Recently I’ve had to manipulate my OPML files to get some feeds and a blogroll to work the way I want. I found that there are fortunately quite a few options to get links and rss feed URLs to read and link the way I need and thought I would share these options with y’all. What is an OPML file you ask? Well, let me show you rather than tell you. Add “wp-links-opml.php” to the end of your home page URL for your WordPress blog (example: http://www.wordpresspad.com/wp-links-opml.php). See all that XML code gibberish, that’s your blogroll (list of links) as an outline.
[Read more →]

On the Blog Herald yesterday there was an article about preparing a checklist before upgrading to WordPress 2.5. Now you’re probably wondering, isn’t WordPress at version 2.3.3 now? What happened to 2.4? Well, it got canceled, or rather delayed and then skipped over. Read more about WordPress 2.4 skipped to WordPress 2.5. Anyway, this got me to thinking about troubles I’ve been having with a recent installation of WP 2.3.3. A quite frustrating experience. Nonetheless, It got me thinking about how important it is to due more testing and creating your own checklists before launching blogs or regular websites when using third party open source software even as popular as WordPress. Something to think about, I think.

[Read more →]

What can’t WordPress do??!! Scholar Press has a great WordPress Plugin that lets you manage a class using WordPress:

“ScholarPress Courseware enables you to manage a class with a WordPress blog. The plugin give you the ability to ad and edit a schedule, create a bibliography bibliography and assignments, and manage general course information. Designed primarily for use in higher ed courses, but could easily be adapted for other uses.”

Visit Scholar Press
Download the Scholar Press WordPress class management Plugin SP Courseware

Welcome back to Our Love Affair with WordPress. In last month’s Episode 3, we customized the Harmony WordPress theme for a fictitious bra-fitting business. In this final Episode of Part 4, before we move on to Part 5 in the series, I’ll cover how you can add a little finesse, searchability and optimization to your weblog once you have the blog design, layout and basic elements down. The following are a few enhancements to your WordPress blog (or blog-powered website) that will make your blog more dynamic, optimized and user-friendly.

[Read more →]

When I signed up for my first WP blog years ago I hadn’t the vaguest notion that WordPress is a content management system (CMS) for all intents and purposes. I understood what a blog was, ’cause I’m a smart cookie, but never thought of blog and CMS together though it’s pretty bloody obvious now. Anyway, back then, I never thought of content management systems at all ’cause I was an exclusive Dreamweaver and notepad hand coder. Anyway, since I like tinkering with code, especially when I have no idea what I’m doing and where it will all lead, I started learning and figuring out how to use plugins, tips I learned on the web and all my web design and development knowledge to make WordPress do more, whatever “more” meant and continues to mean per project. I realize now that WordPress is just like another fabulous company whose services I use almost religiously, Netflix. WordPress is as useful and resourceful as you make it.

[Read more →]

The following are some cool websites with some cool website and blog tools for you to check out and make use of:

Nexodyne Email Image Generator: I love the web! Have I said that before? It’s good to have recognizable icons to lead your site visitors by the hand around your website or blog. This nifty tool by Nexodyne lets you create personalize email buttons that you can place on your website or blog.

[Read more →]

Here are a few WordPress plugins you may find helpful in giving your WordPress blog some added functionality:

RelatedPosts provides a variety of options for displaying posts that are related through tags.

TextMe sends a carbon-copy of all admin emails sent via SMS to your cell phone.

Video Embedder makes it easy to embed videos from various sources, such as YouTube and Google Video.

[Read more →]

In Part 4, Episode 2 of Our Love Affair With WordPress, we chose the Harmony WordPress theme as our template for Perfect Fit, our fictional bra-fitting business. Again, bearing in mind that Perfect Fit is an unusual business, the theme layout is standard but we want to add a little something extra to make it special. In Episode 1 you learned what steps to take to create your ideal blog or website. At this stage, we’ve already decided on the tone or mood of the website, the layout and navigation. And now we have a theme on which to recreate our ideal structure and navigation before setting the mood. The next step now is editing your theme so that the layout is exactly what you planned before dressing it up in something sexy.

The Harmony theme is almost the ideal layout for Perfect Fit. Only a few things need to be moved around or added:
[Read more →]