Apr 20, 2010

Google Reader and WordPress – all at once!

I must thank this person for this tip. Thank you! Now, if you feed readers come to my site, you’d noticed I added a blog roll. My problem with having a blog roll before is that I never updated it. Now, it’s just javascript that is pulling from my google reader – you know what that means? I never have to touch it again! Cha-ching! I’m all for automated things in my sidebar. :)

Here are the instructions as written by A Dash of Bitters:

1. Log in to your Reader account.
2. In the top-right corner, choose Settings.
3. Choose Folders and Tags.
4. Choose a folder and set it to Public. (All of my cocktail and spirits feeds are sorted into a Booze folder, for example. I chose that and made it Public.)
5. Once it’s public, you should have an option that says Add a Blogroll to My Site. Click that.
6. You should see a pop-up window with your new blogroll. For my site, I deleted the default title that Google provided and I changed the color scheme to None, so that I could control the title in WP and let my own custom CSS styles govern the presentation.
7. Copy the code from the box.
8. Switch to your WP admin panel, go to Design, and choose Widgets.
9. Create a new Text widget and paste the code into the widget box. Title your Text widget with whatever you want–in my case, Bartenders and Cocktail Nerds. Save the new widget and then click Save Changes.
10. Et voila.

Apr 14, 2010

Site Analytics and Personal Blogs

Do I use analytics?

No. I stopped a while ago. If I were writing for money, that’d be one thing. Or if I were trying to see what traffic I’m driving. However, having site analytics (Sitemeter, Google Analytics, etc) around me makes me obsessive about looking at them. So whatever was here that kept track at what you’re looking at, isn’t anymore.

The only caveat to that statement is that I do have WordPress.com stats to track pageviews. But nothing that I had to go out of my way for (well, no further than a plugin).

Why don’t I want to know more? Lets face it. My life is either interesting to readers or they didn’t mean to come here. I talk a lot about my Basic Training and various topics here and there. I speak a lot on WordPress because I know that’s like the one of the things to use as far as blogging goes. I’ve used wordpress since version 1.5 so I’m more than familiar with it. If I have knowledge, I’d much rather share it than keep it to myself.

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Apr 12, 2010

WP: Another post_thumbnail headache

Well at work, I’m still working on the fitness blog which I showed you guys a few weeks ago.

There’s been many modifications. Before I get into these modifications, I would like to tell all those “middle man” managers out there that if you’re going to give any directions to your grunt, at least make sure it’s what you want. I don’t know how many times during this project, I was told to do something one way, and later told to revert the changes back. If you want to talk about being efficient with my time, help me out here. Reverting and redoing changes isn’t really time efficient.

I hate having a middle man because they never know how to get all the information at once. Instead of saying “Oh that’s no possible, it’d be a lot of work,” they say “Oh sure, I can do that,” then turn to me and say “Hey, do this.”

I hate not having any say in anything and just expected to perform magic. “Make everything move” is more often than not, the request.

Anyways, onto the modifications. Here’s a semi tutorial on how to customize the_post_thumbnails so that you can set it in the media settings, making it easier to change.

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Apr 06, 2010

WP: Linking Post Thumbnails to Source Image

I was researching this a few days ago. I haven’t fully explored WordPress 2.9 but I’m learning more and more as I look into the newer features.

Here is a snippet of code that I’ve been using recently to have the_post_thumbnails() link to the source image. I use the Lightbox 2 plugin for WordPress so this already incorporates that.

<?php $src = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), array( 720,405 ), false, '' ); ?>
<a href="<?php echo $src[0]; ?>" rel="lightbox"><?php the_post_thumbnail('homepage'); ?></a>
<?php the_content('Read more &raquo;'); ?>

Apr 02, 2010

WP: Changed to Post Thumbnails

So we all know that I didn’t make this layout. It’s a free theme available for WordPress.

Today while at work, I was trying to post an entry. On the index page, it’s suppose to show the image that I put in and somehow, today it failed. Instead of figuring out what was wrong, I decided to 2.9 it. In WordPress 2.9, they added the ability to attach a thumbnail to your post.

And so, I went and added that to this theme by going into the functions.php folder and following the tutorial found here.

Then I went into my index template and did a if/else statement, checking to see if it has a post thumbnail attached to it. If it did, show the thumbnail and if it didn’t, show an excerpt of the post.

Then I went through my 70ish entries and for those that had an image in the post that was suppose to be a “thumbnail,” I added it to the “Post Thumbnail” feature. Took about an hour for me to do 70 entries. I don’t know if there’s a smarter workaround but not too shabby. I’m glad I did it while my blog was still small instead of some of the probloggers out there.

