Wordpress

Blogosphere News 2

July 8th, 2008

Welcome to Blogging Sueblimely. To keep up with my posts you can subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

As promised here is the second part of my Blogosphere News post following on from Part 1 last week.

Social Networking

  • 20 Things I Learned Using Twitter- some good tips here on making the most of Twitter and using it efficiently. I am adding this link to my Twitter Beginners post
  • The Art and Science of Retweeting for Twitteraholics- a guest post by AJ Vaynerchuk on BloggingBits.
  • 50 Top Niche Social Media Sites and Their Power Accounts- I should imagine this may have changed some since it was written in December. Does anyone know of other more recent posts on the topic?
  • Profilactic social media aggregator - you can now post content to 14 services from within Profilactic - currently supported are: Bebo, Blogger, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter and Xanga.
  • Flickr integration with Facebook - share your own Flickr photos and browse those of your Facebook Friends.
  • If you work from home you may be interested in the WhyDoWork network. A new feature that has been introduced by the site is the ability to add links to your blog, website or affiiate activities to their directory. Reviewing other member’s sites is a factor in determining how high your own links are in the directory.The more reviews, the higher you get. WhyDoWork includes forums, an add friends feature, your own blog page and a work at home job search engine. I have joined up but have not signed up for the blog review feature as yet. I want to check out the others who were doing reviews before I decide on whether it is a suitable feature for this blog.

Blogger

  • Blogger in Draft has introduced new features including the long awaited comments embedded in post pages rather than those annoying popusp.
  • I am using my blogspot blog to answer the specific questions relating to Blogger so if you have a problem or wish to learn something please drop me a line via comments or my contact form at Sueblimely Blogspot I also keep its blogroll up to date with any good blogger template sites or blogger help sites I come across.

Wordpress

  • How to Format Images for Feed Readers A simple solution to ensure your images and text are well laid out in feed readers.
  • Wordpress.com enables the use of Google Gears, a powerful browser add in to speed up access times when your PC is communicating with your Wordpres dashboard. If you do not already have Gears installed and enabled on your PC click on the “Turbo” link at the top right of your dashboard . This will take you to the Gears download site. After you install and enable Gears most of WordPress’ images, scripts, and CSS files will be stored locally on your computer. This is not so useful if you use more than one PC or use a public computer while blogging. More info:
  • Wordpress 6 is around the corner, hot on the heels of the much maligned version 5. Technosailer gives us a sneek preview of 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 which includes Google Gears and what looks like a nifty post/snip from any website directly to your blog feature.

Search Engine News

  • 4050 Search Engines - Phil Bradley maintains a list of Country Based Search Engines - 4000 to date. Don’t panic at the amount, they are categorized by country :-). If you are interested in more specific topics then Laura Milligan at College@Home provides 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of As I tend to concentrate on blogging and general search myself I had not heard of many of them, but bloggers on other topics may find this list very useful.

I am setting myself a target of one news post per week, otherwise I will no longer be able to call it news!

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Blogger, Blogging News, Social Networking, Wordpress | 7 comments

Get More Comments with KeywordLuv

May 6th, 2008

A new Wordpress plugin has to be unique and useful for me to write about it. The KeywordLuv plugin by Stephen Cronin of More than Scratch the Surface is just that. It is one of those “I know I have too many plugins, but I must have this one” plugin.

What KeywordLuv does is allow for the inclusion of a name and keywords in the title field in the comments form. I see this as being useful to include your blog title alongside your name. Those who are familiar with your blog title but not your nickname can associate the two or vice versa. For those who do not know you at all your blog’s title may be an added incentive for them to visit you. The plugin has the potential to encourage more comments too.

Your keywords do not have to be your blog title and can be blog topic keywords; but care must be taken that you do not come across as being spammy. Where I can see the plugin useful is where there is something for which you want to become known for. An example that springs to mind here is Kim from Laketrees who could publicize her Top 101 Top Artists’ Blogs list, as this list is of benefit to other bloggers. I would not consider this spammy.

What do you think would constitute spam in a KeywordLuv name?

I have installed the plug myself. Please feel free to give it a try (even if you haven’t must to say).

