We need to assign categories to each record so that we can interact with the crm and see what is happening. We need to assign two sets of categories.

The first set of categories deals with the status of the client or the project. i.e. New lead, phone call, site visit.
The second set of categories deal with the client. So this could be the clients name, John Smith or it could be the clients company, Smith Enterprises or it could be a directory that has numerous clients attached to it.

Full series:
CRM - Stage One - An Introduction
CRM - Stage Two - Customer Records
CRM - Stage Three - Assigning Categories

I am using pages for this section of the CRM.

I have created a page called Clients. You can also create a page called Suppliers or Misc for those that don’t fit into the box!

Now I create a page for my Client called John Smith and add it as a sub page to the page called clients. I grab the url of this page and head over to the page called clients and enter this as a link. Now when I click on my page called Clients I can see a list of all my clients. Of course depending on your number of clients, you could refine this. A simple way is to create pages called Clients A to M, Clients N to Z.

When a client heads elsewhere or maybe it is a one-off job I have a page called Ex-Clients. I then move the record to this section.

There is one more thing to do with this section but that will come when we create a template to manage the clients.

Full series:
CRM - Stage One - An Introduction
CRM - Stage Two - Customer Records
CRM - Stage Three - Assigning Categories

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information.

Wikipedia

Have you ever thought about using Wordpress to manage your business? Well I am going to suggest ways in which this is possible. We will be creating a site that will help us manage each client and view how much time is being spent on each one. We will be able to see at a glance the most recent contact. We will be able to flag customers according to their needs, new contact, red hot sales lead or simply client.

The first decision you have to make is whether to use an existing Wordpress site or a completely new install. For me I would always a completely new install. Why? If you are using an existing Wordpress, every time you load a post or page concerning the crm you will need to make them private. Obviously you don’t want these posts to be seen. It would be quite simple for this to be forgotten. So I create a sub-domain and database and install a whole new Wordpress. Then to protect that I upload this plugin:
Wordpress Password. It is a plugin that simply protects the whole of your Wordpress installation. If someone navigates to the site all they will see if a box that says Enter Password.

To further protect the site in the options/privacy I click on “I would like to block search engines” blob. In options/discussion, I uncheck the first three boxes. This ensures that pings, comments and notifications are turned off.

Ok that is it for now. See you next time.

Full series:
CRM - Stage One - An Introduction
CRM - Stage Two - Customer Records
CRM - Stage Three - Assigning Categories

Hey ok so I have been building some sites for other folks and I thought I would release some of the code to the Wordpress community. So here it is, the first design released to all.

To see the theme in action visit Cregy Test Site - Minimal and Fixed width Wordpress theme.

Download the theme here. Minimal Fixed width Wordpress theme.

I have always wondered how to get an extra column into wp. I normally just call the sidebar and footer from index.php as usual and then if I want a three column layout, put the two columns in the sidebar. e.g.

[/div][!-- end of id content--]
[/div][!--end of id wrapper--]
[!--index.php end--]

[!--include sidebar--]
[?php get_sidebar(); ?]
In the sidebar.php I have two divs, one called leftcol and float this left and the second say rightcol and float it right. (It is a little bit more complicated than that but for ease this is how I will leave it).

Now we finish the index.php by telling it to call the footer:
[!--include footer--]
[?php get_footer(); ?]

However, if I add this line after the call to the sidebar:
[!--include extra.php--]
[?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/extra.php'); ?]
Then I can add an extra column without resorting to having in sidebar.php.

Why is this important? Well maybe the opening page is a three column layout which upon opening a post goes to a two column structure. Using the above will help that process.

By the way I have changed the <> brackets for [] just so it doesn’t break the site.

Does anyone know of any good sites or tutorials on this subject. I don’t want to use a template or anyone else’s theme or CSS style. Any thoughts?

Take a look at:
Urban Giraffe
How to design your own wp theme
Blank wp Theme
Four blank wp themes

And for completeness:
How to write a wp plugin

Nothing about templating in there but if you get that far give me a shout and help then.

