Category Archives: Blogging

WordPress 1.5 installed

Yup… it’s all installed. I’ve installed it, configured it, and decided I liked Kubrick (the default WordPress 1.5 theme) enough to just hack it into a site I like, not to mention how lazy I am… So here you have it. It’s not totally Kubrick, but it smells like Kubrick.

I’m loving the 1.5 action. I love how plugins just add themselves to the menu bar in the admin panel. I love the dashboard. I love Pages. I love the Presentation tab.

One cool thing I discovered about Kubrick is it has a few CSS classes for adding images to posts, namely .aligncenter, .alignleft and .alignright… I’ve been meaning to add these kinds of classes to Webfroot for a while, but then again, we don’t post nearly as many images as we could…

Blogging Coding Web Design 3 comments

Don’t mind the mess

As you well know, WordPress 1.5 was released today, so I’ve upgraded inner.geek. If there’s mess around in the next hour or so, don’t worry, I’m in the process of tidying up…

Blogging Software 1 comment

WordPress Plugin: Smart Unread Comments

As seen on Webfroot and this site, now in WordPress Plugin form!

Current Version: 1.3

What it does
Creates a list of posts with comments that haven’t been read by the user since their last visit/session. Uses cookies to track users last visit – no database required!

How it works:
Users are issued cookies which are used to track last visit. If this is their first visit, all comments in the last 14 days are unread. The plugin generates a list of unread comments. It keeps track of the user’s read posts for the session, removing them from the list as the user goes. Each page load updates the last unread timestamp cookie. Users can also mark all comments as read.
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Blogging Software WordPress Plugins 62 comments

WP Plugin: Official Comments

I just whipped up a quick WordPress 1.2/1.5/2.0 plugin that allows you to distinguish comments made by WordPress users. It also will automatically approve comments made by WP users.

Current Version: 1.1

How It Works:
If you are logged into your WordPress admin panel, and you make a comment, the plugin will see that you are an official WP user of your blog and mark the comment with your WP User ID.
When the page is rendered, that User ID is called up by the plugin functions, which you can use to change text, change CSS class, add images, whatever your imagination desires.

Installation
Either:

  • RECOMMENDED: Install WordPress Plugin Manager then use the One Click Install for Official Comments. This will also make it easier to install other plugins and upgrade them in the future.
  • OR: Download Official Comments, extract and upload official-comments.php to your wp-content/plugins directory. Log-in to your WP admin panel, go to the Plugins tab and activate the Official Comments plugin.

How to implement:
Simply add this somewhere within the Comments loop in wp-comments.php and/or wp-comments-popup.php:

<?php if(is_wpuser_comment() != 0) {echo "Official ";} ?>

Or get tricky and add a CSS Class to the LI:

<li class="comment <?php echo (is_wpuser_comment() ? ' commentOfficialUser' : ''); ?>" id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

and this very basic css example:

.commentOfficialUser { border: 1px solid black; background-color: #999999 }

Documentation
View Official Comments Readme.txt

Examples
There is a very basic example on this post, but more exciting examples available at Webfroot.

Known Issues
It only works with official comments made after the point of installation, as WordPress doesn’t automatically add the WP user ids to the comments field it already has.

Bugs and Suggestions
Any bugs or suggestions, please email me — email link in the sidebar (RSS readers: drop by the site 😉 ).

Blogging Coding Software WordPress Plugins 159 comments

Content vs Publishing Mediums

This is a sneak warning for all you Webfrooters who read my personal blog. Webfroot’s gonna have it’s own podcast. A podcast is basically a radioshow recorded and made available online as an MP3. Technology is so cheap and easy to use that now anyone can publish stuff like this.

People can listen to the MP3 by downloading it themselves, or automatically. An RSS feed is then made available, and using enclosures, special RSS feedreaders can download the MP3 over http or BitTorrent. The feed reader then inserts the MP3 into your iTunes and when you update your iPod in the morning, you have radio to listen to!

But after listening to some podcasts, it seems people are concerned about podcasters talking about podcasting on their podcasts, claiming “it’s all they ever talk about”. David Slusher says “fuck off, too bad, it’s only been around for about 6 weeks!” on his Evil Genius Chronicles audioblog/podcast.

Which brings me to my point (and I’m borrowing some of this from Slusher): People judge new mediums like blogging and podcasting by the content. “Blogs suck because they’re either geeks talking tech or goths whining about their life”. “Podcasts suck because they’re unprofessional and it’s just geeks in their basements”. I could say back at the birth of TV “Television sucks — it mostly has test-patterns on it”.

While yes, the majority of blogs are by geeks and people whining about their life, and the current majority of podcasts have podcasters raving about the new medium, this doesn’t mean that the medium sucks! It’s just you think the people podcasting suck! Which is fine, it’s your opinion — Judge the content, not the medium. These people who have picked up the podcasting stick and are running with it are pushing the medium.

Yes, current podcast content appeals to geeks, but that’s because it’s a new medium invented by geeks! Who invented the TV? Who invented the Internet? Damn right… it was geeks. But just like there are now more non-geek sites on the internet, and there are more non-geek blogs springing up, there will be more non-geek podcasts in the near future.

Blogging Rant 1 comment