Development

WordCamp UK 2008 was an interesting mixture of blogging (as you would expect) and developer conference. It was like two familiar worlds had collided. WordPress as CMS One of the development issues raised was the growing use of WordPress as a platform rather than as a blog. Many people are now looking to WordPress as …

What are visitors arriving at your site for? It’s a question worth asking because if you don’t know, how can you provide it? Search stats will tell you, as will some of the visitors if you ask. In general your readers have followed a scent, a trail that will lead them to their goal. What …

Bloggers like to give and win prizes. It offers some excitement for readers, content and links for the blogger, and if the prize is offered by a third party it gives them some exposure too. Darren does this a lot and to good effect, I do it very occasionally when I have something good to …

I’m a little embarrassed to tell you that I have been using the phrase “New Media” without ever thinking about the definition very much. You see, “New Media” is one of those things you know when you find it, but when it comes to explaining to someone else we can stumble. Let me try now …

Recall I found out about an automatic commenter-thanking plugin I was very excited about? It turns out that Dreamhost, my hosting company, were not quite as thrilled as I was. Hello, Please disable the plugin that is causing this query (otherwise I’ll have to disable your mysql table or user and I really don’t want …

One of the most common issues with blogs that I critique is the WWW/No-WWW issue. That is where you can see the same content with both the WWW. in the URL and without. Doesn’t seem like much of a problem? There is a theory around SEO circles that having content available on both creates problems …

Adam started a great thread over at the Authority Blogger Forum which I would like to open up over here; How many columns should a blog have, and why? For myself, I switch between 2 and 3 columns. When I have advertising, such as at DSLRBlog, I have a third column to accommodate it. That …

Every week I am asked how I put that download link in my RSS feed. Until to now I have had to explain that the solution requires a WordPress plugin that I hard coded. No longer! Damian, my WordPress hacking friend, has kindly released the plugin complete with an options screen. Now anyone can do …

My friend Damian and I have just been moving DSLRBlog from Drupal 5 to WordPress 2 using instructions from D’Arcy Norman. While Drupal is a fantastic platform, I had problems maintaining it. It was getting me down particularly fighting the torrent of spam being thrown at it. Keeping on top of updates, bug fixes, security …

Gary has written a post about his “Group Writing Project” WordPress plugin that should be interesting to anyone involved in WordPress hacking and plugin development. Most interesting is his description of a poorly documented WordPress function, wp_insert_post() that ought to be very useful. The most important thing about the plugin is the wp_insert_post() function that …

My good friend Damian has just released his first plugin and it’s a corker. It goes by the name WP_LinkIt and I think many bloggers will find it useful … WP_LinkIt as a free simple WordPress plugin to automatically convert text from your posts and pages into links from your blogroll. This makes it easy …

I just majorly goofed on my blog. While upgrading a bunch of blogs to WordPress 2.2 I overwrote my theme before checking my backup. It seems my FTP had not managed to transfer my sidebar so when I had a look at my handy work I had the default staring back at me. Don’t do …

The buy me a beer plugin is not the only plugin I have been trying out recently. Here are some other WordPress plugins you might want to try out Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – sitemaps are not just useful for visitors but can help your posts get indexed also. This plugin makes creating a sitemap …

You might have noticed under my posts a little cup of coffee icon. I am trying out a plugin for Ankesh called “Buy Me a Beer Plugin” … This WordPress plugin allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal. The plugin is widget enabled. So the idea is if a reader likes your …

In my last post I said blogs were an excellent content management system. A couple of people asked me to elaborate. What is a CMS and why are they a good thing? What is a CMS? A CMS (Content Management System) is simply a computer software package that makes it easy to create web pages. …

Mark is asking When Will You Upgrade to Vista? To answer your question Mark, not any time soon. Microsoft hasn’t exactly completely lost me as a customer but neither have they done anything at all that makes me want to upgrade. I will elaborate but first here is what Mark has to say Is there …