When converting a Dreamweaver Template to a Wordpress Theme, I personally prefer to use the initial method because creating a full on Wordpress Theme with all it’s include files makes managing your Wordpress CMS or Blog easier and more versatile in my opinion.

Suggested Requirements

• At the very minimum your Dreamweaver Template needs to have one editable region for the main body area and one editable region for the side bar area.
• Any person attempting to use this tutorial should have a moderate understanding of HTML & CSS, a pretty good understanding of how Dreamweaver Templates work, a good attention to detail and common sense.
• Most important, you should read through the original tutorial as this one is a quick bulleted todo list, where the original method goes into a little more detail. Read through both and decide which route you want to take.
• Read the primers for Theme Development and The Wordpress Loop… at least once.

Time to get started…

1. Open your Dreamweaver Template my_template.dwt file and save as a new name like my_wpblog_template_.dwt or something.

2. Update all links in your Dreamweaver Template

• Update link calls to be absolute URL’s
• Update images calls to be absolute URL’s

3. Create your various php files

• file > new from template > choose the blog template
• save as wp-content/themes/your_theme/index.php
• repeat the process and create single.php, search.php and page.php

Save and leave all 4 files open

4. Update Stylesheet

• open the site stylesheet associated with the Dreamweaver Template
• save as wp-content/themes/theme_folder/style.css => leave open

5. Go back to your NEW index.php, toggle split view,

• open index.php from the Default Wordpress Kubrick Theme
• copy everything from and including <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> to <?php endif; ?> => paste into to the body section editable region via the source code of your index.php file we just created from your Dreamweaver Template.
• scan through the source code you just pasted.. note all the different styles being used.

6. Open the stylesheet from the Default Wordpress Kubrick Theme

• add comments from top of default css and paste into yours.. update theme name, version, author etc.
• copy the styles associated with the Kubrick loop code from step 5 and paste them into your new style.css file.

7. Repeat Steps 5 & 6 for single.php, search.php and page.php, again using the WP Loop code from the associated Kubrick files. Don’t forget to carry over the associated styles.

8. Carry over the sidebar code, copy everything between <div id= “sidebar”> </div>. Copyall associated styles sidebar styles. You can either skip #sidebar container style (around line #532) or copy it over and adjust it to fit your site.

9. Copy the following files over from the default folder: function.php, searchform.php, comments.php and comments_popup.php and paste them into your new theme directory.

10. Merge your head content from the Kubrick header.php file into the Dreamweaver Template so it can filter out to all associated pages. Be sure not to over write or mess up and of the Dreamweaver Template tags.

11. upload your theme, test all the different page types; tweak styles and formatting as need be.

12. All done…

Remember.. if you get stumped or don’t understand a part of my explanation, please leave a comment with your issue and I’ll try and follow up.. I’m usually pretty fast to respond. Furthermore, if you decide this task is beyond your skill set, please contact us for a free consultation.

WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.

WordPress comes with several built in search optimization tools, including the ability to use .htaccess to create apparently static URLs called permalinks, blogrolling, and pinging. There are also a number of third party plugins and hacks which can be used for search engine optimization (SEO).

excerpt from wordpress.org - Search Engine Optimization for Wordpress

It’s out of the box features and the various Wordpress SEO plugins available combined with it’s ease of use make it a very powerful tool. I’ve been working with content managements systems for a number of years now and hands down.. I think Wordpress is the most search engine friendly on the market.

So whether you want to start a blog, build a website using a content management system or both… I recommend using Wordpress. It makes doing business online easy and affordable.

Need some help building a website? Check out our website services or contact us for a free consultation.

To catch you up to speed, I have a client who needs to track more than the alloted 4 conversion goals allowed in a Google Analytics profile. According to Google Help docs, to track more conversions you’re supposed to set up additional profiles.

The site I am doing this for requires that I use the old legacy Urchin. js code because we have Live Person Chat enabled on our site and the legacy code is the only code that can integrate at the current time with Google Analytics. So after trying a number of different code configurations I decided to grab the new GA.js code and run it along side in the Legacy Urchin code.

