Daily Twaddle

If your name is Carol, this post will bore you.

I’m working with a client to build his website for the launch of his new business. I decided to build the site with WordPress so that he can update the content himself.

In doing so, I found two incredibly useful WordPress plugins.

The first cforms II, is the most robust and easy-to-use contact form plugin I’ve seen. And I must have tried six of them. This one is so user friendly, customizable with templates, and easy to install (just paste a tiny line of code in whichever post/page/text widget you want).

Not only can you customize the look and content of the form, but you can customize what happens after the user submits the form. Redirect to another page? Display custom pop-up messages? Copy (CC:) you, the user, your mom, and your dog? Awesome.

Next…

We have WP-Super Cache. Yeah - it’s super. This plugin generates a static html file from my WordPress blog files. This speeds up the loading time of this blog tremendously. Actually, I’m not sure about this particular blog (dailytwaddle) since I just installed this plugin three minutes ago. But, it doubled the loading speed on my client’s site. SWEET!

Update: I don’t like meeboo. I switched to Google Chat.

I installed a chat widget on the sidbar of my blog. You can send me an instant message so we can text each other. No need to sign up for an account or download any software… just start typing (but please tell me who you are when you write. )

« Look for “Live Chat” on the left sidebar. Chat me up homies!

Add This To Your Website

Carol and Mom skip this info! It’s just for those who want this technology on their own website.

1. Sign up for a meebo account.
2. Get the code for a meebo me widget.
3. Add this code to a text widget through your WordPress Admin.
4. Add this account to your Adium chat (or other) program.
   1. File > Add Account > Jabber
   2. Jabber ID: yourname@meebo.org
   3. Options Tab > Connect Server = meebo.org, Resource: Home, Port: 5222, Security: Allow plaintext authentication.

I can’t figure out how to automatically allow “allow anyone.” Adium keeps asking me for authorization when my blog loads. Luckily I don’t get that many visitors.

- This is the most recognizable smiley, created with a colon and a closing parenthesis : )

But did you know that you can create a lots of different smilies with different emotions? Most blogs enable this feature, so give it a try!

:smile
:grin
:sad
:eek
:shock
:???
:cool
:mad
:razz
:wink
:neutral

Word Press blog owners: To activate smilies go to Options > Writing in your Admin panel and check the box next to “Convert emoticons like : - ) and : - P to graphics on display.”

I’ve been using WordPress since February and I’ve tried many plugins. So, here is my list of the plugins I use, what they do, and my star rating. If a plugin has a four-star rating, I’d be willing to pay for the plugin. A one-star rating means I could probably go without the plugin.

Note: This review has nothing to do with the quality of the plugin or it’s ability to do what it says it does. The stars just rate how much I personally like the plugin.

BTW: I used an HTML table for this list because I like tables. They’re great when I have information that displays best in a table.

For those of you using feeds to read my blog, you’ll see three strange words (freebird l whilst l jester) after the first paragraph of each post. It’s annoying yes… but it helps me catch spamming thieves.

Thieves? Whoa, sounds scary.

It is scary! Splogs take content via RSS feeds and post them to a spammer’s blog. Basically, they steal someone else’s good quality content (and keywords) to use as their own… posted nice and neat right next to all their spammy ads and links. They’re too cheap, stupid and lazy to write their own content. Unfortunately, their websites look real to an unsuspecting reader.

How do you know if your content has been stolen?

I use MaxPower’s digital fingerprint. I choose a few random words that are automatically placed in each post. I can search for this exact phrase by putting the phrase in quotes and doing a Google search to find my content on someone else’s website. Then… I can let all hell break loose. Really, I will inform God.. er.. I mean Google about the stolen content and Google will remove the site from their index.

Why bother? The Twaddle doesn’t have any good quality content.

Ha ha. Very funny. While you’re probably right, I still want to protect my intellectual property. Intellectual… okay, now I’m really stretching it!

Okay, fine. But why those three words?

I don’t know. I just Google searched for “random words” and I found a website with a whole page of them.

Dun Dun Duuuunnnn… (that’s scary music)

This morning’s version of the Twaddle was 2.0.2 and I just upgraded to 2.1.2. I didn’t know I had an old version until I tried to install an analytics program. I’ll talk about that plug-in later after I use it a little bit.

I read the instructions from Word Press to upgrade “in 5 easy steps.” Sounds simple enough. But, I began to get nervous with each step. First I had to delete half the files in my blog. I took a quick look at my blog after the delete process and I got the “Forbidden” error. Yikes! I needed to hurry up and finish the upgrade!

Word Press suggested that I backup certain files before I begin deleting. I went ahead and made a copy of my entire /blog folder. It took forever to download - but I have broadband (yay for me!). So, I knew if I screwed something up I would have all the original files.

Step four confused me. The directions said to “Visit your blog’s Upgrade Page http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the instructions that are displayed.” But I just deleted the wp-admin folder! Crap! How can I view a file in that folder after I delete it? But I uploaded the new wp-admin folder in Step three. Duh. No problem.

I took a sneak peek of this file (upgrade.php) with Text Edit before I accessed it with my browser. I found the words “So if you see this, you’re done.” What? Could it really be that easy? So, I entered the path in my browser, and wouldn’t you know it? My blog is up and running. No glitches at all.

Speaking of glitches…

If you’re running Word Press version 2.1.1, you need to upgrade right away! Word Press has declared the entire version dangerous.

A gravatar is a small avatar image that appears beside your name when you comment on blogs. It uses your email address to associate your unique icon with your comment. Cool right?

All you do is sign up for a free Gravatar account and upload your graphic. Then, anywhere you leave (or already left) a comment, you’ll see your image!

Of course, it only works on Gravatar enabled sites. And The Twaddle is enabled! Hurray!

← Check out my gravatar! You’ll notice it next to each of my comments too. Righteous!

Tech Stuff

The rest of this is for those who want to enable this on their own blogs.

I went through a bit of trial and error when I first installed Gravatar on this blog. So, I’m going to give a quick tutorial for anyone who wants to install this on their blog too.

First I went to the Gravatar site for Word Press and downloaded the plugin. I followed the installation instructions. Then I went into my themes folder, found the comments.php file and stuck this code

<img src="<?php gravatar("R", 40); ?>" alt="" />

next to the commenter’s name div. I messed around with inserting this code in the right spot until the gravatar rested neatly at the left. That’s it!