Weblog Tools Collection

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Announcing the immediate availability of Persian 1.0 for WordPress 1.2.   Persian 1.0 is based on the previous layout of my site which was very well received by the WP community.  Persion 1.0 is currently for WordPress 1.2; a 1.3 theme version is coming soon.

Read the rest here: Persian 1.0 announcement.

I am calling it a Post Rating Plugin until I can think of what I really want it to be called.

I have created a plugin that allows your readers to vote on each article you publish on your WP blog.   It does loads more than that, but since I have already wrote up a pretty lengthy article about it on my site, I won’t reproduce it here; go over and read it for yourself.

I am looking for beta testers at the moment, so if you would like to give it a whirl and give me some feedback leave a comment or pingback on my site.

Via: kpont

Mozdev Filemanager: This is a very cool little tool for Mozilla family of browsers. The code is finally LGPL and can be used as part of a project. Inclusion of something like this in the admin of ANY blogging or CMS project would be fantastic.
A couple of key features which are incredibly useful.

• Browsing files and folders using tree and list controls
• Copying and moving files and folders using tradditional copy/cut/paste operations
• Built-in text editor

I have been using an ASP and ActiveX based upload download manager with lesser functions for a partial CMS that we are working on at my day job.
Some concerns I have about FileManager:

• Browser Security: Will there be glaring holes that might need to be patched? Since the code has been around for a while, this might be moot
• Server Security: How will the variety of host OSes deal with files created/uploaded by the package? I can see a potential support nightmare if every OS handles file security differently

Has anyone seen implementations for MT, WP, Drupal or any other CMS yet?

What Makes A Great Weblog? from UrbanMainframe.com: Peoples’ perceptions of what makes a good weblog are very interesting to read especially if you disagree with some of them. Here Jonathan claims that weblogs are not about Standards Compliance, Accessibility, Tables (or the lack thereof), design, posting frequency or features.

Contrary to his claims, I would say that all of the above are quite important though to a varying degree. His examples of simply designed, good blogs says to me that he is comparing simplicity of aesthetics with complication in a design. A design can be as simple as just text on a page, and still be a very elegant and semantic page that is well designed.

Tables are yucky unless their use is extremely well justified. Period.

Posting frequency is important. A stale blog, is a slow blog which creates a snowball effect. You post less, less people visit your site, you have less interest in writing more stuff in your blog and so on.

Accessibility and Standards compliance, in my opinion, do not need any explanation.

I agree with most of the “It is About…” section but have to say that his turnoffs are turning off. A blog is first and foremost a personal journal. If you want to write about your pet cat, your depression, your wishlist whoring etc, thats your call and since I have been flamed a couple of times and I am still here, I have to say that they are not all that bad either.

In addition, since he mentions baiting as one of his turn offs, I had to write a critique of his post! (All in good fun, please, no flame wars)