d13design.co.uk [ dave waller ]

I’ve finally got around to developing yet more WordPress plugins and one of them has now been released on wordpress.org.

D13Slideshow is a simple WordPress plugin that creates animated, JavaScript slideshows with excerpts from selected WordPress posts and pages. By adding a simple tag to your template you can embed interactive adverts for your chosen featured posts and manage all of the settings instantly, using your WordPress admin pages. Unlike other components, d13slideshow uses the prototype and scriptaculous JavaScript libraries which means that if you already use Lightbox 2 then there’s no further downloads added to your page

The IBDashboard plugin for Wordpress is an easy way to display your detailed IconBuffet statistics in your blog. The plugin will let you display a whole host of data about your IconBuffet profile including your username, avatar and referral link, how many referrals you have, how many stamps and tokens you have, how many deliveries you’ve made, whether you’re a VIP and even all of the badges you’ve accumulated - phew!

Anyway, they’re doing quite well at the moment (so much so that I exceed my bandwidth after just 3 days!). Check them out and drop me a line if you use them on your site.

A quick trawl through some of the (countless) online CSS galleries came up trumps this week when I came across not one but two sites that I’ve worked on featued at WeLoveWP.com.

To coincide with the launch of Compendle as a web-based application we, at MyKnowledgeMap, also wanted to create a platform for a community of users and enthusiasts to collaborate and share their experiences. We looked at a variety of ways to quickly establish a blog and we settled on WordPress as the platform.

There were some real plus-points that led us to choose WordPress for this:

1. It’s so quick to get set up and established
2. We could give out contributor rights to a ton of people while maintaining editorial control
3. We could all contribute to the posts while the theme was being developed
4. Incredibly easy theme and plugin development (the Compendle blog is a totally custom project)

So, with a new WordPress install set up on our PHP hosting service we got to work with the customisation of the site.

I was approached by North Circle Photography through a friend of a friend when they were just establishing themselves as one of Northamptonshire’s premiere contemporary photographers. They were after a clean and contemporary web presence that communicated their clean and clear approach to photography.

Focusing on the areas of portraits, commercial, wedding and illustrative the website showcases some of their work and is really stong introduction to their photographic approach.

Using a combination of clean HTML, CSS styling, Javascript effects and PHP contact forms this website does the job quickly and simply.

Compendle was developed a few years ago by myself and the e-learning development team at MyKnowledgeMap. It’s key aim was to transfer some of the technical tasks associated with the packaging and delivery of e-learning from the IT specialists and to the practitioners.

Developed, initially as a desktop application, Compendle allowed course tutors and teachers to gather all of their existing learning resources, organise them into sensible and relevant structures and then publish them ready for delivery to learners. What made Compendle unique was the fact that you needed absolutely no technical expertise to start delivering standards based learning packages.

Compendle has now evolved and this month sees the release of Compendle Web–an internet based version that brings with it all of the great features of the original product coupled with the power and potential of the MyKnowledgeMap Core Framework.