Category: wordpress

Categories
internet photo wordpress

Photo Dropper, et al.

unplugged
Creative Commons License photo credit: billaday

Amy over at informing MUVEs is trying out a WP plugin called Photo Dropper, and it looked like it might simplify my inclusion of photos on ye olde blog, so I thought I’d give it a try as well. Honestly, I’m not sure what I think of it. Up until now, my current process for posting photos has been to: a.) Find a photo on Flickr, I try to use my own photos whenever possible; b.) download the photo to my desktop; c.) resize the photo so that WP can display it at actual size; d.) upload the photo using WP’s file upload function; e.) insert the photo into my post at full size with a link to the photo creator.

It’s not the most straightforward process, but it has the benefit of hosting the photos on my site, so that I’ll know as long as the blog is here then the photos will be here too. Photo Dropper turns my five-step process into a two-step process: a.) enter something into the search bar; b.) insert a picture using a given size. Simpler, sure, but the photo remains hosted over at Flickr, and if the user ever deletes it, or their pro account expires, or for any other reason the link degrades, my post is all of a sudden minus its visual element. In certain cases this could really damage the function of the post, assuming the content revolved around the photo itself.

Also, and feel free to call me Web 1.0 for this, I still like going to my content. I like reading blogs on their native sites when possible, instead of aggregating them, likewise webcomics, and I like looking at Flickr photos on Flickr. Surely I’m not the only one?

Time will tell if I stick with Photo Dropper, but right now I’m thinking I probably won’t. It’s just not that tough to open a new tab over to Flickr and find a quick image, a process which has a lot of benefits. Since I’m on the topic, though, I thought I’d mention some of the WP plugins and Firefox add-ons that I do like and use.

I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to WordPress. I abhor the WYSIWYG editor, and I try to keep my plugins to a minimum. That said, I find the following essential:

I’m a Firefox minimalist too, but I couldn’t live without FireFTP for my file transfers, and I find ColorZilla super useful from time to time.

Are there any that I’m missing? What WordPress plugins / Firefox add-ons can you simply not live without?

Categories
wordpress

Fixer-upper

huzzah for fixing wordpress quirks!There is a nice, fresh feeling that comes of destroying something (after making the necessary backups, of course), and starting anew. Today I deleted all my ahniwa.com WordPress files, as well as their accompanying databases, and started fresh. Aside from the whole “freshness” of it all, this means that comments are working again (I’ve no idea why or how they got broken), and that I can upload images from within WordPress again (also no idea why this stopped working).

As for the theme, I’m as yet undecided. I love the high standards of the Copyblogger theme, but in the end I may be won over by darker colors and a tri-column approach.

Until the WP goblins get me again, functionally yours,

Ahniwa

Categories
wordpress

Haywire

You may have already noticed, but things will be rather kablooey around here for a little while. It seems easiest to use this site as a theme-editing sandbox. I’m adjusting the newly available copyblogger 1.0 theme for use at our university.

Fun times.

Categories
wordpress

WordPress 2.2

WordPress 2.2 is available! I always get a little giddy when a new version of WordPress becomes available. Really, it doesn’t affect my life all that much, but that doesn’t make it any less cool. Some of the features from this full decimal update include:

  • Integrated Widgets;
  • Full Atom Support;
  • Speed Optimizations;
  • and a new Blogger importer.

They also claim to have closed 244 tickets on the bug tracker, which seems a significant accomplishment. Who knows, maybe that means I can start using wp-cache again.

Read all about it on the WordPress Dev Blog.

Categories
wordpress

Because change is overrated

I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.1.2 for whatever reason, but mostly because the site was being incredibly sluggish today – to the point where I couldn’t load my login panel – which made me want to try and fix something. Ergo the WordPress upgrade. Immediately after the upgrade, I went through and tried to make it so that as little as possible actually changed.

Today is the day to fight off the blues. Somewhat contradictory to this purpose, it’s also the day to play Tom Waits and Johnny Cash. Perhaps most pressing, it’s also the day to write my collection development policy project. First and foremost, however …

It’s a day to go get some lunch. Ciao.

Categories
internet wordpress

Keeping the “me” in metrics

I’m really interested in talking about Seth Godin’s blog about “High resolution mistakes”, and how concern about metrics, and drawing the Digg crowd (or blogging for popularity in general), can ruin what might otherwise be an entertaining, personal blog. I mean, if you can write, you can write, and you can find stories in your life that are interesting. Following the cookie cutter model to popular blogging means you’ll just end up with another robotic technopolisci blog among thousands. I like his list of “common metrics”, and their possible real points, but to me the crux of his article lies here:

There are literally millions of bloggers that have become so focused on measurable traffic that they end up posting nonsense designed to do nothing but attract a Digg. Look back at a blog like that a month later and it appears to be a series of gimmicks, all designed to maximize a metric that’s almost totally irrelevant to what the blogger set out to do in the first place.

