Plugin Archives

Jul 18 2012

Visual Form Builder: Easily Create a Custom Contact Form

Posted by Brock Nunn | Tutorial, WordPress | No Comments

By now we have covered several ways in which WordPress Plugins can make your life easier by adding elements to your WordPress site without requiring you to be a web design master. Now, I will be the first to admit to you, forms are frustrating. Web forms can be tricky to build, difficult to validate properly and even harder to make sure that relevant information gets to the site owner when needed. This is why there are so many web form building tools that you can pay for like WooFoo, Gravity Forms and so many more. Today, I present a form building tool that can integrate highly functional forms with a simple drag and drop interface: Visual Form Builder.

Step 1, Getting Started: Install Visual Form Builder

Just like any other WordPress plugin from the repository, VFB is easy to install. Check out the video below

Step 2: Create The Form (Or Forms)

Now that we have Visual Form Builder installed on our site, we can begin creating awesome forms that our users will be able to interact with. To begin, create your first form by giving it a name for example “Contact Form”.

Next, you will notice that VFB has already taken the liberty to create a few important fields for you. Unless you are more than confidant with web forms, it is a good idea to just leave these areas alone. Now we can begin adding fields at our leisure.

To add fields, begin clicking on the fields that you would like to use found in the left hand column of your screen. Even better yet, check out the video below!

http://www.screenr.com/q1F8

Step 3: Place The Form

So, if you watched the video above, you are already ahead of the game and could probably teach this section yourself! However, if you are not the video type then you will find that installing your VFB form is incredibly easy. On the left hand side of the Visual Form Builder settings page, you will find a section titled “Form Output.” Herein, there is a shortcode that we will copy (ctrl+c or command+c). Next, simply navigate to the desired page where your shiny new form will call its home, and paste the shortcode into the editor (note: make sure the editor is in “Visual” mode). Next, click “View Page” to see your contact form rendered in all of its brilliance.

There! Wasn’t that easy? With plugins like Visual Form Builder, adding great functionality to your WordPress site can be easy and, dare I say, a little fun. If you have any questions about installing plugins or setting up your WordPress site let us know. Until next time, adios!

Would you like to see your plugin on Untame? Let us know what your plugin is and why it is awesome and we may post a featured tutorial soon!

Jul 11 2012

How to Set Up Cloudflare with WordPress

Posted by Brock Nunn | Tutorial, WordPress | 4 Comments

Cloudflare is a dynamic content delivery network that you can easily get up and running on your domain for free! If you have not already read through part 1 of our series, please take the time to do so before you start on part 2.

Today, we will examine how to easily get started using Cloudflare with WordPress. Initially, it was considered best practice to pair the WP Super Cache plugin with Cloudflare, and if the situation is correct, this could still be the case. However, for small business sites and blogs we really just need to ensure that Cloudflare works properly without much interest for in-depth server or code configurations. Luckily, Cloudflare has created a native WordPress plugin that will fit perfectly within our needs. If you need help understanding how to install a WordPress plugin, go check out our post on installing a WordPress slider plugin for a general overview.

First, navigate into your WordPress dashboard to the plugins overview page. Next select “Add New” found at the top of your view. Search for “Cloudflare” and select install on the correct plugin. (Likely the first plugin on the list but to make sure, the image above leads directly to the plugin on the WordPress repository.)

Configure Cloudflare

Now that you have installed the plugin, find the settings page for the plugin. Likely, the link to the plugin setting page will be located in your WordPress left hand sidebar, within the “Plugins” sub-menu.

While, we are on the subject, I would like to be clear as to how the Cloudflare WordPress plugin will directly benefit your WordPress site.

CloudFlare has developed the plugin for WordPress. By using the CloudFlare WordPress Plugin, you receive:

Correct IP Address information for comments posted to your site
Better protection as spammers from your WordPress blog get reported to CloudFlare
Optimization of your server database (optional)

This plugin helps your published content play nicely with the Cloudflare service and helps you take the steps necessary to optimize your site. To do this you will have access to the Cloudflare Database optimizer and development mode toggle directly within your WordPress Dashboard.

Connect With Cloudflare

Access your Cloudflare account dashboard by going to the “My Account” tab while signed in to the service. You will need to have two pieces of information to connect the WordPress plugin.

Cloudflare API Key
Cloudflare API Email

Once you have retrieved each piece of info, enter them all into the appropriate fields within the Cloudflare plugin page on WordPress. Once complete, click “update options” and ensure that the connection is successful.

Congratulations! You have successfully integrated the Cloudflare service with your WordPress powered site. Pretty easy right? Next we will take a look at further integration with plugins like WP Super Cache to fully unleash the speed beast.

Jul 09 2012

WordPress Slideshow Tutorial: How To Add a WP Orbit Slider

Posted by Brock Nunn | Tutorial, WordPress | 3 Comments

Sometimes it is nice to add some interactivity to your pages. A Home, About or Gallery page can spice up user interaction with the addition of a slideshow, for example. You might assume that cool javascript tricks such as this are out of reach for beginners. However, today I am going to show how you can integrate a great looking slider on your site all with a few simple clicks (and without writing a single line of code).

