I have been meaning to post a note about some of the recent changes here, but have been busier then a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs (been dying to use that phrase for some time ;’)…

I’ve adopted a new theme called nobus, designed by Dezzain Studio. The UI is not too simple, not too complex, not too dark. The header is a bit tall, but I want to live with it a bit before attempting changes (the height did allow me to pretty much cut-and-paste some of my code/hacks into the header to retain functionality I desired (translation service, RSS icon w/out scrolling down, my logo and some quotes). There is a big difference in typography, not just style, but size and spacing. Feedback is desired/welcome about these (and any other) changes.

Some minor changes in functionality, testing new plugins (not just new to me, but new to WP 2.3 and/or the ‘world’), carefully applying some AJAX (less then 2% of my visitors have JavaScript turned off, but I do keep an eye on this and try to use JS that will degrade/fall-back to HTML behavior/appearance.

Posted here about using Zazz Post ticker. I have been keeping an eye out for something with this functionality over the last year or so, and everything I researched/tried was either too clunky/ugly or required more time to integrate then I was willing to devote. This one dropped right in without a struggle and styled up quite easily with a few CSS additions.

Playing with the new (WP 2.3) Tag functionality (not tag as in template-tag-PHP-function but tag as in ‘mini-category’). Using the new-to-2.3 the_tags() function like this:

With the 2 arguments supplied to the_tags() being the leading text/title and then the separator. Checking existence may seem overkill but without it, if WP is downgraded, it will explode. Or something like that.

Also trying the new Tag Cloud widget that comes with WP 2.3, although using:

pretty much achieves the same thing if you wanted to just add it to sidebar.php (or elsewhere).

Some other new plugin additions:

• DoFollow Using no-follow as a rule just doesn’t make sense any more, it should be the exception.
• Enforce www. Preference I dropped the www NOTE: This plugin is now redundant with 2.3.
• HeadSpace2 Experimenting with this meta-generator-on-steroids
• Link Indication If we are going to put the control/decision about how links/new-windows are handled into the users hands, let them make an informed decision?
• Nofollow reciprocity If I’m going to turn off no-follow, I expect you to, as well
• Shutter Reloaded With all the different javascript libraries and resultant conflicts my lightbox/slimbox scripts started acting whacky. Just dropped this in and I’m ok for now ;’)
• WP-Footnotes Because some of my posts just need footnotes.
• Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form Fianlly broke down and decided to try/test a plugin form solution

Some folks email me now and then about the quotes in my header, so just as an FYI: I use Quality Quotes, and the thing I love the most about this ‘yet-another-random-quote’ plugin is that it goes out and gets 10 quotes each day and then cycles randomly through them on each page refresh. So instead of hitting/depending-on some outside resource every time a page is refreshed on my site it’s cached locally. Fast, lightweight and independent.

Closing with one of my favorite recent quotes:

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
- Wernher von Braun

When I first started a WordPress blog I wanted to add some personal identification to the front page in an effort to promote validity/identity/what-evah. ‘Widgets’ were somewhat new to WP so I thought this was the approach for me. I ended up with a minor struggle using a text widget and got what I wanted.
…my head finally popped out of my sphincter and…
Then masochism got the better of me and in an attempt to self-flagellate I made an About Me widget. My approach was simple; Enter the URL of an image, a blurb about your self/site and a link or two. It worked simply too: On simply about 70% of themes/sites ;’) The problem was that a lot of themes do some pretty screwy stuff and some web hosts are picky about any file/image handling.

So I began a journey that started with meditation… Once I felt loose and unencumbered by the stress of day to day life I asked my Creator: “Are you familiar with WordPress?”
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Working on 0.99 and and I decided to take the About Me widget to a level I had never intended. If you have used it before, you’re used to seeing this configuration interface:

I had originally intended to design a widget that would allow a user to enter a path to an image, a few lines of text and a few links. Responding to requests and with a mixture of geeky interest and since I eat my own dog food a number of revisions have crept out. A few bug fixes, a few adjustments for people with hosts that do things a bit differently…

I often get questions about styling. This can be a tough one, because it can be effected by different themes (element names, style inheritance, etc.) let alone different browsers. Often the question is as simple as “How do I change the size of the text?” (actually more complicated then it sounds if you want to use proportional sizing). I’ve been thinking about this for some time (well, at least a few minutes here and there), so I started looking around for code examples regarding image uploading and even GUI code for layout/etc. Then with a POP my head came outta my sphincter and I realized there’s already an editor/uploader in WordPress ;’)

Here’s what the current 0.99 beta config looks like:

It’s the TinyMCE editor all WordPress users have seen before, currently configured with a limited GUI (plenty enough to design the layout for a sidebar widget) and to force more standards-compliant code (not necessarily prettier, mind you, but valid). I’m hoping this will allow for ease-of-use with less limitations.

