Weblog Tools Collection

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If you have been wanting to import your entries from Movable Type into WordPress so that you can switch, but have been worried about losing your hits from Google and or other linkage, look no further! The venerable Alex King has written and posted a script/tutorial which does just what you are looking for!
You can find the script here.
He encourages people to use the script to build templates and other material as they please. So if you or a friend have been wanting to switch, but have used this excuse, get crackin!

Find a way to thank Alex if you do use his script.

There are times when you’re working on a project and you need to test a page’s load
overhead. For instance, if you have a lot of database calls or are using some crazy regex
kung fu. These two little snippets of PHP code will give you a start to finish execution time
of the page you’re loading up. Put the first one at the very top and the second one at the
very bottom and load it up. When the page is finished rendering, just view source and you
can see the execution time in the HTML comment. You can remove the comment if you
want it to echo straight to your page. If you leave it in the comments, you can deploy this
in a production page and monitor the load times whenever you feel like it.

This goes at the top:

<?php
ereg(”(\.[0-9]+) ([0-9]+)”,microtime(),$time);
$starttime = doubleval($time[1])+doubleval($time[2]);
?>

This goes at the end:

<?php
ereg(”(\.[0-9]*) ([0-9]*)”,microtime(),$time);
$endtime=doubleval($time[1])+doubleval($time[2]);
$runtime = number_format($endtime-$starttime,4).” Seconds”;
echo “<!– [$runtime] –>”;
?>

There ya have it! [Jason]

…excerpt from: http://channels.lockergnome.com/web/backissues/20040324.phtml#20040324_2

Dave Pollard explains “Top 5 ways to improve your blog” and “Top 5 ways to attract more attention to it”.
Makes some very interesting points.
Find the article at: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/03/23.html#a674

As posted on the forums, from Markku here are the details of the LinkBlog hack. It is a very cool idea and I use a rudimentary linkblog on my own blog. This one, however, is a lot more powerful, configurable and deserves some attention. Here is the writeup from markku

wp-recent-links is a hack (soon a plugin?) for adding a links blog to your WordPress-powered site, similar to kottke.org’s remaindered links. Compared to WordPress’ included links manager, this plugin allows you to have a separate archives page for your links blog, including monthly archives. You can see it in action on my site, it is labeled “Recent Links” on my sidebar, with its own archive page.

Here is the link to the hack.

I really hate having to use a different gallery program for my pictures and wanted to write something which would work directly from inside WordPress without having to mess with much (and would look good).
I rewrote a hack which allows you to upload pictures to your blog so you could upload a bunch of pictures using FTP, specify the folder you uploaded everything to and then have the thumbnails for all those pictures show up in your blog post (with shadows even!) with clickable thumbnails.
You might need to wrestle with the CSS a little bit to get it to look right with your blog.

Here is a link to the hack:
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/wpgallery.zip

I found out about BlogJet while I was flying from New Jersey to Detroit yesterday. It looks like it could have a lot of potential and is still free. You can find out more about it at http://www.blogjet.com

Here are some of the listed features for this new public beta:
* Multiple categories support.
* Quick test of FTP settings.
* pMachine support.
* “Delete Draft files after posting” option in settings.
* New keyboard shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Tab - switch between Normal/Code view.
- Ctrl+M - indent
- Ctrl+Alt+M - outdent
- Ctrl+Shift+N - numbering
- Ctrl+Shift+L - bullet style
- Ctrl+Shift+I - insert image
- Ctrl+Shift+V - attach voice
- Alt+D - select text in Title bar
- F5 - change account

Currently BlogJet (Version 1.0.0.16 BETA) supports the following blog services:
Blogger
b2
.Text
TypePad
MovableType
Blogware
LiveJournal
DeadJournal
DasBlog

So, since it is still free, and looks good, why dont you do try it out?

I came across this site on my own little box of ads (though I did not click on it, just typed in the URL). There is a new Internet Explorer RSS plug-in called “Pluck”. It is available at http://www.pluck.com and is free to download and use (for now). There are some interesting and cool features and some which are just lacking.

I like the fresh interface, but found to difficult to add feeds.
I still like the book style reader pane of Feeddemon much more, though Pluck is free and FeedDemon is not.
There is no ATOM support (yet) in Pluck.
The reader itself is VERY basic, giving you the ability to add, browse and group feeds. No Frills at all.

I think this might be a good alternative to paying for a Feed Reader. Please leave your thoughts on this software if you have used it or plan to try it out.

[EDIT] This has been updated with a fix for Mozilla where the textarea used to jump to the top on addition of a tag. The updated script is in the same file, and some instructions have been added.

I tweaked, redid and added some Javascript quicktags in WordPress. Quicktags, for those that are unaware, are those small little buttons above the post content form in your admin interface. Some of the features added include:
Automatic CSS dropshadows for images
Automatic CSS dropshadows for text
Capitalization (can be used for many purposes)
Small size and large sized text
Left or right floating pictures and text etc.