I wanted to be popular once. Thankfully, these days I just want to be me.

Categories
wordpress

All your base …

I have this horrible feeling that the database the site is running on is hopelessly fubared. A lot of the older content isn’t indexing correctly, and there’s a lot of debris hanging around from my previous installations. All of which is just to say that, having finally started towards a site I find nearly optimal, I may have to take it all back to formula. At least the process is bound to be much quicker the second third fourth fifth time around.

Who knows, maybe it will right itself somehow. In the meantime, I’m playing around with sitemaps to see if that helps my indexing. Wish me luck!

Categories
wordpress

Bend, don’t break

There’s some small amount of joy in messing around with code until you break it, and then backtracking to figure out if there’s some other way you could make it work. Granted, I’d probably have much greater success if I had even more than the slightest idea what I’m doing. I doubt it would be quite as much fun, though.

On a more practical note, if someone could tell me how to combine the functionality of Kashou’s Inline Ajax Comments with Mike Smullin’s Ajax Comments 2.0, I’d be incredibly grateful. I fiddled plenty, but it’s not something I’m likely to figure out on my own.

Categories
personal school wordpress

What you see …

WYSIWYG editors are just plain annoying. They load slow and they try to do everything for you, but they do it wrong. I mean, haven’t these people learned anything from MS Word!? The default editor has a handy link button, and will even do bold and italics for me if I become too lazy to bracket my b’s and i’s, and really, that’s all I need.

At the moment I’m hanging out, slightly buzzed off a Canadian table wine called “Cochon Mignon” (cute pig), which is actually quite good, and thinking about doing my homework for tomorrow (which I imagine I really should). Next week we have our first set of due dates, as far as assignments go. I’m not quite stressed … yet. I work best under pressure.

The new site loads much faster than the old one. I attribute part of that to the shiny new underbelly of WordPress 2.1, and some of it to my having somehow broken my old install with random plugin installations and too many bells and whistles. This install I will keep clean and limber, because I like it that it loads much faster than it used to. And really, what is a blog besides a place to put words? Of all the communication mediums, words have always been my favorite anyway, so even in this age of fancy podcasts and youtubisms, I figure they’re what I’ll stick with. I have some fun plans for some other projects, though who knows if I’ll ever follow through on them. Mostly I just get excited about having plans, so much so that I really don’t feel like doing anything about them would contribute to my excitement. I’d much rather just plan things. One of the things I always forget when moving urls around is that it breaks referral links. Mostly, this means that the handy links I got from the Librarian Avengers “Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian” link won’t give me all the fancy hits that it used to. Rather, it will just direct to my boring, empty (but very speedy), portal page.

Speaking of which, my portal page uses Drupal, which is itself kind of fun. It’s nice to get out there and try out some new software every now and again. I even installed it manually, since Dreamhost doesn’t have a Drupal one-click install (yes, I really am that lazy most of the time). It kind of makes me wish I was in the web design course this term, but I am glad to be getting my requirements out of the way so that I can have fun next year (I think). I also, from time to time, mourn the fact than I’m not in McNally’s history of libraries class, but I guess it’s too late to do anything about that now. I’m excited about taking his history of books and print course next year, so at least that’s something.

Alright, back to the wine, and maybe even some studying….

Categories
wordpress

The new new look

So here’s the new look!

What, you weren’t expecting a new look?

Well … it’s too late now, so you’d better like it.

I upgraded to WP2.1, which is fresh and clean, and figured I’d take the opportunity to move some things around. The plain ‘ol ahniwa.com url now points to what I admit is currently a very undeveloped portal page. And the blog has moved next door to its old home, now lurking at ahniwa.com/blog. I guess it’s true when they say that the only constant is change.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not posting an “actual” post. I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for too many hours already, staring at text, and I haven’t eaten since about one. On a sidenote, the new WP is named Ella, after Ella Fitzgerald. So that’s pretty neat.

Categories
libraries wordpress

She blinded me with library science.

Jeph has made promises of shirt availability. Shirts that say, “She blinded me with library science”.

Once again, Jeph Jacques is totally my hero.

You can see the shirt in action: here, here, and here.

Aside from the shirt, which is magnificent, what makes me feel ever warmer and fuzzier inside is that Jeph claims he has NEVER had as much demand for a shirt. Hellz yea, librarians represent!

Categories
wordpress

The Dancing Librarian has moved.

Subscribers to my old "library" blog, The Dancing Librarian at exlibrius.org, may have noticed that I stopped posting to it, and that as of yesterday the feed title is now ahniwa.com.  I started to feel like having multiple sites to post about multiple topics was simply unmanageable, so I've moved EVERYTHING (including all my old blog entries from my old blogspot blog) over to this site.  One thing to maintain and tinker with, and it's got my name on it to boot.