Also new is a aboutme.css file, especially helpful to those with more need then can be met with the GUI config.

Here is the 0.99 beta About Me Widget See original post for the released (1.0beta).

Feedback welcome!

This is the release of the missunderstood theme, originally designed by Will Rossiter. This is a dark theme, with a slightly girlish touch (that’s not pink!). See a live demo here.

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Here is a newsletter-style 2-column with sidebar theme for WordPress which allows some control over which categories are displayed in each column. I included the WordPress Theme Toolkit by Ozh for user-friendliness. This theme is a modified version of Corporate Slave, by dreamLogic .

For style and functionality I have included some plugins: HotDates by Supriyadi Slamet Widodo, Sociable by Peter Harkins, Get Recent Comments by Krischan Jodies, Live Comment Preview by Jeff Minard and Iacovos Constantinou, Optimal Title by Aaron Schaefer and Related Posts by By Alexander Malov & Mike Lu.

The plugins above need to be installed for this theme to function as intended. If HotDates and/or Live Comment Preview is not installed, the theme should still behave, but without the others something will break…

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Over the past few months I have come across an enormous amount of resources and tools for every aspect of working with WordPress. This is another one of the benefits of Open Source (a large number of contributors), however the down side can be that there’s no central ‘management’ or quality control over these. It is my hope to offer some direction to the novice and journeyman (journeyperson?) alike.

“…but the plugins author will provide instructions. If not, go poop on their lawn…”

I’m going to start with a list of tools I use, and feel confident recommending:

• FileZilla (FTP Client)
• Notepad2 (Text Editor w/ line numbers and syntax hi-lighting)
• Firefox 1.5.0.6
• Web Developer extension for Firefox
• FireBug extension for Firefox
• Measure It extension for Firefox
• Colorzilla extension for Firefox

And here are a few recommendations for the Mac from Yvonne:

• Bare Bones Software’s Text Wrangler - “Priceless. Couldn’t survive without it…“
• Cyberduck / RBrowser for Mac: “Although Cyberduck is a lot more preferred by OSX users, I find the rBrowser demo faster and cleaner…“

Yvonne has also written a companion piece from the perspective of, well, someone who demands we all bow to her PowerBook ;’) Here it is: A list of essentials for the diehard Mac blogger
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WordPress 2.0.4 was released on the 29th. With over 60 bugs squashed since 2.0.3 (including what little substantive portion there was of Dr. Doom’s(sic) “OMG-The-Sky-Is-Falling” reference) this is the most secure, stable release or WordPress. Upgrade now. Shh. Zip it! Just do it. In addition, Mark Jaquith has posted a 2.0.3 > 2.0.4 changed/diff list and .zip (especially handy for custom sites and multiple upgrades).

Admin Autumn Theme Version 2.0 was released on the 23rd. 2.0 has optimized CSS, better IE6 rendering and menu icons.

Bad Behavior is at 2.0.4 now. I wouldn’t manage an internet blog without it. However, if you have “Display statistics in blog footer” then to validate (and look right for my theme) I had to change line 138 of bad-behavior-wordpress.php to: echo sprintf('
%1$s %2$s %3$s %4$s’, __(’Bad Behavior’), __(’has blocked’), $blocked[0]["COUNT(*)"], __(’access attempts in the last 7 days.’)); I removed the

and changed the leading

to
.

Came across a rockin’ plugin released by Chris Hwang, WP-phpMyAdmin. Activate this and you have phpMyAdmin in your WordPress admin pages, same interface, colors and layout… I love it, and if you ever find yourself bouncing between the admin pages and phpMyAdmin, you’ll love it too. Damnit. ;’) Careful when installing, some users are digging too far into the zip file (directory structure should look like wp-content/plugins/wp-phpmyadmin NOT wp-content/plugins/phpmyadmin.

Dagon Design’s Secure Form Mailer Plugin For Wordpress is at 4.2 now. I’ve had good success with this, and it allows me to have multiple forms/layouts as well…
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Since I don’t consider my blog anonymous or ’seekrit’ I grabbed a text widget and started adding an “About Me’ to my sidebar. After trying to get things aligned, formatted, and adding a few links I started thinking a widget might be nice for this. I had not seen anything like this around, so here it is, my first widget.

“*Fixed in 0.96: Align didn’t work in some themes.”

Here are some installation instructions:

1. Click the download link below to get the latest version
2. Drop the AboutMe folder into your wp-content/plugins folder
3. Go to your Administration:Plugins page and activate the About Me Widget

To configure:
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