WP 2.0.5 Update time!

{ November 23, 2006 @ 11:51 am } · { blogging software, WP resources }
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For those of you that may not have noticed the news on your WP dashboard, I figured I’d let you know that there is another update! Find info below, and visit here to get the updated files.

It’s new release time. The latest in our venerable 2.0 series, which now counts over 1.2 million downloads, is available for download immediately, and we suggest everyone upgrade as this includes security fixes. We’re breaking the tradition of naming releases after jazz musicians to congratulate Ryan Boren on his new son (and first WP baby) Ronan.

What’s new? We have about 50 or so bugfixes, which you can review on our dev tracker here, mostly minor bug fixes around feeds, custom fields, and internationalization. If you’d like a nitty-gritty view, check out Mark’s blog post on the changes.

Akismet first impressions

{ August 20, 2006 @ 10:08 pm } · { WP plugins }
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As I stated when I started this blog, I only wound up testing things here at WordPress.com because I had to sign up for an account to get a WP API so that I could use Akismet.

It was difficult to tell, at first how well this plug in worked, because I had only been using it with newly installed and developted blogs. When I recently took the plunge, and did the long overdue upgrade of my main blogs from V 1.5.2 to V 2.0.4 … this is when I truly found out how superior this comment and trackback spam tool really is.

For reasons I don’t understand, the Bad Behavior spam plugin I had been using just was not stopping the various comment spam that was hitting my blogs on a daily basis. Thanks, but I’m not an impodent, overweight middle aged man with a gambling addiction like these spammers seem to think I am by the many ‘products’ their posts were trying to sell. 🙂

When I upgraded, and activated Akismet, it found over 100 past and present spam comments on my blog, which I keep up with on a daily basis, or so I thought. Apparently, there had been spam comments breaking through for some time without my knowledge, which is disturbing considering I always set comments to be moderated!

Akismet also snagged one of my own references to another post within the blog, but that was easy enough to ‘teach’ the plugin that those are OK. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with how well this plugin is working to date. I just hope that saying so doesn’t make things mysteriously explode on me! LOL

FireFox blogging tool

{ August 20, 2006 @ 9:49 pm } · { blogging news, blogging software }
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There’s a new ‘extension’ for FireFox called Performancing. It offers bloggers a way to easily write, edit and post to their various blogs right from within FireFox. You are supposed to be able to use it with Blogger, WordPress.com blogs, and the WP blogs you’ve installed on your own domains (just to name a few; others mentioned are live journal, and Windows Live the MSN space replacement).

I’ve tested it on one of the WP’s I installed on my server, which is updated to the latest version 2.0.4, but I get a user/password error message. After reading the Performancing.com forums, I think it might be necessary to set up the ‘blogging by email’ function within WP for this to work.

I had no problem what-so-ever setting this up to work here on WordPress.com though! With all the new functionality of the latest WP, I’m not really sure I’m going to take the time to set up my WP installed blogs to use this handy dandy editor with. Since Windows Live took over MSN spaces, I haven’t been able to log into that blog, so that’s not even an option right now.

To be honest, I’ve tweaked my own blogs so much that I probably wouldn’t use this editor much for those, being they are commercially driven. However, for my many personal blogs hosted on blogging platforms, I do really like the functionality of this handy little FireFox blog editor. Nice job.

powered by performancing firefox

SEO beyond metas

{ August 13, 2006 @ 3:32 pm } · { SEO }
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I admit it openly; I haven’t been keeping up with the intricate details of today’s search engine optimization trends. Running my own network of sites, and managing the networks of my clients is a large enough task for one girl. I’ve been taking the time to once again follow trends in order to be able to more accurately predict the SE trends.

I found this article about “on page SEO” today, and felt that it helped confirm that my suspicions about recent SERPs are correct. Subtle changes such as using the plaural forms of keywords, and using dashes in URLs, as opposed to underscores are making a huge difference these days.

I know a lot of my clients are in the learning stages where SEO is concerned, so if all this information is too overwhelming, have no fear… I’m on it! 😉

Found an updated PHP in post plugin

{ August 13, 2006 @ 2:44 am } · { WP plugins }
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Due to my habit of using WP for CMS, I often find in necessary to use PHP code within a post. I was having some issues with an old, no longer supported version of the plugin I used before this last upgrade, so yet again went searching.