You needn't change your feed subscription at all.  I've taken care of it for you.  Specifically, you'll receive feed of all the posts on ahniwa.com that would used to have been posted on The Dancing Librarian.  This will probably amount to most of the posts I write, though it may exclude some posts that I don't feel are pertinent (i.e. more personal posts).  If you'd like to subscribe to the whole shebang, point your aggregator over to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ahniwa and you'll be golden.

In either case, I'll continue to post stories and links to things I find interesting, mostly involving technology, webcomics, art & illustration, and other sundry and miscellaneous morsels.  Enjoy, and for the feed-readers, feel free to stop in on the site anytime and say hi, leave me a comment, and let me know that you're out there.  I'm maintaining this site for me, mostly, but it's always nice to know other people might enjoy it from time to time as well.

Cheers, Ahniwa

Categories
internet wordpress

WordPress Theme Viewer and Plugins

Picking a WordPress theme is like buying a car.  It feels like a big decision, and there are lots of shiny options available.  Themes, of course, are much less expensive than cars, but to date they've also been more difficult to find.  Most sites list themes by name, with little or no rating system and very few sorting options.  I found this to be less than a little helpful and more than a lot aggravating.  But that all changed on June 17th with the launch of the WP Theme Viewer.

Theme Viewer allows you to sort by any number of options, including number of columns, color, widget-readiness, width style, and even sidebar side-preference.  You are also shown a thumbnail of the theme, the number of times it's been downloaded, and the average rating.  The accompanying blog is handy for keeping up to date on changes, additions, and theme news.

Of course, if you're not that interested in searching and installing a theme yourself, updating to WordPress 2.0.3 offers fifty included themes, all washed and polished and ready to drive home today.  This theme was one of them, and I'm quite fond of it so far.

While I'm talking about WordPress:

The WordPress Widgets Blog has updates and downloads of the newest widgets that you didn't know you needed.

Archivist is a plugin that allows you to post a selected number of random archived posts on your front page. 

WP-Alexify pulls website thumbnails from Alexa.com and previews them when people scroll over your links. 

EditorMonkey is a huge plugin that replaces the default WordPress text editor with a TinyMCE or FCKeditor WYSIWYG editor.  It integrates spellcheck as well as find/replace and advanced link options, and is very customizable.  (Evidently WordPress 2.1 will incorporate spellcheck as well, but why wait?)

The Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin allows you to route your RSS feed into Feedburner, which gives you many more options regarding your feed, as well as keeping track of feed statistics and making your feed universally readable.  Note that while this plugin streamlines the process a bit that it isn't strictly necessary for setting up your WP blog with Feedburner.  If you do end up using the Feedburner service, you should probably update your feeds autodiscovery links, as described here.

Google Sitemaps creates a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.

Last but not least, Ultimate Tag Warrior, which has been around forever and may be the most well known plugin (after Akismet), lets you tag the holy hell out of your posts, and gives you plenty of options for how to display those tags (or not, as the case may be).

I may be a little plugin happy, I admit, but those are the ones I use and I love them all.  I'm also planning on adding a "nicer archives" plugin, once I can find one that says it works in WordPress 2.0+, and I'd like a stat tracker as well.  If you have suggestions for either, please do tell.

Categories
humor internet wordpress

Action figures sold separately.

I was a bit confused if the WordPress dev blog was playing an April Fool’s joke with their announcement of “Wordpattern”. Having read it over, I’m fairly convinced it’s a joke, but should note that I can tend to be unfortunately gullible, at times. In any case, here are some items of humor I came across while researching this “hoax(?)”.

Our groundbreaking, no-nonsense approach of creating a fast and lean CMSMS (CMS management system) is unparalleled and will fulfill the need of every user out there – we won’t be content with anything less.

A “Content Management Software Management System”? Awesome.

The Wordpattern features page has some choice tidbits:

4 Minute Install

The latest InstallMark™ benchmarks clock the WordPattern install process in at 3:47 – that’s a 25% improvement over WordPress 2.0, and a whopping 41% faster than Textpattern.

Gidgets

Like widgets, only cuter.

I think this marks the first time a web application benchmarked its install speed. I also like BJAX, Web2.1 (beta), and invisible URLs. The roadmap section is not to be missed, detailing Wordpattern’s “5 milestones” (the 5th being World Domination). I like the idea of “Tiger Teams”, as well as the Marketing and Evangelism Team. Also linked from the roadmap is Huhcorp, who they’re evidently working with. Their page is hilarious as well.

Our name will confuse you, but, you have to admit, the logo design is pretty cool. And we’re good at turning regular words into “e-words,” such as “e-consulting,” “e-business” or “e-sexual harassment.”

