HTML Emails replaces the standard WordPress emails with spruced up versions that simply look good. Sample included below:

Currently, only comment notifications are HTML-ized (new comment and comment moderation emails), but I’m hoping to add all other email notifications soon (and yes, that includes Multi-Site emails coming with WordPress 3.0).

While I have only tested the emails on Gmail, Gmail on Android, and Outlook, they should work on most email clients (including clients without HTML support). If you’re using a client other than the 3 I’ve listed, I would appreciate an email with info on whether the email looks like it should and works correctly.

Don’t like my design chops? (Go ahead, admit it!) I’ve got you covered! HTML emails makes it easy to fully customize the look and feel of emails sent by WordPress. See the Other Notes section on the Plugin page for details on how to customize emails. More detailed walkthroughs to come.

Grab it from the Plugin Directory or install directly from WordPress (Plugins > Add New, search for HTML Emails).

HTML emails from WordPress? Yes, please!

Coming very, very soon!

If you haven’t upgraded yet, download it from the Plugin Directory or directly from within WordPress.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the new features introduced in this release:

Usergroups

Version 0.3+ adds in what are called usergroups. On the outset, they’re similar to “Roles” built into WordPress, except that (at this stage) usergroups are simply ways to associate groups of users together. Edit Flow adds a number of sample usergroups for you to get started (as shown above) and get a sense of what sort of groupings you can create. However, the main power of usergroups comes with…

Notification Controls

Much of the feedback Edit Flow received since the email notification were introduced centred around having greater control over who receives notifications. Previously, post updates were emailed to authors, editorial commenters, and any roles that had been selected to receive notifications. Many people were drawn to the notification feature but were forced to keep it disabled since they didn’t want all their editors or administrators notified on every single post update.

With the new release, you can specify on a post level, what users and usergroups should receive notifications, so that only relevant people and groups of people receive updates.

Note: with the introduction of this feature the “Notify by Role” option was removed. In its place, a new feature was added “Always notify admin option” which includes the blog administrator in all notifications. To all overly protective, nosy admins that want to know everything: you’re welcome :)

This is just the beginning of notifications. Some interesting ideas that I’d like to integrate in future versions of Edit Flow include:

• Giving users the ability  to subscribe to posts themselves
• Have specific users or usergroups automatically subscribed to posts based on categories or tags assigned to posts.
• Make the UI a bit more efficient. The UI for this new feature is something that was unfortunately rushed. My original vision didn’t make it in (due to various impracticalities, changes, and lack of time), but it’s very much a high priority on my list to make it easy to select users/usergroups (especially for installs with hundreds and thousands of users).

More Useful Notifications

On the topic of notifications, the new release introduces emails that are slightly more descriptive in terms of the action taken on the post. The subject line of the email will specify whether the post was created, published, unpublished, etc. Although a small change, it should hopefully help users manage incoming emails more effectively and not get inundated with a barrage of “Post Status was changed” emails. (Interestingly, I’ve found that this new change comes in handy even on my personal blog which is a simple on-user blog. I find these notifications fairly useful especially since I make aggressive use of WordPress’ future scheduling functionality.)

Additionally, the action links in comment notifications now take the user directly to the editorial comment form (e.g. clicking on “Add editorial comment” will open the post and take to directly to the Editorial Comment form). Again, not a major feature but something that should hopefully save you some time, scrolling and future dealings with Carpal Tunnel.

I’d like to extend this feature even further and allow users to reply to comments via email and not have to go into WordPress to do so. (As you can see, there’s a bit a time-saving trend going on here.)

New widget: Posts I’m Following

Still a little crude at this stage, this new widget gives you a list of the most recently updated posts that you’re following. However, this widget will likely form the basis of the activity stream, which will offer an audit trail of activity happening within the WordPress admin.

Knight News Challenge Round II

While not really a feature introduced in 0.3+, here’s a bit of news that may be interest: we’ve submitted our 2nd round application for the Knight News Challenge. Check out it, vote, and leave us some feedback.

What’s Next?

Apart from some of the ideas already mentioned, with the next couple of Edit Flow releases, you can expect to see some great features such as:

• Post task lists (à la Basecamp, namely a list of tasks that must be completed in order for a post to be published)
• Better Post Management (to help you track and manage your content better, such as snapshots of how far along existing content is)
• HTML emails (because emails should always be pretty – but always fallback to plain text for people still living in the ’90s)

Your Homework

As always, your feedback is much appreciated and vital to our development. Let us know what about Edit Flow works for you and what doesn’t and what else Edit Flow can do to improve your organization’s WordPress experience.

We’ve already had discussions with several online and print publishers and newsrooms interested in adopting Edit Flow and would love to include you in that conversation. Why not get in touch?

Zen: distraction-free writing for WordPress.

