After a couple of months of messing with the settings in WPG2 to get my photos/images displaying in a sweet lightbox like container, I have finally managed to do it (go ahead, click on the peanut, you know you want to!). Turns out there’s an issue somewhere with the wpg2 lightbox script and something else that wordpress is running. I don’t know what it is, so don’t ask.

What I do know is that by using the laptop (though I could have done it on your grandmother’s old 386 machine as well) I was able to install a lightbox (version 2.2) script through the plugin manager in wordpress (I love it!) and disable the internal lightbox script in WPG2. This, coupled with my innate knowledge of all things technical corrected the issues and once again let my images live in Lightbox Glory.

Not that any of you cared…

Related External Links

• The Pathetic Polaroids Lightbox added to IstockPhoto.com | Dean …
• Trends in Web Design Involving WordPress | I'd Rather Be Writing …

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I was reading around the web today looking for ways to make the blog better and I stumbled on a post over at sitepoint about 10 must have Wordpress Plugins. Surprisingly, I’m already running most of the ones listed, but I thought it was time for me to make another list of my favorite plugins and the reasons I like them. So here goes:

• Comment Timeout 2.0.1 – One of the worst things on a blog is comment spam (you know those “I read your post and it is good” comments that get left by ‘Super Duper Webhosting Wow’). Akismet helps keep down a good bit of that, but the comment timeout plugin gets the rest by doing something Wordpress *should* do automatically. After a set time period (one month, one week, days) the comments close. It gets extended a bit every time someone comments in order to keep the discussion alive. It works rather well and has reduced my time editing spam to almost nil.
• CommentLuv – One of the best ways to help out people who leave comments on your site. It crawls their site and if possible, grabs the latest post (though newer versions of the plugin also have the ability to allow the person to choose one of the last five posts) and links back to it. Giving both you and the poster some deep link luv. Its developed in to a kind of movement and has its own site and program to go along with it. If you want to see it in action, leave a comment here…
• Google Site Maps – The big G loves to crawl your site. Providing them with a map makes it easier, and the google site maps plugin makes it mindless. Add the plugin, set the parameters and its done. No more worries and you have a good site map for the robots to find.
• LinkCurl – LinkCurl takes the tags (or categories) you add to your post and grabs a handful related links and appends them to your post. It takes a little longer to post the post due to it crawling the web, but it helps add links to your site (and the little boost from return traffic is swell). I’ve edited the code a bit to make it work a little better. If you’d like my copy, let me know and I’ll send it to you (or post it here).
• Quoter – Allows commenters to quote other comments. That way, if there’s something Gruntled said that you don’t like you can make sure to comment on his comment. Comment.
• Related Posts – If your readers liked the post they read, maybe they’d like this other one? This plugin recommends other posts for your readers to read. After all, its all about getting them to stay on your site right?
• Subscribe to Comments – Does what it says it does. It allows your readers to subscribe to the comments when they comment. Automatically emailing them if anyone else comments, that way they can follow the discussion.
• Top Friends – Top Friends allows you to list your friends in a block on the side and post a link to their most recent post. This is cool as it gives some updating love to your friends or blogs you like. Also shows the frequency of their updates.
• Wordpress Mobile – In this day and age, there is no reason not to have a mobile enabled site. I pull my site up on my Blackberry all the time (as though someone else is going to update it) and I hate it when other sites aren’t enabled for mobile devices. You’d think that in the age of the iPhone and the Blackberry that everyone would be. Well, now with Wordpress Mobile, its as easy as activate. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did. If you use it, let me know, I’d love to see your site on my phone!
• All in One SEO Pack – This provides Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. You can control the keywords, description and more from the simple to use admin interface with this plugin. Now you have NO REASON not to be SEO approved!

All of these plugins are in use here on the site and they are in no way all that I have. If you have a favorite plugin, let me know what it is, I’d love to check it out. Also, most of these can be installed directly via the plugin manager in WP these days…

Related External Links

• 10 Quick Win jQuery Plugins | Steve Reynolds Blog
• SEO Tools (136 tools) | Domain&Hosting Review, Make Money Online …
• Trends in Web Design Involving WordPress | I'd Rather Be Writing …

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Yar, I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and I’ve finally developed a list of five of my current favorite tools for twitter. I thought I’d share them with you.

Twhirl is perhaps my favorite desktop app for twitter. Its cool because its done in AdobeAIR and can run on Mac, Linux and Windows (making it fully crossplatform), you can reply, retweet, and tweet right from it and it updates on its own. Follow friends, keep tabs on whats happening and even view profiles for other twitter users. When I’m not twittering on my blackberry, I’m using twhirl.

