Author Archive

January 22nd, 2010

Last week I wrote up a post to review the Real-Time Find and Replace Plugin and the comments on that story about other methods to make site wide changes permanent sent me in search of another way to search and replace information in my SQL database.
Now I consider myself pretty decent at geeky things but directly editing and messing with my site’s SQL database does not top my list of things to do. Neither does manually going through nearly 1,000 postings to make changes.
What I found was a terrific plug-in that lets me perform a few different functions to make corrections or change info throughout my site.
Caveat: Before I get started – this plugin does make changes to your database. Play it safe and back up your info to protect your original data.
With that said let me now introduce you to the Search Regex Plugin written by John Godley.
The [...]

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(6 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)

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Real-Time Find and Replace Plug-in Review

responses

Richard Hay

January 16th, 2010

WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips

According to the WordPress.com support page on short codes they are defined as follows:
A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut.

Many WordPress plug-ins make use of short codes to easily make a call to a plug-ins functionality. This can make maintaining your WordPress based site very easy but what happens if you decide to shift from one plug-in to another and that specific short code is not used in the new plug-in?
Let me give you an example. I used to use the WordPress Adsense Manager Plug-in on WindowsObserver.com to place my Google Adsense ads. It allowed me to build the ad and then use a short code to place it on a page or in a blog post. That [...]

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(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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WordPress 2.9 Feature Focus Batch Plug-in Updates

responses

Richard Hay

December 20th, 2009

WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips, WordPress WishList

WordPress 2.9 (Carmen) has been officially released and has quite a few new features. Some are visible and right on the page while many others are under the hood.
One of the features that I really like is the ability to bulk update my plug-ins. In previous versions of WordPress you had to update each plug-in individually by clicking on the automatic upgrade link in the WordPress plug-in, entering your FTP credentials and then waiting for the update to happen. If you had a lot of plug-ins this process could take a while to do.
To utilize the new bulk update process go to the Tools>Upgrade menu in the admin panel:

There you will find a screen that looks something like this":

Select the check boxes for all the plug-ins you want to update and then press the Upgrade Plug-in button at the bottom and you will then be taken to [...]

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(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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WordPress Stats Plug-in Review

responses

Richard Hay

August 30th, 2009

WordPress, WordPress Plugins

Stats – Stats – Stats. They can drive everything for your WordPress site. They can help you understand how visitors move around your site; how they got there in the first place; what are the most popular posts they are visiting; what browser and OS they are using. The list can go on and on.
I have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking for just the right plug-in to track stats on my WindowsObserver.com website and I think I may have hit the mother lode with my most recent discovery.
CyStats is written by Michael Weingaertner and has been downloaded from the WordPress.org Extend directory 32,435 times over the 23 months it has been available there. The last update was last October so it would be nice to see an update however, it works just fine with the current release of WordPress (2.8.4).
According to the author’s description [...]

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(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

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Using WordPress For A Private Collaboration Site

responses

Richard Hay

August 9th, 2009

WordPress, WordPress Tips

I work with a group of people in the development and production of a podcast called The PC/Mac Smackdown. The show is going through significant changes in the near future and we decided it would be great to have some type of collaborative site for us to share ideas, files, schedules, etc.
Rather than use commercial services like Google Docs, Google Groups or Multiply we thought it would be much more functional to build our own site and customize it to our preferences. I volunteered to get that site up and running and I was actually able to have something online overnight that met our needs. It really proved just how flexible WordPress is and how talented the plug-in developer community is to be able to provide such a wide range of functionality with plug-ins.
After getting our domain registered I got the latest version of WordPress (2.8.3) uploaded and installed. If [...]

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(5 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

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WordPress Version 2.8.3 Security Release

responses

Richard Hay

August 3rd, 2009

WordPress, WordPress Security

Weren’t we just talking about upgrading to the latest and greatest version of WordPress just yesterday?
Well today Ryan Boren has just posted at the WordPress.org blog about the release of the WordPress 2.8.3 Security Release. As he mentions in the posting this fix is related to the privilege escalation issues in version 2.8.1.
What he says next is the real reason why WordPress is so popular and well supported:
Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs. Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked. With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.

Ryan is right – it is the community that looks after each other. Where else would you have such a diverse and talented group who points out any issues instead of just taking them public even though it would draw a lot of attention and maybe fame for themselves? How easy might [...]

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(9 votes, average: 4.89 out of 5)

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Fare Thee Well WordPress 2.0

responses

Richard Hay

August 2nd, 2009

WordPress

Mark Jaquith recently posted over at the WordPress.org blog that the WordPress 2.0.x Legacy Branch is Deprecated – in other words retired and no longer supported for the most important aspect – security updates. It had gotten a little long in the tooth as it was published back in late December 2005.
However, WordPress 2.0 was revolutionary in many ways. Think back to WordPress 2.0 and how that changed WordPress as we knew it at the time. Some of those changes we now take for granted included:

Completely Redesigned Backend
Included Spam and Backup Plugins
Inline Uploading
Faster Posting
Post Preview
User Roles labelled
Header Customization

WordPress 2.0 certainly set us on the path to the WordPress we know and love today. Congratulations 2.0 on a terrific service life – rest in peace “Duke”.
Time For An Upgrade?
What does this mean for you as an individual blogger, website developer or site admin? Well the first thing it means in my [...]

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(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Generating Post Ideas – A Follow Up

responses

Richard Hay

July 29th, 2009

WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips

Last week I posted a blog entry to generate discussions about how you work at Developing Post Ideas for Your WordPress Site. The response by everyone was tremendous – 33 comments and quite a few great ideas.
It seemed that the most popular way to keep track of ideas for blog entries is by using the built in draft functionality of WordPress. You can do this via the Admin Post writing interface or even via offline tools such as Windows Live Writer. A quick title and a few words, lines about what you want to write about and then save it as a draft. That draft will happily sit there waiting for you to come back to it when your ready or when you have more info to write down towards the idea/post. Once you get the post where you want it and feel the inspiration to complete it then it [...]

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(5 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)

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Developing Post Ideas for Your WordPress Site

responses

Richard Hay

July 20th, 2009

WordPress

I am sure the people who visit this site on a regular basis are very passionate about WordPress as a blogging platform and use it in the day to day running of their personal and/or work related websites. You all visit this site because it is a terrific resource for the latest and greatest information about WordPress. Of these things I have no doubt nor do I wish to challenge that part. For me it is quite obvious as I watch this community interact.
As technically minded as everyone is that helps makes it easier to get the website up and running on WordPress. Then you tweak the code and install plugins to get the site looking and doing exactly like you want. You have an awesome WordPress based website and it needs the life blood of any site – content!
Your sitting there staring at your screen and waiting to have [...]

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(7 votes, average: 2.43 out of 5)

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