Designs by Seth Alling

Over the past year, I have developed quite a few sites in WordPress. One of the common requests that I have been asked to do is to create a testimonial page, where people can leave their testimonials as a comment and then style the feed so those comments will display nicely as client testimonials.

While this has been easy to do, I have found it rather annoying at times because I then have to allow comments on that particular page, but on no others. One would think that WordPress by default would allow for this be be fairly simple out of the box, and it is, but only if you do it their way.

On the WordPress settings, you can choose to disable posts and trackbacks by default, but throughout the entire site. You can still enable comments on a page by page or post by post basis, but you can’t have it be enabled by default on posts, and then disabled by default on pages. This is the probable that I always seemed to be running into. Normally, I would just remove the comments template from pages, but once I wanted comments on just one page, I would have to add the code back into the template.

Now, I know I could just grin and bear it and remember to disable comments on each new page, or enable comments on each new post, depending on my main comment settings, but I want things done my way. I don’t want to have to remember and leave the possibility of human error taking effect, so last month I determined that I have had enough.

I finally put my mind to it and wrote a plugin to allow me to set the default comment settings individually on a page. This way I could enable the comments so they would appear on posts, but disable them by default on pages. I did this using javascript so I could then change my comment settings on an individual post or page basis. After developing it, I released it to the WordPress community. The plugin is No Page Comment.

Well, now that a little more than a month has passed since developing it and releasing it to the WordPress community, I have made some more modifications to it. It is now possible to set the default for posts, pages, and any custom post types that may be installed on your site. I found out that some people wanted comments disabled on posts only, but wanted them open by default on pages. Others saw a need to block comments on custom post types that came from third-party plugins. Because of this, I have made the modifications, and am happy to release the next version of No Page Comment. Feel free to check it out. It just may make working with WordPress a little easier for you, as it did for me.

Last month, my first premium WordPress plugin was released to the public: WP FAQs Pro. I have been working with WordPress for more than a year and have developed plugins before, but this is the first one that I am selling to the public.

The plugin is meant to be a simple way to manage FAQs for a website using WordPress, giving the user complete control over the way FAQs are displayed without needing any coding knowledge.

Features of WP FAQs Pro

• jQuery usage and non-JS support
• An optional questions index
• Easy drag-and-drop question reordering
• Multiple style choices
• Custom CSS ability
• WordPress shortcode incorporation
• FAQ categories
• Ability to post multiple FAQ lists on a page

A live demo of WP FAQs Pro can be viewed and the plugin can be purchased at WP Plugins for $15.

As a special in honor of my first premium WordPress plugin, the first 10 who use the code “1STPLUGIN” will receive $12 off their order, bringing the total to only $3.

The other day I was working on capturing screenshots for a plugin I’ve been working on and every screenshot I took didn’t include the cursor. Now, on most occasions this isn’t an issue, but I needed one of the shots to show drag and drop functionality, meaning that I needed the hand cursor.

Well, after trying out a variety of different screenshot programs, I still wasn’t able to get the desired result. I was able to figure out a way to show the drag and drop functionality, but the hand cursor was still missing. In the end, I determined, that I would just have to recreate it by hand.

By zooming in on the screen (CTRL-Scroll) I was able to see the hand cursor up close, although it was a bit fuzzy. From there I could then build the hand in Photoshop pixel by pixel. With much zooming in, remembering, and then zooming out and moving into photoshop, I was able to build it.

Because it’s wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, I’ve decided that if anyone else ever needed this cursor, then they can download it from my site.

Download the PSD Mac Hand Cursor. Inside the zip file is the cursor in PSD, PNG, and GIF formats.

Umm… Happy New Year.

Yes, I know it’s been a year since I last posted, and I promised to do better, but I failed. So instead of promising to do better, I’ll just post when I have time. Maybe one day I’ll be self-employed full-time, but until then posting a blog will be hit or miss.

So, in honor of my failed attempt to post regularly, I will post a quick and short review of this year. Read more…

Quite a few months ago I was asked to develop a site for a company known as Tech Brokers. I was given a very rough layout for the design and a few graphical elements as well.

The main purpose of this site was to have a site up for a company that was just starting out. Once they had a website in place, their investors would be able to learn more about them and eventually get the business started. Read more…

A few weeks ago I was working on our company’s site before we launched our new design and had to fix our drop-down menu in Internet Explorer. It worked fine in IE8, but there were severe issues with IE6 and IE7. Our company doesn’t support IE6, and neither do I unless someone is paying me more, but we do support it to the point where at least all of the information is accessible even if it doesn’t look right.

Anyway, in both IE6 and IE7, I found out our main banner image was covering the dropdown menu. I could not figure out what the problem was for quite sometime, and after doing some extensive searching on Google, I was able to learn what the problem was through a variety of sources. Read more…

What am I thankful for? In two days, I will get to fly out to Utah so I can finally be with my wife again after spending the last five weeks apart, and six weeks apart prior to that. We will be driving back to Michigan together and hopefully the weather doesn’t cause any problems. If there are no problems, I will also be thankful that we will make it back home in time for Thanksgiving.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I felt it would be appropriate to list some design freebies for the holiday. I’ve noticed in the past that Halloween and Christmas always seem to have icons, vectors, fonts, brushes and other resources available. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is not the same, so hopefully these will come in handy to anyone who needs them. Also, a thank you to all of the designers who created these and made them available. Read more…

After taking a break for the past few months from blogging, here is one of my recent works. Back in February, at Brigham Young University, we were discussing some of the ways that we could possibly attract more recruits to BYU, besides winning games, and the idea to put our media guide online was thought of. Read more…

Two days ago, Google finished their celebration of Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary. I remember after seeing them, I was wishing that there was a way to download them. Like a majority of the population, I watched Sesame Street when I was younger, and seeing those images reminded me of childhood.

Well, while I was looking online yesterday, I found out that Google is now offering the Sesame Street collection for download as “high-resolution” images. To clarify the “high-resolution” word, it’s 1200×800, which means low-resolution to anyone who designs with print.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009: Big Bird

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It has been a while since I have posted anything. In fact it’s been more than four months. I guess I have some explaining to do.

I am no longer working for the Brigham Young Athletic Department. I originally thought this would happen in December or January as I was expecting to live in Provo until my wife graduated from school, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put a hiring freeze on all church employment, including all non-student jobs at BYU, back in January. Because of this I was going to lose my job two weeks after I graduated in April. Read more…