Mala Yoga is a local yoga studio with a very dedicated following.  Their students are obsessed with yoga and the studio, so naturally they would be obsessed with their website.  We sat with the team at Mala and went through all the features that would satisfy their students needs, and provide valuable, timely information as well.  The result is a beautiful website, packed with features, that is easy for the ladies at Mala to maintain themselves.

MalaYogaNYC Features: Podcasts that are available on the website and iTunes, online store where students can purchase classes or gift certificates, newsletter subscription, class schedule,  individual teacher pages, integrated Google map.

“Indexed By Google?” will check any URL and quickly let you know if Google has indexed it.

It works like this:

Sometimes Google indexes pages with “www” in front, and sometimes without it.
You may need to search Google both ways to make sure your page is indexed.
IndexedByGoogle.com saves you time by checking both versions with Google.

We even have a bookmarklet!

Check it out and let us know what you think: IndexedByGoogle.com.

247WallSt.com features: a host of social networking tools; Email post to a friend, post to Facebook, Follow on Twitter, Share This, Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Fark and Reddit.  We also integrated the Intense Debate enhanced comment system, and a tabbed interface in the sidebar to highlight popular posts and the Editor’s picks.  Setting a post as a “Featured Article” highlights it on all pages.

If you use WordPress, we highly recommend you attend WordCamp.

Steve Bruner, Founder and Partner at SlipFire will be appearing on a panel to discuss Content Management Systems (CMS).  SlipFire is an online business solution firm specializing in helping businesses use the web productively through proper website design, website analytics, online advertising and social networking.

The panel is hosted by Ultra Light Startups, a group of entrepreneurs who explore the perpetually evolving factors involved in the cost of launching a tech venture, reaching profitability and multi-million dollar valuations in a very short period of time with minimal capital investment.   This event will focus on the main differences between the three major CMS platforms; WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, with Mr. Bruner representing WordPress.  Steve is an expert in WordPress, and runs the WordPress Meetup in New York City.

This event will be held at Gigapixel Creative on December 4 at 7pm.

First let’s talk a little about RSS feeds.  These feeds distribute the information that you publish on your website.  They can be setup to broadcast all your info or just parts of it, and they can distribute text, images, video and audio.  To see an example of this sites RSS feed for our articles click here.  You will see a list of all our articles and clicking on any of the links takes you to the website.  This is done automatically.  Everytime we publish an article the feed gets updated.  Another example would be the podcasts that you see in iTunes.  They are just RSS feeds from the individual podcasters website.

So how do you use RSS feeds to get your articles to your readers?  Well, there are two main ways:

1. RSS Feed Readers

If your visitors use RSS feed readers like My Yahoo, My AOL or iGoogle, they can subscribe to your feed and automatically receive updates when you publish an article.  We use a service called Feedburner that adds configuration options to our feed.  To see these sites feed through Feedburner click here. When you click on the link you are presented with a page that allows you to subscribe to the feed using a variety of readers.

2. RSS Emails

Using Feedburner offers many benefits.  One of them is the ability to email your readers whenever you post a new article.  Your reader just submits their email address, and whenever you publish a new article Feedburner sends out an email.  It’s free and it works great.   Just sign up for a free Feedburner account and provide them with your RSS feed.  Under the PUBLICIZE option, choose the EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS option and configure.  Feedburner will provide you with some code that you can place on your website.  This code generates a form that will allow readers to subscribe to emails.  That’s it!  Your done.

But what if your site doesn’t have RSS feeds, or you want to send emails manually?  In that case you want to use email services like Constant Contact or aWeber.  These services also provide you with a form that you can place in your website, which will allow visitors to sign up to your mailing list.  Just login into your account, create your email and press send.  Both Constant Contact and aWeber are paid services but worth it.

3. Automatic and Manual Emails

Here’s where it gets exciting.  aWeber allows you to send manual emails and also automatically produce emails from your RSS feed.  Yes, you read correctly.  You can do both with aWeber.  At the time of this writing Constant Contact is not able to generate emails from RSS feeds.  Additionally, you can configure aWeber to send the RSS email whenever you post a new article, or to send your readers a weekly summary.  And in between you can email them manually whenever you like.

