5 steps to get blogging again
It's so easy to stop. You skip a day. Then a couple of days. Then a week. It stops being part of your routine, you stop thinking about it when you're not doing it, and soon enough, it's been a month and you feel like you've stopped altogether. No, not sex when you're married: I'm talking about blogging. And I'm guilty enough of the accidental blog hiatus myself. In fact, it seems to me that... Read more
How to make your copyright line automatically update for the new year
It's the 19th January: did you update the copyright line on your blog yet? Or are you still saying copyright 2009? Or worse still, 2008, 2007 or 1999? I like to edit my WordPress theme's footer so that it automatically updates with the new year. Here's the code if you want to do the same: © <?php bloginfo('name'); ?> 2008 - <?php echo date("Y"); ?> Obviously you'll... Read more
What I love about WP2.9, part 1: upgrade all plugins
If you've ever seen a number higher than 1 in the Orange Dot of Doom by your plugins, you're going to love this one. WordPress 2.9 now has an "upgrade all plugins with an available upgrade" feature, so you can upgrade everything in one click, rather than having to do them all... one... by... one... Bizarrely, the feature has been hidden in Tools > Upgrade rather than put on the plugins page,... Read more
Don't show your working
If your blog isn't quite ready to face the world, what do you do? You might be working on content, you might be reworking your theme, but the fact is that for most of us, WordPress is an online application, and visible to other eyes, even when we're not ready for them to look. Here's a simple way to make sure that you're the only one who can see your blog until you're ready to share it with the... Read more
Women Who Love WordPress Too Much
Conversation: Me, talking about new Get a Freelancer job: "... and he said he picked my bid because I sounded enthusiastic and like I really, really love WordPress." The Man, rolling his eyes: "He got *that* right... Read more
Where to find your API key for Akismet
Akismet is one of the plugins that comes bundled with self-hosted WordPress blogs. It's designed to stop spam comments from showing up on your blog, and though it won't be enough on its own once your blog gets properly indexed, for new bloggers it should do the trick. In order for Akismet to work properly, you'll need to grab an API key from WordPress.com. That's right, from WordPress dot... Read more
How to sign up for PayPal Express Checkout
This is a bit off-topic: it's nothing to do with WordPress, but building various ecommerce sites, I've lost track of the number of times I've had this conversation: Me: ... and if you want PayPal Express Checkout, I'm going to need you to sign up for their API ... Client: No problem. Where do I do that? Me: Umm. I've forgotten. Let's both spend a couple of hours trying to find... Read more
How to find if a WordPress page has children
A friend called me yesterday* about a list of pages he was trying to set up. He needed pages with children indicated by a ">" after the link. "You'd think there'd be some kind of setting in wp_list_pages", he said, "but if there is, I can't see it." The function we want is get_pages(), which passes the list of pages as an array to PHP to process. You can then test for the existence of... Read more
WordPress upgrade reminders - by email!
There are lots of reasons why people don't keep WordPress up to date. Most excuses revolve around time and busy-ness and forgetting: a few bloggers have the more legitimate cause that they know crucial plugins will break with newer versions than what they're using. And one dear chum gave as her reason for still being on 2.7 the other day, "well, Sue, we're not all as obsessed by our blogs as you... Read more
How to change the WordPress admin user ID
There have (unsurprisingly) been a lot of blog posts written in the last few days about WordPress security and what you can do to keep your blog safe from hackers. I'll be chucking my own twopennorth in shortly, but for now, I want to look at one of the recommendations in more detail: "get rid of the user called 'admin'". This is a pretty sensible piece of advice. On most WP installs, "admin"... Read more