SocialScope Its still in private beta, but this app for mobile devices is amazing. When I’m on my berry, its what I use to keep track of twitter AND facebook status. You can update both as well. If you’re rockin a smartphone, register for the beta. Its getting better every update.

I came across this next one on a post on Twitter Tools by Felicia Day. Twitterholic is a good ranking of top twitterers based on number of people following them. Its no big surprise Obama is number 1.

If you aren’t using Twitter Tools by alex king or TwitMe by Johnny Mast to update your twitter status with your blog posts (both wordpress plugins) then you’re missing out. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blogs and posts is by letting your “followers” know of current postings and both do an excellent job of that. Twitter Tools is the more robust allowing for a little more customization and options.

Lastly, Take a look at another wordpress plugin, TweetBacks by Joost de Valk. TweetBacks Show the tweets about your posts and pages as comments on your blog. This helps you gauge who is talking about your posts as well as drives more people to twitter. Works well.

Oh what the hell. I came across this gem today and I wanted to share. Twistori. Twistori makes use of the Twitter API to search out tweets with certain words (love, hate, believe, feel, think and wish) and then streams them to you live. Its a little earie to see it in action, but quite addicting….

Related External Links

• 10 Quick Win jQuery Plugins | Steve Reynolds Blog
• Toolmonger » Blog Archive » 4-in-1 Bucket Tool
• Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Test of a new …
• Trends in Web Design Involving WordPress | I'd Rather Be Writing …

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One of my favorite things to do is to try out new plugins and I have to say, the new plugin interface in WP 2.7 is AWESOME. Absolutely Awesome. I can search and install without leaving my admin area. Something that other suites have been able to do for a while and its something that helps bring Wordpress to the forefront of Blogging platforms. That being said, if you’ve ever checked out my Plugins Used page, you’ll know, I like me some plugins (I have about 55 active plugins at the moment).

Here’s a list of my favorites…

• All in One SEO Pack – Anyone who isn’t using this plugin is shooting themselves in the foot. This plugin helps make it easy to add keywords, titles and other much needed objects to your pages and posts. Plus, its kinda cool… now you can say, “Yea, I’m doing the SEO thing. Are you?”
• Comment Email Responder – I think I’ve talked about this one before. Its a godsend! Now, you can notify your commenter via email when you reply to their comment. This does two things, one, it lets them know you’ve commented and two, it pulls them back to the site. Often times to comment again. Its been a big help in retaining readers here.
• CommentLuv – It started as a simple plugin to pull your commenter’s last post and has evolved in to a movement. Even cooler is the fact that they run contests that your commenters are automagically entered in. Its a good way to add links to your site as well and to help out your friends by Deep linking to their posts.
• Comment Timeout – Yes, I run akismet, but with the Comment Timeout plugin, I have to clear a lot less spam. You can specify a time period for your comments to close (after the last comment was made). On here, its set for a month. A month after the last comment or the post, the comments close on that post. Helps keep a lot of spam out. A lot.
• Google Sitemaps – The last one I want to talk about today is the google sitemap plugin. It simply generates a sitemap of all your pages (or just the ones you specify) and puts it in a location. You can then alert google, yahoo, ask, etc. that you have a sitemap and it will help the bots crawl. Its good for increasing your ranking and it does something that WP should do anyways.

Thats just a short list of some of the plugins I like and use, I’ll cover more next week, don’t you worry. Is there a plugin you use that you think I’d benefit from??

It doesn’t get much better then this. Adobe Air has allowed some developers to do some pretty cool things with code lately and I have to think, that from a blogger’s standpoint, Moderator by Daniel Dura is the best thing since, well, wordpress.

Moderator is a pretty cool wordpress plugin that adds the ability to approve, spam or delete comments right from your desktop. Its like digital signage on your desktop of your blog. Doesn’t get much better then that does it? The kicker, AIR is a multiplatform (mac, linux, windows) tool so anyone on the big three can make use of this easy plugin.

Installation was a snap, simply unzip the moderator files to your wp plugins folder and activate it in your admin section. Go to the moderator section under the settings and install the code (if you haven’t installed AIR it will do that for you at the same time). Start it up, put in your info and you’re off and running.

So far I haven’t had any comments *ahem* on the site to make use of it, but I hope to shortly… *ahem*. If you use it, let me know what you think.