Do you use Constant Contact and aWeber? What are your thoughts?

After working for 16 years as a consultant/software developer for a number of Wall Street firms, Jim Winters decided a career change was in order. One year after becoming a licensed real estate agent, Jim realized his combination of honesty, integrity, and grit was rare in this business, and he wanted to share his knowledge with the world. FromTheStoop.com is Jims way to share his real estate experience with the world and his musings on Brooklyn.

FromTheStoop.com features: full content management system (CMS), tabbed featured articles section, always present content form in header, ability to add real estate listings, built-in search, integrated Mailing List manager.

The ladies at Gotta Knit in Greenwich Village are warm and friendly, and they wanted a website that reflected their personalities. First we picked warm, fun colors and then we added fun borders to everything. A large typeface added some warmth, and some line art added the finishing touch.

GottaKnit.net features: an easy to use event manager, integrated mailing list, photo gallery and a personalized Google Map.

UPDATE

WP-CRM will no longer be supported.

However, we have a  new Contact Manager built on WordPress: RoloPress.
To find out more, visit www.RoloPress.com

WP-CRM is a WordPress system for creating a basic Contact Manager / CRM.  The system requires a combination of plugins and a theme.  It was inspired by the great work David Yeiser did with WP-Contact Manager, and by 37signals Highrise.

Features:

• Add contacts from the front end of WordPress – no need to go to the admin screen.
• Associate an image with each contact.
• Assign each contact to a company… or don’t.
• Create a note history for each contact.
• Clickable email and website links.
• Google map contacts address.
• Dial a phone number (works on cell phones with internet browsers).
• Fully hcard / vcard compatible.
  • To check out this feature, install Tails for Firefox; it will show you the hcard data and allow you to export a contact to Outlook.
• Written with BluePrint CSS.

D E V E L O P E R S   W A N T E D

WP-CRM was built rather quickly using existing plugins and some creativity. Imagine what would happen if a few plugin developers got together and focused on making a full-featured CRM built on WordPress.

Well… stop imagining, and start coding!

SlipFire is looking for a few good plugin developers to help build the world’s best (some may say, first):
Open-source, stable, secure, themable, pluggable CRM.

If you’re interested please contact us here.

Installation Instructions

Setup is a little bit of work, but once it’s done you have a cool , customizable CRM.  Remember, if it were easy… everybody would be doing it!

For WP-CRM to work properly, you need a fresh install of WordPress, the theme and a few plugins:

• Get the theme here: SF-BluePrint-WP.zip (2808)
• Custom Admin Post Listing: makes the backend admin pretty.
• Customizable Post Listings: controls “notes” feature.
• Search Everything: self explanatory.
• TDO Mini Forms: ups the coolablity factor of this theme! Allows you to create a contact from the front end.
• WordPress Heat Map: creates category cloud.
• Members’s Only: makes sure your new CRM is not public.
• Database Backup: (optional) automates backing up your data.

1. Upload and activate the theme and plugins (did I really need to tell you that?).
2. Though you will be creating contacts on the front end, you still need to create your companies on the back end. Go to MANAGE – CATEGORIES, and create a category called “none” (without the apostrophes). This will be for contacts that have no company associated with them.  If you like,  you can also create a few companies here as well… or you can do it later.  Each company is just a standard category.
3. Click on the tab “TDO Mini Forms”.  Now we’re going to create the add contact form.  You will immediately see “Error: No default author set!” Click on “Create dummy user for default author automatically”.
4. Click on “Form 1″, these are the general options for your form.
   • Change form name to “Add Contact”.
   • Change default category to “none”.
   • Since this is your CRM and you’re not going to let just anybody create a contact, you can check “enable moderation”.
   • Change widget instances to “25″.  This is the amount of custom fields you can have on this form.  We’re only going to use 15 of these, so you can use the remaining 10 for other fields if you like.  But you’re going to have to edit the theme to show them.
   • Click “Save”
5. Now let’s create the form!
   1. Click on “Form Widgets” from the submenu.  You may recognize this layout. This plugin was created so that it uses the familiar widget layout… very slick!
   2. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and where it says “Custom Field Widgets”, select 25 from the dropdown menu and click “save”
   3. Now scroll back up and drag “Custom Fields 1″ to the widget.  And then place “Custom Fields 2″ underneath it.  Now, pay attention here; place “Categories 1″ next.  Continue until your layout looks like this:
      
