Hard on the heels of all the recent updates I’ve made to my plugins, I’ve decided to go and use CFormsII inside the Quick Shop checkout page. This was supposed to have been in 2.0, but didn’t make it in because CFormsII API was broken at that stage.
However, it’s working just fine right now, and is ready for download!
You can see the new form in action at my new plugin showcase, and download the updated plugin from Wordpress.org Extend.
Since it’s hard for users to see how things might look I’ve created a Wordpress site which shows all my Wordpress plugins in action. Along with the plugins I’ve set up other author’s plugins working in tandem with mine so that you can see what’s possible.
This is probably one of the largest sites Zack Design has ever built. I created 4 plugins for it!
These include a data monitoring system which hooks into the Sunny WebBox, and downloads the latest results from solar installations connected to Wordpress users and inserts the values in the database, a data graphing system which shows the monitoring results in graph format together with Fusion Charts and environmental data, a CoolIris plugin which shows a NextGen gallery album in a CoolIris slideshow, and an auto-login script which allows schools to connect to the portal automatically.
The website includes a forum (Simple:Press), and uses my Wordpress CSS Dropdown Menu plugin for the tabbing system. It is also aggressively cached using the W3 Total Cache plugin. For PDFs I suggested my client use Issuu and Colorbox modal windows, which work extremely well together!
W3 Total Cache has been a massively useful tool which I’m installing on all large production sites these days. Using a combination of Firebug and the Google Page Speed plugin together with W3 Total Cache I’m able to dramatically increase the speed of page loads in Wordpress. Just using the minification and CDN (or parallelisation options) that W3 Total Cache offers often increases a website’s Page Speed score by 10. Depending on its usefulness, I also implement page caching (though this can lead to problems with authentication so I’ve disabled it for Bright Future).
Get the latest and greatest code from the Wordpress.org Extend Plugin Directory!
Demo of the menu is on the Utah Utes Gameday site.
See the Changelog for information about the new code. Also please read the installation guide especially if upgrading.
I would like to thank everyone for their comments and ideas ever since I released the first version of this plugin. Even though I cannot reply to all the posts and emails I get I at least read them and try to remember and keep lists of features people want/like.
IMPORTANT
When upgrading, you will need to modify your <?php wp_css_dropdownmenu(); ?> code. I’m using PHP classes in this version of the plugin, and have outlined all your options in the installation information. If you don’t the theme will issue an error and your menu will disappear.
Other than that, I hope that this release is much easier for the lay person to get working and that it will be relatively simpler to get the menu working in different theme areas. Unfortunately to get the most out of this plugin you still do kind of need to have CSS skills!
And lastly, as usual please remember to donate via the link in the sidebar! I’ve spent most of my Christmas Eve and several extremely late, caffeinated nights to bring you this plugin. None of which I am paid for!
This plugin is brought to you in part by the Victorian public transport system, the Zune, Foobar 2000, an Asus laptop, LOTS of coffee, Count Basie, Dragonforce, Opeth, and countless blues songs including those released by the great Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Have a very merry Christmas from Zack Design, and a happy New Year!
I have something very exciting to share with you – the new 3.0 version of the CSS menu system will shortly be arriving!
This will be a complete rewrite of the way things work. Because so many users have been after an easier-to-install and run plugin (especially with the new Wordpress plugin install system which hides a lot of the README), I have decided to cut down on all the annoying support requests by providing you with a brand new, re-imagined, install process for this plugin. And, I’ve gone and thrown in all the heirarchical Wordpress elements!
Exciting new features:
This is a massive feature set and one which will take me a further week or two to finish up with. Remember, I’m doing this for you for free. If you would like to donate to support this project, please see the sidebar.
See your Wordpress.org Plugin updates for the latest and greatest code! I’ve gone ahead and incorporated some interface and logic improvements to the plugin:
As usual donations are welcome, and please remember that I did not get paid to offer this plugin update to you! Also, if you need any website work or coding done please let me know via the contact form, not via the comment area.
See your Wordpress.org Plugin updates for the latest and greatest code! This plugin should now work correctly with:
I’ve gone through and isolated what I believed to be the problem with the previous implementation and rewritten the plugin accordingly. Don’t forget to donate!
Addendum: Because this gets asked so much, here’s your answer for embedding a widget into your non-sidebar theme:
The Wordpress widget area is awesome and allows you to set up a linear layout of different useful items in unordered lists. Wordpress really needs to call their sidebars ‘blocks’ because all people seem to think is that they use them as sidebars. I use ’sidebars’ as ‘blocks’ all over my themes and set up multiple blocks with different widgets for different occasions or needs.
If your theme doesn’t have sidebars or ‘blocks’ installed, may I direct you to this excellent blog post. Simply place the sidebar code anywhere you want it to appear in your template and fire away. Even add some page logic so it only shows up on a certain page! Much cleaner, more accessible, and more easy to manipulate.
If you can’t do this on your own I can help you – just visit my contact form and I’ll provide you with support. Please don’t put support requests in the comments.
ThemeParkNewsDirect.com was a recently-created Drupal website I was commissioned to skin. One of my graphic artists created the graphics and I then proceeded to use the following Drupal modules:
We ended up using the most complicated panel layout and many, many different kinds of views to get the right feel for the front page. The Zen starterkit for Drupal is also a magnificent way to start off a theme, but I’ve often found that one of the biggest problems with Drupal theming is that you have to start with the Drupal ids and classes rather than your own otherwise there’s so much more work involved.
Still, I think you’ll agree that the end result is quite good!
QuickShop has come a long way from its 1.0 days, as you will see when you begin to use this new version!
For all those people wondering why there was such a low level of support, I can tell you:
That being said, Zack Design does read all your bug reports and requests wherever possible and does endeavour to reply or collate them for later. Just remember that courtesy works both ways!
Now that we have all that out of the way, it is time to talk about v2.0!
QuickShop is completely re-written. It has a better inventory manager (everything all in the one place!), a better shipping calculator which addresses the issues previously had, a better product listing and form with better product options, an actual checkout page, extensible payment options (with Authorize.NET to be added ASAP), use of Wordpress shortcodes and an auto-tag updater to change all your tags from the old V1 tags to the new V2 tags!
There will be more updates in the near future with QuickShop 3.0 planned with AJAX implementation, internationalization, shopping cart usage improvements, more payment types, and much, much more. Please consider donating if this plugin is good for you, and remember that if you want something, sponsor its development!
A quick update to let everyone know to upgrade their CSS dropdown menu!
After a LONG period of waiting, it now comes with IE8 support, a completely extensible multi-level drop-down system courtesy of a recursive menu generating function, bugfixes, and more!
This is merely the first major update in my line of Wordpress plugins. QuickShop 2.0 is well on its way with a revamped system and an inventory (among other things). And the multiple category selection widget is about to receive some love too.