Here’s a sneak peek at a plugin I’ve been working on. If you blog using WordPress and you’re a fan of WriteRoom, OmmWriter, or similar tools that help you focus on your words instead of the tools you’re using, then this plugin will soon make your wildest dreams come true (and give you a simple clean environment to write to your heart’s content)! It looks like crap right now, but I’m working on polishing the look and adding some cool features (themes, backgrounds, etc.), and hopefully release something soon.

If there are any features you’d like to see, add a comment or contact moi.

Zen: coming soon to anow available in a WordPress Plugin Directory near you!

…or in “proper” English: Feed Killer.

Basically, a small plugin to disable all your feeds on your WordPress install, for whatever crazy reason; we don’t judge (much). This is a result of a question by @wesbos.

There’s also a non-plugin version if you don’t want to go the plugin route (for whatever crazy reason; again, we don’t judge (extensively)). Just add the code to your theme’s functions.php file.

See below or download from gisthub.

Here’s an idea that I thought might be a useful addition to Edit Flow especially once we add in User Group functionality. The main premise is to have a full-out User Directory accessible by logged in users that provides easy access to contact information for other users on the site. Would probably only be useful for larger groups using WordPress, but I’d imagine would still come in handy for newsrooms and such.

See the wireframes in full screen mode.

Using Mockingbird, a recently launched Cappuccino-based wireframing tool, I was able to whip up some quick UI concepts I’ve been thinking of for the next iteration of Edit Flow. Though obviously not as fast as a hand-drawn sketch, it’s far more convenient when you’re working with other people since you don’t have to get cameras and/or scanners involved.

Mockingbird has a fairly intuitive interface, and most functionality you’d expect from a wireframing/diagramming tool. Best part: no Flash! Check out the result below. It’ll be updated as I make changes to the diagram.

See the wireframes in full screen mode.

Ever look through your list of plugins and forget just exactly what one of them does? I know they have descriptions next to them, but that doesn’t always speak to exactly what you are using it for and why. This plugin would just put a text field in each plugin field you could type some notes in there, theoretically to keep information about why and how you are using this plugin.

And since I was bored (and thought this was a pretty useful idea), I delivered. Plugin Notes is exactly what it sounds like.

Once you install and activate, the plugin adds a link “Add plugin note” that lets you add in a little note next to each plugin. It’s totally ajaxified and full of cool goodness. (Unfortunately, I was a bad programmer and didn’t make plugin gracefully degrade when javascript is turned off. Sorry, folks. Maybe next time.)

Plugin Notes: adding a note is easier than milking a cow.

When a note is added, it shows up inside a little blue box and includes the name of the user that added the note as well as the date and time when the note was added. You also get handy dandy options to “Edit” or “Delete” notes.

WordPress plugin: Plugin Notes - blue boxes make things look pretty.

Each plugin can only have one note. I can imagine there would be cases where multiple notes may come in handy, but those would be rare so I’m passing on that functionality.

The plugin is pretty simplistic, and unlikely to see any future feature additions (unless someone really, really wants one). I’ll keep a watch for compatibility with future versions of WordPress though, so rest easy.

Excited, enough? Grab Plugin Notes (from the WordPress Plugin Directory) or download it from within WordPress.

Note: you’ll need PHP5 and a javascript-enabled browser for the plugin to work.

Sharing Category Templates

Update (2009-12-21): So, the original technique that I had posted is a bit hacky and kinda gets annoying when you have lots of categories and category templates. There’s a better approach that can add to your functions.php file to make everything work magically, which was inspired by Justin Tadlock‘s comment on a post by Elliot Jay Stocks. Code below:

Add to your theme’s functions.php file and edit as necessary. For example, to redirect to categories with IDs 1 & 5 to a template called gallery.php, change the if statement to:

if( is_category( array( 1, 5 ) ) )
    template = locate_template( array( 'gallery.php', 'category.php' ) );

Easy, no?

Note: the stuff below is old, crappy, “legacy” code. Still here for posterity…

WordPress has an amazing theming system. It’s not perfect, but if you know the right things you can bend it to your will and do a lot of cool things. One great thing about it is the template hierarchy; WordPress basically allows you to create custom templates for categories, tags, authors, etc.

For example, if I add category.php to my theme, all category pages will now be styled according the structure within the category.php file. Now, let’s say I have a category called “Photos” that I wanted to look a little different from the rest. (Let’s assume the category ID for “Photos” is 6). All I have to do is add category-6.php to my theme, modify it to whatever, and the “Photos” category page will switch to this new template. Cool? Definitely.

With a system like this, you could technically customize your site to the point where the every category, author, tag, etc. page has a unique look and feel. But, that’s quite a lot of work and in most cases unnecessary. There may be cases though, where you want a small subset of categories to have a unique look, and you want these pages to share this look. Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t allow different pages to share templates. (Intuitively, I would think that something like creating a file called category-6,7,8.php [or similar] would apply this template to categories 6, 7, and 8). You could technically set up separate files (category-6.php / category-7.php / category8.php) and just copy and paste the code across all of them, but that’s a maintenance nightmare. A single change will have to be copied over multiple times, and that’s just annoying.