I originally ordered the code ga.js then urchin.js. I tested for a day and noticed that numbers were off a bit so I switched then around and now finally it appears that I am successfully tracking two separate profiles for the same website allowing my up to 8 conversion goals. The numbers are still off slightly but only by a handful or so.. I can live with that.

Below is a screen shot of what the Google Analytics code looks like in my website…

According to Google Analytics documentation or Help Center, they say that if you need to more than four goal conversions… set up additional profiles. So I did.. I took the snippet of java script code (we’re using the Legacy Tracking Code - urchin.js) and pasted it along side the other script. I waited a couple of days and noticed that the second profile wasn’t collecting data.

Troubleshooting Round 1
So I started examining the code snippets… I noticed they were out of sequential order according to the user account # associated with this site profile ex.. _uacct = “UA-8XXXX2-3″;. So I put them in sequential order and all of a sudden the second profile started registering data… sweet I figured out.

My code looked something like this…

A few days later, colleague and friend, Search Master Jamie Low called me and said Google Analytics stopped tracking our account. What happened was once I switched the code around it activated the second profile but deactivated the first.

Troubleshooting Round 2
I’ll admit.. I’m terrible with javascript.. I can install them but have no idea what any of the code means.. but I have worked with them so I should have used a little more common sense. First I fixed the issue by removing the call to the second profile. But I still had find the solution to track both.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the answer on Google anywhere so I sat an pondered the code for a little while. All of sudden I started thinking back to the validation and calendar scripts I install on client forms and how those calls to scripts are structured. I had it all wrong I needed to combine the two scripts into one.. not use two separate ones so it would like this…

After double checking things this afternoon it appears that both sites are now tracking data. I will post a follow up in a few days with final results to let you know how its going and if I really fixed it.

I have a blog called Tehachapi Daily which is completely open to the community to post to the site. They are granted contributor level access immediately upon registration and get worried sometimes about all the spam registers I get. Now with is_human(), I’ve got Catpha security.

Thanks Nick for developing this new plugin.

Download is_human()

• Related Posts
• Breadcrumb Navigation
• Recent Posts
• My Category Order

When a plugin breaks my site.. if I know for certain I’m going to be reactivating the plugin anytime soon I go ahead and delete the PHP call for the plugin. If I think I’m going be using the plugin in question again I comment it out instead.

How to ID the Plugin Causing the Problem?

If you’re new to Wordpress and PHP, one thing the original article left out was how to ID the Faulty Plugin. The error message usually tells you. Lets say you deactivated al plugins and now your front page has this message..

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_breadcrumb() in /home/hostname/public_html/websitename/wp-content/themes/genesis-10/header.php on line 48

I have all the info I need to quickly find the bad code and either comment it out or delete it. I know that on line 48 in the header file of the Genesis theme i need to find the code get_breadcrumb(). Make sure to include the open and close php brackets that enclose the call.

The Blank Index.html File
Most web hosting servers do not block site visitors from being able to view the root of any folder. To keep anyone from figuring out what is running your site you should put a blank index.html file inside your wp-content folder as well as inside uploads, themes and most importantly plugins.

The blank index.html file keeps anyone who might be snooping around where they don’t belong from finding out what theme you are using or the plugins that being used to run your site. The more a hacker knows about your site the more places he/she can look for vulnerabilities. So stop them ahead of time by placing a blank index.html file in the root of all folders within the wp-content directory.

Don’t Wait for Fantastico!
When security is at risk.. manually upgrade your Wordpress Installation… its not as difficult as one might think.. just be sure you back up everything before you upgrade. Auto-installers are great to get you started but in all honesty they more of hindrance. Everyone puts so much stock into Fantastico but its a hassle because it always takes so long to for them to get current. So while you’re waiting for Fantastico you’re getting owned by some hacker who is injecting bogus links into your posts. Forget about.. get a copy of filezilla and manually upgrade your site as soon as a security update is released.