To use:

In the name field of the comment form add your name in this format: name@yourkeywordtext

Example:
Typing in “Stephen@More than Scratch the Surface” (without the inverted commas) will appear as:
Stephen of More than Scratch the Surface

- although I do not see why you would want to use any one else’s name :-)

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Wordpress | 33 comments

Navigation Menus 4 - Dessert

March 20th, 2008

Table of contents for Navigation

  1. Navigation Menus 1 - Appetizers
  2. Navigation Menus 2 - Entrees
  3. Navigation Menus 3 - Main
  4. Navigation Menus 4 - Dessert

Today is the fourth course in my series on blog navigation menus - dessert. Some ’sweet’ menus for you to copy - suitable for Wordpress and Blogger.

Here is the html code you will need for all the examples:

HTML

<div id="menu">
<ul>
<li class="selected"><a href="http://www.your home page.com">Link2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.your link.com">Link2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.your link.com">Link3</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.your link.com">Link4</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.your link.com">Link4</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>

Menu Bar

CSS 

<style type="text/css">
<!--
#menu, #menu li a {background-color: #8AAADF; color: #ffffff; font-size: 1.0em; font-weight: normal; height: 1.5em; line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none; }
#menu, #menu li {padding: 0; margin: 0;} #menu ul { padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 25px; }
#menu li { float: left; list-style-type: none; white-space: nowrap; }
#menu li a { background-color: inherit; display: block; padding: 0 10px; border-right: 1px solid; border-right-color: #ffffff; }
#menu .selected, #menu a:hover { background-color: #B9CCEC; color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none; border-right: 1px solid #537495; border-right-color: #5B80A4; }
-->
</style>

Tabbed Menu

CSS

<style type="text/css">
<!--
#menu, #menu li a { color: #000000; font-size: 1.0em; font-weight: normal; height: 1.5em;
line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none; }
#menu, #menu li { background-color: #FFFFFF; padding: 0; margin: 0;}
#menu {border-bottom: 1px solid; border-bottom-color:#83E292;}
#menu ul { padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 25px; }
#menu li { float: left; list-style-type: none; white-space: nowrap; margin-left: 10px; }
#menu li a { background-color: #83E292; display: block; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px; border:0;}
#menu .selected, #menu a:hover { background-color: #A0E9AB; color: #ffffff; margin: 0; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; border:0;}
-->
</style>

You will of course need to change the links to your own: Copy the code for your chosen menu into a text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad and alter the links to point to where you want them to go. This means altering not only the link text - e.g. Sausage Links - but the hyperlink too. Change http://www.your link.com to the address you are pointing the link to. (remember that blogger does not use the www prefix so you homepage will be something like http://yourbloggeraddress.blogspot.com)

These menus, styled using CSS, are infinitely changeable. If you wish for a thicker menu bar change the height and line height values (currently 1.5em). Change the colors to suit the rest of your blog by changing the values for "background-color" and for text "color".

How to use them in your blog:

Blogger

You can do this by adding an "html/javascript" page element. Firstly you need to make sure you are able to add the page element in the place you want it.

Go to your layout/html section and backup your current layout. Tick the "expand widgets" box. You can alter either of the following two tags (you may not have the crosscol wrapper so will need to alter the header section.

Change: 

<b:section class='"crosscol"' id='"crosscol"' showaddelement='"no"'

To:

<b:section class='"crosscol"' id='"crosscol"' showaddelement='"yes"'

Or:
Change

<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'>

To: 

<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='2' showaddelement='yes'>

If you already have 2 widgets add another and so on.

Now go to your layout/add element area and add an HTML/Javascript element to the header or cross column section. Copy and paste the CSS and the html code from your chosen menu into this. Alternatively, add just the html code to your html/javascript element and put the css into the style area of your template. Because Cascading Style Sheets cascade you may find the font size of the menus too larage or small so change the "font-size" in the html.

Wordpress

You can approach this in two ways. If you already have a horizontal navigation menu built into your theme then you can just style this. The default Wordpress menu is already called "menu" so the only changes that are needed are to the your style.php file. From the menu examples above only add the CSS styling portion (the code between the "<style type="text/css"><!–" and "–>
</style>" tags), replacing any tags of the same name.

