Above is a shot of a couple of the images I’ve produced for new site features.

You can find that related posts plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/similar-posts/. Another plugin by the same authors is one that shows a list of the most recent posts. In the old design I had this functionality hardcoded into the theme footer but now it can be done with a single line of PHP.

A link to the plugin: http://www.phoenixheart.net/wp-plugins/referrer-detector/

I’ve posted it on the wordpress forum in case it proves useful for anyone else: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/245629

Update: Since this is now closed, I have included the code I made originally here:


function Get_Post_Number($postID){
$temp_query = $wp_query;
$postNumberQuery = new WP_Query('orderby=date&posts_per_page=-1');
$counter = 1;
$postCount = 0;
if($postNumberQuery->have_posts()) :
while ($postNumberQuery->have_posts()) : $postNumberQuery->the_post();
if ($postID == get_the_ID()){
$postCount = $counter;
} else {
$counter++;
}
endwhile; endif;
wp_reset_query();
$wp_query = $temp_query;
return $postCount;
}

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-page-numbers/

Unfortunately this wasn’t quite what I was after, since it works with the existing pagination system of WordPress.

I have based the site on WordPress, using it as a Content Management System allowing for the quick adding of portfolio entries and amendments.

Essentially the pages have been used for each section with their own templates, and posts can be categorised so that they will fall into each of the three portfolio sections and with a bit of PHP will display in the right portfolio page.

The design itself was largely drawn out as vector graphics and features some PNG images with alpha channels to create a width-flexible front page design, where both sides of the content expand and resize accordingly, that needed to be acceptible for viewing in Internet Explorer 6.

Additionally I had to solve a number of issues for IE6 not understanding the minimum height and width CSS parameters.

So having gotten the site to a reasonable state of operation, I’ve turned my attention to experimenting with CMS‘s. Open Source CMS has proven invaluable in finding out what is on offer, as well as a few subtle hints from a friend who has been working with them since the start of his placement year.

And basically, if you want a CMS I would now say go with Drupal. It will let you create a very complicated site in a matter of hours, the setup is obscenely easy (I seem to recall a single installation page) and anyone who knows what they are looking for from the site can figure out what to do via the admin interface after a few hours of playing with it. Additionally, I used the Ubercart with Drupal installation specifically, since I was looking for a way to create a site that handles everything all in one – the Ocean Addict Community section (user-centric forums, news, blogs, image galleries) merging seamlessly with the Ocean Addict online shop.

Most brilliantly of all is the way the admin interface, and all the sections of the site use the same standards-compliant XHTML and CSS markup via the same template, helping form what I would consider a true community driven site.

To sum it up then, Drupal is absolutely insane! (in the good sense). But that is not to say I like WordPress any less, just perhaps it should be used only in the capacity as the outstanding blogging tool it is. Instead I wish I had known about Drupal sooner.

While this side of things worked exactly as expected it threw up a unique issue I hadn’t considered.

While viewing the Category through the file Archive.php, for example http://www.oceanaddict.co.uk/category/sailing-yachting-and-dinghy/ the pages were displayed in exactly the same form as posts which put simply was something I didn’t want to happen. I had to find a way that pages and posts could be displayed differently in the archive page.

Initially I would have thought this would be quite easy for wordpress since it sends other variables to the template like the_ID(); and the_author(); and even a promising-sounding is_page();, but after a LOT of searching I found there was no method of determining the page type value after the SQL statement had run from the variables sent by wordpress itself.

Eventually I came across the solution:

if ( $post -> post_type == 'page' )

So there we go, if you wish to differentiate between pages and posts in your template, this is the line to use.

I quickly found http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smf-a-simplemachines-bridge/, which seemed ideal. That is until after diligently following the installation instructions the plugin caused the entire site to break. Fortunately WordPress’s plugin system can be rescued by simply deleting the offending plugin.

Searching for much longer wielded a solution based on the first. The stuff that can be found at http://www.earthorbit.com/opensource/ DOES work and works well.

An excellent page bringing together a whole range of resources to do just this can be found at:

http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk/wordpress-as-a-cms-content-management-system/

Before now I have experimented with the nextgen gallery wordpress system and the wordpress simple forum.

Here is a preview of my current direction of design…