Step 1: Go Fetch

First, lets take some time to go to the WordPress plugin page for the WP Orbit Slider. Once there, you can read through some of the documentation, faq’s and more. When diving into the use of any plugin, it is a good idea that you familiarize yourself with its area on the WordPress plugin repo as you may find tips that could save a bunch of time.

Step 2: Install

Next, lets get the orbit slider installed on your WordPress blog. We could download the plugin straight from the repo, upload it via FTP and then install it manually. However, thankfully WordPress has a built-in area to take care of that for you.

Log into the WordPress dashboard, then find the plugins page. Next, click “Add New” at the top of the page. Search for the plugin by typing “WP Orbit Slider” into the search field.

Once the plugin has been found in the search, simply click “Install Now”. Pretty easy right? Once you have become familiar with this process, the entire WordPress Plugin Repository will become your virtual playground; experiment and have some fun!

Step 3: Setting Up The Slider

Next, we can set up the slider to display on any page that you would like but first we need to add a few slides. To begin adding slides to your new slider simply head back to your WordPress Dashboard. Now, locate the item on your navigation sidebar that says “Slides”, click and jump into the slides main page. Just as with the plugins before, we can now begin to add new slides to our slideshow. If you would like a bit more of a walkthrough, check out the video below for a step by step introduction to adding slides to our slider, declaring them as featured images and adding a descriptive title.

Step 4: Start Sliding

Finally, we can add our WP Orbit Slider to the desired page. To do this simply head over to the lucky page within your WordPress dashboard admin. Select “edit” and within the editor place the slider by typing in this shortcode

[orbit-slider]

Now, click on the Publish button and voila! Your new slideshow should be working in full force now. At any time, you may add this slider to another page. It is up to you!

I hope that you have found this tutorial to be an insightful look at how even a WordPress beginner can pull off professional level results with the help of a really neat plugin. Do you need some extra help setting up a site of your very own? Don’t hesitate to let us know via our contact page.

Jul 06 2012

5 Great Premium WordPress Plugins

Posted by Brock Nunn | News, WordPress | No Comments

WordPress is an awesome Content Management System. In fact, for most of our projects here at Untame it is our CMS of choice. However, often we require functionality that moves beyond the core WordPress offering. This is where plugins come in. The “Premium” WordPress community has grown in leaps and bounds for the last several years allowing top WP contributors to make a living developing for the platform that they are so passionate about.

This post is no kind of definitive list of the absolute best plugins on this fine planet of ours. Instead, we want to showcase five plugins we have used in the trenches of development that have made a significant difference for us.

Fancy Gallery

“Create unlimited of galleries and each gallery can hold unlimited of albums. You can add different types of media – Images, Video, Websites to the albums.”

One of the most requested features of our sites is an ability to host an image gallery on a particular site. Fancy Gallery provides for a highly customizable way to not only adjust the look of your gallery but also manage the order of the pictures within it. If your site is photo heavy (I’m looking at you wedding photographers) then fancy gallery could be a great solution for your site.

Easy Custom Content Types for WordPress

Easy Content Types provides an extremely easy-to-use and intuitive interface for creating custom post types, taxonomies, and meta boxes.

WordPress is full of incredible functionality. However, some functions are less intuitive than others, even for developers. Easy Content Types allows developers to create and manage their own post types, taxonomies and metaboxes within minutes.

Visual Form Builder Pro

“Visual Form Builder Pro is an affordable WordPress plugin that helps you build beautiful, fully functional forms in only a few minutes without writing PHP, CSS, or HTML.”

Forms stink! From coding them to working with databases to ensure that the correct information is delivered to the client on time, forms can definitely be a hassle. However, it would serve you well to take the $10 plunge into Visual Form Builder Pro. Sure, the free version that we have already covered is fantastic. But seriously, $10 is not too much to ask for such a versatile plugin that makes managing forms almost (dare I say) fun.

RoyalSlider – Touch Content Slider for WordPress

RoyalSlider for WordPress is a cross-device jQuery content slider with touch-based navigation and responsive layout. It has a user-friendly admin area where you can manage slides, change slider settings, customize your interface and add blocks-captions using custom WYSIWIG editor.

IT is one of the most popular files on CodeCanyon, and for a good reason. Image slideshows are one of the best ways to deliver a message of show off your work on a site. RoyalSlider makes integrating one or multiple slideshows a breeze. With an easy-to-use administration area, RoyalSlider can integrate into a page or post within minutes. What’s better, RoyalSlider packs in all of this power while remaining responsive. Yep, that means that RoyalSlider would look equally at home on an iPhone as on a giant desktop screen.

Visual Composer for WordPress

“Visual Composer for WordPress will save you tons of time working on the site content. Now you’ll be able to create complex layouts within minutes! It’s built on top of the Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery UI framework”

We love to set our clients up for success. Sometimes that means giving them the ability to create their own layouts without a bit of coding knowledge. Enter Visual Composer. Using Visual Composer could not be easier. Simply tell the plugin how wide your site is, set a few custom colors and you are off to the races.

We encourage you to experiment with WordPress plugins of all sorts. Plugins help make a site stand out, adding key functionality in places that WordPress just does not cover on its own. Do you have a favorite plugin that we have not covered yet? Let us know by leaving a comment or using our handy contact form.

Plugin Archives - Untame