December 2, 2008
"Recent comments" are an essential addition to the sidebar of just about every blog. They tell your visitors that they're important, and I know from experience that many people will come back to your blog to read new comments, even if there are no new posts. If you're blogging for business, they tell your customers that you trust and respect them enough to let them leave feedback right there on... Read more
November 27, 2008
So you have your shiny new WordPress install. You have your lovely theme you've downloaded or had made for you. How do you get the theme onto your blog? The least you need to know If you already know what FTP is, then this is all you need to do: download the theme you want to use unzip the theme to your computer upload the unzipped theme via FTP to your wp-content/themes directory from your... Read more
November 26, 2008
A cool but easy-to-miss feature in Wordpress 2.6 and above is post revisions. If you've edited a post but wish you hadn't, you have an automatically-generated series of previous versions saved in WordPress, which you can roll back to at the click of a button. In WP2.6.x the Post Revisions channel is minimised at the bottom of the edit page. In WP2.7 by default, it's right there in the middle... Read more
November 25, 2008
WordPress have released version 2.6.5 today. This release fixes a security issue and three other small problems. You can download the newest version from WordPress: my blogsprogs need not worry, they will be upgraded tonight. And for the record, 2.6.5 is the version that follows 2.6.3: there is no 2.6.4, as that was the number attached to a fake release which was doing the rounds a couple of... Read more
November 24, 2008
If your theme isn't showing up in your WP admin section *at all*, then this post is what you're looking for. Just a quickie for anyone who makes their own WP themes I've spent an hour picking my way through forum posts, trying to find out why my theme doesn't preview through the Dashboard > Design page. It works fine, as you can see, but preview is just a blank white page. Turns out... Read more
November 24, 2008
If you've run a default installation of WordPress, you probably have a note at the bottom of your posts saying "Posted by Admin...." and the date. I'm not called Admin, and I don't know anyone else who is, so I'd change it. Here's what you need to do: From the WP dashboard, click on "users". Click on the user name you want to change, "admin" in this case. Add the name you want to post under to... Read more
November 20, 2008
A friend emailed me today to ask how to add a search box to a new blog theme he's installing. I think he thought it was going to be horribly complicated, but it isn't: WordPress gives you the ability to add search, and plenty of other useful things, to your blog in just a couple of clicks. Widgets are little tricks which WP has stored, and which you can choose to add (or remove) at any time,... Read more
November 20, 2008
Most up-to-date themes should support widgets; anything you download from the official WP theme repository will do so. But what if you're running an old theme, or writing one yourself? Actually, adding widgetability (is that a word? you know what I mean) is pretty straightforward. You'll need to have an up to date install of WordPress*, and to edit two theme files. Firstly, functions.php. Add... Read more
November 19, 2008
I love blogging and I love WordPress. And so do comment spammers. If you've got a brand-new blog, you've probably got a month or so before the spam comments advertising everything from pharmaceuticals to porn start. Here's how to keep them off your blog. Akismet looks at the content of comments left on your blog, and analyses their spamminess. Comments it believes are spam don't appear on your... Read more
November 18, 2008
It's happened again today: a chum running WordPress has told me their blog has been hacked. With a sinking feeling I asked, what version are you using? It's 2.2: five versions out of date. It can't be said too often: keep your WP install up to date. The good news is that 2.7 has an inbuilt upgrade option, so that you only need to click one button, and it'll upgrade itself. 2.7 comes out in a... Read more