If you do not have a horizontal menu bar already you can add one by adding the html code to your themes header.php file - just below the header division.

If you want to get fancy then instead of your home page address you can use this line instead.

<li><a href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>"></a></li>

The next and final course in this menu tutorial will be made of a variety of fresh ingredients to tempt you to indulge yourselves.

Previous in series

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Blogger, Design and Coding, Wordpress | 25 comments

Blogosphere News 17th March

March 17th, 2008

News

Reading

Blogging Tools

Social Networking

  • Trusera is the place to tap into real world experience about people and their health. Stay awhile and tell us your story.
  • I have been using Friendfeed for a week or so now, since it opened up to the public. The name describes the service nicely - a kind of social networking aggregator. Add your friends/friends of friends and receive an online feed of their activity from their blog’s RSS feed, on twitter, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, flickr, picasa, vimeo, netflix, jaiku, last.fm, pownce, reddit, tumblr, zooomr, ilike, status updates from GoogleTalk. Once I am able to find more of my friends on their it will be very useful. Here is my pageif you want to find me. More info from
    SheGeeks FriendFeed is THE Next Big Thing 10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed
  • Kill Them With Kindness - guest post by Saphrym on CK Marketing Blog

Wordpress

Search Engine News

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Blogging News, Social Networking, Wordpress | 9 comments

Contest - Win a Premium Magazine Style Wordpress Theme

February 10th, 2008

I have been searching for magazine style Wordpress themes for a new site I am planning and could not find a free template that totally suited my needs. I am impressed by the Revolution Themes which are very adaptable clean and, clear but they are premium themes currently costing $79.95

Revolution Theme for Wordpress

I then discovered a contest, being run by The Success Space, the winning prize being a free copy of the not yet released Revolution Pro Media Wordpress Theme so this post is by way of letting you know about the contest as well as entering it myself. The Success Space is a resource for Wordpress themes and plugins, social media, affiliate marketing, and more.

If you too want to be in the running for the free theme here are the instructions:

  • Write a brief post about this contest on your blog.
  • Be sure to include the following in your blog post:

The winner will be announced on 15th February so entries need to be in before then.
Good luck if you do enter.

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Wordpress | 11 comments

Yahoo Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress

January 29th, 2008

I have been trialling the Wordpress ‘Yahoo Shortcuts‘ plugin for a week or so now. As I found it a little tricky to come to grips with, I thought I would give you a bit of a run down on how to use it and a review based on my experiences. The images and popup links in this post have mostly been embedded using the plugin.

This plugin uses Yahoo Shortcuts to add Yahoo search popups and Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photos to blog content.

The image to the left is an example of a Yahoo Shortcuts “badge”.

As you are writing your post, the plugin searches for media relevant to your content. A message, at the top of the sidebar in your post window, alerts you to the number of ‘Shortcuts’ that have been found, allows you to review the post and choose whether to include all or some of suggested links and images:

Yahoo Shortcuts for Wordpress

The information suggested is based on various Yahoo search topics and services. A ‘Shortcut’ may lead to a Flickr image, a financial data, stock quotes , a map , a news item or information about specific companies, products, and people. More services are to be added (maybe maybe sports, movies, and music?)

If you want to view and add what has been suggested for inclusion in your post, click on the “Review this Post” button. You will be taken to an edit screen, which shows your post with the suggested shortcut ‘keywords’ underlined with a blue dotted line and a small arrow icon to the right of them. Hovering over the underlined word gives you a preview of the link suggested. Clicking on the arrow brings up options based on the type of content suggested. From here you can delete the link. Where graphical representations are available you can choose to convert the link into a badge, which embeds an image instead.

Yahoo! Shortcuts

A section at the bottom of the Yahoo post review window post shows Flickr thumbnails based on keywords in your post. If there are no images to your liking, a search function allows you to browse for more within the same window.

Yahoo! Shortcuts

Hovering over a thumbnail will produce a popup window showing you a larger version of the image. If you decide to include it, clicking the “Add to Post button in this window produces another popup window where you can choose the size of image. Pressing “Submit” here will insert the image into your the review post window. Once you are happy with the shortcuts included, press save and you will be taken back to your post window.

