WordPress


WordPress 2.5 was just released yesterday. The upgrade is as easy as ever, and it includes some really cool features. It includes a new gallery feature, which I’m hoping will be useful on my family blogs. For some of the features of the new version, take a look at this video. Maybe this version comes with a little extra motivation to blog more. ;)

Update: After updating two other blogs, I realized that something is wrong with the Image/Media uploader in WordPress 2.5.  The folks at WordPress are aware of the issue.

I spent about an hour this afternoon messing with the Share This plugin and installing it on my Business Blog. I got the plugin working just fine, but it does not come with the Facebook sharing feature installed by default.  To install the Facebook feature, I followed these directions

Unfortunately, installing the Facebook feature did not go as quickly.  Once I copied the code from the directions above and placed it in the share-this.php file, I got an error at the line of new code.  After further investigation, there is a slight difference in this
 
)
, ‘facebook’ => array(
‘name’ => ‘Facebook’
, ‘url’ => ‘http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={url}&Title={title}’ 

versus this:

)
    , ‘facebook’ => array(
    ‘name’ => ‘Facebook’
    , ‘url’ => ‘http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={url}&Title={title}’   

If you can’t spot the differences, look at the apostrophes.   Depending on the browsers or the text editor, the apostrophes may not work correctly or display correctly, or you may actually not be able to tell any visible difference at all.    Long story short, the version copied from the directions in the comment do not work with php, while the second version works. If you copy the above code and it still doesn’t work, delete the apostrophes in your code, and then add back in the correct apostrophes using the key next to your right pinkie. 

After I got that working, I ran into another problem.  I went to http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico to download the icon to my  local machine, then renamed the file as facebook.gif, as indicated in the instructions.  After uploading the file to my we server, everything appeared to work beautifully, until I tested the application in Internet Explorer.  For some bizarre reason, IE refused to display the facebook.gif file. 

After pulling out a few of my remaining hairs, I decided to start over. I downloaded the Facebook favicon.ico again, opened it in Photoshop, then saved it as facebook.gif.  I then uploaded the new-and-improved file to the server, and magically it worked beautifully.  Something tells me that simply renaming the file wasn’t enough for IE, but the odd thing is, it displayed just fine with the Windows picture application. 

After a little bit of trial-and-error, I did get the Share This plugin customized to my liking.  Now we’ll see if anyone uses it.

So why not install the plugin on this blog?  We’ll quite simply, I need a new WordPress template to run it.  Updating this blog’s template and design is on a long list of to-do’s, so I’ll eventually get around to it.  Perhaps even before WordPress 5.0 is released. ;)

I was looking for some Firefox extensions this morning and noticed that Performancing has changed to ScribeFire.  “ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured
blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post
to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are
browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.”  Version 1.4 changes include:

  • Rebranding of Performancing for Firefox as ScribeFire
  • Improved support for Blogger accounts
  • Improved file upload support
  • Added support of the new Wordpress.com API

I’ve been using Performancing since David King recommended it to me last fall at Internet Librarian.  It’s a great tool for publishing to blogs, particularly if you author or maintain quite a few different blogs. 

Tubetorial has some screencasts that cover the 7 Essential WordPress Hacks.

This series highlights 7 of the most important tweaks and plugins that any WordPress user should know about:

WordPress 2.0.4 is now available.  You can find it here.

I was getting kind of bored with the old look of Library Voice, so I’ve been tinkering with a few new themes. The latest incarntion is using the stock version of a theme called Connections, which I downloaded from the WordPress Themes Directory. Connections was created by Patricia of Vanilla Mist, and it appears that many have downloaded the theme and customized it to their own liking. I too, intend to tinker with the colors, images, etc, when I get around to it. Thanks to Patricia and other theme creators for making their excellent work available to others.

This is probably old news to most, but a WordPress update is now available. This fixes some security issues with the software. Upgrading is easy, but you have to overwrite your existing files. This can be a little scary, but if you follow these directions for upgrading, your update will go smoothly.

I have updated my two personal blogs, but I still have about four more of our library’s blogs to update.

If you are using WordPress to run your blog, you might want to check out these links to understanding WordPress Themes.

[Link via WordPress Planet]

I have finally gotten around to updating this blog with the latest version of WordPress. Everything ran pretty smoothly, although I did have some problems with my comments template. It turns out that my previous iteration of the comments template (which I have had since WP 1.0) needed to be tossed. I simply copied the default comments template and placed it into my Library Voice templates folder. I may tweak that a little later if needed.

I have been using this latest version of WP on a number of other blogs, and I have been really pleased with the update. The ability to change themes with the click of a button is incredible, and the spam blacklist seems to be working quite nicely. While I have yet to tinker with all of the new features, I am anxious to investigate all of the other new options. If you are looking to create a new blog, or are unhappy with your existing setup, I encourage you to give WordPress a try.

I am a little late with this, but WordPress 1.5 was released last week. I updated two of our library blogs on Sunday in about an hour. The directions offered by Podz made my upgrades a snap. I followed everything to a “T” and it worked flawlessly. Now I simply have to find time to upgrade this blog and a few others. Hopefully by the end of the week, all five of my WordPress blogs will be up to date.

If you haven’t upgraded and don’t want to, I encourage you to reconsider. The new interface is really slick, and the spam blacklist alone should merit a second look from many. I’ll post more about the new WordPress when I have a little more time to get under the hood.