May 21, 2009
Sooner or later, how much you love the WordPress theme you've chosen, you're going to want to change something about it. Maybe you'll want your post titles to be a little larger, or to change fonts or link colours, or to make your sidebar wider. If you already know HTML, CSS and PHP, then head on over to the Theme Editor and start playing. But for everyone else, this post will be a brief... Read more
May 20, 2009
We looked at plugins to link WordPress and Twitter before, but if all you want to do is add your Tweets to your blog's sidebar, there's an even easier way to do it: plug your Twitter account's RSS feed into an RSS widget, and you can have everything set up in about two clicks. You'll find the RSS feed for your Twitter account linked from your own Twitter page in the the sidebar: it's marked... 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
May 2, 2009
WordPress doesn't just publish the all-posts feed: in fact, it automatically publishes feeds to just about everything on your blog. Below are a few examples; I've included both the URL and the code to automatically generate the relevent link; after all, the feed's no use if your readers can't find it. URLs given assume you've set up pretty permalinks in Settings > Reading. Edit the bits in... Read more
April 16, 2009
Talk about frequently asked questions: four people have asked me this one this week already! But there must be plenty of others who, like me when I first approached WP, don't even realise there is a difference, or that there are two different flavours of WordPress to deal with. The least you need to know WordPress.com is a free, hosted blog system (similar to Blogger). Your blog lives on... Read more
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 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