Event Posters Made Easy!

The Best of the Best

There are tons of plug-ins available for Event Calendars online. WordPress provides some of them directly from their main website, but there are also a variety of outside resources as well. After evaluating multiple plug-ins, the two in this article are the most useful overall.

One of the plug-ins available is the Event Calendar Pro, but in order to get the full benefit of the plug-in, you’ll need to upgrade. If you download the Events Calendar Premium plug-in for WordPress, it will enable you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation.

Some of the features of the Premium plug-in include:

• Manage event details in the Events post type
• Upcoming Events Widget
• Provides full template to complement the 2010 theme out of the box (month and list view)
• Extensive template tags for customization
• Google Maps Integration
• Calendar Month view with tooltips
• Detailed List view
• In Depth Screencast and Documentation included just to be safe!
• Includes support for venue, cost, address, start and end time, Google maps link
• Support for international addresses, time and languages

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Event Espresso is the premiere events registration and management plug-in for WordPress. WordPress developers use Event Espresso as an event registration framework to create customized event registrations for their clients. This premium plug-in for WordPress allows you to turn your existing blog or website into a fully featured event management website.

Event Espresso events are created from within the WordPress admin. The plugin even creates registration forms so attendees can sign up right on your website.

Here are some of the features of Event Expresso:

• Easily manage attendees from within your WordPress website.
• Manage all aspects of your event from the WordPress interface.
• Event Espresso users save hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year.
• Event Espresso is fully integrated with WordPress.

Best of all, attendee information is stored right in the WordPress database, allowing you to have access at any time.

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The Winner Is . . .

While other plug-ins offer excellent calendars and easy-to-use interfaces, Event Expresso is the way to go. You can create as many events as you want. When you set one up you can add all of the information, including sign-up details, payment details and a Google map. You can also set time periods for registration, add custom email confirmations, limit the number of attendees as well as allow/prevent group registrations.

The Bonus: If you are running lots of different types of events, you can very easily put them all into different categories to a make them easier to manage. BIG smiley face!

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The User Friendliest One Is . . .

. . . Event Expresso, and here are the reasons why. For the most part, there are a variety of filter controls on the Event Overview page including category, month, as well as active/inactive. There’s also a live search feature which filters events by their content based on the text that you enter as you type to quickly locate whatever events you might be looking for.

In WordPress, it just goes to show life is as easy as you make it, even when selecting a calendar plug-in. Happy coding!

Reviewing Contact Forms for Wordpress

Exploring Built-In Form Features

This is a tip for everybody. If you’re not getting much contact from your site visitors then perhaps it’s time to spruce up your contact forms and make it more attractive and easy to read. Let’s face it; some contact forms look so bad you really don’t want to use them.

Some of these contact solutions exist as a built-in feature in WordPress. One of the best available options is to use TDO Mini Forms. This plug-in can add themed custom posting and editing forms to your website that allows your readers, including those who are not registered, to contribute.

Using this plug-in allows you to add highly customizable forms that work with your WordPress Theme to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit and edit posts and pages. New posts are kept in "draft" until an admin can publish them (also configurable).

Best of all, TDO Mini Forms has been used to turn WordPress into a Forum, Contact Manager.

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My Vote for the Best Plug-In

After doing some extensive research online, I have determined that the plug-in available is CformsII. CformsII is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder WordPress plug-in, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments to multi form management; you can even have multiple forms on the same page.

Here are some of the main features of the CformII plug-in:

• Customizable fields with optional checkboxes, radio buttons, . . .
• Several fancy “styles”, change the look of your form with a single click.
• Create multiple contact forms and display them on however many pages you want.
• Tell-a-friend form support.
• Backup and restore custom forms to other sites.
• Visitor verification questions, along with CAPTCHA support.

Overall, CformsII makes life easier on both the user and the developer.

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Choosing Easy Yet Effective Plug-Ins

Despite everything that I have read about WordPress, it is not any sort of magical content management system, although it does provide a slew of possibilities in the right hands. Even if the possibilities are there, I will not recommend installing massive quantities of plug-ins just to ramp up your site. In these cases, less is not only better overall, but also more effective.

One of the easiest plug-ins available for Wordpress is the Visitor Contact form. To use this plugin, you need to create a contact form at the home site for the plug-in (see above link). After that, just fill in your form ID to the plugin page and you are done. There are a lot of cool features, such as Geocoding, Captcha Spam Protection, Contact Manager, Skype Status and much more. The options are unlimited.

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But don’t just take my word for it. See for yourself. Selecting a plug-in for forms is all about discovering what fits your comfort level. Good luck and happy coding!

Developing WordPress Templates for the Web

A Template or Design Your Own Theme

Here’s the good news on using WordPress. You have options. In the world of web design that is the best news that we can get. Pre-made templates are boring and lack in originality.

Just to elaborate, here’s the list of features your finished theme will be able to boast of:

• All the search-engine optimization you’ll really need
• Including google-supported Microformat markup
• Valid and logical semantic markup structure than can be used to create ANY layout
• Smart default CSS layouts
• Dynamic Body, post and comment classes
• Separated trackbacks and threaded comments
• 2 widget areas coded to disappear when they’re empty
• And all the typical WordPress stuff you expect from a theme

I think that’s kind of impressive for any WordPress Theme.

Download Free Templates Online

In the case of WordPress, the templates online are unlimited. Courtesy of Smashing Magazine's website, 100 free high-quality WordPress themes are available for consumers. Together with hundreds of other designs, these themes have been manually selected, installed and tested over the last weeks. They all can be downloaded, customized and used for free in both personal and commercial projects. Links to demo-versions provide a direct preview of a theme. These templates can also be edited to fit your specific needs.

You can also go to WPDaddy, perhaps the internet's leading WordPress Themes gallery - where you are offered to browse various categories of the most visually stunning free WordPress templates. Its marvelous collections of professionally designed free WordPress skins will stun you by the diversity of styles and colors, high quality and fresh ideas.

Want more? Trust me, it's definite out there. Check out wptemplates.org for even more WordPress themes.

You CAN Design Your Owe Templates

I hate to plug a site shamelessly, but you have to check out seowebmeeting.com for this incredible step-by-step tutorial. In this 10 minute video, you’ll learn how to make your own custom WordPress Template from start to finish. If a student like myself can do it, anybody can. Using this method isn’t cheating – it’s using the same tricks the pros use! They just don’t spend the time making custom templates anymore. There’s no need to.

You can also check out smashingwebs.com for an excellent tutorial on template creation, but don't take my word for it . . . see for yourself!

Modifying an Existing Template From Scratch

After an hour of surfing and research, I have narrowed it down to one intriguing template. The results of my hunt is the fresh, clean, user-friendly and playful WordPress theme 'Dilectio," a smashing layout that I uncovered from Smashing Magazine. When you first open the template, all images are clickable and lead to the demo-version of the theme. You’ll find the preview- and download-links on the site. Needless to say, the template provides an awesome starting point for reconstruction.

This is a fairly clean template with a layout that can be modified to fit my overall needs. The key is to utilize the resources that the template currently provides and develop it from within. It's really that simple. Content Management Systems are your friend and, sometimes, the very best friend a web designer can have.