Wordpress 2.4: What I Hope to See
Dec 31 at 3:03pm by Andrew Benton
So, its been announced that Wordpress 2.4 will be released on January 24th. While it seems that they just released 2.3, and even more recently released a critical security update, here are some things I’m really, really hoping for in Wordpress 2.4. Read the rest of this entry »
Injecting Any Ads in Wordpress Posts Automatically
Dec 27 at 7:07pm by Andrew Benton
So, on one of my other sites (http://www.thatsingleguy.com), I wanted a way to automatically insert adsense (or any other ads source) into my posts without having to remember to use the adsense deluxe, select the correct one, and put the tag in ever single post I had written. Here is what I’m going to show you how to do:
How to Transfer Your Wordpress Install to A New Host
Dec 19 at 8:08am by Andrew Benton
So, for whatever reason, be it Digg effect, the fact your girlfriend doesn’t like the name, or you just can’t stand the service, you decide you’re going to switch webhosts. Or, for that matter, going to switch your Wordpress install to another domain/subdomain. While for inter-domain transfers you could probably get away by just moving the directory (carefully), when you switch to a new host, the question becomes, “How do I save all my stuff?”
Well, that’s where the awesome export/import feature comes in with Wordpress. Here in easy to follow steps is how to backup and restore your wordpress install:
- Login to Admin Panel, then go to Manage > Export … Select all in the drop down menu to get all authors posts
- Click Download Export File, save it locally.
- Once you have setup your new hosting service, do a fresh install of Wordpress (I’d make sure it’s the same version).
- Login to the Admin Panel and go to Manage > Import, choose Wordpress.
- Click ‘Browse’ and choose the file (XML) that you currently have saved from Step 2.
The only thing this doesn’t cover, unfortunately, is themes and plug-ins, but those are as easy as uploading and re-activating.
Backing Up Themes/Plugins
The easiest way to do this would just to get on FTP and copy the folders. They are located in ‘wp-content/themes’ and ‘wp-content/plugins’ respectfull.
Weekly Web Design Roundup
Dec 13 at 8:08am by Andrew Benton
- Coda Slider - Javascript navigational slider thing. Kind of hard to explain, just check it out.
- Maximum and Minimum Height and Width in Internet Explorer
Behold the seventh wonder of the virtual world: max/min-height and max/min-width properties are possible in Internet Explorer! Indeed, by taking advantage of IE’s proprietary CSS attribute,
expression, you too can whip IE widths and heights into desirable proportions. The CSSexpressionattribute enables JavaScript commands to be executed within Internet Explorer. JavaScript via CSS? Thanks, Microsoft! - Creating Sexy Stylesheets
Being a CSS expert is more than just memorizing selectors. It’s also working to improve the maintainability and efficiency of your stylesheets, planning for the future and mastering your workflow. In this article Jina Bolton gives 10 CSS tips culled from surveys with 12 top designers.
- A Preview of HTML 5
The web is constantly evolving. New and innovative websites are being created every day, pushing the boundaries of HTML in every direction. HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers.
- CSSDOC
This is starting as a little approach to help individuals and teams to improve writing/coding/styling/managing CSS files. The main concept is to put all the good and tested usage of DocBlock comments into CSS. That’s putting style, docblocks and tags together.
Why Newsvine is Better Than Digg
Dec 9 at 2:02pm by Andrew Benton
It’s no surprise that I found myself wanting to write an article about this, I am a member of both Digg and Newsvine, contribute to each, and like them both equally for their individual strengths. Both of them run on the basis of user-generated content; digg through article/picture/video submissions, and Newsvine as a place for new-age journalist to write to a niche of other writers and daily news and opinion readers. While each of them are pretty different, both in audience, age range, maturity and content strength, to me at least, Newsvine is the more superior of the two.
I want to first say that by superiority I do not mean sheer numbers, if that was the case then Digg most assuredly wins. What I’m talking about is relevant, educational information that me as both a contributor and a writer, can read and ascertain to make myself a more educated individual. Below are a few areas that Newsvine is great in. I will talk later about what Newsvine could do to improve their readership though.
Usable Knowledge
If you look at the front pages of Digg and Newsvine respectively, as of the time I’m writing this article, this is what I see:
Digg Top 5 Stories:
Newsvine’s 5 Most Active Stories:
As you can see from the comparison of the two, Digg pretty much only has one, maybe two real articles that could make you any smarter. With Newsvine, all 5 are interesting, researched, well-written articles by the community, for the pure reason of educating fellow Viners.
