Linora Low » Wordpress

WordPress 2.7

Linora Low — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:35:06 +0000

Upgrade.. yet again. While I don’t like it when I have to upgrade my wordpress. I must say that I quite like the new interface of WordPress 2.7. This is already the second time that wordpress has upgaded it’s layout this year and waddya know just before Christmas. WordPress present for wordpress bloggers. hehe. It may take a while, to get used to it but so far I love the new layout. This is what it looks like on my dummy wordpress admin dashboard.

Let’s take a look at the latest dashboard. Firstly, everything is now ajaxified. You can drag and minimize the topics most important for you. Under screen options you get to pick what you want to see on your dashboard. The latest addition to the dashboard is ‘quickpress’, allowing you to write an instant post without having to go to the write post page. Nice but instead of having the tags section, I would’ve preferred for it to be the category section. I used to love the plugin Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu because the old interface didn’t have the drop down option. They’ve now gotten rid of the top selection menu and put it all as an ajax sidebar on the left. Not bad. Btw if you are having troubel seeing the dashboard menu, it’s due to the Ozh pluging still activated. Deactivate it and all will be fine again. While we are on the topic of plugins, fantastic to know you can now search and instantly install a plugin into your wordpress rather than going through the ftp way. Can ya see the install button… ooh goosebumps on how instant it can be. I’m such a geek!

Another thing that is a great feature is that this wil probably be the last time we have to do our own means of upgrading wordpress. Now there is an option on the menu under settings that will allow you to an instant upgrade.

The last thing which i find superbly cool. Is that when you click on the post page. You will all your drats and published post on one page. Great and even better, you can do quick editing on the main post page, instead of having to open up the actual editing page. Before I had the plugin Admin Management Xtended. Don’t need that anymore, since it’s now integrated with the new wordpress 2.7. Woots! Goosebumps again!

These were tha main things that caught my attention for wordpress 2.7. If you want to know more or find out about the latest features for it go to this link WordPress 2.7 Coltrane. Or better still just watch this video, if it doesn’t take too long to load. Should you upgrade your wordpress? Well no harm in doing so but even I’m not upgrading my aronil.com site yet. Just cause i want to test it out a bit more first. Get familiarised with the new features. Maybe I’ll upgrade when my site is due for payment or something. Overall the new interface is pretty rocking!

Custom WordPress Login

Linora Low — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:16:11 +0000

This is not something new but for those of you out there, who like to customise and personalise just about everything you have – especially when it comes to blogs and especially if yours happens to be a wordpress platform. Then you are going to love this little plugin. This plugin allows you to personalise your own wordpress login page. This is a before and after shot of my own login page.

Not too shabby, eh? The image before is what your wordpress login page would look like with WordPress 2.6 and above. The one after it is the one I have made base on the template given with the plugin download. The plugin is called Binary Moon Custom Login Plugin. What you need to do to get this effect going on for ya. Is to first download the plugin above. Designing your new layout. You need to create two images. One is the login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif or save them as jpegs. Whatever suits your fancy. These two images will make up the look of the wordpress login. You’ll find what you need in the template folder. Once you have designed your new layout, save them into the folder wp-content/plugins/bm-custom-login/images. Make sure you save them exactly as these two names login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif. Activate the wordpress plugin and wa la! You’re done and you have a brand new WordPress Login to stare at hehe. Honestly no one else will see it unless you are sharing your blog or you have multiple writers. But it’s great to have it for some kicks. If you don’t really have an idea for your design, you can also head on to the bm-custom-login flickr group. You can read the original post here at Binarymoon or just go on straight and download the plugin.

I’m in WeLoveWP

Linora Low — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:54:43 +0000

One of my favourite sites to visit for some wordpress inspiration is WeLoveWP.com. It is basically a gallery filled with blogs that uses the wordpress structure and all of them either have some unique designs for their skins or something way graphicky. So I’m very very proud to say that Aronil.com has now been approved to be apart of that gallery. Hee hee yes I’m ecstatic. Adn guess what. Even better at the moment I’m now on the front page of the site. Woopa die doo It’s a thrill to see your design up on a gallery that showcases your stuff. Hehe.

Can you try and spot me?

