A Better WordPress Admin Layout?

Comments · September 18, 2008 at 5:39 am · Web Development

There is a new poll, put out there by the WordPress team, seeing if you would like to change up the WordPress admin interface any. 

It seems like they would like to move all of the stuff currently across the top to the side, creating more room for you to view your pages inside of the WordPress admin space, without scrolling up and down.  I like the idea, but I want to do it now – not later.  If you find yourself seeking the same type of WordPress admin interface, give the Fluency Admin plugin for WordPress a shot.

As you can see, the menus are rearranged, main menus down left, sub menus across the top.  If you are using WordPress 2.6 and up, then you should not have any issues getting going with this awesome plugin.  I added this to one of my smaller sites the other day, and love it.  I might have to be adding it to others later on. 

 

Akismet Help and How-tos

Comments · September 10, 2008 at 5:26 am · Web Development

Out of all the years I have been using WordPress, I have probably not used one plugin more often than I have used Askimet.  Now that might be because it rocks, or because it came with WordPress, so it was kind of always “there”.  Love it or hate it, it does get the job done when it comes to filtering out spam comments from your WordPress blog.

The way it works is it checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, then you can review if necessary. 

Akismet Says I Need an API Key.  Where Do I Get That?

WordPress.com has what’s called “API keys” which allow you to use services and enhancements built on the WordPress.com platform. This allows you to leverage the power of WP.com while still hosting your blog elsewhere.

All you have to do is sign up for a WordPress.com account, and you will get your API key to add to your Akismet settings so it will work.

I Deleted Akismet Before I Knew How Awesome it Was.  How Can I Get it Back?

You can download the spam comment fighting plugin here:

http://akismet.com/download/

How Can I Show a Badge of How Many Spam Comments I Have Filtered Out?

If you want to put the Akismet fear of God into any spam commenters looking at your site as a target, just cut and paste this tag into your template:

<?php akismet_counter(); ?>

That will display how many spam comments Akismet has caught for you.

I Am Getting a Akismet 2.1 Parse Error.  How Can I Fix It?

You can find a fix here or better yet, upgrade Akismet to the latest version, which fixes this bug that was in the Akismet 2.1 release.

Where Can I Find More Help for Akismet?

Try searching the WordPress.org forums.  Using the “akismet” tag, you are bound to turn up a lot of results to browse through too:

http://wordpress.org/tags/akismet

 

OneNews - Create a List of News

Comments · August 14, 2008 at 6:20 am · Web Development

The popurls-style of lots of sources on one page is a very interesting one that a lot of people have tried to copy.  Here is a theme for WordPress however, that will get you off on the right foot. 

OneNews does a great job at giving you a WordPress powered multiple news headlines on one page tool.  Ok, maybe that isn’t the prettiest way to describe it but it has got me inspired to perhaps create my own new project styled much like this one.  Now just got to find the time…

 

Lunarpages Now Providing 229 WordPress Themes

Comments (1) · July 27, 2008 at 11:24 am · Web Development, Web Hosting

I’m proud to say that Lunarpages (via several design contests) has done a lot to perk up the WordPress theme design area of the Web.  Between two contests they are now highlighting 229 different themes that are all available for download.

Lunarpages Wordpress Theme Design Contest - Series 1 Entries

Lunarpages Wordpress Theme Design Contest - Series 2 Entries

So if your looking for a little insperation on your next WordPress theme design or your stressing over finding a great one to use, check ‘em out.  Lunarpages is also currently holding it’s third WordPress design contest right now - so if your a designer you got to check that out too.

 

WordPress 2.6 Rocks

Comments (1) · July 16, 2008 at 5:33 am · Web Development

Thus far I have to say that WordPress 2.6 looks like a pretty awesome upgrade.  Just did a few upgrades myself, but haven’t had time yet to play with everything that is new…

I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.

Also here are some of the improvements, updates and upgrades:

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

You can read more (and watch a video tour) from WordPress.org about it here:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26-tyner/

You can download WordPress 2.6 here:
http://wordpress.org/download/

Also looks like somebody has already found the easter egg in it too.

For those of you using cPanel/Fantastico to manage your install and upgrades, the upgrade for you might not come for a couple of more weeks.  Are you excited about WordPress 2.6 yet?

 

Looking Ahead at WordPress 2.6

Comments · June 24, 2008 at 5:18 am · Web Development

With Firefox 3 out, now I need something else to look forward to in the area of tech.  Hmm, WordPress is already working on version 2.6 you say?  I like WordPress, and the hinted at list of new features looks to be building on an already solid 2.5.

Here are a few things to look forward to in WordPress 2.6:

• Post Revisioning
• A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
• A new image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
• Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• Built-in word counting in the post editor
• The ability to relocate your content directory
• The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• Check box range selection with shift-click

You can check out the full list of goodies over at Ryan’s blog and also pickup the beta 1 if you have a place you’d like to play with it.