Usernames and Passwords
I’ve got a few tips regarding your Wordpress username and passwords.

• Don’t ever let your browser save your username and passwords. This information is saved in a cookie which can get hijacked by a hacker.
• Always change your admin passwords everytime you upgrade your installation.
• Don’t use admin as your main administrator username.. that only leaves half of the problem to solve for a hacker trying to access your website.
• Make your passwords difficult, use both upper and lower case letters, use symbols such as ! $ & # @ and use numbers.

There is a great plugin out called WP Security Scan that offers several security tools like password strength and DB Prefix Updater.. to name a few. Aside from what I have detailed above you should check out the plugin and make your Wordpress installation bombproof.

If you have other security tips and tricks for websites, Wordpress Blog or CMS Installations please post your comments below.

The material in question violates WordPress.com Terms of Service (if it doesn’t.. it should.. Im not a wordpress.com user so I’ve never read their TOS).

So Lorelle is asking.. why aren’t more people talking / blogging about the issue at hand? Why does it seem that no one is concerned?

My first question isn’t why aren’t people concerned.. my first question is… how did YouTube allow this video to go live in the first place? I’m almost certain adult content is not allowed on YouTube. So what’s up with that.

So why not ban YouTube instead? Right! Like that would ever happen. If I were the lawyers for WordPress.com.. I’d be appealing this and drag Google into it because that’s where the problem started.

To speculate on why more people aren’t blogging about it, my guess would be that a lot of WordPress.com users are probably saying to themselves.. so what if I can’t reach Brazil? Or maybe people view it like spam and blacklists.. use a free product and deal with being at the mercey of what others around you do. It’s guilt by association.

My 2 cents!

From white site to launch, the project took us 8 months (2 years if you consider the theory process). The new website went live on February 28, 2008. We have plans for unveiling the new Rafting.com Blog (1 installation for both the site and the blog) during the first week of April.

With the relaunch of the website we decided that is was only fitting to make Rafting.com “The Definitive Whitewater Rafting Go To Site.” To move in that direction we added nearly 160 new pages of content to the rivers and regions directory, making the site over 230 pages and growing.

So Why Wordpress?

We chose Wordpress because 2 years ago we started planning the development of the Rafting.com Blog and we soon realized after WP 2.1 how easy it was to use WP as a CMS. Secondly, we also chose Wordpress because of all the functionality available to make rafting.com a very robust, yet simple website. Third, using a CMS allows the publishing tasks to anyone on our virtual team without having to know a lick of html. Finall, we used WP because its so dang search engine friendly.

Kudos to the Web Team

Jamie Low - http://SearchEngineMarketing.com: Search Master
Tessa Sibbet - http://www.Rafting.com: Content Manager / Editor
Sammy Russo - http://SearchFriendlyWebDesign.com: Site Admin & Theme Development
Joe David - http://www.DavidDesign.com: Maps & Graphic Design
Malina Dunk - http://Blog.AOrafting.com: Writer / Editor
Robyn Suddeth - http://Blog.AOrafting.com: Writer / Editor

Nice work people. After only a month of being relaunched we have nearly 99% indexation of all new pages and 100% re-indexation of original content on their new URLS.

BlogJet costs about $45 and you can get 30 trial. In the beginning I was having issues connecting to any of my blogs.. it turned out something either happened during install or I had a bad file but I had to uninstall and try again.. worked fine after second installation.

In the process I attempted to use the support forum and there was support. My post was replied to… within a few hrs I think.

I pretty much felt attached to this software from the moment I opened it. The interface is very clean, inviting and easy to use.

Some key features that I liked were the ability to set the timestamp, add tags, insert YouTube video and toggle between code and visual view.

One thing I was confused about was being able to split my post.. in WordPress I call it “The More” link… Where you have the intro and the post cuts off with a link to read the rest of  the post (sorry I never new this had a particular name). In BlogJet it’s called Extended Entry and I did find it under the format tab.

All in all… nicely done… I give it 4.5 Stars. I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy a license for this but I still have a some other softwares to review.