Yeap. So if you want some great inspirations for your own blog design, WeLoveWP is one spot that you can get it…. Not cause I’m there.. just cause

Importing RSS Posts into WordPress

Linora Low — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:39:15 +0000

Earlier this month I was busy helping two friends out with shifting their blogspot blogs into their new wordpress home. Which I’m quite proud to say I’m sponsoring them with the hosting while they got their own domain for themselves. The two bloggers are Mr Ming Han and Mr “Soh Han Sem” Soon Wei.Mr Ming Han who is on threeminutenights.blogspot.com will be shifting soon. Where as Mr Soon Wei has already moved from interconnections.blogspot.com to new home www.soonwei.com. So proud of my proteges Both of them were originally on blogger (which i still say sucks!). Anyway before i go into biasness, I had to help them set up and transfer all their past and present posts into their new home. This was the tough part because about a year back, WordPress could import posts from blogger. But recently – and i think understandably – Blogger has created some sort of block so that WordPress can’t import posts from your old blogspot blogs. Rightly so. Everytime you wanted to get your posts it’ll just remain stuck. This is what it will look like once you grant blogger access on your wordpress. Keep your eyes on thestagecalls. The second last row. Once i hit import…it’s suppose to move.

But see here it gets stuck. Leaving it at one like forever and ever.

I found this a huge pain, and it wasn’t doing to well with me telling my pals how great wordpress is when I can’t even import the most important thing. The content! Ming Han was a little easier since he was starting his blog a fresh and had a few posts in. So i told him to copy paste his posts first into the new blog. Soon Wei’s however was a bit of a prob cause he had like 400 + posts. So i spent a good couple of hours searching on how to get all his posts into his new blog. Great progress I have to say, showed the dude what wordpress was made of and Ta-da instant convert Hence this is another way for you to get your posts from blogspot in , if you are having difficulty. Let me list it to you step by step.

Importing Blogger RSS Posts into WordPress

What we are going to do is save your blog post into an .XML file. First type in this into your address bar. Say your blogger add is “test.blogspot.com”. So you should have something like this. You’re basically getting your feed. “test.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?start-index=1&max-results=999&alt=rss” Now you see the number “999″ there, reason I put 999 is so that when you enter in that entire add it will actually collect all the posts you have in your blog. Not unless of course you written 1000 blog posts. If you have that many posts, I suggest, you split up your file. So that it is not too big.
Once you key in that link of your blog, you’ll end up with a page that looks like this. So you’re on the right track if u see this jumbled mess.

From there right click and “save as” the page as a .xml file. You can name it to whatever you want. In this case, let’s just say the file you save is called test.xml. Save it to your desktop.
Then head on into your wordpress dashboard and go to manage> Import. Once in that page click on the one that says “RSS”.
You will see this. Go find that test.xml file and upload it. Even thought it states max 10MB. It’s fine, cause if say you have tons of posts just upload them in batches. Like test.xml, test2.xml…etc.
Right so now upload and just watch the magic. Then TA-DA! All your post are in.
Nope that’s it now enjoy all your post in your new blog on wordpress.

Custom Field WordPress Plugin

Linora Low — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:40:36 +0000

Well Aronil.com has finally gotten a facelift. It took me a while to get a template which I could tweak much, but that’s not the purpose of my post for now. See part of the new theme, will cause me to use the custom fields section which is a part i usually avoid due to sheer laziness. But i decided to get cracking at it as it would be a lot more visually easier and faster to load up on the site. At least I hope so. Originally I had inserted a section of coding which I got from Webdesigner Wall on how to place custom images in your posts. Which worked brilliantly, however there was a slight problem, I didn’t know how to adjust where my images would be aligned. Great new prob eh. That was until I googled this “customising images from custom fields” and it brought me to this Scribu.net. What Scribu has done is create a wordpress plugin to make eaisier for people like me or complete noobies with wordpress to place images for your custom field. It works like such.

This is what it looks like when you write a new post. You will find it at the bottom after activating it.

You can do some further tweaking. But I haven’t bothered here cause I’m quite happy with whatever it is set to at default. So go give it a try out.

I Won 10 Bucks

Linora Low — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:58:32 +0000

About a week or two ago, there was a competition going on in the web. Not many people I think were aware of it, but I happened to chance upon it while surfing for some wordpress tutorials. I then stumbled upon DevWP.

In short they write about everything regarding WordPress: articles and tutorials about WordPress themes, plugins, hacks, updates.. whatever. A site which is all about how one can develop WordPress into something more than just a blog platform. There isn’t a lot of content going on yet on the blog as you can see on their main home site. But they are slowly getting enough things started which I’m really looking forward too. Back to the competition, the mini competition was open to the public. Whereby you were suppose to just leave a comment of what kind of tutorials you would like to see placed on the blog. Whoever that left a comment, 5 fortunate people stood a chance to win $10. Guess what I’m one of the few!