Opinion:

Flickr Image placement - if you wish to move the image from its automatically embedded position at the top of the post to somewhere else, care has to be taken that your post layout is not messed up and that text is not floating in places you don’t want it to go. Center placement may be the safest. This image came up for the words “Flickr Image” and he is cute so I thought I would leave him here:

I have not found much use for the linking and badge features, but it was only its Flickr image capabilities that initially attracted me to the plugin.My blog topics do not lead to many automatically suggested and relevant Flickr images. I can, however see this feature being of great use to some blogs.

Once I got used to the interface the plugin became much quicker to use.

Let me try some words to see what the plugin comes up with:

“Funny Sign”‘

“Chocolate”

That is too tempting, I feel a chocolate attack coming on. :wink:

Links:

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Images and icons, Tutorials, Wordpress | 3 comments

Add Widget-ready Sidebars to Wordpress Footers

January 11th, 2008

Now I have removed my Christmas theme formatting, I am ready to work more on my blog design.. Having made the move to Wordpress from Blogger not long before I added the festive colors and images, I had not spent any time on the real theme. I know I am doing this backwards - most sane people would decide on a theme before showing their blog face in public. The reason, I want to talk through the process I am going through as I do my design as a way of teaching anyone who may be interested.

To alleviate the problem of those resource hungry social networking widgets making page load time slow, I have now relegated them to the footer. Not being a php expert - (not much past the “hello dolly” stage) I had to search for a way of doing this. I had to piece together various bits of information here and there so I thought it an idea to put it all together for your edification and delight. (I am wondering how many left after reading the last part, thinking how boring). Anyone using anything other than Wordpress may as well take their leave at this point too, although I would much rather you click on recent posts or archives and stay a while longer on this blog of course.

Rather than having to add widget codes directly into my footer.php, I have added “sidebar” elements into the footer. This means I can add widgets to them from the Wordpress dashboard widget page, which gives me more flexibility if I change their content..

How to add a sidebar to a Wordpress footer

Firstly I had to tell Wordpress to insert new sidebars into my theme by altering the footer.php file.

As I already have two sidebars and wanted 3 columns in the footer, I needed to let the Wordpress architects know that instead of two sidebars I now needed 5. (the architects are those that work on the basic structure and design - in my imagination that is). For this I had to alter the functions.php file in my theme folder.

Edit functions.php:

Find the section in your theme folder’s functions php file that says something similar to the following- except the number will not be 5 yet:, it may be 1 or 2. Change the number to reflect how many sidebar elements you want in total (that is the number of sidebar(s) in your sidebar area plus how many you want in your footer) . If you do not have a functions.php file but have a widget enabled theme create the functions.php file including all of the code below.

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebars(5,array(
        'before_widget' => '',
        'after_widget' => '',
        'before_title' => '<h4>',
        'after_title' => '</h4>',
    ));
?>

Now the architects have drawn up their plans, the construction team come in to put the new sidebars in place. They need to build the new “sidebar” elements into the footer. I added mine at the very top of the footer straight after:

<div id="footer">

Add to footer.php:

<div id="footer-sidebar" class="secondary">
   <div id="footer-sidebar1">
     <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
      || !dynamic_sidebar(3) ) : ?>
     <?php endif; ?>
   </div>
   <div id="footer-sidebar2">
     <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
      || !dynamic_sidebar(4) ) : ?>
     <?php endif; ?>
   </div>
   <div id="footer-sidebar3">
     <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
      || !dynamic_sidebar(5) ) : ?>
     <?php endif; ?>
   </div>
</div> <!-- Close footer-sidebar -->
<div style="clear-both"></div>

I gave my new elements the id of “footer-sidebar” but you could call them anything you like as long as the name is unique - that is, different to any other id name you have in your theme.

That done, when your site loads, the builders come in and add the sidebars into the footer. Imagine how busy they are grabbing all the bits needed to put your page together.

The problem is the building is is still very basic. Now we need some interior designers to add a bit of style and finesse. Crack open your style.css file and pretty up the sidebars so they sit side by side of a width that is going to suit the sort of content you want in them. I made mine all the same width, measured so they stretch the full width of the footer: I gave the whole footer a border. I could have added borders around each sidebar, added background color etc, but wanted to keep it simple for these instructions.

