Wordpress Plugins on RRR

In case you find it useful, here’s a list of the plugins I use on RRR’s Wordpress installation and an example of how a couple work together.  I’m inspired to post this after following the tips provided by Dreamhost on fine-tuning a Wordpress installation to speed it up dramatically.

ADMIN (make it easier to manage)

  • Ajax Plugin Helper - activate, deactivate, and upgrade plugins without leaving the plugin screen.
  • Simply Show IDs - displays the IDs for posts, pages, and categories plainly on the “edit post/page/category” pages.
  • Maintenance Mode - allows me to work on the site while showing a temporary “Site down” message to all visitors.

PERFORMANCE (reduce page load time)

  • WP Super Cache - reduces hits on the MySQL database.
  • JavaScript to Footer - for plugins and template pieces I can’t or don’t want to move manually, moves javascript calls to the footer section of the page, which speeds up page display.

SEO (make sure people find us)

DISPLAY (make things functional/easy/pretty)

  • Audio player - for playing single files that aren’t uploaded to SoundCloud.
  • FAQs - handy FAQ manager for our growing FAQs.
  • Flexi Quote Rotator (temporary) - used for showing a rotating crop of quotes. Not ideal but it works when I need it.
  • List category posts - on static pages, displays a list of all posts by title within a stated category or categories, with links to the original posts (see example below).
  • Shadowbox JS - lightbox funcationality for pictures, videos, audio, html, etc.
  • Exec-PHP - enables execution of PHP on a Wordpress page.

Each has its own usefulness, but combining them in interesting ways also made my life easier when it was time to set up the album/collection pages.

Each song exists in multiple categories of song collections; e.g., “Layers of the Earth” is in the science album, the Earth Day collection, and the box set.  It would be a pain to configure automatically-generated category pages to show custom descriptions, embedded audio players, purchase buttons, and more for each unique cluster.

Instead, I set up static pages that hold everything but the list of posts in each category.  Then I set up each song to display its categories.  Using Redirection, I pointed each category listing on a song page to the matching Wordpress Page with matching slugs.  (For instance, the category “earth-day” redirects to a music page with the same slug).  Each music page then automatically lists any tracks assigned to a category via the “List category posts plugin”.  You can see it in action on the Layers of the Earth page and any of the collections it links to near the top.

This is a story of triumph. I realize this is obscure, but:  if you ever find yourself doing batch file renaming, A Better Finder Rename is an incredible time saver.  (I wrote about it previously here.) I’m in the middle of a comically tedious effort to change the embedded players on the RRR website from imeem to SoundCloud.  As a result of a process involving iTunes, Audio Hijack, and Logic, I had the following:  153 30-second preview tracks that followed a peculiar scheme. First 39 tracks:  original version of each song, grouped by album. Next 114 tracks:  alternate versions of those same songs, listed in the same order but in groups of three. For instance, if track 1 was “Characters, Setting, Plot”, tracks 40, 41, and 42 were alternate versions of “Verb Tenses”.  Track 2 was “Dots and Dashes (Punctuation)”, so tracks 43-45 were alternate versions of it.  The alternate versions were in the same order, thankfully (Downtempo, Recall, Instrumental). I needed a way to rename all those files without doing it manually; I refuse to do something so ghastly.  So: I pasted a list of the original file names into Excel and used some text functions (mostly vlookup, left, right, and concatenate) to create a pretty list. Then I copied/pasted that final list into a text document that simply listed all the new names, in order. Made a backup of my ugly-named tracks (which I later needed) Brought those ugly-named tracks into A Better Finder Rename, told it rename everything using my text file, and voila:  new names. Bam!
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This is a story of triumph.

I realize this is obscure, but:  if you ever find yourself doing batch file renaming, A Better Finder Rename is an incredible time saver.  (I wrote about it previously here.)

I’m in the middle of a comically tedious effort to change the embedded players on the RRR website from imeem to SoundCloud.  As a result of a process involving iTunes, Audio Hijack, and Logic, I had the following:  153 30-second preview tracks that followed a peculiar scheme.

  • First 39 tracks:  original version of each song, grouped by album.
  • Next 114 tracks:  alternate versions of those same songs, listed in the same order but in groups of three.

For instance, if track 1 was “Characters, Setting, Plot”, tracks 40, 41, and 42 were alternate versions of “Verb Tenses”.  Track 2 was “Dots and Dashes (Punctuation)”, so tracks 43-45 were alternate versions of it.  The alternate versions were in the same order, thankfully (Downtempo, Recall, Instrumental).

I needed a way to rename all those files without doing it manually; I refuse to do something so ghastly.  So:

  • I pasted a list of the original file names into Excel and used some text functions (mostly vlookup, left, right, and concatenate) to create a pretty list.
  • Then I copied/pasted that final list into a text document that simply listed all the new names, in order.
  • Made a backup of my ugly-named tracks (which I later needed)
  • Brought those ugly-named tracks into A Better Finder Rename, told it rename everything using my text file, and voila:  new names.

Bam!

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
  • 26 Plays

Just to finish this show and tell, here’s the before and after of the clip we were editing in the video I just posted.  Before, the high synth 1/8 notes, low synth 1/16 notes, and reverse cymbal were competing for attention.  In the final version you can hear that we’ve stripped those out and removed a few notes of the low bass, giving the vocals some room to breathe before opening things back up in the chorus.

Matt and me editing “Regulation”

The amount of time we spend on tiny details in every track is ridiculous.

(via robbiedotm)

I’m testing out our new Zendesk setup and am having a little too much fun having conversations with myself.
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I’m testing out our new Zendesk setup and am having a little too much fun having conversations with myself.

Friday Slink: Lykke Li

Lykke Li - I’m Good, I’m Gone (Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid Remix) by Van Rivers

Side note, we’ll be using SoundCloud for our new RRR site and I am PUMPED.

[via SoundBoard]

Textbook Publisher to Rent to College Students

“I think it could very well end up being a standard offering,” said Patrick Maloney, the executive vice president [at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers]. “We’re renting books at 35 percent of the list price, and it’s only for hardcover texts, because paperbacks would get beaten up too fast. The schools assist us with collecting the books at the end, as they do with library books. The other option, taking the student’s credit card and billing it if the book wasn’t returned, didn’t seem very user-friendly.”

You know what would be user friendlier?  Selling the books at 35% of the list price in paperback and saving everyone the trouble of dealing with used books.

They’ll do anything to keep selling hardcover books, but the writing is on the wall.  That’s why RRR is working with companies like Flat World Knowledge, who is embracing technology rather than beating the ocean with a stick.

pablog:

thedailywhat:

Dance Battle of the Day: A dude and a dog krump to the death by the side of Florida’s SR 50 (a/k/a just another Tuesday in East Orlando). [via.]

I think I’ve finally found a spokeperson for RRR.  You’re hired.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
  • 24 Plays

Rhythm, Rhyme, Results - Elasticity

I think it’s finished.  See if you can hear the differences between this and our first pass with the production wand (revision 1).  Matt (composer/producer) and Mac (vocalist) both stepped up their games on this.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
  • 72 Plays

Rhythm, Rhyme, Results - “Elasticity” (first rough cut)

We’re working on an entire album of economics tracks for a super-hip college textbook publisher and I couldn’t resist putting up a clip from the first production pass on this song.

The album ranges from gritty hip-hop to smooth pop tracks like this.