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
September 8, 2009
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
August 17, 2009
Changing your WordPress password is easy enough if you can actually sign in to WP - just go to Users > My Profile, scroll to the bottom and input the new pw twice: job done. But if you can't get into WordPress in the first place, things get a little more complicated. What you're supposed to do is go through the password reset routine: from your WP login screen... 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 12, 2009
There's a new release of WordPress available this morning: 2.8.4 is labelled a security release, so you should upgrade as soon as possible. If there's not a link on your dashboard, you can upgrade automatically through Tools > Upgrade. A word also about what this upgrade is for. Late yesterday (if you're in my time zone), a vulnerability was discovered: it was possible to generate a new... Read more
July 21, 2009
Following on from a previous post on how to make author profile pages for WordPress, Jabril and a couple of others asked how to make a page listing all the authors of a blog, with bio information and a photo. Here's how to do that. Some things before we start: You'll need to adapt this for your own theme (probably): e.g. you might need to add get_sidebar() in the appropriate place, or... Read more
June 27, 2009
If you're running a multi-author blog, you've probably thought about including biographical and contact details for each author either on the posts that they write, or on a separate profile page. Though WP admin's users section gives you plenty of options for inputting information, from a potted life-story to your AIM handle, most themes don't take advantage of this. So today, we're going to look... Read more
June 9, 2009
photo credit: Quinn DombrowskiHaving written yesterday about backing up WordPress before an upgrade, I thought today we'd have a look at what backing up WordPress actually means. It's not necessary to back up every single file of your entire install: you need to preserve the files that are unique to you. If (dog forbid) your server fell over and died, or your hosting company ceased business, or... Read more
May 18, 2009
I think more blog inches have been expended discussing commenting than any other aspect of blogging - and perhaps rightly so. Commenting was, when it first started, revolutionary: it turned the internet from a broadcast medium into something so much richer. I don't think it's overstating the case to say that existence of the Web 2.0, post-Cluetrain internet-as-conversation many of us take for... Read more
May 17, 2009
Photo courtesy of Eurovision TV The Beta 1 version of WordPress 2.8 was released last night (in the middle of the Eurovision Song Content - what were they thinking of?!). I'm now testing it in a couple of places, and it has some lovely new features: The theme installer is probably the headline for most people. New themes, like plugins, can now be installed from within the WordPress... Read more