I was asked to take a spreadsheet of WordPress posts and add a category to each post. This is easily done if the category is the same for each of the posts. I thought about re-using a wp-cli bash command I had used previously to add one category to a list of post ID’s.

for x in $(cat posts_list.txt) ; do wp post --url=https://wpmulti.site/blog-slug/ term add $x category category-slug ; done

Doing that would have required splitting the posts into separate .txt files for each category, which was not feasible with the number of posts and categories in the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet included the post ID, title, and the text name of the category.

Clean up the data

The first step is to properly format and sanitize the spreadsheet, to change the category names to the correct corresponding slug. This was relatively simple in Excel, by changing the case of the category names to lowercase, removing all special characters such as ampersands and commas, and replacing spaces with hyphens. I didn’t need the titles at all, so I deleted that column. In the first row, I added column headers: post_id and post_category.

Note: be sure you have entered the categories in WordPress before you run the import, and make sure the slugs match what is in the import spreadsheet. Otherwise, you will have to edit the category names after the import from the newly created category slugs.

Export the spreadsheet to CSV.

Parse a CSV file and add categories to WordPress posts by post id and category slug

Here’s a simple BASH command to parse a CSV and run wp post term add category, using while and IFS (Internal Field Separator):

while IFS="," read post_id post_category ; do wp post --url=https://wpmulti.site/blog-slug/ term add $post_id category $post_category ; done < "post-add-category.csv"

The post Use WP-CLI to add categories to posts appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

This is a chart created with Everviz embed code in a custom field.

The post Everviz Chart Test appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

I have been looking for a simple solution to create and manage “dashboard” type charts on a website. Something that would produce editable graphs, accessible content for screen readers, and fit into a responsive design.

Chartist.js is a simple and independent library to create SVG charts in the DOM. Various plugins are available to extend the functionality and display options. In this example, the accessibility and axis label plugins are used. There are also plugins available for frameworks, and for WordPress (as a TablePress plugin extension).

See the Pen Chartist Graph with (visible) accessibility, point label, legend and axis label plugins: CCTN by utcwebdev (@utcwebdev) on CodePen.

The post Responsive and Accessible Charts and Graphs appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

I’m very excited to help out with Chattanooga’s premier TEDx event: TEDxChattanooga.

TEDxChattanooga website

For this site, I chose a responsive Bootstrap 3 SASS WordPress theme, originally developed for TEDxToronto. I made a few tweaks and improvements to better fit our event, and worked with April Cox from UT Chattanooga to dial in the design and architecture. Developed on an Amazon EC2+Ubuntu+Webmin server running a Nginx+MySQL+PHP-FPM stack, the site should handle plenty of traffic, and can be scaled up to meet spikes in demand coinciding with the event.

Please check out TEDxChattanooga.com!

Love Open Source software, but hate the generic branding? No problem. It’s very simple to create a fully-branded login screen for WordPress and Webmin/Virtualmin, to match a client’s logo and color scheme.

The post TEDx Event Website appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Lula Lake Land Trust needed a quick website update to replace a neglected site that had been dormant for years. I chose WordPress with a Bootstrap theme for quick and flexible development, and generated a color palette using the Lavish Bootstrap color scheme generator.

This is a great example of a site that can come together in mere days, look great, and function well on every device from desktop to tablet to smart phone.

Lula Lake Land Trust website

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This was a team project for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my alma mater and current employer. I was hired by UTC as web development specialist in late 2012, and worked with a cross-discipline team on the redesign, information architecture, 10,000 page migration to CMS and user training for over 300 web editors.

The design was built on Bootstrap, a versatile framework that includes a flexible, responsive grid system, icon font, and LESS/CSS styling for nearly any imaginable UI element. The site looks great on desktop, tablet and mobile phone; images are resized according to users’ maximum screen width by Adaptive Images.

We worked with OmniUpdate to port the functional HTML templates to the OU Campus Content Management System.

A companion WordPress theme was created to retrofit the UTC Blogs MultiSite. Enhanced WordPress RSS feeds in the media namespace populate news feeds on the home page.

Deets for Devs

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Trawire.com offers portable 4G MiFi and iPad rentals for visitors traveling to Iceland. Trawire’s CIO approached me for assistance after his systems administrator bailed and left him with a poorly maintained, self-hosted MacMini server running unoptimized WordPress installs.

Trawire website

I migrated the site to Amazon Web Services, where it now can handle traffic spikes and can be scaled and built out more easily, should the concept grow to additional markets. Working with my WordPress coding contacts in India, Trawire developed plugins to add features, and keep the software up-to-date. My contributions: caching and content distribution for static assets & queries, Virtualmin and phpMyAdmin for ease of management and development.

The post Portable Wifi Hotspot Rental Site appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Punktastic.com is a community powered site that covers punk music in Britain, but is poised to go worldwide. They cover punk and hardcore shows and festivals, and provide album reviews, video interviews and more.

With a growing audience and user base, Punktastic needed a more reliable and robust web server, so they made the move to a dedicated CentOS 5 series web server with 3GB RAM. While this is a relatively low-end box, it has plenty of horsepower for a single WordPress site and phpBB3 forum.

Punktastic.com web site

For this GIG, I soloed on…

• transferring the site from a WAMP development server to the live LAMP server
• configuring an active firewall to block the baddies
• installing monitoring and administration tools
• tuning Apache and MySQL for high traffic
• integrating APC PHP Cache to speed up web pages and provide better concurrency

Loud Fast Rules.

The post Punk Rock Music Community appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Joe Naturals Farm Store Cafe is a “farm to table” cafe and natural foods store located in historic Leiper’s Fork, near Franklin, TN. The owners contacted me through a fellow farmer with whom I have worked on several web projects.

Joe Natural's website

The website project was languishing, after being abandoned by a designer who lacked knowledge of WordPress template coding. The site needed better integration with WordPress, including text-based navigation and replacement of scanned layout comps, which were being used for page display & navigation.

I reworked the stylesheet to replace image-based text with CSS styled text, integrated WordPress navigation, and then added a few WordPress plugins.

• Constant Contact API for automated newsletter signup
• Simple Facebook Connect for Facebook Fan Page interconnectedness
• Google Analyticator and Google XML Sitemaps for search engine optimization and traffic reporting
• WordPress SEO for simple and effective search engine optimization
• W3 Total Cache to speed up site access on a low-end GoDaddy hosting account

I also worked with the farmers’ social media person to add social media links and integrate Facebook “Likes” and cross publishing from the WordPress blog to the Facebook Fan Page.

The post Farm to Table Restaurant Website appeared first on Chris Gilligan » new media.

Light Sport & Ultralight Flying Magazine needed an easy-to-manage e-commerce solution, coupled with Content Management and slideshows.

I used Joomla plus VirtueMart, and SlideShowPro to give them a sophisticated system that is simple to use.

Light Sport & Ultralight Flying Magazine website

The magazine has been in circulation since 1975, so the publishers know how to survive and thrive. Online sales & subscriptions give the print magazine a fighting chance against online outlets in a tight niche market.

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