So to get an email from Gilles saying that he will send me $10 into my paypal account just made me go woooppeedoo. I’m all for winning free cash (yeah I’m desperate sue me ) But more than that, i get to help out fellow bloggers out there, who want to have an even better WordPress thought. Give the site a check out for those of you who are new to WordPress or even those who just want some other ideas on how to use it.

WordPress 2.6 is Out!

Linora Low — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:28:35 +0000

is now a thing of the past even though it was only like a few months back. The people at wordpress.org is doing all they can to upgrade this wonderful platform into an even better one from the day it started. While i love upgrades but at the same time i dread them. For two reasons. One I’m just so darn lazy to upgrade. Two.. I could lose a number of things in the process of upgrading… which is always my biggest paranoia. Taking a tour through the wordpress 2.6 video. I’m pretty excited with the new features.. not to say that I’m not happy already with 2.5.1 which is an immense upgrade to the previous wordpress platforms. Have a look at the video yourself.

Sigh so here we go in ..

Flexible Upload WordPress2.5 Compatible

Linora Low — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:59:15 +0000

My favourite plugin, Flexible Upload is now compatible with wordpress 2.5.. Ooooo Happy Happy Joy Joy ^_^

For those of you who are wordpress lovers and users like myself. Bare in mind this is meant for those who are hosting their own domain and wordpress. You’ll be happy to use this lil piece of work for your site ^_^ Created by Antoine, you can read on . Head on to Flexible Upload to download the compatible version for WordPress 2.5 HERE.

Not Just Me

Linora Low — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:26:03 +0000

Heh guess I wasn’t the only one with wordpress issues. When I was going in to view stats just a few minutes ago, I saw this greeting me on the Nuffnang homepage. [singlepic=5,450,,,center] But this only laste for a few minutes. I think there was some upgrading work in the process when i happened to visit nuffnang.

Updating to WordPress 2.5

Linora Low — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:45:20 +0000

Ok while I love the look of WordPress v2.5 I’m going to write my review on what it’s been like for me since I upgraded to it, which was like a days ago. Yesterday, before the upgrade, I was a bit excited and worried at the same time. I saw what wordpress.org looked like so it only registered midway in my brain that my wordpress control panel would have quite a number of changes too. There are pros and cons of course which i will in as much detail as possible. Pros

I will say first say first of all, I love the new look. Which I already mentioned in a .
The dashboard is a wonderful sea of information which is neatly arranged in big words for the more important and urgent matters like comments, writing a post and not to mention a neat RSS function on the latest plugins. [singlepic=1,450,,,center] Which I’m very appreciative of because it allows me a plugin freak to see what works best with my blog. Also i personally love the new plugin i just placed on it – the WordPress.com Stats. Showing me stats of today or top posts or whatever, but it’s still new so not much stats yet. I also love the fact that now I can see the latest comments straight away.
The writing panel is pretty different too now. [singlepic=2,450,,,center]If you notice for those who are familiar, they have removed the upload image box at the bottom of inserting content and instead they have buttons on the top that allows you to upload your different files from images, audio and video. Although I’m still getting used to those. They have a new feature too which is the full screen option when typing out a new post. Which is pretty nifty i have to say. I am also liking the new feature of the formats. instead of just the name now they give you a preview to what format you’ll be giving your text.
There is also now the managing of tags on wordpress v2.5 and instead of options we now have a button that says settings which is suppose to help with the management of all your plugin features. [singlepic=4,450,,,center] The plugin section now allows you to update your plugins right from your admin panel. Of course that could have been done with a plugin but if you don’t have one it’s good enough. The plugin panel also now has the ability to deactivate all the plugins at once, which is real handy instead of having to click every single one of them. The new add media button allows you to add sorts of items, even ranging from google maps to documents… i think ^_P

Cons

Moving on to what I’m not crazy about. First off, while the post page has been upgraded a lot by far. But I don’t like the fact that the panels are no longer editable. Meaning I can’t drag each panel up or down anymore. The tags, categories, excerpt, trackbacks, etc.. are all located at the bottom and would’ve preferred them at the side to limit scrolling action.
Because of the upgrade, there are some very helpful plugins that made my life so much happier, but I can’t use them anymore due to incompatibility. :sniff: Such as the Flexible upload which i was loving sooooo much.. to the point
…. hmm i guess thats my only few complaints ^_^