Weblog Tools announced that Aaron Brazell is sponsoring a “WP Custom Fields Contest” for full version WordPress users.
Aaron Brazell, techie extraordinaire from Technosailor (also responsible for the technology strategy and implementations for b5media) is sponsoring a “Custom Fields” Contest for WordPress. Basically, it is a contest to show off the best use of Custom Fields implementation in a WordPress Blog. The results will be judged on visual aesthetics, code examples and SEO benefits derived from the custom use of Custom Fields in WordPress. He will be offering cash prizes totalling $200 and is looking for sponsors and other cash and prizes for the contest. The last date to enter the contest is February 28th. It looks like he has some stellar help in judging the contest and that should make his life (and the contest) a lot easier on turn around time.
Custom Fields are found on the Write Post Panel of your WordPress blog. There are two options: key and value pairs.
The two work together to create what is known as a “meta-data element”, a bit of code that can display content and information on your WordPress blog. The key is the name of the meta-data element, which is the “title” associated with the value. The value is the information that will appear in the meta-data list on each individual post that the information is associated with.
Most people use these to create “mood”, book reading, video watching, music listening, and other lists, but there is much more you can do with these to add things to your blog.
You can find more information and specific instructions and guidelines for using custom fields in the WordPress Codex – Custom Fields article.
The contest is through February 28, 2007, though I fear that isn’t enough time for people to learn what custom fields are and then to come up with a novelty idea for them. If there is enough initial interest, they might extend it.
So if you want to jump onto the custom fields band wagon, let Aaron know you are interested and start experimenting with your custom fields.
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Site Search Tags: aaron brazell, technosailor, wordpress contest, wordpress custom fields, custom fields, meta data, metadata, reading list, listening list, music list, mood list, competition, contest, awards, prizes
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
Lorelle on WordPress 
6 Comments
Why on earth is “SEO benefits” one of the judging factors? I can tell you now, the best uses of custom fields in WordPress will have nothing to do with SEO.
Submit your entry, Bon. 😉
Custom fields can indeed be used and enhance SEO benefits. And the point is creativity in the use of CF, so perhaps an enhanced offering on the CF front will expand more opportunities to the community. Maybe? 😉
SEO is about making sure search engines can crawl your site and making sure there is the information they need to gather for their database. Custom Fields offers another opportunity to add keywords, links, and information for search engine food. 😀
I’ve done a wide variety of things with Custom Fields, each time amazed at what is possible. So I’m excited to see what all these creative WordPress people come up with. Aaron is right, this is a much overlooked treasure in WordPress.
I’m excited to see what the community can come up with this hidden treasure..
Where do i enter the contest?
I wish there was something like custom fields, but Wide Blog available. Something like setting global variables, that could give the flexibility that custom fields do on posts, but that could be used by templates, sorting, etc. It should be a simple yet useful plugin for WP 🙂