Q: Hi, I need some help with this. I am using Wordpress and I would like to get a dotted border around the different categories on the sidebar.

A: Apply the border style to the outer elements, the uo and ol, not to the li’s. The following will get you started.
#sidebar ul, #sidebar ul ol {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 2px dotted #ccc;
}

If you want the border only on the inner lists, try this instead:
#sidebar ul ul, #sidebar ul ol {
margin: 5px 0 0 10px;
border: 2px dotted #ccc;
}

One important area that I believe needs consideration is the tools for adding text and images.

Allow me to expand a bit. Currently in an online text editor if I place an image or a piece of text they get allocated a value of img… or p. This means to do anything creative with that data I have to style the img or p tag with css. But it stops there. Unless of course I apply a containing div to my post. We also don’t often have the chance of deciding which elements to apply. For instance to create a post I could substitute the img and p tags with dl tags.

Having read this you might be wondering what planet I am on! Well, Wordpress and many cms’ have been developed to encompass a wide range of layouts through the use of plugins. A couple of things could be an online shop and a gallery. If there was someway of hard coding markup into the template that a developer could hang things onto we could make it very easy to create a huge variety of plugins. I am not sure how it would work or whether it is possible - I am not a developer, but is it possible to create a php tag that allows images to be given tags in certain post/categories. Similarly would it be possible to do the same with p tags. You could then tell your template to allocate 5 tags to the category called shop. The tags could be title, description, price, image, thumbnail. I don’t know how you would translate this to the post and category but I hope you guys are beginning to pick up what I am thinking about. If this was possible, we could create a piece of software that could be developed and deployed very easily for a number of apps!

Any thoughts please?

I have always wanted a list of tags that could be used in a template. Well here they are. If you know of any more please send them in this direction. Thanks


[?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?]
[?php the_date('','[h2]‘,’[/h2]‘); ?”
[div class="post" id="post-[?php the_ID(); ?]“]
[h3 class="storytitle"]
[a href="[?php the_permalink() ?]” rel=”bookmark”][?php the_title(); ?][/a][/h3]
[div class="meta"]
[?php _e("Filed under:"); ?] [?php the_category(',') ?] —
[?php the_author() ?] @ [?php the_time() ?] [?php edit_post_link(__('Edit This')); ?]
[/div]
[div class="storycontent"]
[?php the_content(__('(more...)')); ?]
[/div]
[div class="feedback"]
[?php wp_link_pages(); ?]
[?php comments_popup_link(__('Comments (0)'), __('Comments (1)'), __('Comments (%)')); ?]
[/div]
[/div] [!--closing .post --]
[?php comments_template(); // Get wp-comments.php template ?]
[?php endwhile; else: ?]
[p]
[?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?]
[/p]
[?php endif; ?]
[?php posts_nav_link(' — ', __('« Previous Page'), __('Next Page »')); ?]

Hi

Just to let you all know. I am still trying to employ a developer that will finish the development of the shop and then start on the next stage. It seems that the coding needs a lot of sorting out and maybe some trimming.

The current issues with the coding:

1. Works with 2.1.2
2. Safe urls
3. Pages not being displayed on the front end
4. Remove links and all items pertaining to shipping tokens, vouchers, reviews and ratings, tools, help.
5. Make Paypal work as a payment gateway
6. In the product list, remove sort date, apply special rules, fields.
7. Get the description fields to work correctly. Short description should be a simple teaser. Long description should provide more space.
8. Shipping should have two fields applied to it. Inland for all local delivers, overseas shipping for all long deliveries. How these apply can be varied from country to country. i.e. In England, inland would apply, whilst overseas might be the eu only!
9. Customer details need to be recorded along with items they have bought.
10. Orders need to be split into outstanding, paid not sent, sent, etc.

Suffice to say much work needs to be done. I need a developer who can do it. Is there anyone you can recommend. I am speaking to one or two at the moment but it would be an idea to see who else might like to be involved.

Many thanks for your patience.

Rich