why WordPress is such a great platform for content creation online. WordPress is simply good for business for many reasons and though some may always be partially subjective or just subjective please just bear with me.

Twenty Five Percent of the Web Can’t Be Wrong

25.5% of the web

WordPress powers 25.5% of the web and 30.3% of top 1000 sites. So that means a lot of people like using it. Also that a lot of companies and professionals do too. Companies like Sony, Time, Samsung, Linked and celebrities like Jay Z, Snoop Dog and Malala Yousafzai use WordPress. Here is a list of Fortune 500 companies using WordPress. And the reason they are using it? WordPress is simply good for business they found out.

Now the reasons you should go for WordPress one by one:

User Experience

user experience

 

As iThemes mentioned in their blog article, “it’s probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today”. Usage is often a personal experience and mine is of course too. But I have worked with other content management systems in the past. CMSs like Joomla!, Drupal, Typo3, Ghost and others. And WordPress’ Dashboard is just very intuitive and easy to learn. The Customizer to adjust the looks of your site and widgets are just amazing. Content creation using posts and pages is just not difficult at all. Also, there is plenty of help out there, either paid or for free.

Here a list of WordPress features that make it very user friendly:

  • widgets – easy way of drag and dropping content blocks into place
  • customizer – easy way to manage all elements of your theme from one location with live preview
  • posts – built for blogging with easy to set up hierarchy
  • wysiwyg – beautiful content editor with full screen zen mode
  • mobile friendly – WordPress Dashboard is fully responsive

Ecosystem

huge ecosystem

The ecosystem of plugins to extend the functionality and themes to give your site the needed look is just wonderful. This is really important. So many free and commercial themes and plugins out there. It is unbelievable. There is no other rival CMS that offers this many themes and plugins to choose from. None. Just look at what a company like Themeforest offers in the WordPress section alone. It is truly phenomenal.

When I talk about the ecosystem I am including the community mind you. The WordPress online presence is truly magnificent. So many online resources and fora to read up on WordPress and to get help. The organization behind Joomla! has had quite a few issues the last couple of years. One of the reasons I left that CMS. The organization and people behind WordPress with Automattic and benevolent dictator Matt has thrived like no other. So in brief:

  • enormous and friendly online community
  • large online grid of documentation and tutorials
  • themes – huge amount of free and commercial themes
  • plugins – over 42.ooo plugins to extend your setup

Licensing

open source - free

WordPress is 100% Open Source, baby! Nobody owns WordPress nor its themes nor its plugins. Everyone can use them for free and fork them to make them better. All is free for use as long as you follow the basic GPL licensing rules. Open Source makes sure nothings gets stuck behind licensing walls and that all keeps on growing. Beautiful!

Reasons for going for WordPress in Brief

So to summarize it all, it all comes down to is:

  • usability- very user friendly and easy to use
  • licensing – is it closed source or open source / what do extensions and or themes cost
  • eco system – large enough to sustain users and to grow and with solid enough leadership

And so far the answer has been yes to all three. Usability is great, licensing is open source and there is an amazing ecosystem out there waiting to be embraced. Plenty of reasons explaining why WordPress is simply good for business

NextGen Gallery Template Sample 5

Well here as promised at a WordPress.org support forum post and requested by Marc Serra the code to make a NextGen Gallery similar to sample 5 and as shown at www.ultimatefijivacations.com.

!This Code is not re-formatted for general use and might not be complete. Will try to rework the code some other time.

