Happy New Year to everyone!

I hope this year is better than the last and you are all successful in what ever you do.

Best Wishes

Lee

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. I hope next your is better than ever for you all. January will mark the 2nd year since being a Full time freelancer and it has been a great journey. Thank you all, I am looking forward to what 2011 will bring.

The Funk House is delighted to be working with a Southampton based charity called DAIN (The Disability Advice and Information Network). The Funk House is providing the business with a new website that will allow them to edit their own content and establish an online presence for the first time. The website is due to launch in the New Year.

I finally got around to updating the website and I chose to use StartBox from Brian Richards. It is a WordPress framework that allows me to create great WordPress websites without having to start from scratch each time. I will be writing more in detail about it soon but if you are into building websites with WordPress then make sure you check out StartBox.

The new site has more funky jQuery magic in the portfolio section and a new home page. I have made use of some of the new features of WordPress such as the Custom Post Types and the new menu.

Along with the new refresh of the website the blog is now going to be updated much more, so make sure you keep an eye out for new posts. If any of you followed my articles that I wrote on bloggingtips.com then I hope to continue on my own website when I have time.

The Funk House is pleased to be working with Simply Bathrooms in Southampton on their new website for 2010. A new fresh design will be released in the new year showing off their range of bathroom products.

After stumbling on a WordPress plugin called Anyvar I found it was extremely useful. However, one thing I really did not like about the plugin was the fact that a user had to use code to type anything in unless it was some simple text.

After some thought I decided to add the same WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that WordPress uses to the plugin to allow everyone to be able to add text and even more useful is the ability to add images. Now a user can add images to the plugin just as you would do when editing a page or a post.

How did I add the WYSIWYG editor to the plugin?

Generally to add a visual editor with the media uploader to a plugin where there is a text area for editing then it is a simple process with just a few lines of code:

/** In plugin file **/

add_action('admin_print_scripts', 'add_thejs' );
add_action('admin_print_styles', 'add_thecss' );

function add_thecss()
{
    wp_enqueue_style('thickbox');
}

function add_thejs()
	{
		if ( user_can_richedit() ){
			wp_enqueue_script('editor');
			wp_enqueue_script('media-upload');
			add_action('admin_head', 'wp_tiny_mce');
		}
	}

/** Then wherever the textarea is replace it with the following **/

    <?php the_editor('Some content here','content'); ?>

It is good to note that if you don’t use the id of content then the visual display will not be selected automatically it will select the HTML view first.

It is quite amazing that all you need are these few lines of code to enable the use of the editor. The code i used was slightly different for the Anyvar plugin as the following needs to be added as an array:

add_action("admin_print_styles-$page", array(&$this,'anyvar_css')); // Add required css file(s)
add_action("admin_print_scripts-$page", array(&$this,'anyvar_head')); // Add required JS file(s)

Hopefully the code above to add the editor is straight forward enough to add to your plugin.
Just to give you a quick overview of what it does here is a quick run down.

The add actions are how the functions are called then in each function the CSS or the Javascript is added in turn.

One thing I added was the:

if ( user_can_richedit() ){

This then allows you to only show the editor if the user has the rights to use one.

I hope this is useful to someone and I hope that Matt from devspace includes it in the next release.

Here is the my updated file for you to download: Anyvar Updated – You may need to right click and save file as.
You will need to change the .txt extension to be .php

*Please note that although I have tested this on a few sites you should make sure you test it and backup before using it on a live website.

A new article on bloggingtips.com : Images from your blog from Google the second article by Lee Doel.

Google has updated their image search to include Creative Commons images.

The first article “The mobile Internet the next generation” by Lee Doel from The Funk House has been posted on bloggingtips.com, the article is about the next hip thing in the exploding mobile Internet.

The Funk House will be redesigning the website for the WVS (World Vets Service) who supply veterinary resources, in the form of volunteer teams, drugs, equipment and advice to help animal charities and non-profit organisations around the world.

The Funk House with the help of Ktandco  updated the look of the Tackle & Bait shop web site.
The site is based upon WordPress, with a few plugins and new templates the site now has a refreshed look.

The web site is the online presence of a small shop in Plymouth Devon selling fishing equipment and bait to the local people.
The web site needed to allow the owner the freedom to update the web site and also show off some of the products they stock.

www.thetackleandbaitshop.co.uk