Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

Public redesign in progress. Please pardon the mess.

Plugin Integration

Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory Test Search

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The Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory is a small state agency that provides diagnostic testing services to veterinarians. The website includes a database of available tests, shipping instructions for biological samples, a reference library, an archive of news related to infectious animal diseases, and a podcast.

TVMDL had an old custom database for its diagnostic tests. The database did not support aliases, fuzzy matching, or relevance-based results, and users found it frustrating to use. Most of the staff didn’t have permission to correct errors, and the interface could not be updated to match the current website design.

As part of the overall site redesign in 2015, I used WP All Import to integrate the test data into WordPress custom post types and fields.

The new test search feature uses Relevanssi Premium to index the custom fields and provide relevance-based results with fuzzy matching and basic English stemming. Additional custom code allows users to leave the search field blank and submit the form using only the species selections. Empty searches with no species selections redirect to the master list of all tests. Relevanssi allows us to specify synonyms, ensuring that veterinarians can find the relevant tests whether they enter “canine” or “dog.”

Each search result row includes a detail view. This data is not retrieved until the user requests it, which keeps the main search result list fast and efficient. On mobile screens, the detail view changes from a side-by-side table layout to a vertical list.

test-search-view-allThe client requested a “View All” button that would override WordPress’s built-in posts-per-page limit for search results. This was surprisingly tricky to implement; WordPress has failsafes to prevent people from requesting unlimited posts, which would tax the database server on large sites. In this case, the data set is small enough that the occasional use of “View All” does not pose a problem, and of course the pages are cached until the data set changes.

In addition to the many custom fields used in the test database, Advanced Custom Fields Pro offers an easy site-wide options screen where administrators can manage the footer contact information, emergency announcement banners, and the gorgeously detailed photos used as the backdrop for the search feature. Each photo has its own CSS alignment settings for widescreen, tablet/small desktop, and mobile layouts.

acf-options-backgrounds

The responsive design called for two navigation menus, one for the labs’ locations and one for the main site navigation. On small screens, the location menu is automatically appended to the main menu to save space and avoid confusing visitors.

Other than the site logos and the test search form (including the species icons), the entire home page is built from widgets, menus, options, and editable content areas. The internal site documentation, stored in the Dashboard using the WP Help plugin, includes a diagram to remind site editors where to locate each home page item for editing.

screenshot-diagram

Justine Larbalestier, 2013

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Justine still loved the 2008 version of her site, but wanted to refresh and update it a little. We decided to keep the background, which had become a signature look for her, and give the main content more contrast. We rethought the navigation entirely and replaced some of the old-school blog features with a Twitter sidebar.

Showcasing both the US and Australian editions of Justine’s books is important to her, but it had always required extra work for both of us, creating two versions of the featured image for each book (one with the US cover in front, one with the Australian) and randomizing which one appeared. I took the opportunity to automate this process in the new theme. Now, Justine simply uploads each cover and checks a box for its country (using a custom taxonomy). The covers are still displayed stacked one atop the other, but this is now handled in CSS instead of Photoshop. The three books at the top of the site are the three most recent, but the plugin randomly chooses whether to display the US or Australian cover. This same custom plugin also builds the cover gallery for her press kit and displays foreign edition cover galleries on each book’s page.

Texas A&M University at Qatar conference network

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I had worked with Texas A&M University at Qatar before to set up last-minute sites for events. We agreed that this was not the ideal process, and they set aside some time for me to create a better solution.

We set up a new multisite network and created a sample site with the basic content outline every event would need: a schedule, travel and lodging information, a sponsors page, and information on how to register for the event. Then we set up the Blog Copier plugin so that new sites could be deployed using this base outline with a couple of clicks.

The network has all the Genesis child themes available, plus Design Palette Pro and Web Fonts to let the conference organizers customize their designs. The network also includes the Genesis Extender plugin to allow the network administrators to add per-site customizations using Genesis’s hooks. The site also includes the Soliloquy plugin for gorgeous, responsive photo slideshows that can be placed anywhere on the site.

The conference organizers have the choice of using Events Calendar Pro, which is fantastic for big multi-day conferences, or simply entering a single day’s schedule in TablePress. Gravity Forms lets them add contact forms or even simple, no-fee registration forms. They can also use Event Calendar Pro’s various ticket sales add-ons (like EventBrite) or the very simple CampTix plugin if they are not using the university’s in-house event registration system.

The site includes speaker profile pages that can be linked to events. Session descriptions therefore include an automatically generated list of linked speakers’ bios, and speaker pages include links to that person’s sessions. In previous conference sites, these interconnections had to be maintained by hand.

Since placing sponsors’ logos on the site was a common problem, I created an option using Advanced Custom Fields. On this page, event planners can upload and arrange logos just as they would in the text of a page. They can then place the logos in the site footer, in a sidebar widget, or in a page using the custom [[sponsors]] shortcode.

I wrote extensive documentation for this site in WP Help, so that event planners have a complete guide to setting up their sites on the network. The network also includes WP101 video tutorials and a custom wayfinding Dashboard widget that walks the event planner through the site setup process. They wayfinding widget can be edited on a per-site basis to accommodate future changes to the network.

Like all of the Qatar campus’s sites, the conference network is hosted on WP Engine, which provides daily backups, automatic software upgrades, and guaranteed security and hack recovery.

Screenshot Gallery