WordPress Playground is made for experiments. However, plugins are not easy to install. If you want to install and use plugins you have to change the URL and add:
Solution to a strage page not found errror after a version update that stalled.
In this case the solution was simple. I deactivated the theme TT24 and activated TT23. Then I reactivated TT24. Then everything seemed to work all right again.
How to integrate AI output in WordPress and set up the AI APIs with tokens.
In WordPress
Page or
Post
Use a blank template or a cool template in your favorite editor
Why Use WordPress?
Rapid development
A page as a presentation
Easy media integration: text, sound, image
As a backdrop when you present your production by OBS
Install WordPress?
Now you may or may not have access to WordPress. If you have WordPress installed, then just create a page or post for this Workshop.
On web hosts you’ll often have a “one click install” option that will get your site up an running in a few minutes. In the video below WordPress is installed in a subdomain.
WordPress Playground
If you don’t have access to a web server you can experiment with WordPress Playground. You can save the page on your computer, but it will not be availabe online. The playground is a sandbox for WP delevopers.
Create a page or post where you can present your production.
Let the page use a blank template – then you can build whatever you want on the page.
For a fast production use WordPress Patters. Some patterns are available in the theme. You can also find free patterns here.
Publish the page – and remember to save your work now and then.
Alternative editors
In this workshop you can use whatever editor you fancy. The method is the same as above. Many students prefer editors like Elementor, however some features are locked if you do not pay for the Pro version. Some popular themes like Astra are shipped with their own editor. Again Astra is not free – you have to pay for more advanced options.
However, during the present workshop I will use the standard editor, since it is free to use for all.
AI Tools for WordPress
Output from AI Tools
Output from AI can be:
Text
Images
Video
Audio (e.g. your music)
Code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
It is easy to copy or upload this type of content, and integrate it in WordPress.
Text (e.g. ChatGPT)
Just copy-paste the text. Then format the output, so that it looks nice. Use fonts, headings, whitespace etc.
Images (e.g. Dall-E)
Upload the images to your Media Library. Add details like alt-texts and descriptions. Then you can use the illustrations whereever it’s convenient.
Video / Audio
If the video is found on Youtube just paste the URL from the share button. Audio from streaming services like Spotify work in a similar manner.
Code I (e.g. Co-Pilot)
If the output from the AI is code, you can integrate the code in a Custom HTML Block.
Code II (readymade iframes from SoMe, Google etc.)
If the output is available online somehow, you can try to integrate the AI output in an iframe. See W3 Schools. Again the <iframe> element should be placed in a Custom HTML Block.
How to integrate AI output with WP.
AI Plugins for WordPress
Plugins can add new functionality to WordPress. Let’s say that you want to create content by AI in a post. That is possible via plugins.
Here is a list of recommendations from ChatGPT.
Output:
Text Content Creation
Yoast SEO
Overview: Uses AI to analyze content for SEO and readability.
These plugins leverage AI technologies to enhance various aspects of content creation, from text and audio to video, helping to improve the overall functionality and user experience of your WordPress site.
AI Trends in WordPress
AI trends – a small selection
Trend? Block the AI scrapers – protect intellectual rights.
Images
Here is a similar list for image creation:
Best Free AI Plugins for Image Creation in WordPress
Smush Image Compression and Optimization
Overview: Uses AI to compress and optimize images for faster loading times.
Overview: Uses AI to compress and optimize images and PDFs.
Features: Automatic image and PDF compression, bulk optimization, detailed optimization reports.
These plugins utilize AI technologies to enhance image creation, optimization, and management, making it easier to maintain high-quality visuals on your WordPress site while improving performance.
Demonstration: Install an AI Plugin
In Practise
As you can see these lists are long, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s try to install a typical plugins. When you can do this, you may be able to do something similar later on.
The following recipe was made by ChatGPT:
Output
Installing and integrating ChatGPT into WordPress can be done through various methods, typically involving API integration or using a plugin that facilitates communication with the OpenAI API.
Here are some suggestions from ChatGPT.
Method 1: Using a Plugin
Log in to Your WordPress Dashboard
Open your web browser and go to your WordPress site.
Log in with your admin credentials.