Add to style.php

#footer-sidebar {
  border: 1px solid #cccccc;
  display:block;
  height: 260px;
}
#footer-sidebar1 {
  float: left;
  width: 300px;
  margin-right:20px;
  }
#footer-sidebar2 {
  float: left;
  width: 300px;
  margin-right:20px;
 }
#footer-sidebar3 {
  float: left;
  width: 300px;
 }

Note that the divisions have the same names as I gave them when adding them to footer.php

As, by the time you read this, I may have altered the formatting of the footer once more to add extra styling elements here is an image of what it looks like after adding the above styling.

Blogging Sueblimely

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By User ImageSueblimely | Category: Design and Coding, Wordpress | 20 comments

Using your own Blog URL as your OpenID

December 7th, 2007

Blogspot Blogger users are already reporting a drop in comments from non Blogger blogs, following the change in the comment form login process. I should imagine this is primarily from new visitors rather than those who visit and comment regularly, although some may be confused by the new comment login process and not bother. Those who do not allow anonymous comments may not realise they are cutting off all comments from non Blogger users.

Blogger in Draft is now testing a new feature that allows readers to sign into comments with an OpenID. (I talked about OpenID in my last post). However, if you are a non Blogger user, just having an OpenID is not enough to link your comment name to your blog. This will just create a link to your OpenID profile. In order to divert this link directly to your blog you need to add some code between the <head> and </head> section of your theme/template. (In Wordpress this is located in the Header file). This is known as OpenID delegation.

A simple way of doing this, for Wordpress hosted on your own domain, is via a plugin to be found at OpenID Delegate WordPress Plugin although I have not tried this out myself. Once activated you have to configure the plugin with your own OpenID details.

The other way is to manually add the code to your head section.

Here are examples of the code you add. As you can see below, the url varies according to which OpenID provider you are using. The information needed should be in your provider’s help documentation.

ClaimID.

<link rel="openid.server"    href="http://openid.claimid.com/server" />

<link rel="openid.delegate"

href="http://openid.claimid.com/yourname " />

MyOpenID

  <link rel="openid.server"        href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />

<link rel="openid.delegate"

href="http://yourname.myopenid.com/" />

<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location"

content="http://www.myopenid.com/xrds?username=yourname.myopenid.com" />

Thanks to Meg for “Dipping into her Blogpond” and putting me onto this coding in How to Get an OpenID and link it to your Blog URL

Once the code is added your blog URL may need to be activated by logging in to your OpenID provider account.

What has now happened is that you have authorised your own blog URL to be your OpenID address. Instead of logging in to OpenID supported sites and leaving comments using your OpenID URL you can now use your own blog’s URL. e.g. instead of using http://claimid.com/sueblimely I can now use www.sueblimely.com to log in to OpenID supported sites, including Blogger in draft. The link in comments I leave now lead directly to my blog.

When choosing an identity to leave comments in Blogger in draft you now choose the checkbox “Sign in Using” and then “Any OpenID” from the drop down box. Type in your blog URL in the box that appears below.

blogger in draft login

The first time you leave a comment you will be directed to your OpenID provider to to let them know that you trust Blogger to access your OpenID. (although you may not be associating the word trust with Blogger right now!) More details are to be found at the official Blogger in Draft blog New feature: OpenID commenting

I wonder if Blogger users can get around the problem of the links in comments they make leading to their Blogger profile, rather than to their blog, by registering with an OpenID provider and adding the relevant code to their template? (Update - it seems they can - Kim of Poeartica has left a comment to this post and her name leads directly to her blog and not her blogger profile)

If all this is too much trouble maybe it is time to move to Wordpress and your own domain. Snoskred is offering hosting AND the setting up of a Wordpress blog for only $5 per month. This includes all the set up, including necessary plugins and exporting your blog from blogger if necessary - a working all set up and ready to go blog within around 24 hours. This is a great deal and if you need help setting up your blog I reckon this is the way to go. Snoskred is very knowledgeable about Wordpress and the sort of blogger, goes out of her way to help others and is concerned about the effects of the new blogger comment system.

Update: phydeaux3 has comprehensive details on how Blogger users can set their blogs up for Using OpenID for Blogger Comments.

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