You know how someone can ‘like’ or ‘share’ your blog on facebook, and there is supposed to be a thumbnail image, title, and a few sentences of text? The plugin can now handle that stuff for you ( but only if you want! It’s an option). The plugin tries to figure out which image goes with your post or page based on the featured image if there is one, the first attached image, if there is one, or a default image you can specify on the plugin’s settings page.

Also in this update, I added an option to disable the ‘tabs’ and ‘toggle’ shortcodes. This removes the js and also the PHP that drives the shortcodes. Just in case you are trying to reduce clutter on your blog and only want the other features of the Super Functions Pack.

Enjoy!

Launched the new theme for the MonacoReps blog, Look Here Blog. Working with an in-house designer, Springthistle built this new theme. It works smoothly with the existing posts from the old theme of course, and also adds a number of theme options to allow the designer to change the look of the blog – header image and colors – at any time.

A custom-built CMS that they can use to manually manage all of their photographers, illustrators and videographers and each artist’s galleries, images, and videos is what we did for Monaco Reps. Collaborating with an in-house designer, Springthistle create a custom MySQL-based back-end, using CakePHP. Everything, from the homepage to the galleries to the images, is dynamic and easily changable by the client.

To enable the new feature, go to Settings > Super Functions Pack > Settings and turn on the checkbox next to ‘Include document types styles?’

Click the ‘Save Changes‘ button and you’ll see that a new field appears with a list of the support file extensions.

If you don’t see the list, click ‘Load defaults‘ and they’ll appear.

Now when you view your website, any link that connects to a file with one of the listed extensions will have the appropriate icon.

Want to remove one of the default extensions? Simply delete it from the list and that extension will be ignored.

Want to add a missing extension? Find or create a gif file named appropriate (icon-ext.gif) and upload it to your website’s wp-content/uploads/ directory. If you want to replace one of the icons I’ve provided with the plugin, uploading a replacing icon to that directory will take care of it.

To get started, download and install the plugin, or update it if you’ve already got it.

Questions? Suggestions? Email me!

The new Hazon website went live today. Springthistle did all of the hands-on work of design and coding, but worked closed with Kestin Technology solutions for strategy and general decision-making. The old Hazon website, which we built a dog’s age ago, had outgrown its original skin and was becoming unwieldy. The new site, built in WordPress with a custom theme, is sleek, dynamic, and can expand in any direction the Hazonniks see fit. We built the theme with a passal of custom shortcodes, javascript, and php functions to make it super flexible and easy to make layouts beautiful. Take a look!

Bellflower is the latest movie release from Oscilloscope. It’s a WordPress site with a custom theme created to Oscilloscope’s specifications. It includes special theme features that allows them to update parts of the site that needs to be dynamic, like the featured image for each page, the list of publications, the embedded video preview, the list of theaters that draws data from a separate database, and the sub-menus of actors.

Bethel UCC is a church in Virginia. They needed a brand-new website that they could update themselves and would be dynamic and engaging for both older and younger members.

Their WordPress-driven website has a flexible homepage, menus and sub-menus, and a fully-featured Theme Options page that allows them to easily change any of the dynamic content on their site. Their homepage has a slider where they can easily load additional photos, and they can also seasonally change the background image of their site.

We collaborated with Rich Content to create this beautiful and functional website.

It features a rich sidebar of social media on the homepage along with a custom image slider and three separate blog feeds. There are custom plugins and shortcodes, including ones that allow for tabs, lightboxed videos, a fancy donation form, and more.

Holy Blossom Temple and Rich Content also bear the unique distinction of being Springthistle Design’s first Canadian customers!

Working with the Maccabee Group, Springthistle created this custom WordPress website for LOGIS (Local Government Information Systems) to their specifications on design, functionality, and use.

Their website features their list of services, each of which has a custom icon assigned to it as well as screenshots (viewable larger in lightbox effect) of their software in action.

There’s some custom javascript at work on the site as well.

This organization came to me with a very short timeline and a lot of programming needed. They already had a design and the website mostly built. Springthistle created a database and hooked up the pledge forms and ‘who pledged’ list to it. We also added reCAPTCHA to prevent spam submissions, and a secure admin area where staff can review and download data.