I found a new version of the PHP in a post plugin, and it worked without any issues. The only thing you have to remember (and in most cases I’ve done this for you already when I installed your WordPress) that you must have turned off the “visual rich editor” that comes with WP now. This is found under your Users tab, at the very bottom of the page. Make sure the little box next to “Use the visual rich editor when writing” is NOT checked!

Widget shmidget

{ August 12, 2006 @ 11:14 pm } · { WP themes, WP Widgets }
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Ok, so I’ve been a little emmersed in recent industry turmoil. So much so that WP added a whole new feature to blogging that I had no idea about until I started a blog here on WordPress.com … ok, I accept that. Now that I see how they function, I’m reconsidering my current blog set ups. I just love anything that makes my life easier, and now that I’ve learned a bit from the links below, I realize that’s exactly what widgets do.

I’ll be playing with these now to see if I can integrate them into current theme designs of mine. I may even become inspired enough to design my own widget ready theme! 🙂

WordPress Wiki – themes that are widget ready

Third party Widgets, text widgets, RSS Widgets, Widget resources

What the heck is a Widget?

It’s called Sidebar Widgets because it allows you to move things (widgets) around, in and out of your sidebar. A widget is something that you might want on your sidebar, such as a category list or the most recent comments or a link to your admin pages. There is even a widget that lets you type whatever you want in the sidebar, such as some HTML or Javascript code.

Blogging software

{ August 12, 2006 @ 11:01 pm } · { blogging software }
{ Comments (2) }

I personally run over 12 blogs on my own domains (that are regularly posted to, not just used as the cms), plus various blogs on all the different hosting systems. (Yahoo360, MSN, blogspot, etc.) I’ve been looking for a desktop stand alone program that will allow me to post to all my blogs (individually because I don’t want to get penalized by the search engines for posting the same exact posts over several blogs).

I found RocketPost tonight by Anconia, and love the features it has. Have any of you out there used this software, or anything like it? If so, I invite your comments, reviews and recommendations. Affiliate links are welcome as long as you sincerely offer your experience with using the product. Over zealous, spammy responses telling me you’ve found the best software in the universe, without showing proof of actual experience in using it isn’t likely to gain my attention. 🙂

Plea for help with Adhesive plugin

{ August 12, 2006 @ 10:25 pm } · { calling all code heads, techno babble, WP plugins }
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window.document.getElementById(’post-10').parentNode.className += ‘ adhesive_post’;

Ok, I just updated over 20 or so blogs, some used as cms… over to the latest WP 2.0.4 — I was hoping that the Adhesive plugin by Owen would work with this version, but I’m getting the error above on the ‘catagory’ pages. It only appears on the first line of the posts that have been designated as ‘sticky’, and only on the catagory page summaries. If there are any really cool techie bloggers out there with a few minutes to spare, I would truly appreciate a nudge in the right direction to solving this problem.

Even though the catagory summaries contain this line of code for the ‘sticky’ posts, at least the ‘pages’ appear correctly, and the catagories function the way they’re supposed to. I couldn’t get this plugin to work on prior versions of WP without begging a codehead friend to rewrite parts of it.

I’m told I beg pretty well, if that helps convince you to help a chick out. LOL 😉

WP v2 resource sites

{ August 12, 2006 @ 10:12 pm } · { WP resources }
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I’ll wind up crossposting this, but since I’m taking some time tonight to relax with phones off and a really bad SciFi channel movie running in the background, I realized that I’m such a WordPress nerd that I have fun finding new WP tech blogs, forums and related materials.

So, why not share?

http://www.redalt.com/ Aparently, he’s the only developer on the Internet that has successfully made a ‘sticky’ plugin that’s worth a crap. A lil buggy, different versions of WP require different ‘tweaks’, but overall still the only one out there that functions. He’s recently added a ‘wiki’ to his site, as well as a ton of other revolutionary tools. All WP authors should bookmark this one.

http://www.solostream.com/category/tutorials WordPress tutorials with video instruction! Cool stuff.

eh… now I’ve just found a new ‘widget‘ ready theme that I want to play with, so I’m outies LOL Enjoy!

Replacing outdated WP plugins

{ August 10, 2006 @ 11:44 pm } · { WP plugins }
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One of the reasons it took me so long to upgrade all my 1.5.2 WP blogs is that there are certain plug ins I simply refuse to live without. (If I wasn’t in the middle of helping a client recreate her server after a vicious hack attempt, I’d list my imperative plugins here… post that another time.)

Since V2 of WP has been around a while now, there is a list of V2 compatible plug-ins in the Codex! To search for replacement, or updated plugins that will work in V2, visit the codex here.

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