   4. Now we need to set the values for each field.  Click on the icon to the right of “Custom Fields 1″ and the options screen should pop up.  Fill in the values per the table below.  When you’re done with each field, click the “X” at the top of the options screen to close the screen, and then click “Save Changes” after you adjust each field, just to make sure you don’t lose your work.VERY IMPORTANT:
      • The Custom Field Key must be typed exactly as shown, or it won’t work.
      • You must set First Name and Last Name as Required fields.
        

      Custom Field #	Title	Custom Field Key	Type	Size	Select button choice	Other
      Custom Field 1	First Name	first_name	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 2	Last Name	last_name	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Categories 1	Company	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	“overwrite default categories:check “list of categories to exclude”: 1
      Custom Field 3	Title	title	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 4	Address Line 1	address1	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 5	Address Line 2	address2	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 6	City	city	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 7	State	state	text field	2	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 8	Postal Code	postal_code	text field	10	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 9	Mobile	mobile_phone	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 10	Home	home_phone	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 11	Work	work_phone	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 12	Fax	fax	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 13	Other	other	text field	30	text	(no option)
      Custom Field 14	(leave blank)	email	text field	30	email	(no option)
      Custom Field 15	Website	website	text field	30	text	“default value”:http:// choose “url”
      Content	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	“Title of Post”: uncheck “show “Content of Post”: uncheck “required”
      Tags	No configuration neccessary
      Upload Files	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	(no option)	“Allow File Types:” .jpg .gif .png Check: “Use filename as post title” “Max File Size:” 100000 “Add download link to post content:” uncheck “Add download link as custom value:” uncheck Url of Uploaded area:”http://[your domain name]/wp-content/uploads/

   5. We need to create a WordPress page to put the cool form you just setup:
      • WRITE – PAGES
      • Page Title: Add Contact
      • Page Slug: add-contact (must be exact, in lowercase and hyphen)
      • In the body of the page, type:  [tdomf_form1]  (with the brackets)
   6. Now let’s make some changes to your WordPress setup:
      • WRITING: Default Post Category: none
      • PRIVACY: I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
      • PERMALINKS:
        • Custom Structure: /people/id-%post_id%
        • Category Base: /list
      • MISCELLANEOUS:
        • Store uploads in this folder: wp-content/uploads
   7. Let’s update the other Plugin options:
      • ADMIN POST LISTING:
        • Hide ‘Title’ column: check
        • In the area under “Custom Fields to Add”, enter:
          • last_name =>
          • first_name =>
      • SEARCH EVERYTHING: Check off what ever options work best for you.

Done!  Your CRM is now ready.

So, how do  you use it?  Here’s a quick tutorial:

• Adding Contacts: Click the “Add Contacts” button and fill out the form.  When you create a contact a few things happen.  If you add an image to the contact, then the post title becomes the image name.  If you don’t, then the post title becomes the date and time it was created.  You probably didn’t need to know that much, because the post title has been hidden!
• Adding Companies: Click the “Add Companies” button, and you will be taken to the back-end of WordPress.  Just create a category for every company you want to add.
• Managing your Contacts: This is also done from the back-end.  But thanks to the ”Custom Admin Post Listing” plugin, when you click MANAGE – POSTS, you won’t see ugly post titles, you’ll see your contacts names.

That’s it!  Enjoy!

Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions, as well as any bugs you find.

SkyTrack Condo has 60 owner apartments spread out over four buildings and wanted a way to communicate with them easily. Their new website certainly does the trick! All new announcements are posted on the front page of the website, and immediately emailed to the owners. Sending messages to the Superintendent, Managing Agent or Board of Managers is just one click away, and the website keeps a log of all messages for future reference. An integrated calendar announces upcoming events, and the local weather is always displayed. Additionally, each board member has a user ID and password so they can easily update the website themselves.

SkyTrackCondo.com features: Email subscription service, three different contact forms, integrated calendar, local weather display.