Anatomy of a Blog Move - Part IV
Posted on: October 28, 2006Continuing, naturally, from Parts I, II, and III…
This is really exciting. Throughout today, I've been adjusting this PHP, trimming that CSS, all with a glorious shower of plugins. This is what I'm currently using to extend my WordPress blog:
I'm still not crazy about using the TinyMCE editor, but like all things integrated, it's nice to have it built right into the control panel. I'm still keen on posting using Zoho Writer — it's worked well for me for so long!
I spent a good chunk of time setting up Similar Posts, which will hopefully add some more connections to my accumulative history; especially since I often post making reference to a bigger context, or something I picked up on an early entry.
In the last few minutes, using the ever-handy Search and Replace plugin, I think I managed to scrap all those rogue "apos" mentions and change some out-of-wack "?''s caused by Unicode rogueness into the proper em dashes I love so much — booyeah!
(I saved a copy before I made changes, thanx to the WordPress Database Backup plugin.)
I've got a lot of experiments lined up to make my blogging approach more timely, and easier.
Aside from some plugins not being easier to work with, I'm really, really happy about my new home thus far.
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October 28th, 2006 at 6:40 PM PDT
Oh WOW! Congratulations on the EXCELLENT move and choice of platform! Yes, WordPress rocks, doesn't it?
It's soooo configurable!
Now I can trackback to your posts and ping you and ask you to use OpenID for comments and cross-link you with XFN and…
***the brain blows***
Ok, ok. Sorry about that. I just got carried away! I think that WordPress is the closest one can get to a blog engine that is also a fully configurable and programmable content management system… without being super-heavy and highly complex and needing 20 years of advanced programming experience to do cool things
I hope you enjoy to blog here as much as you do on the official Linden Blog!
October 28th, 2006 at 6:53 PM PDT
Oh, Torley, BTW, it seems you can use Zoho Writer to post to WordPress as well!
Now if I only understood how I get my gravatar to display here… hehe
October 28th, 2006 at 7:25 PM PDT
OMG! Gwyn! You're here! *huggerz*
Word sure does spread fast, and thanxies for your sound encouragement too. Yeah, in a nutshell — or more accurately, watermelon heart-'n'-rind, I definitely needed the configurability. Plus, OPEN SOURCE yes?
In three days or so I've already gotten a lot done, I feel. Thx for the pointer on Zoho Writer!
Gravatars should work automatically, you'll see mine show up here. I wonder if it's connected to their difficulties transitioning to 2.0 as described here:
http://www.gravatar.com/blog/archives/2006/10/13/gravatar-20-update/
October 29th, 2006 at 3:53 AM PST
I'm working on a fix for the OpenID plugin with some WP:MU IRC peeps, but I'm pretty sure the plugin works fine as is on the standalone version of WordPress (the one you're using), but is slightly borked on WP:MU (the one Linden Lab is using).
I've fixed everything but the installation process. I'm considering some workarounds to make the installation process play nicer.
Look for upgrades posted in the next few days
Do note that the default method for replacing the comments form is a rather ugly hack as well (which I made slightly prettier and I'll be beautifying further prior to release)
Upgrades and suggestions:
WP-Cron
Gravatars2- replaces Gravatars and wp-cron-gravcache from skppy
October 29th, 2006 at 3:59 AM PST
you'll find WP-plugins.net to be a usefull tool as well
October 29th, 2006 at 4:03 AM PST
Aaaand I would also suggest you go into your profile to disable Tiny MCE (I've never understood why the single personal option is under profile), and experiment with hand-driven XHTML-fu
October 29th, 2006 at 9:41 AM PST
WOW! Torley! Your page loaded FAST!!! Excellent!
I think WordPress will work for you for quite some time. I'm a Drupal user myself, but I use a lot of PHP tweaking under the hood too so it suits me better.
For the record, and giggles, I would suggest changing "I Love Watermelons" to "I love Open Source Watermelons".
October 29th, 2006 at 11:53 AM PST
Sure is a thrill to wake up to this!
Marv, thankee for the tippage, I'll follow progress. One of my qualms about the OpenID plugin is the part on that page where it says "Users can pretend that they authorized with OpenID." Doesn't that defeat at least part of the purpose? I don't want to turn off anonymous commenting here, but is there some other convenience I'm missing? (I have an OpenID too but haven't used it a lot.)
Also, if at all possible, I prefer to code pretty with actual fonts and stylings displayed instead of code. There have been exceptions where I needed to fine-tune something, but for now at least, Zoho Writer is tops.
I'm waiting for Gravatar to be fixed — do you know if I can just install Gravatars2 and uninstall Skippy's one, and it'll work seamlessly?
Taran aka Nobody, thanx for visiting mah new home and for the feedback too! Glad to know it is quick. When I think Drupal, I think of their little drop-guy mascot, and imagine he's a relative of Rayman — at least in some reality.
Good suggestion… let's do that now!
October 29th, 2006 at 6:07 PM PST
I haven't actually used either of the Gravatars plugins, so you'll have to ask Gwyn on that one
If you're referring to the migration of settings I don't think so.
However, depending on the account you have with Dreamhost, you could install a seperate installation of WP alongside this one, and test it out.
What that page is referring to, is people doing what I'm doing now- signing a comment in the traditional way.
However, what the site doesn't tell you is that you can alter the way the plugin works, so it display a little text blurb or graphic next to each OpenID Identity URL that actually went through the OpenID protocol, negating the issue of traditional posters and the requirement to turn off traditional commenting.