Pricing Guide

I had a very long day today trying to track down the exact plugin combination needed to truncate both the title and text for posts in Word Press. That may sound like a weird need but I am working on this site where I need very uniform post for layout purposes and since random users can post whatever they want the only way to control height of each post was to truncate both the title and the post. Here is the site I am working on (it is still in development so a lot of stuff is broken, DON’T JUDGE ME! ;P).The plugin combination that I used is one part WP limit post automatically and one part iMP Limiter. Limit post automatically is awesome. The options are easily set in the WordPress admin panel to meet pretty much any truncating option you might need.

The second part wasn’t so easy.If you search iMP Limiter in google you will find a ton of results, but every site links to: http://www.inmypad.com/2006/12/wordpress-plugins-imp-limiter/That is a big fat 404. It turns out that this developer lost their database and you can’t download the plugin anymore from his site. So I thought for sure there was another source. There wasn’t. After like three hours I stooped to searching for open plugins directories through google, I am not going to name anyone. I went down the list of results and emailed all the contact emails on the sites. Out of the forum postings, emails to my networks and random emails to open directories I was snooping, I finally got an email back, and this kind soul provided me with the plugin. So no one else has to do this I am going to offer this plugin here:iMP Limiter (right click, save link as) I was able to find some instructions on how to use the plugin at some other random site but what was most important in the plugin were a few lines of code which decide whether you truncate the title or the post text.

The first step to using this plugin is replacing either, <?php the_content(); ?> or <?php the_title(); ?> with one of the lines of code below depending on whether you want to truncate by character count or word count.<?php iMP_Limit_Char($max_char='', $more_text=''); ?> // Use this to limit characters with default parameters.<?php iMP_Limit_Word($max_word='', $more_text=''); ?> // Use this to limit words with default parameters.

After you have added the code above to your index.php you to look below where there are two functions, one if you want to truncate based on character count and one based on word count. My code is set up to truncate the title. If you want to set it for the content you just have to replace “title” with “content” in the spots where “title” is bold.

function iMP_Limit_Char($max_char = 10, $more_text = ‘…’, $more_link_text = ”, $limit_type = ‘title‘) {if ($limit_type == ‘title’) { $limiter = get_the_title(); }else { $limiter = get_the_content(); }$limiter = apply_filters('the_title‘, $limiter);$limiter = strip_tags(str_replace(’]]>’, ‘]]>’, $limiter));if (strlen($limiter) > $max_char) {echo substr($limiter, 0, $max_char+1);echo $more_text;if ($more_link_text != '') {echo ' <a href="';echo the_permalink();echo '">'.$more_link_text.'</a>';}} else {echo $limiter;}}function iMP_Limit_Word($max_word = 40, $more_text = ‘…’, $more_link_text = ”, $limit_type = ‘title‘) {if ($limit_type == ‘title’) { $limiter = get_the_title(); }else { $limiter = get_the_content(); }$limiter = apply_filters('the_title‘, $limiter);$limiter = strip_tags(str_replace(’]]>’, ‘]]>’, $limiter));$trim = explode(' ', $limiter);if(count($trim) > $max_word) {$l = $max_word;for ($i=0; $i<=$l ; $i++) $output .= $trim[$i] . ' ';echo $output;echo $more_text;if ($more_link_text != '') {echo ' <a href="';echo the_permalink();echo '">'.$more_link_text.'</a>';}} else {echo $limiter;}}

I hope that this helps. I am not a developer/programmer I just design, code XHTML/CSS and hack stuff people have already programmed. Email me if you want, I will help as much as I can.

Or if you are the client…why you and your mom should get a blog.

I love blogs. Some people don’t. Some people even gag a little when they hear the word “Blogosphere”. It is kind of a lame word but it has really changed the landscape of the internet. Blogs are excellent on many levels. They function as SEO tools, sources of professional information, incredible down time killers, a soap box (for better and for worse) and a thought validator. Someone could come up with additional ideas but I feel that these reasons are more than sufficient for explaining the value of blog.

Blogs are great SEO tools because, if updated, they deliver fresh content. Google loves content that is constantly getting updated and blogs naturally produce that. It gives the spiders a reason to come back to the site and re-index your site. If you are writing quality posts you can also build links through other sites linking back to your site as reference, again, another thing search engines love. In addition to the links coming in it also gives you an opportunity to give links out. If you can get some reciprocal links then even better.

Blog posts are also awesome for submitting to social media sites too. Relevant posts can be submitted to respective social media sites and if they get popular then I hope your blog has a cache plugin installed from all the traffic you will receive, possible RSS subscribers, back links and if your lucky, viral traffic.

I know there can be doubt about the validity of someone seemingly posting random thoughts on the internet, but when you have sources like the Official Google Blog, Matt Mullenweg’s Blog (creator of WordPress) or Single Grain’s SEO blog you have some amazing, professional FREE information. These are only three of my favorite examples, there are thousands of sites instantly available on every topic. But please, as with any publication of any kind don’t believe what you read right away, cross check multiple sources to make sure there is a general consensus on the topic.

This one could sound arbitrary but it’s not! People are always faced with downtime…especially at work (if you are killing downtime right now then I recommend that you check out this video). The internet has to be the most abused work tool available. What would the sports junkies do without ESPN and their favorite sports blog? What would the avid green thumb do without their gardening blog giving the latest ten tips on better roses? With a blog you can capitalize on a niche by anticipating on people wanting to use your blog as a way to kill some down time.

The soap box is definitely a double edged sword. Blogs can act as an amazing way to keep your visitors updated on what is going on. The Digg blog is an excellent example of the moderators of a site interacting with it’s user base (here is a quick reminder of what happens when someone attempts to censor the internet). This is a very effective tool and a great way to reach the people connected to your site. The only problem is that everyone can stand on the soap box. This allows for parasitic content to seep its way through the internet like Perez Hilton’s celebrity blog. With the exception of a blogs like Perez Hilton’s the soap box idea is great and blogs make that ability easier than ever.

Blogs can act as thought validators. If you are writing about your niche and you have a thought on the topic that you feel is worthy of sharing you can. You put that idea out for everyone and see what happens. This is the hardest part of blogging, this is where the rejection happens. But it is through these moments of potential rejection that you can grow in your niche and become an expert in the topic. Being wrong and critiqued is where you can learn the most, where you can have your thoughts validated. Blogs are a great place for that process to happen. Of course, we are dealing with the internet, and believe it or not every person that graces this digital realm is civil, so brace yourself for that 12 year old moron who will leave that worthless comment on your blog calling you an “a**hole stupid head”. So now that you have read this call your mom that you want you her to get a blog.