Our office is really modern and we’ve got nice computers and stuff. If you ever saw it, you’d say “Wow, cool office. These guys are legit.”

Following more links, to Huhcorp’s “ideas” page:

Our female staff members are all hot, so, even if there’s nothing to meet about, we’ll sit and flirt with them, and charge you for the time. When one of our new-age marketing gurus or design experts or consultants has an idea, the rest of us look at him or her with serious expressions and write stuff down on paper.

I’m really temped to quote their entire site, because I find it all completely awesome, but you should just go and check it out for yourself. The coup de grace of this Wordpattern Masquerade is on the legal page, where one finds the following:

The Fine Print

All content, code, images, sounds, smells, ambience and the warm fuzzy feeling you get while basking in our glow are Copyright (Q) 1972-1976 The WordPattern Concern. WordPattern™, the WordPattern Logo™, the letters W™ and P™, the colours white™ and black™, and the non-breaking space™ are registered trademarks. The WordPattern Concern does not represent the accuracy or reliability of the information on these so-called “web pages”, after all you can’t believe anything you read on the internets these days.

Things like this make April Fool’s Day worthwhile. But on a more serious bent, why don’t companies make their “serious” web pages this interesting? Would I want to use a company like Huh? for marketing by looking at their website? Maybe, and maybe not, but they would certainly stand out from the crowd, and that’s never a bad thing. Offering serious and quality information about your product is a good thing, certainly, but it can be oh so dull. I would love to see companies manage to fit factual aspects into entertaining text. I mean, when was the last time you READ through the entirety of a corporation’s site because it was entertaining? Yeah, me neither. If we’re going to start talking about aspects of Web 2.1 (beta), I think a defining feature should be humor.

** Mention of “Wordpattern” dates back awhile, at least to January 2005. It appears the original coinage of “Wordpattern” (and Textpress) belong to Jina Bolton, though her post is lost to everything but Google’s cached pages. Her post was in response to this post on Joshuaink. Here’s Google’s cached version (2nd post down) if you’d like to read it. There, I’ve done my snooping for the day.

Categories
wordpress

Template Search 2.0

More links in the eternal quest for a classy, sexy, working template.

Blogger-Templates – Of the templates listed, I particularly like this one. He also has some good tips, tricks, and hacks listed, so it’s worth checking even if you’re happy with your current template.

Not completely blog-related, but this dude’s art rocks my face off.

Isnaini Dot Com has some gorgeous templates. Half of them are a little off on the layout, which is really unfortunate, but I may tool around with them a bit and see what I can come up with. Dude has a second template site here.

Beccary has some simple, elegant, kick-ass work going on, including my favorite so far.

I know Nick will like the name. Eris Design has a kick-ass template creator, and some nice stuff. It’s a definite finalist. I like this one particularly.

I’m gonna go play with these for a bit, but perhaps I’ll update some more links later. Ciao!

Categories
wordpress

I Need Some Intelligent Design

I want to completely redo the template for my blog. And perhaps, even the idea for my blog, and what I post about. I feel like working on one thing will help negotiate the other. What I’d like to do is take the elements I like from certain blog designs and weave them together in a masterful way to create something pretty, and wholly my own. Like Frankenstein’s blog, I guess … and yes, it will probably come out looking like a monster.

Here’s a big link-dump of design sites and blog designs I’m eyeing enviously. Please feel free to make any suggestions.

powazek – I like the banner especially, and the way it fades into the rest of the page.

shifted librarian – Nice, simple, easy layout. Very readable. Could have fun with the 2-tone aspect.

bizgirl – very simple, easy, elegant. girl’s hot. I need to actually read this at some point, too.

stephanie klein – pretty straighforward. i like the colorful banner and the absolutely useless line of green along the right side.

indiekids – i like the top banner with the links. also the muted background colors. it’s nearly blogger-styled, but cooler.

tequila mockingbird – rocking colors. nice, easy layout. easy is good. color is good. take notes.

boudist – i think this is fucking class. nice primary colors, elegant.

chromewaves – good width-fit. i like how the boxes are seperated.

fluxblog – ooOoOo, I kinda like this mono-color thing, especially with the banner. Cute logo, too. I need me one of them.

jason santamaria – this is way too clever for me to figure out. but i like the banner and link style up top. how the hell do you do that stain thing along the top-right of the page?

karen cheng – very clever, fairly simple, good content. i like the day-of-the-week headers especially.

lowculture – i like the two blogs in one approach. could do some fun shit with this, i think?

popagandhi – i like the retro banner, and once again, the white on white background keeps it simple

pussycat – simplicity rules the day. this is a well-done minimal.

watchblog – tri-blog, one page. good idea

Design & template sites:

cookie designs

francey.org

thisisliz

notthatugly

rp designs

squidfingers

If you know of any other gorgeous blogs, or awesome design sites, let me know! That’s it for now!