There are a few ways around this. One of easy ways is to use Idealion’s Category Enhancements plugin. Alternatively, if you want a more theme-level solution, follow the steps below. This is something I discovered while building out the image gallery pages for The Boar (links of what I came up with are at the bottom).

1. In your theme folder, create the category files for the categories you want to apply the custom template to.

• Let’s assume we want to apply it to the categories “Portrait Photography” (ID: 5) and “Nature Photography” (ID: 12).
• In this case we’d create category-5.php and category-12.php

2. In the category template files (category-5.php & category-12.php), add the following:

<?php require_once('common_template.php'); ?>

3. Create a generic category template: common_template.php

4. Then in the common_template.php, add the following:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php echo 'Hello World!'; ?>
<!-- The rest of your custom template goes here -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>

5. Now, if you navigate to http://your-site.com/?cat=5 and http://your-site.com/?cat=12, you’ll notice that their look will mirror what you included in common_template.php

I should note that this approach isn’t limited to category templates; you can use this with author and tags templates as well. Technically, with this approach you could combine multiple categories and tags, as well (though if you do, be wary of category- and tag-specific functions and make use of conditional tags).

You can see an example of this in action at the links below:

• Regular category page: The Boar – The Library
• Customized category pages that share a single template: The Boar – The Gallery | The Boar – Photography | The Boar – Fine Arts

Sample files you work from. Download them, rename the extension to .php and throw them into your template folder.

• common_template.php (Note: I just filled this with code from the Kubrick theme’s archive.php file)
• category-5.php
• category-12.php

Thoughts, questions, suggestions? Leave a comment below or send me an email.

This past weekend, we released the beta version of Stage 1 (Custom Post Statuses) of the Edit Flow Project, a plugin aiming to improve the WordPress Admin Interface for a multi-user newsroom’s editorial workflow.

The main goal of this stage was to “improve posts statuses by allowing custom statuses.” WordPress, by default, only allows for two statuses for posts during the editing process: “Draft” and “Pending Review”. These statuses are not very descriptive nor do they make it easy to track a story as it moves through a newsroom’s often complex, multi-level workflow.

With the release of Stage 1 of Edit Flow, WordPress users can now assign custom statuses to posts, giving them more control over the state of their content.

Adding/Editing/Managing Custom Statuses

Upon activation, the plugin adds five default statuses (“Assigned”, “Draft”, “Pending Review”, “Pitch”, “Waiting for Feedback”). These can all be edited or deleted (with the exception of “Draft” and “Pending Review”, which can only be deleted). Users can also add additional custom statuses. Overall, we tried to make this as flexible as possible, acknowledging the extreme diversity in workflows and requirements across different newsrooms.

The “Add/Edit/Manage Custom Statuses” screen (screenshot above) is reminiscent of the interface used to manage categories and tags. From a design stand-point, we tried to keep with standard WordPress interface conventions (to minimize the learning curve) and, similarly, make the plugin as less intrusive as possible.

Assigning Custom Statuses to Posts

With custom statuses defined, they can now be assigned to posts. The plugin adds the custom statuses to the “Status” dropdown when editing a post (screenshot above). Additionally, given the likely frequency of use of this feature, the Status dropdown is made visible by default. The plugin also allows you to set a default status for new posts, which WordPress sets to “Draft” by default.

Managing Posts

To ease the management of content, a new column is added to the Edit/Manage Posts screen that indicates the current status of the posts displayed. Additionally, the posts on this screen can be filtered by status, by clicking on the links at the top.

Dashboard Widget

As a small bonus, we threw in a small dashboard widget that gives you a quick glance of the state of currently unpublished content. As this was a last minute addition, it’s minimal and largely unstyled, but something we’ll clean up and build out more in the coming days.

Version Compatibility and Internationalization

The plugin relies heavily on JavaScript, and given recent changes to the core, we’ve decided to only support WordPress 2.8 onwards. If there is enough demand for backwards compatibility, we may consider supporting older versions. For now, and the remainder of the plugin, we will be focusing on compatibility with WordPress 2.8+. Additionally, internationalization isn’t currently supported, but something we hope to build into the next Stage of the plugin.

Download

You can find Stage 1 of the plugin on the WordPress Plugin Directory. Alternatively, download it from within WordPress using the built-in Plugin Manager (just search for “Edit Flow”).

Feedback and What’s Next

As this is the first official (albeit beta) release of Edit Flow, it is likely still rough around the edges. We’re very open to feedback though. Leave a comment below telling us what you think is broken, missing, or could be improved. (Praise doesn’t hurt either). Alternatively, feel free to submit any issues or requests that you run into on our GitHub page.

Up next, Daniel will be leading efforts for Stage 2 (Additional Post Meta Data) of the plugin, which will be working to add newsroom specific meta-data to posts. Stay tuned to our progress as we work through Stage 2.