How To Blog

Wordpress plugin - Running PHP in Wordpress posts

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Mark Somerville wrote a REALLY cool Wordpress plug-in that allows you to include PHP code in your wordpress posts, which really expands the potential of what you can do with Wordpress.  I highly recommend checking it out!

Wordpress Customization for Newbies

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Elliot Back has written a really cool Wordpress Customiation for Newbies guide that helps you convert a new Wordpress installation into a customized blog in just a few steps.  You should definately read his full article, but in a nutshell he suggests you start with the following tips (& he goes into far more detail on exactly how to implement them)

1. Get Kubrick, a drop in template for Wordpress, and install it
2. Import your links. The fastest way to do this is to use OPML from your favorite RSS reader. It will have an “export to OPML” option somewhere, which you can use to save all the feed URLs to a file that you will import via WordPress->Links->Import Blogroll
3. Get some plugins, and modify them to suite your tastes. Asymptomatic, the WordPress Wiki, Kitty’s Plugins, and the Web Log Tools Collection are all good places to start.  Elliot's top 5 (quoted from his post):

   1. Insert a breadcrumb navigation on your page
   2. Add an Acronym Replacer so when your write AOL, it looks uber-stylish
   3. Turn on the built-in WordPress->Plugins->Search Hilite
   4. Get an automatic linkifier to create links for you, when you only have the URLs.
   5. Random file is another useful WordPress plugin. I use it to rotate the banner of my Kubrick by adding a folder for random images.
4. Turn on pretty links.  Actually, I wrote an entire post on how to create search engine friendly permalinks that I think explains it a little better, so I'd recommend giving my post a read on this topic.
5. Ping some services. If you ping popular blog notification services, you’ll start getting traffic to your blog nearly immediately!

Great post - thanks Elliot!

New book "Movable Type 3 Bible" recommeded by Six Apart team

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In the words of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, "It looks to be one of the best books on Movable Type that's been published, including coverage of the application all the way up to version 3.1 and even includes dedicated chapters on creating and using plugins, managing syndication files, and working with the weblog APIs supported by the application."

Sounds like I'm gonna need to get myself a copy of the Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition!  Of course, once I do I'll post my own review at How to Blog

Why Neil chose Movable Type over Wordpress

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Neil turner wrote a really cool article on his reasons for choosing MT over WordPress.

Some of the deciding factors for him were the better templates that Movable Type comes with (as well as the ease of editing them without having to know cascading style sheets and PHP), a larger base of existing plug-ins (for now) and better documentation.

I'm curious to see if MovableType has been (or will be) updated by Six Apart to improve it's interface to allow for rich text editing (WYSIWYG publishing) and a spell checker like they've done with TypePad.  As I already pay for my own dedicated server, I don't like having to pay extra fees to host my TypePad site elsewhere, so if I could have typepad's functionality and ease of use hosted on my own server, in the long run that'll be more affordable for me.

Another cool feature from TypePad's new WYSIWYG editor!

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I've only tested this so far with Internet Explorer, but when you're in Compose Post mode (WYSIWYG mode), you can actually copy and paste (or drag and drop) content from another web pag directly into the edit box for TypePad and all of the formatting, links, etc, are retained.  So in my previous post, all I did was select the text of the article from TypePad and drag it into my existing post (after first doing an indent to try to indicate I was quoting -- that makes me realize that one of the wysiwyg component elements that would be nice to have included is a button for the blockquote tag)

Rich Text Editing (WYSIWYG) and Spell Check Come to TypePad

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If you're using TypePad, you've probably already noticed that starting Nov 4th, it's got a REALLY cool new interface for editing/writing posts.  In fact, it easily rivals the quality of Blogger's WYSIWYG  (what you see is what you get) interface, and then surpasses Blogger by also giving users the option to edit the HTML directly.  You can switch back and forth between design mode WYSIWYG (the Compose Post tab) and Edit HTML mode, much the way that advanced web development tools such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Microsoft's Frontpage.

When I've more free time I will definately need to update my blog software comparison article because this may actually push me to prefer TypePad for future blog endeavors (I'd been leaning towards Wordpress).  The bummer is that it's still not free.  But this may be an example of you get what you pay for.

Here's the quoted article from typepad.com that details this new functionality:

Rich Text Editing and Spell Check Come to TypePad

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve added two new features to TypePad:

• Rich text editing, aka “WYSIWYG” (What You See is What You Get); and an
• Integrated spell checker.

One of our most important goals with TypePad is to make it easy and fun for you to add new content to your weblog. While some folks might enjoy writing "raw" HTML, we’ve been using rich text editing around the office for the last few weeks, and have found that it’s easier to write, review and edit posts before publishing them to our weblogs.

If you are just discovering TypePad sign-up for our free trial and see how fast and easy it is to create and maintain a professional looking weblog.

Rich text editing features
The rich text editor now supports...

• Common text formatting options like bold, italic, underline and everyone's my favorite, strikethrough;
• Sizing and coloring text, with a handy drop-down “web-safe” color palette that includes a history of your most recently selected colors;
• Bulleted lists, numbered lists and indented text;
• Easy insertion of links – to both email addresses and websites (after all, what would your weblog be without links?); and
• Inline preview of images -- you can preview how your image will appear in your post right inside the editor. (Of course, our “insert image” button continues to support image aligning, thumbnail creation and text wrapping.)

Spell check
In addition to rich text editing, we’ve also added an integrated spell checker. We currently support spell checking in English, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. TypePad will automatically choose the appropriate spell check dictionary based on the language preference you’ve set for your weblog.

Rich text in QuickPost
We’ve upgraded TypePad’s QuickPost bookmarklet functionality to support WYSIWYG editing. If you’re using a TypePad bookmarklet already, your QuickPost screen will display a handy link that will lead you directly to simple instructions to replace your current QuickPost bookmarklet with a new-and-improved one with WYSIWYG support. If you don’t have a QuickPost bookmarklet, you can get one by clicking on the Weblogs tab, and then the "Set up QuickPost bookmarklet" link.

It’s the little things that matter
We’ve added a few refinements to help make writing and editing your weblog that much easier..

• We know you have a favorite chosen font for your blog. The font that you publish in is also the font that you edit in (note, however, that the editor will display a default font if you are a Pro user and publish with advanced templates);
• If you’re on a roll and need a bit more room in your editing area, just click on the "bigger" link in the lower right hand corner of the editing area, and it will expand automatically;
• Finally, if you’re a fan of hand-coding your own HTML, you can switch back and forth between the rich text “compose post” mode and an “Edit HTML” mode. Edits you make in one mode will be immediately reflected in the other. You can also disable rich text editing entirely, by clicking the “Customize the display of this page” link on any post editing screen.

Supported browsers
Rich text editing and spell check functionality are available in Internet Explorer 5.5 and above, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla 1.3 and above and Netscape 7.1 and above. We plan on adding support for Safari and Opera in the future.

But wait, there’s more!
We’ve also recently enhanced the TypePad File Manager. The File Manager now displays HTML and CSS files. This functionality, combined with your ability to create and rename folders, means you can now host your web content in addition to your weblog on your TypePad site.

We’re very excited about these enhancements, and hope you are too!  To learn more about these new features, visit help.typepad.com, where we've put together a page of tips on Rich Text Editing that has everything you need to know.