WordPress solution challenge

[cjk]

Hi,

I have a request for help in finding a simple solution to the following challenge.

My business is in providing horseback riding lessons. This is an outdoor activity that is at weather’s mercy. Where I live, this time of year especially, the weather is unpredictable. Pop up t-storms etc. This always creates a lot of repetitive work in contacting clients, letting them know if their lesson is good to go as scheduled, cancelled, or play it by ear and watch the weather to see if we can squeak one in.

Since I do have a wordpress installation, and an iPhone… and most of my clients have internet access… I figure there has to be a way to put all this tech to good use!

So blue skying, here is what I envision:
– A live weather widget on the sidebar of a specific and consistent page, say for example, /lessons/
– A Post directly below it, it need only be short and to the point, the content could be a couple lines, "Lessons today as scheduled" – "Lessons today canceled due to weather" – "Thunder Storms might affect lessons later today, check back at 1pm" for example.
– The ability to send a weather post to this sidebar, I have an iPhone so that is easy.
– These weather posts should / need not appear anywhere else in the wordpress installation. They would just add unrelated content to the archives etc. I only want them to appear in a widget (preferably) on a page specific sidebar along with the live weather widget. I use TS Custom Widgets to control which widgets appear on which pages/posts etc.

I know this is possible and there are likely more than one solution, however, how would you solve this challenge?

Best regards,
Chris

[AshtonSanders]

Hey Chris,

Here’s an overly simple solution:

I don’t know if you are currently using Widgets on your blog. You should be able to create a widget in your side bar of Plain Text. Then you just log into your WP with your Iphone and update the widget to say what you want.

Regarding the weather widget, I haven’t used any of these, but my friend google told me about Widget Box’s weather widget

[davesgonebananas]

Quote:

– A live weather widget on the sidebar of a specific and consistent page, say for example, /lessons/
– A Post directly below it, it need only be short and to the point, the content could be a couple lines, "Lessons today as scheduled" – "Lessons today canceled due to weather" – "Thunder Storms might affect lessons later today, check back at 1pm" for example.
– The ability to send a weather post to this sidebar, I have an iPhone so that is easy.
– These weather posts should / need not appear anywhere else in the wordpress installation. They would just add unrelated content to the archives etc. I only want them to appear in a widget (preferably) on a page specific sidebar along with the live weather widget. I use TS Custom Widgets to control which widgets appear on which pages/posts etc.

1. Sign up for a twitter account. http://twitter.com/
2. Grab the Twitter Widget plugin for WordPress. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-widget/
3. Configure the widget with account name and number of posts to show
4. Optional. Grab a twitter client for you iPhone. http://macapper.com/2007/11/19/4-iphone-twitter-clients-battle-it-out/

[cjk]

"AshtonSanders" wrote:

Hey Chris,

Here’s an overly simple solution:

I don’t know if you are currently using Widgets on your blog. You should be able to create a widget in your side bar of Plain Text. Then you just log into your WP with your Iphone and update the widget to say what you want.

Regarding the weather widget, I haven’t used any of these, but my friend google told me about Widget Box’s weather widget

Hey Ashton,

A good idea. Quite a few steps though. One has to log in using safari on iphone, zoom in to select widgets, etc. etc. Quite a few steps on an iphone. Since I could theoretically post a weather update several times per day (the weather changes quickly in this area especially throughout the summer months) the workflow would ideally need to be simpler. Although this idea is certainly doable, I would like to explore more ideas on how to simplify the day-to-day workflow even if it means more work up front.

Thanks for the idea!

Chris

[cjk]

"davesgonebananas" wrote:

Quote:

– A live weather widget on the sidebar of a specific and consistent page, say for example, /lessons/
– A Post directly below it, it need only be short and to the point, the content could be a couple lines, "Lessons today as scheduled" – "Lessons today canceled due to weather" – "Thunder Storms might affect lessons later today, check back at 1pm" for example.
– The ability to send a weather post to this sidebar, I have an iPhone so that is easy.
– These weather posts should / need not appear anywhere else in the wordpress installation. They would just add unrelated content to the archives etc. I only want them to appear in a widget (preferably) on a page specific sidebar along with the live weather widget. I use TS Custom Widgets to control which widgets appear on which pages/posts etc.

1. Sign up for a twitter account. http://twitter.com/
2. Grab the Twitter Widget plugin for WordPress. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-widget/
3. Configure the widget with account name and number of posts to show
4. Optional. Grab a twitter client for you iPhone. http://macapper.com/2007/11/19/4-iphone-twitter-clients-battle-it-out/

Hey Dave!

A very creative idea! I have never used twitter but I think I should look closer at this. Sounds easy, quick workflow, solves all the issues of creating unnecessary posts and then having to "hide" them somehow. Thanks!

[TheDoc]

"cjk" wrote:

A good idea. Quite a few steps though. One has to log in using safari on iphone, zoom in to select widgets, etc. etc. Quite a few steps on an iphone. Since I could theoretically post a weather update several times per day (the weather changes quickly in this area especially throughout the summer months) the workflow would ideally need to be simpler. Although this idea is certainly doable, I would like to explore more ideas on how to simplify the day-to-day workflow even if it means more work up front.

I thought there was a WP app that enables you to skip going through Safari?

[davesgonebananas]

"cjk" wrote:

Hey Dave!

A very creative idea! I have never used twitter but I think I should look closer at this. Sounds easy, quick workflow, solves all the issues of creating unnecessary posts and then having to "hide" them somehow. Thanks!

I’m really pleased you like the idea. Thanks for the compliement. Hope it works out well for you.

Dave

[cjk]

"TheDoc" wrote:

I thought there was a WP app that enables you to skip going through Safari?

There is and it works wonderfully for creating posts/pages and editing comments. To get to dashboard and the widgets functions one has to use a web browser.

I was hoping that someone would come up with a way that I could create a special category, call it "weather" and then have that category set to display 1 post in a sidebar widget, ONLY. ie: none of the posts under weather would appear anywhere else, in archives etc.

Then I could use the wp iphone app to make quick weather posts.

[TheDoc]

"cjk" wrote:

I was hoping that someone would come up with a way that I could create a special category, call it "weather" and then have that category set to display 1 post in a sidebar widget, ONLY. ie: none of the posts under weather would appear anywhere else, in archives etc.

That seems like a pretty basic function of WP.

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