Some interesting figures!

I was trying to find an answer to the question of making one page use https and came across this thread

http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=2138

Seems like I’m not the only one. Anyway, this is what I came up with. I’m not a programmer so if someone can give me a more efficient method, please do.

add_action('wp', 'sslForPages');

function sslForPages(){
if ((is_page(453))||(is_page(430)) && empty($_SERVER['HTTPS'])){
	$url = 'https://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
	header ("location: $url");
	}
}

Obviously, change the page ID and add or remove pages or compare using different criteria to suit you needs.

I’ve expanded this to cater for links within the site that weren’t absolute (to get off https when not needed).

function sslForPages(){
if ((is_page(453))||(is_page(430)) && empty($_SERVER['HTTPS'])){
	$url = 'https://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
	header ("location: $url");
	} elseif (!((is_page(453))||(is_page(430))) && !empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']))
}

I said I’d mention the technology. Well for those that really care, this site is built within  (or on) the excellent blog and CMS platform called WordPress.

Couple this with a great theme you have winning combination. For me the theme is not so much the look and feel, there are hundreds if not thousands  out there, many free and many commercial; but the way it enhances  and extends the functionality of WordPress itself.

This site, at the time of writing, is the basic out of the box Thesis theme by Chris Pearson. Simple, clean and functional. Thesis has a heap of layout possibilities, colour and font adjustment available just from its own control panel, without knowing a stitch of html or css. Thesis is a commercial theme but worth every cent and I’ll tell you why I think so later.

Because most of my clients are not after a blog (at the beginning) – I often set their sites up with the main focus on the static pages and utilise the blog posts as latest news or testimonials. Changing the site to a blog, if required, is then just a simple progression.

The beauty of using WordPress as the basis of a website is the multitude of plugins that can extend and embellish and make it even more useful.  These include photo galleries, lightbox functionality, subscribers, mailing lists, RSS feeds, e-commerce  and  social networking interaction etc. You can write your own plugins if coding’s your thing. The possibilities are endless.

Quickly, Thesis as a theme does a couple of things that I haven’t seen in other themes, (not that I’ve used a lot).

1. It’s simple, neat, usable and very configurable straight out of the box.
2. Its extends the ability to easily customise your WordPress site a heap.
3. It is itself easily customised.
4. All of those customisations are stored in custom functions which ‘hook’ into the theme and in custom style sheets. You don’t touch the theme files themselves at all.
5. These customisations and associated image files live in a folder named, you guessed it, “custom”. So, when the theme is upgraded, you just grab the “custom” folder and drop it into the new versions folder. Viola! 5 minutes NOT 5 hours.

So that’s the basis for most of the sites I’ve developed for clients over nearly the last year or so.

If you’re looking for the www.froling.com.au site, well look no further. Temporarily you’re here.

Sorry, but I’ve disliked the old site for a while, so rather than just leave it there I’m going to have a think about what I want to do with these sites.

Until then, well, here we are.

I apologise for the issues we have been having with our OLD server, slightly out of our control.

All of our clients’ sites are up and running on a new server, hosted in an Adelaide data centre, and we are working on solving our current CMS dilemma. The solution might even be an improvement over previous.

If you would like a John O’Dea CD please shoot us a line at sales@frolingenterprises.com.au (our online shop is the last thing that we are bringing across).

By the way, John is playing up at Parachilna tonight with Mike Carr. Always a brilliant show with those two together!