I almost always tweak free themes I find to fit my style. If you need/want help with anything on your wordpress blog, please feel free to leave a comment or email me at s.raide@gmail.com. I’ll do it / help you free of charge. :)

Apr 01, 2010

WordPress project and jQuery

So at work, I’m working on a new blog project which I may have mentioned before. I’m nearly done with it but there’s still some modifications to be made.

I’ve been working with WordPress for a while and am really familiar with making tweaks to themes and making it suitable for the client. However, there are some things where I look at the design and say “Yea, that’s not going to happen…” Of course, nothing ever is the end when I say it. If that’s what people want, that’s what I have to deliver.

So now I need to bust out some jquery and make these the kind of box where it expands when you click on the little swirly arrow thing and collapses when you click again on the arrow thing.

You can click on the screenshot of the project to get a larger view. I don’ t/can’t provide a link to the live site yet because simply, it’s not live yet. I don’t really like the design that much and it’s based on another design for a blog I already built. I don’t like the 300×100 ad under the first entry. The fact that the border wraps around the “Recent Articles” portion makes it feel like they’re just advertisements underneath.

I don’t like the inconsistency in background color. I think throughout a site, I would like the same background color and not have it go from light to gray to dark gray to darker gray. If anything, I think that should be the one thing that remains constant throughout the entire site. But that’s just me.

I’m a developer more than a designer… but I don’t even think this is design I’m complaining about. It’s common sense.

Mar 12, 2010

In response to spam…

At first, I was going to block all the IPs that have left spam comments on the blog. The one comment I received this morning was really classy (as in not classy). But I researched the idea a little bit more and decided that I would just approve all comments. IPs are so dynamic and subject to change. I would really hate to block out a legitimate stumbler of this blog.

Plus, I like reading comments. I’m not keeping this blog to get revenue from ads (which is why there are no ads). I just like sharing my experiences and thoughts and learning new ones (which is why I’ve been also exploring other people’s blogrolls).

Anyways, that was my thought on blocking IPs to prevent comment spam. It might help but it might also do more damage than good.

Mar 09, 2010

Getting the_time() to work

So someone was curious about how to get the_time to work in WordPress. Here’s an example (taken from this theme I customized) on how to use the_time:

This is the basic way to show the month, day and year like shown in my posts:

the_time('F j, Y');

However if you want to do something with the actual timestamp (such as showing time you posted), you can use this:

the_time('g:i a');

Refer to the chart below to know what character to use in to customize the display (You’d just change the F j, Y in the_time(‘F j, Y) ).

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Mar 08, 2010

Blocking IPs with .htaccess

Today I got quite a bit of comment spam. In researching a possible solution, I have learned how to block IP addresses in the .htaccess file. I never had much experience working with that file but I’m starting to explore what can be done. Here’s an example. Each line containing an IP address can be changed accordingly.

order allow,deny
deny from 123.456.78.901	
deny from 123.456.78.901
deny from 123.456.78.901
deny from 123.456.78.901
allow from all

Mar 04, 2010

5 key points to starting a blog

I just had my face-to-desk moment this morning. I had a little side gig and while working, I’m answering this guy’s email about his new WordPress site. I start asking some questions of my own and the stupidest answer I’ve ever gotten: I have no content for my site.

So here folks, this is what you should have when you begin a serious blog (as in not something you’re going to ignore for months on end). Whether or not is personal use or professional use, that is irrelevant. However, if you’re planning on reaching out to someone to help you design and get your blog started, you should have at least this much.

1) An idea of what you want to put on that site.
Is it going to be a personal blog like this one where you talk about anything and everything from life to your interests to the coin that fell out of your pocket and went down the storm drain? Is it going to be a niche blog focusing on one topic that you amazingly know a lot about? Is it going to be a photos blog?

2) What categories do you want to have?
Categories are key to site organization if you’re using WordPress (I cannot vouch for a whole lot of other blogging platforms). If everything is thrown into “Uncategorized,” do you have an alternate way to organize your content?

3) Design. How do you want your blog to look?
Are you going to go with a default blog and just overshadowed the design a billion other people have with amazing content? Are you going to want your design custom made? Are you going to find someone to do it or are you going to make it yourself?

4) Resources. What do you need to make this blog run?
Do you have hosting? Do you have a domain name or someone that can provide you with a web address? Are you going to use video? If so, do you have enough resource to store those videos somewhere?

5) Your own concept.
There are a billion blogs out there probably playing copycat of another blog. There are a million sites out there that does the same thing YouTube does and yet Youtube still probably is the most used video site ever (not based on any research). Have your own concept and your own niche. There’s a lot of “Been there, done that” so if you have a fresh idea not a lot of people have tapped into, use it!