Navigate to the Plugins Section
In the left-hand menu, click on Plugins.
Select Add New to open the plugin installation page.
Search for an AI Chatbot Plugin
In the search bar at the top right, type in “AI Chatbot” or “ChatGPT”.
Look for a suitable plugin that integrates with the OpenAI API. Examples include “AI Engine” or similar plugins that support OpenAI integration.
Install the Plugin
Click the Install Now button next to the chosen plugin.
After the installation is complete, click the Activate button.
Set Up the Plugin
Once activated, you may be redirected to the plugin setup page. If not, find the plugin settings in the left-hand menu under its name.
Obtain an OpenAI API Key
Go to the OpenAI website (https://www.openai.com/) and log in to your account.
Navigate to the API section and generate a new API key if you don’t have one.
Enter the API Key in the Plugin Settings
In the plugin setup page within your WordPress dashboard, enter the OpenAI API key.
Save your settings to connect the plugin with the OpenAI API.
Configure the Chatbot
Customize the chatbot settings according to your preferences, such as the chatbot’s behavior, appearance, and placement on your website.
Add the Chatbot to Your Site
Use a shortcode, widget, or Gutenberg block provided by the plugin to place the chatbot on your desired pages or posts.
Method 2: Manual Integration
Now this one is experimental. The output came from ChatGPT. But you may want to try something along these lines if you know or want to try PHP. In WP you can create your own plugins. So here’s an indea: add a hand crafted bot via the ChatGPT AI.
Create a Custom Plugin or Use Functions.php
If you are comfortable with coding, you can create a custom plugin or add code to your theme’s functions.php file.
NB: I have not tested the code above. It looks all right though. You can either save the code as a plugin or add it to the functions.php file in your theme. If the plugin should work independent of the themes it’s best to use the functions.php method.
Add the Shortcode to Your Site
Use the [chatgpt_chatbot] shortcode to display the ChatGPT form on any page or post.
By following these steps, you can integrate ChatGPT into your WordPress site, enabling AI-powered content generation and interactions.
WP AI Co-Pilot
The present ChatGPT licence of the Business Academy does not cover the use of tokens. Therefore my demo will be a few screeenshots that will give you the general idea. As you can se it is relatively easy to set up bot or AI plugins.
First enter the token under Settings.
You can see that this is a “freemium-premium” thing. You’ll get it all as soon as you pay for the plugin and for the token usage on ChatGPT.
As soon as the token works you can use the AI tools.
Workshop: Presentation Page in WP
Workshop
During the present workshop your best option may be to use the output from the different AI’s and integrate the outputs as either text, images, sounds or videos.
Continue your work with the production during the rest of the day. You can use WordPress as a presentation page/post for your project.
With WP you can create stunning presentation, somewhat like PowerPoint, but online. You don’t have to install a seaparate WP for the purpose – a page or post will do the trick.
Playground is a WordPress sandbox. In this playground you can try out all WP features and they will not be available online. As long as you are in an research stage this sandbox may be very practical.
Install WP Playground
First you must set up a WordPress playground. Do this via the button below:
Click on the PHP settings tab. Give the Playground access to a local directory on your computer under Storage Device. Here you can save your experimental work.
Now this dialog will open.
As soon as you have selected a local directory on your computer, you can save and load your work.
Blueprint Settings
Now you can edit the Blueprint settings. Click on the burger menu to the right next to the PHP settings, and select edit the blueprint.
Edit the JSON
Now you can edit the JSON in order to enable the network features:
Now you can open the Blueprint panel. Now you can add this code to the JSON under features:
"networking": true
Now you can add whatever plugins you want to.
With this “hack” you have a WordPress sandbox for experiments.
Click the open in new tab button. Then you have a full screen WordPress version.
Experiments
Now you can add themes or plugins directly from the Dashboard. Now we can experiment.
Select and install a theme
Select and install plugins
For instance you could install SEO plugins in order to see which one is the best.
Please note that some plugins will not run on Playground. For instance Elementor could not install on my system, så it’s pretty much a question of trial and error.
Save Your Work
Now you can experiment. Remember to save your work now and then to a local version, since the Playground only lives in your browser.