I created a folder with three essential files:

  • gallery-resort-php
  • style.css with styles including the ones for the gallery
  • single-resort.php
Here the code for gallery-resort.php with the gallery code:
<?php/**
 Template Page for the adjusted gallery carousel

Follow variables are useable :

$gallery : Contain all about the gallery
 $images : Contain all images, path, title
 $pagination : Contain the pagination content
 $current : Contain the selected image
 $prev/$next : Contain link to the next/previous gallery page

You can check the content when you insert the tag <!--?php var_dump($variable) ?-->
 If you would like to show the timestamp of the image ,you can use <!--?php echo $exif['created_timestamp'] ?-->
 **/
 ?>
 <!--?php if (!defined ('ABSPATH')) die ('No direct access allowed'); ?--><!--?php if (!empty ($gallery)) : ?--></pre>
 <div class="ngg-galleryoverview">
 <div id="resortpic">
 <div id="picborder">
 <div class="pic"><img title="<?php echo $current->alttext ?>" src="<?php echo $current->url; ?>" alt="<?php echo $current->alttext ?>" />
 <div id="resort-info"></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div id="ngglist">
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <li class="ngg-prev"><a class="prev" href="<?php echo $prev ?>"><img src="<?php echo CHILDTEMPLATEIMAGES . '/resort-slider-previous.jpg' ; ?>" alt="" /></a></li>
 </ul>
 </ul>
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <li id="ngg-image-<?php echo $image->pid ?>" class="ngg-thumbnail-list <?php if ($image->pid == $current->pid) echo 'selected' ?>">
 <a title="<?php echo $image->description ?>" href="<?php echo $image->pidlink ?>">
 <img title="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" src="<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>" alt="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" />size ?> />
 </a></li>
 </ul>
 </ul>
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <ul class="ngg-gallery-list">
 <li class="ngg-next"><a class="next" href="<?php echo $next ?>"><img src="<?php echo CHILDTEMPLATEIMAGES . '/resort-slider-next.jpg' ; ?>" alt="" /></a></li>
 </ul>
 </ul>
 </div>
 <div id="nggpanel"><!--?php if ($prev) : ?-->
 <a href="<?php echo $prev ?>"><img class="previmage" src="<?php echo CHILDTEMPLATEIMAGES . '/gallprev.gif' ; ?>" alt="" />PREVIOUS</a>
 <!--?php endif; ?-->
 |
 <!-- NEXT LINK -->
 <!--?php if ($next) : ?-->

<a href="<?php echo $next ?>">NEXT</a> <img class="previmage" src="<?php echo CHILDTEMPLATEIMAGES . '/gallnext.gif' ; ?>" alt="" />

<!--?php endif; ?--></div>
 </div>
 <pre>
 <!--?php endif; ?-->

And here the gallery page CSS code

/* ##################################
 RESORT PAGE
 ################################## */

#resort-info {
 position:absolute;
 bottom:0;
 background:url('images/resort-desc-bar.png');
 background-repeat:repeat-x;
 filter:alpha(opacity=50);
 -moz-opacity:0.5;
 -khtml-opacity: 0.5;
 opacity: 0.5;
 left:0;
 width:700px;
 height:44px;
 }

#pic-caption{

}

#pic-title {

}
 .pic {
 position:relative;
 color:#69c5ff;
 }

.ngg-gallery-list li img {
 width:110px;
 height:80px;
 }

li.ngg-next, .ngg-next a.next, li.ngg-next a.next img {
 height:80px;
 width:15px;
 padding:0;
 }

.ngg-gallery-list li.ngg-prev, .ngg-next a.prev, li.ngg-prev a.prev img {
 height:80px;
 width:15px;
 padding:0;
 }

li.ngg-next a, li.ngg-prev a {
 padding:0;
 }

#content ul, #content ol {
 padding:0 0 0 20px;
 }

.ngg-gallery-list {
 margin: 10px 0 0 0;
 }

On single-resort.php I added the code to load the gallery:

<?php /* NG Gallery Custom Field Rotating Images */
 $gallery = get_post_meta($post-&gt;ID, 'Gallery ID Number', true);
 $gal = $gallery;
 //$gal = 1; //REMOVE THIS JUST FOR TESTING
 if( !empty($gal) )
 {
 $nggtemplate = "template=resort images=5";
 $gal = apply_filters('the_content', '[nggallery id='.$gal.' ' . $nggtemplate. ']' );
 echo $gal;
 }
 ?>