wordpress

The following posts are hopefully related to "wordpress" in some way.

Friday, April 4, 2008, 9:39pm

WordPress 2.5: Best New Features For You, For Clients

I’ve noticed that the new UI and functionality of the WordPress Admin have made me consider switching from MarsEdit back to the built-in, web-based editor.  Although I haven’t posted much here, I’ve been messing around quite a bit while installing the latest version for several Snowdrop clients and I’m very impressed.

It’s always interesting to hear what others - especially clients - feel are the biggest improvements when a new version hits the market.  For me, the colors and overall interface layout are the most noticeable (and appreciated) features, whereas clients have mentioned the better upload and media capabilities most often.

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Sunday, March 30, 2008, 4:21pm

I Deleted Everything Again (But Upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and Love It!)

For the second straight WordPress upgrade I managed to overwrite my entire /wp-contents/ folder and wipe out my existing themes. Evidently I need to pay more attention to the options in Forklift when I upload folder structures. There is a “merge” button and a “replace” button - I need the former, not the latter.

Anyway, at least it gave me a reason to complete the design I was working on for a future version of the site, although I didn’t expect to cram a lot of the functionality into a 12 hour window. Overall I’m pretty happy with how the design came out. Since I was going for a minimalist look, I tried for much more whitespace than in previous designs.

There are a few cool features, however, that I haven’t implemented yet, which will attempt to make this site more of a personal “lifestream” rather than a mundane blog. For example, I have API code for Flickr, Twitter, and Google to capture everything I do online in one place. I think that can add a lot to a blog, especially if its visitors don’t already have some idea of who the author is as a person and a writer.

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Sunday, January 27, 2008, 6:34pm

Secure Your WordPress Installation

Matt Cutts has a nice article and discussion about how to secure your WordPress installation. Security is a huge concern for businesses and organizations, especially when pitching an open source platform like WordPress. Therefore, any measures you can take as a freelancer to protect your client’s data is worthwhile. Matt mentions three tips, which I’ve summarized below:

1. Lock down your /wp-admin/ directory via an .htaccess file
2. Make an empty wp-content/plugins/index.html file
3. Subscribe to the WordPress Development blog

All three tips will take you less than 10 minutes total to implement, so why not?

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Thursday, January 24, 2008, 6:19pm

Using Google Alerts with Gmail and WordPress

I make fairly extensive use of all the Google services. One of my favorite “workflows” requires a combination of Google Alerts, Gmail, and WordPress.

Google Alerts
In a nutshell, Google Alerts lets you monitor specific phrases and keywords and sends you an email alert whenever a blog, video, or website in Google’s database mentions it. So, for example, here are a few active alerts.

Google Alerts

As you can see, I’ve set up alerts for many of the things that interest me. You can be notified whenever someone mentions your name, your blog, your local town, etc.. Then you choose the frequency that Google will alert you, either all at once at the end of the day or as often as new content arrives. So what do I do with these alerts? (more…)

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Thursday, January 17, 2008, 8:50pm

Leverage Your 404 Page Traffic

A lot of people put very little thought into their 404 page while others put in a great deal of effort into making their error pages either funny, informative, or both. I’m not one to talk right now, but for every client I work with I make sure to provide an effective 404 page aligned to the goals of their site. (more…)

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