Since the playground is only a local version of WordPress you can export the theme and import your work if you have a version of WordPress on your server (e.g. Simply.com or One.com).
Playground is just a sandbox where you can test plugins, themes etc.
Good news from WordPress. At last you can add your own fonts to a standard theme. This is one of the most wanted features, and it is great to see, that easy font management is now part of the WP Core.
Towards the end this video will even give some tips about the art of pairing fonts – what you can do and what to avoid.
Learn how to do this in the video below from WordPress TV.
The new Full Site Editor has become more usefull than ever.
If you have followed my previous posts you’ll see why this improvement is a major leap forewards. Before this addition you had to hardcode JSON objects in style variations in order to add fonts. This code was not impossible if you have JavaScript knowledge. But invalid JSON could result in serious theme errors. So the font manager is a great help to the part of humanity that is not very code savvy.
This solution is rather a workaround, but the main problem is solved.
When you add a WordPress Style Variation it is possible to add a new font. However in the style editor it seems that the new font cannot be enabled. When you save, the font is automaticly changed back to the original font.
There is a solution, however cumbersome:
Change the font in the template. There it’s possible to use the new font. Above you see a menu with a custom font.
Of course this behavior strange, and does not make sense.
PS: the font features are improved from version 6.5.4 and up. Now you can add additional fonts from the FSE in the main design panel.
Did you know that you can create your own style variations? In the theme folder ./styles you’ll find the style files. They are named after their intended effect, e.g. .styles/blues.json.
Mostly these files will create changes to colors or gradients. If you want to add fonts you’ll have to add lines to the JSON. Here it’s easy to make errors.
So how do you get all fonts and styles from the theme – and then modify? These settings are defined in the theme’s theme.json file in the root folder.
What if you could just create a copy of theme.json – and then modify everything? That would be a real game changer.
In fact you can do this. Follow these steps:
Copy the theme json.
Paste the file as: ./styles/theme.json
Now rename the file to something convenient: ./styles/myStyle.json
Now open the myStyle.json in your favorite editor, and add the key value pair:
“title”: “Your Title Here”
somewhere around line four, as in the image below:
Now is the time for a test. Go to Appearance / Styles. Hover the mouse over the styles. Now one of the should be your style. In the top image, you can see my style, like this:
Now activate the style and save it.
Since we have all the theme settings it is relatively easy to edit the styles or even to add alternative fonts to the theme. You can also edit styles in the editor.
Why Create a Style Variation?
You could ask: why should I create my own style variation?
Answer: if you edit either the theme.json or one of the standard styles you risk loosing your additions if the theme is updated. This will not happen when you create your personal style variations.
You can embed a chess game that was played on LiChess. Here I used the <iframe> option from Lichess. The game is auto-annotated by Stockfish. Sicilian is one of my favorite openings as black.
These are my research notes about the new Woo blocks.
By now WooCommerce has changed totally. Now everything is block based, and this will make all editing much more easy – since all is done by drag and drop. Exactly as we know it from the Gutenberg editor.
Jamie Marshland: 10 minutes Woo Introduction
In Jamie’s video you’ll hear that it’s possible to work with categories, keywords and tags in the page templates. Here are a few tips on how to do this.
Woo Blocks
Click the button and read more about the new blocks aka “Set up products”:
You can filter by taxonomies. Obbiously we’ll need blocks from a premade template as our model. Here you can eiter use or copy the blocks from one of the filtering templates:
Sometimes you’ll see that your corrections to CSS or scripts don’t seem to work. If it is not an issue with your code, perhaps the problem is cashing either on the server or in the browser.
To me the best cure of caching issues is:
Use a plugin to clear the WordPress cache
The problem can be the browser cache, cure: Use a browser window that is not cached – e.g. a Fire Window in the DuckDuckGo browser, a private window in Chrome or Firefox.
Sometimes you have to use yet another private / fire window in order to see the changes!
Multimusen.dk will set a few cookies from Doubleclick, Google and the Social Media plugins they ay set some cookies. Some of my pages use APIs - such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Fonts, Google Maps, Mapbox, Spotify, Jetpack, Twitter, Facebook &c.. Such plugins may set the odd cookie.