So a friend is attending some conference somewhere and in one of the sessions he was in he learned of twitter.zappos.com. Apparently, the shoe GOD zappos has instituted a twitter feed to their site that allows visitors to see the good and bad of the twittersphere when it comes to zappos. Simply mention the word zappos in a twit and you’re in the feed. its rather cool and its led me on a search for a plugin that does the same…

I came across two that are kind of similar the first is Twitter Fountain. TF creates a flash like animation of whatever the search term you specify. Its ok but not really what I’m looking for…

The other is closer. TwitterDoodle searches the twits and creates a post based on your search and search intervals. The post can be posted to the front page or not and you can create as many searches as you’d like. Its actually a pretty cool tool. Here’s a post of the mentions of Delusions of Grandeur (not just this website but any time those words come up in a twitter!) in the twittersphere. How cool is that??

If you have another twitter tool you’re using, let me know about it….

I’ve been looking for a good way to view this site on my blackberry for a while now (the images in the theme play hell with a mobile browser) and I finally came across a kick ass plugin that does just that. Wordpress Mobile (imagine that right??) is a really nice plugin that reformats your site in to a mobile browser lovin site in no time.

Download the file, unzip it in your plugins directory and activate it. You can leave the default settings alone or go to the setting page for it and plugin your adsense and admob codes and make some money yourself. Ad revenue is split between you and the developer (or you can one out 25 pounds to the dev). The site renders fairly quickly (stupid edge network) and shows photos as well.

As more and more phones come out with better browsers on it (iPhone anyone?) plugins like this will become more prevalent in the blogosphere. One of the nice things is that ANYTHING with a mobile browser will be able to view it.

Now if I can find a good wp-admin interface for mobile I’ll be set!!

One of the plugins in use here is the Yahoo Shortcuts plugin which aim to help make your blog supafly! Its an easy way of adding photos, links, maps and other rich media to Your blogposts with little effort.

The cool thing, is that they’re currently mailing out FREE t-shirts to those people who are using their wordpress plugin! I highly recommend you grab the plugin and the shirt before their all gone!

If you’re like me, you’re a bit hesitant to upgrade to the latest release of Wordpress. DoG was running a very good install of the last 2.2.x release and I wasn’t in a rush to upgrade it for several reasons. The largest reason and one you can still see some of the effects of on the site, is that the theme I’m using, Redoable by DJR hasn’t been updated for the 2.3 branch and most likely won’t be any time soon.

If you’re not currently running a theme compatible with the 2.3.x branch of wordpress, I would recommend changing your theme to one that is or wait to upgrade until you’re comfortable with doing the work yourself. I’m in the process of a redesign and I wanted to use some of the native features in the new releases of WP so I went ahead and made the jump. It wasn’t all cake though, there are some hoops to jump through before you dive right in.

1. Download the latest version to your server (if you have ssh, log in and do a wget) via wget or ftp if you can.
2. Log in to your admin area and disable ALL plugins (yes Virginia, even Akismet. No, don’t worry, you’ll have akismet back up with in 15 minutes). They make it nice and easy in wordpress to disable everything at once (there’s a link at the bottom of the plugin management page that disables everything with one click).
3. Set your default theme to the Default wordpress theme. This is recommended practice for several reasons one, the default theme is standard in wordpress releases and WILL work on your site immediately after the upgrade where as your current theme may or may not.
4. Unzip and copy (again really easy in ssh) the new release to your blog directory. Make sure to copy the contents in wordpress to your blog’s directory and not just the wordpress folder.
5. Run http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php – This is a crucial step as the database changed from the 2.2.x versions to the 2.3 branch. You need to update the database or nothing on the site will work correctly.
6. Check your site. Once the upgrade has completed you can check your site. Your posts and everything should display properly using the default theme.
7. Login to your admin area and UPGRADE ANY plugins that say there is a new release. **THIS IS IMPORTANT** as the database changes rendered the way some plugins accessed the information. If you don’t upgrade the plugins you might get errors (like the UTC category error on this site). Its easy and will take hardly any time at all. One of the features I LIKE about 2.3 is that it lets me know when I need to upgrade the plugins.
8. Activate all your plugins – Or at least the ones you still want to use. I went through and cleared out some of the ones not in use here on the site and it helped a bit.
9. Select new theme – You *should* now be able to reset your theme to the one you want. There may be some errors, if that is the case check the wordpress.org site for answers, chances are that someone has already had the same issue.

In all, it should take less than an hour to do the upgrade. If you’re unsure, there are plenty of people who will do it for you (often for a slight fee). I’ve found the best way is to be prepared. Download the new version before you start anything and make sure you read the upgrade notes. If you’re using a custom theme, make sure it will work. I’ve found that most themes will with some minor changes to the way they call some of the WP hooks.

Good Luck young Skywalker.

So in addition to upgrading the code to the site yesterday, I added a plugin. Absolute Comment allows me to reply to your comments from the admin menu, making my job just one step easier. How cool is that??