November 27, 2009
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
September 8, 2009
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
August 14, 2009
It's weird how everyone wants to know the same thing at once: today's question (it's been asked by three separate people) is "how do you get those little links for Facebook and Twitter on the bottom of your posts?" There are any number of ways to add individual site buttons to your posts, but here are four plugins that make it easy for you and link to a whole bunch of different networks at once.... Read more
August 6, 2009
I love Twitter Tools. It's one of my favourite plugins for two reasons: it does a whole bunch of different things that I'd expect to need different plugins for, and it always works. But one thing's always slightly bugged me. When it creates a tweet for a new blog post, it sends Twitter the whole, long pretty permalink, and Twitter automatically shortens that to a bit.ly URL. Frankly, I'd... Read more
August 2, 2009
If you're new to WordPress, the_excerpt() is a template tag that allows you to include just the first 55 words of a post. It's useful if you want a magazine-style front page with lots of snippets of posts; some themes also use it in sidebars for teasers for recent posts. The problem with the_excerpt() is it's not very flexible. It's fixed at 55 words. It's wrapped in <p> tags. The... Read more
July 26, 2009
I have to say that if you've ever had the slightest inclination to write a WordPress plugin, Vladimir Prelovac's book is exactly what you need. I'll write a proper review once I've finished it, because (like reading the best erotica) I have to keep stopping. So if for no other reason than to amuse future-me at how basic I once was, here's what I wrote this afternoon. It translates blog posts into... Read more
July 24, 2009
Just because I'm feeling a bit pleased... Read more
July 8, 2009
One of the more frustrating things about blogging with WordPress is finding a plugin you think will do just what you need... only to find that it doesn't work. When things don't behave like you expect them to, it can be hard to know just where to start trouble-shooting. So here are some suggestions: Is the plugin uploaded to the right place? If you uploaded via FTP (rather than installing... Read more
June 28, 2009
Just because I've been playing with this, and someone else will surely find it useful... I like the Author Image plugin because it allows users to add their image directly to their profile in WP admin, rather than sending them off to Gravatar to sign up there. However, the plugin's a bit limited as to what you can output: it generates a whole img src with an attached CSS class, so if you want... Read more
June 22, 2009
photo credit: Hamed SaberIn the last few days, I've heard from a few people who've upgraded to WordPress 2.8 that they're missing some or all of the visual editor from the Add New Post page: even if the "Visual" tab is selected (not the "HTML" one), buttons are missing. People have also reported the dashboard page not loading properly. The issues seem to be reported more widely in Firefox... Read more