You can see an example of the stuff this is capable of here:
http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog/2003/5/24/this-is-another-test/

To install this hack, download this file. Unzip the contents on your computer. Copy the images directory to the root of your WordPress folder. Rename quicktags.txt (in the zip) as quicktags.js. Rename the original quicktags.js in your wp-admin folder to something else for backup and copy the new file into your wp-admin folder.
Now open your wp-layout.css (or whatever else you call your CSS file) and add this to the end of that file:


.img-shadow {
clear: both;
float:left;
background: url(images/shadowAlpha.png) no-repeat bottom right !important;
background: url(images/shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right;
margin: 20px 0 0 17px !important;
margin: 20px 0 0 8px;
}


.img-shadow img {
display: block;
position: relative;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #a9a9a9;
margin: -6px 6px 6px -6px;
padding: 4px;
}


.p-shadow {
width: 90%;
float:left;
background: url(images/shadowAlpha.png) no-repeat bottom right !important;
background: url(images/shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right;
margin: 10px 0 10px 30px !important;
margin: 30px 0 0 15px;
}


.p-shadow div {
background: none !important;
background: url(images/shadow.gif) no-repeat left top;
padding: 0 !important;
padding: 0 6px 6px 0;
}


.p-shadow p {
color: #777;
background-color: #fff;
font: italic 1em georgia, serif;
border: 1px solid #a9a9a9;
padding: 4px;
margin: -6px 6px 6px -6px !important;
margin: 0;
}


Note: You can change any of the CSS elements or the elements in the quicktags.js to suit your needs. These javascript functions and CSS tags can be used in other blogs/sites as well and the inspiration comes from Dunstan Orchard and http://www.alistapart.com/

I would like to know if there are any other useful tags/CSS tricks that people would like to see in Quicktags.

I was helping someone finish writing a script on IRC and I think they have come up with something very cool. They provide a (mostly free) service which allows a LiveJournal, DeadJournal and now WordPress blogger to build a nice PDF page of their whole blog. He calls it LjBook and you can find more information about the features and install at http://www.ljbook.com/. Just like this blog and many others out there, it is a free service that is supported by its users. So if you use his work, please leave a small donation.
For WordPress users: http://www.ljbook.com/wordpress.php
PS: I dont know how useful it will be to me, but the PDF files are very well formatted and look very cool!

As per requests, I have made a slight modification to the Livejournal autoupdate script so there is a little check button on the edit page that can be used to select updates to a LiveJournal blog. The updates are very minor and there are a bunch of bugfixes. I have also added the feature to allow users to post “friends only” entries to their LiveJournal.
You can download the hackfile here:
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/ljautoupdate.txt

I modified an Erfurt Wiki script to work with WordPress and other php based webpages. The installation is really really simple and the wiki seems to work well for me. You can see it at work here:
http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog/aboutme.php

I have created a static about me page with this and plan to use it in the future for “free-for-all” blogging from time to time. I might find other uses for it as well.

All the instructions and the hack files can be downloaded here:
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/wikihack.zip

Please post bugs and suggestions here.

With WordPress 1.2 due out in a couple of weeks (Not gauranteed or confirmed), I need to get to working the WuhWUh 0.2. Here is the tentative functional specifications and changelog (over and above what is already in WuhWuh 0.1 RC1 and WordPress 1.2).

A built in Wiki, accessible from the admin interface, to build “static” pages - Does anyone think that a wiki inside a blogging tool is overkill? I am starting to think it just might be!

A File Manager of some sort

An integrated Linkblog with comments feature and RSS feed

Mozilla Right Click Blog This xpi builder (maybe, not much interest in this)

A setting to make older entries comment moderated (again, not much interest)

More involved LiveJournal Update/edit/control

One of the many photo hacks

Cookie managed breadcrumbs (maybe, not much interest)

Alex’s groups hack (maybe, not much interest)

A custom page to configure pingers - Done in WordPress 1.2

Newsfeeds for categories

All hacks turned “on” or “off” from the control panel

Much better documentation

Look for a release candidate in about a month (if all the hacks get done) I will not promise an ETA.

I was wondering how Matt made the titles of his posts appear so perfect and I realized that they were PNG (portable network graphics or simple picture files) files. So I started looking for ways to convert text into PNG automagically using PHP. This would enable all kinds of freaky fonts, colors and other magic to be used with inline text. I came up with this wonderful article from NewtNotes which explains the process of creating PNG files from TTF fonts using PHP and even provides source code. Here is the link to the tutorial.
I blog this so when inspiration strikes, I can whip up some code myself!

Jesuit has coded a “Live Preview for WordPress Comments Hack” which is just very nice. I was thinking of writing something like that myself when I had a few minutes. Here is some preliminary information from his forum post.

I have ported the live preview hack from MT to WP.
Basically this hack allows your users to see a live preview of what they are writing below the comment entry box.
Currently it uses onkeyup, but you could easily change it to onblur if you don’t want the realtime updating.

Check out the hack here.

Good job Jesuit!

My domain names have recently changed and I would really appreciate it if incoming links were updated.

They are:
Weblog Tools Collection: http://weblogtoolscollection.com/
Mindful Musings: http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog/

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.