And it looks good! As of this post it’s around 50% done (I prefer to think of that as half-full, thankyouverymuch).
I have been testing the alpha and love it. Often when answering questions about WP I find myself writing “Go here and just click on this…” only to realize it’s not available in 2.0.4. And before you ask, no, there is no release date.
For those that use WordPress, this will be a “Drool” release ;’)
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…
What’s the biggest nightmare of anyone with a website? When you go to it and nothing is there. It’s gone, no sign of it. Not unlike driving to your business and finding an empty lot. With no signs.
Well, this is the third time Network Solutions has dropped the ball. The first time they said it must be my ‘scripts’. I wrote about the details here: Network Solutions (Customer Support tragedies)? This had my site down for almost 3 days.
A month or so later I had a lot of intermittent problems. A traceroute looked great (all under 100ms) but the last hop (a Network Solutions router) showed 100% packet loss. I was used to being herded onto packed servers (great ping/traceroute normally, DB queries were quick, but page delivery was very slow). I was told there were upgrades happening. They took a day or so and it seemed to straighten out.
This time (Sept. 9th) I noticed intermittent 500 errors mixed oddly with an occasional “Cannot find”/””. Assuming (yeah, I know) a temporary thing, I let it go until the morning… In the morning it was all 500 errors, everytime, so I used my “Gold Member” Express Support Request button on the 9th. I received this later that day:
Dear Samuel Devol,
Thank you for contacting Network Solutions. We are committed to creating the best customer experience possible. One of the first ways we can demonstrate our commitment to this goal is to quickly and efficiently handle your recent request.
However, we will not be able to resolve this issue by e-mail. So we ask that you please call Customer Service, at 1-888-642-9675 within the U.S. and Canada or at 1-570-708-8788 outside the U.S. When you call, please reference the following Service Request number 1-243929254.
We look forward to hearing from you soon, so that we can work to resolve your issues.
Sincerely,
WRANCEL001
Network Solutions Customer Support
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:
And here are a few recommendations for the Mac from Yvonne:
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 fangirl and her requisite Mac App list.
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This article was inspired by the fact that WordPress downloads recently passed the 1,000,000 mark.
There are some very common problems that pop-up frequently on the WordPress Support Forums that can stop an installation dead in it’s tracks. This is my attempt at covering these issues while still relying on the WordPress codex.
To provide a common ground for the following, I suggest (assume?) that these are the installation steps followed:
- Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
- Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
- Rename the
wp-config-sample.phpfile towp-config.php.- Open
wp-config.phpin your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.- Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
- If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g.
http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.- If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g.
http://example.com/blog/), rename the directorywordpressto the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.- Run the WordPress installation script by accessing
wp-admin/install.phpin your favorite web browser.
- If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit:
http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php- If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called
blog, for example, you should visit:http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.phpThat’s it! WordPress should now be installed.
If Video tutorials are your thing, try Rachel’s WordPress Quickstart Screencast Tutorial (1).
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Which of the following is true?
The answer is both. I know, I have experienced both of those situations. My hope here is to help you get more of the first and less of the second.
One thing to address first is the Expectation of Results: The WordPress Support Forum is a place to help find solutions to your WP related problems. It is not a place where someone else can, or should, fix your problem(s) for you. Everyone in the forums is a WP user or volunteer, with varying levels and areas of expertise. There may be a few people familiar with your problem, there may be a lot, but at the time you post they may not be available. These people may also be frustrated, angry, dizzy with hunger, heavily medicated or just plain wasted on [insert abused substance here] at the time of your post. Don’t take it personally! It’s human to bring your emotions into the forum, but wise to filter them, Grasshopper.
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Shortstat: There's an issue with shortstat 1.3 and WordPress 2.0.x. Try this fix:
I was having the same trouble with logging not occurring. is_admin_page()* was returning true for non-admin pages. I just commented that line out, and it’s working for me on WP 2.0.2 – I don’t know what other effects doing this will have.
* in the track() function, near line 95
Worked for me ;') For the layzee ones, here's the original wp-shortstat 1.3 with the fix .
Version 1.2 of WP Admin Theme – Autumn (with Drop Down Menus) was released 6/6/06. Shutup.
DagonDesign's Secure Form Mailer Plugin For WordPress was updated 6/27/06. You can see it in use here, at my Contact Me…
There were some more tweaks to the WordPress 2.0.3 Tuneup plugin in June. If you are running 2.0.3 this plugin is required. Period. Fini. Shush. No talk. Do it. Shh.
Roblog released updates to Now Reading in June, and a final push on July 4th… (Now Reading 4.2 link is broken).
For those times when rubbing broken glass on your nipples just isn't enough, Leon Kilat wrote up a guide on How to edit WordPress themes using Dreamweaver. Ouch?
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:
To configure:
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This is one of the most common questions asked in the WordPress Support Forum. From "Where did my sidebar go?" to "Why is my sidebar at the bottom of my page?"…
The most common cause I see is when someone drops a large image (or movie object) into a post. If it's big enough it will push into the sidebar area and the sidebar will 'fall' in it's search for adequate space. This is most obvious when viewing with Internet Explorer because IE does not handle margins and padding the way modern browsers do (see WordPress Troubleshooting: My blog looks horrible in IE!). Possible solutions: Shrink the image. If it's a movie object (hopefully you're not using <embed>) and shrinking isn't an option, try to remove any padding or margins that effect the object. This might even require you to modify your css file, adding a 'class' that removes any inherited padding or margins.
Another cause is poorly written, invalid or malformed code. One unclosed <div> in the right place and suddenly the rest of your page is tumbling out of place. A great method to help diagnose this is to validate (see: WordPress Troubleshooting: I have to validate? Oh MY!!).
In a comment below, HandySolo refers to “Something I’ve seen a lot lately are statements like <div class="foo" />” that wreak havoc on post layout. Be careful how you enter your posts, avoid tables (unless adept with them) and never cut and paste from a Word Processor without first removing all the Word Processor’s formatting:
If you HAVE to post text from a Word Processor, first paste the text into an ascii text editor (like Notepad2, for example [or Simpletext for the Mac?]) to remove the extraneous formatting, then paste into your post…
Your page is broken or some support monkey is insisting you validate it! "OMG! I just want my sidebar back!"
Everyone makes mistakes, the point is that new habits and practice can limit these. I hope the following can help, so let's get down to it:
I have yet to see a theme designed in IE (not that there aren't any, I just don't see them, I have little spots on my glasses that cover them up), so you can generally rest assured that the HTML/CSS works well with Firefox and other modern browsers. For this reason I recommend you use Firefox to go through the process of making your WordPress blog valid HTML.
If you don't have the Firefox Web Developer Extension get it. You should have another bar now that has a menu that looks like this: 
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