Maturity of Community
With the comment system in place with Digg, the vast majority of it’s users do not welcome any comments that contradict a particular story. For example, if a user were to post a breaking story related to Bush, they almost always mis-title it inaccurately to get a view across, for a perfect example, see here. An article that is clearly from a site with slanted views, titled in such a way to not even be news, but rather a partisan attack with a misleading title.
On to Newsvine. While I do believe some of the same “tin-foilers” from digg (from all sides of the aisles) show up on Newsvine, the system is much better at handling these kind of people. For one, you can flag a comment so that if it is truly of no value, inflammatory, etc, it can be removed. The main difference that I’ve noticed however is that the community of Newsvine likes to use the comments section as more of an open forum, rather than a pedestal to either condemn or promote the story. Most Digg articles seem to be quick rips at whatever party, then one side subsequently votes the view down. That brings me to another thing that I really dislike with Digg. If you post something contrary to a articles overview, you almost assuredly get voted down so no one will ever see your comment unless they go looking for it. For example if someone posted a positive article about Ron Paul, and someone brought up a point about Ron Paul that was not positive, the “fan boys” of Ron Paul would most assuredly bury that comment. It’s almost a communistic information controlling by the masses. Newsvine does not allow this to happen, it actually has the community behind it that loves to debate, argue, disagree and discuss. I have never seen people on Newsvine flag someones comments unjustifiably, but it happens 24/7 on Digg. The bottom line with maturity is that Newsvine has lots, Digg has hardly any.
The only noticeable difference I’ve seen about Digg in relationship to Newsvine, is that if you’re looking to drive traffic to a site, or become popular, Digg is the way to go, if you are just worried about content, Newsvine is the way to go.
So, what do you guys think? Am I way off?
Wordpress - Ad Under First Post Only (Adsense)
Dec 6 at 8:08pm by Andrew Benton
A popular thing to do is to add an Ad (adsense) immediately following the first post on the homepage of a blog. Here is a quick and simple way to do this:
Open index.php under “Presentation > Theme Editor”, it will be titled ‘Main Index Template’
Find this line:
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
Immediately above that, paste this:
<?php
$postnum = 1;
$showadsense1 = 1;
?>
That’s part one of the code - the value.
Staying in index.php, scroll down to this part:
<p class=”postmetadata”>Posted in <?php the_category(’, ‘) ?> | <?php edit_post_link(’Edit’, ”, ‘ | ‘); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(’No Comments »’, ‘1 Comment »’, ‘% Comments »’); ?></p>
</div>
<-Put the below code right here
<?php endwhile; ?>
Into that area between the ending of the div and the endwhile statement place this:
<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
echo ‘
Your adsense code goes here
‘;
} ?><?php $postnum++; ?>
Thats all you have to do! I’ll cover more in-depth ways of inserting ads later this weekend.
Zopa Has Launched for US-Based Customers
Dec 4 at 1:01pm by Andrew Benton
Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending network has launched for US Customers, heres an excerpt from their blog:
So this week we’re launching in two new countries. In the United States, we’re launching a product that’s really new and different. And in Italy, we’re launching with a product that will be familiar to any member of Zopa UK. But even in the UK we’ve been changing - we launched Zopa Listings a month ago, and it’s going gangbusters!
Different countries, different products, same Zopa values. It’s a pattern you can expect from us going forward, as we adjust the Zopa idea for different regulatory and cultural contexts around the globe. (For example, in the US, we wanted to tap into the phenomenon of charitable giving, which is nearly $300B a year.)
Money has a long history of being a bad thing. With Zopa, we are going to change that. That’s why say we’re “making money human again”. And that doesn’t just mean the pound, either. But all around the world.
This is really going to shake up the place here in the Financial sector for the US. This has had some big success in the UK, and will surely do well here.
Designing a New Wordpress Theme, Part I — The Beginning
Dec 4 at 10:10am by Andrew Benton
So, while I love this theme by bloggingpro, it disgruntles me that its not a design of my own. With that said, I am officially beginning a redesign of this blog, with full advertising, readability, and user-friendliness. I’m doing this for a number of reasons, mainly because I want my blog to have my design. Also, I wanted more control over layout, content areas, and advertising space. With my design, I think I can better optimize the space given to each, and also, it has a fresh new minimalistic approach which I’ve seemed to be really into lately.
So, I figured as a learning experience for both myself and my readers, I would document every step I take from design to implementation, to launch, and then share the theme with the world. Not a new idea of course, but I’ve rarely seen designers document their every step to theme creation, talk about issues involved with such an undertaking, and so on.
So, check back tomorrow for Part II, covering the initial Photoshop design, considerations for ads, content, etc, and much more. I hope this series sparks some creativity in my readers, and hey, if you do/don’t like what I’m doing, let me know, you could very well change the refresh!
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