What The FUCK is this?

4 attempts to get this damned image to post.  And then I forgot to put a ring round it.  Guys - It’s not a TIP.  It’s ADVERTISING.

A tip: Use the “B” button in the write window to make something bold.

An Advert: Be the master of your own domain.

See the difference?  Nice forum thread too.

While I am whining, for gods’ sake PLEASE give us back the ability to edit our posts on the forum.  Even a five minute window would be nice.

I am liking wordpress.com less and less every time I “visit”.  I might just have to stop “visiting”.  I think the only thing that brings me back right now is the morbid curiosity of what people are going to be moaning about in the forum.

And don’t even get me started on the Possibly Related Posts thing.  I think between TGA and the forum threads, the whole subject has been pretty much covered.  As if it needed explained, I have already opted out by ticking the box.

Like Kubrick? Hate The BBH?

Try this:

Big Huge Labs header generator for Kubrick.

I played. Came up with this:

I won’t be using it as I really don’t like Kubrick, but it’s nice to know that these options are out there…

Via WLTC.

My New Computer Killing Boast

Blah blah blah pending review test

I have WordPress 2.3 installed at my hosted blog. All was sweet. I created a new blog in a subdomain, again running 2.3.

I try to log in and get no response from the main site. Grr! Support ticket time.

I got a response a little while later. a 510 error message from the web server saying my account had been suspended.

Oooookay…..

An email arrived explaining that my main install of wp2.3 was running the web server’s resources at 60% (on a shared server) and it topped out the server meaning the server rolled over and played dead. The host suspended my account so they could get the server running again. Ooops!

My account has been “un-suspended” and I am able to log into the FTP.

I think what killed it was trying to insert a footnote into a post. I had been using the old wordpress footnotes plugin which worked beautifully with 2.x previously. With all the code changes to 2.3 the plugin didn’t like it. FTPd and removed MOST of the plugins I was using and all seems to be hunky dory.

I’m not going to re-enable WordPress (killed with a simple index.html file at the moment) until I can log into the cPanel and remove all the spare database tables that old plugins (UTW for example) had created.

By the way, can anyone give me easy instructions on converting UTW tags to WP native tags? None of my searching (about three hours worth!) has turned simple instructions. Ta muchly!

Killing Off The Porn

Following some Link Love (this could get confusing!) from Options on one of my previous posts, I glanced at the tags. I noticed that one of them was Porn.

My first thought was “idiot tag gaming spammer”, which I very quickly revised when I realised the plan and then formulated one of my own.

This might get me kicked out of the News Departments, but I don’t care.

Here’s the plan:

1. Write a technical post. Computers, Internet, WordPress - whatever.
2. Tag it “Porn”.

This will eventually have the effect that the Porn tag will be overrun with techy posts and the actual porn tags from WordPress.com blogs not declared mature will disappear. Ok, this will probably piss-off the non-adult bloggers that talk about porn, but that’s a small price to pay. They should get a life and not spend it thinking about titties.

This goes along (somewhat) about my idea for the Forum Tag War…

In case you don’t hear from me again, check Matt’s (lost the plot using IE7!) BBQ for a fat human looking piece of meat on the spit roast…

Give us the Damned URL!

Just a very quick one. If you’re asking for help in the wordpress.com forum then let uss have the URL for your blog (warning if it’s NSFW!). Threads like this one do nothing to help either you or the volunteer trying to help you.

Oh, and read the bloody stickies! If you’re too damned lazy to do that then learn just this:

1. Are you blogging at wordpress.com or do you have your own host?

If you’re at wordpress.com use this forum.

If you’re self-hosted, use this forum.

See, not hard is it!

Your Facebook Status in your WordPress.com Blog

Do you use Facebook? I have done for about a month now and am rather enjoying it. It’s like MySpace without the Emos! My profile is here. If you’re using FB then feel free to add me. Let me know who you are by commenting here so I can tell who’s who though!

One of the facilities is the “Status Update” where you can tell your friends what you are doing/feeling/pondering/whatever you like. Think of it as a Twitter for Facebook. It’s not much use unless you want to let your friends know what you’re doing.

Well, thanks to Adam at Pomomusings there is a way to share your Facebook Status Updates on your blog. He has actually created a small plugin called Facepress Statuspress which, when used with the hosted version of WordPress will allow the blogger to display their Status Updates in the sidebar.

Knowing what WordPress.com bloggers are like for Gucci widgets, I thought I would explore the possibility of displaying Status Updates on wp.com blogs. And it’s easy! It uses the RSS feed for your Status Updates. You can find the RSS feed like this:

1. Go to your Facebook Profile.
2. Click on the Mini-Feed bar so you can see all of your recent activity.
3. Click “See All” on the top right of that box.
4. Under “View” on the right, you’ll see a long list of “Stories” - click on “Status Stories.”
5. Underneath the list, you will now see “Subscribe to these Stories - My Status.”
6. Right click on “My Status” and Choose “Copy Link Location.”

Come back to your wordpress.com blog and follow these steps:

7. Go to Presentation -> Widgets.
8. Scroll down the page and find RSS 1 or RSS 2. If you have already used both of those then scroll down a little further and increase the number of “RSS Feed Widgets” appropriately, save and re-load the page.
9. Drag the selected RSS widget to an appropriate location on the sidebar.
10. Click the configure button on the widget and paste in the URL that you copied in step 6.
11. Click away from the widget and then press “Save Changes”.

When you view your site you should now see your Facebook Status updates in all its glory on your sidebar. You can see mine on the right. I changed the number of items to display to “1″, otherwise it was taking up half the sidebar.

Why The Theme Change?

I was using Redoable Lite, but realised at lunchtime that there’s no method to get to older posts not on the first page. Hence, the sudden theme change. This is Freshy. Still not perfect, but at least readers can get to my older (though not necessarily better!) posts.

I might one day cough the dosh and get the CSS upgrade, switch to Sandbox and design something truly shitty and unique.

Thankyou for your understanding.

Sandbox Went to 1.0

I just noticed that Scott (in a comment on Ryan’s post about 2.3) has released version 1.0 of Sandbox specifically for WordPress 2.3.

Sheesh! Something else to play with! :)

WP23 - My first glance

Woohoo! The blogroll default links are gone and replaced with something useful!

Nice job guys and gals!

I exported this blog and imported to my home server running XAMPP and the WXR played really nice. I’ve heard stories about crappiness with WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS) but I haven’t had a problem.

I haven’t played with the UTW tag importer yet - I don’t have UTW on the XAMPP build. I might set up a sub-domain of my self-hosted site and have a play later.

WP 2.3 Beta 1 Available

Ryan Announced it here, Official notofication here.

Can’t talk, playing. Will let you know my impressions soon.

Download here.