Archive for January, 2008

416 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND (Starting a web site)

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

416 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY Figure 15-14. Hierarchical categories Deleting Categories Deleting a category is as simple as clicking the Delete link to the right of the listing on the Manage Categories page. The link turns bright red as you hover over it to remind you that this is an irreversible change. If you do click it, a dialog box pops up to remind you of this fact and to give you a chance to cancel if you change your mind. The category will be deleted, but the posts will not be removed. They will be assigned to the default category. (Although it appears to let you try, you can t delete the default category.) Note If you do delete a category and then change your mind, and if you had a lot of posts assigned to it, you will have a tedious job of reassigning those posts. It would be nice if someone wrote a plug-in to allow mass assignment of categories to posts. Managing Comments I touched on comments, comment spam, and comment notifications in Chapter 14. In this chapter, I will take you through the management of comments with WordPress. Three main pages allow you to manage comments on your blog: the Manage Comments page, the Comment Moderation page, and one mode of the Manage Posts page. Finally, the public face of w you to manage comments.
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Web hosting providers - CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING

Friday, January 11th, 2008

CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY 415 Figure 15-13. Category descriptions can be displayed on your blog. Adding Subcategories You can add new categories as subcategories of an existing one. This is very useful if your topics lend themselves to this structure. For example, a blog about programming might have a Languages category and subcategories named Object Oriented, Procedural, and Functional. The subcategories can have sub-subcategories. For example, the Object Oriented category could be further subdivided with Java, SmallTalk, and Ruby sub-subcategories, as shown in Figure 15-14. Each of your posts can be assigned one or more categories. Most themes will display the categories for each post. Most themes also provide a list of all the categories used on your blog. Each of these different ways of listing the categories also usually includes a link to display all the posts in a category. When you display a list of all the posts in a particular category, the posts assigned subcategories of that categories are also displayed. So, continuing with the Language category example, displaying the Object Oriented category should also display entries in the Java, SmallTalk, and Ruby subcategories. Note If you don t have any posts assigned to a particular category, that category doesn t normally appear in the listings.
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414 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG (Web domain) AND

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

414 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY Figure 15-12. Manage categories from this page. Adding a New Category Adding a category is simple: type in the new category name into the Name field. Category names must be unique, but other than that, there are no restrictions. You should keep your category names relatively short and descriptive. Consider how the categories are displayed on the default template. It displays the categories a post is in with the text Posted in x, where x is the category name. Thus, category names like Hints and Tips, Technology, and Questions work well. You can add a description to each category, too. This description can be displayed on your blog, if the theme you use supports that. For instance, the description may appear as a tool tip when you hover your mouse over a link to the category, as shown in Figure 15-13.
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CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING (Michigan web site)

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY 413 Figure 15-11. Image code inserted into a post Tip An IImage Browser version in beta replaces the link in the corner with a button under the quicktag buttons. Check the http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/iimage-browser site to see when that version will be ready for release. Managing Categories Categories are a great way to help people understand the content on your site. They allow you to classify your posts and serve to group together posts with similar content. Categories in WordPress can also be hierarchical. A well-thought-out set of categories will allow members of your community to find the content they want. A post generally displays which categories it is associated with. This helps your reader make a quick judgment about reading a particular article. It is worth spending some time thinking about which categories best describe the intended content of your site. You manage categories from the Manage Categories page (no surprises there). Click Manage, then Categories, and you will be presented with a page that allows you to edit existing categories, create new ones, and delete old ones, as shown in Figure 15-12.
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Web hosting servers - 412 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

412 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY Figure 15-10. Insert Image controls You can specify how the image should be included; as an in-line image, as a link to the image file, or with some custom code. The custom code option requires you to edit the plug-in file itself. To add the image, select the Include as image button, type a description in the Description box, and click the Get the code button at the bottom of the form. Finally, click the Add it to the post! button. The plug-in creates the HTML link and inserts it into the post for you, as shown in Figure 15-11. The plug-in window stays open, so you can select another image to insert. When you have finished inserting images, close the window. The plug-in allows you to directly upload images, too. You can create folders and navigate to them when selecting images. This makes it much easier to organize your images. If your version of PHP supports it, the plug-in can also create thumbnails of your images as you upload them. It prefixes the full-size image name with an underscore (_) to recognize them. If a thumbnail is detected, you get an option to create a link to the full-size image with the thumbnail as the link. Additionally, the plug-in allows you to delete images. You can see why the IImage Browser plug-in is a great enhancement to the default WordPress behavior and is highly recommended.
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CHAPTER 15 STARTING (Remote web server) TO BLOG AND BUILDING

Monday, January 7th, 2008

CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY 411 Figure 15-8. Activating the IImage Browser plug-in Using the Plug-In If you now click Write to create a new post, you will see a new link labeled Insert Image in the top-right corner of the Write Post page, as shown in Figure 15-9. Figure 15-9. The Insert Image link appears at the top-right corner of the page. Clicking the Insert Image link pops up a new window that displays all the images in your configured image folder. (You can instruct WordPress to use any particular folder by configuring this on the Miscellaneous tab of the Options page.) The images are paged 30 at a time. If you have more than 30 images in your image folder, the plug-in will display the first 30 in the opening page and a link (at the bottom of the window) to second and subsequent pages of images. Clicking one of the images displays a set of controls for that image, as shown in Figure 15-10.
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410 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND (Web server setup)

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

410 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY The images you upload can be referenced in your posts and pages. Assuming your user level is high enough (as discussed in the Assigning User Permissions section later in this chapter), to upload images, all you need to do is click Upload along the top of the administration pages. This takes you to a page with a file browser button and a couple of other controls. Click the Browse button, and navigate to the image that you want to upload to your blog. When you have selected an image, you can add a description of the image. You can also choose to have a thumbnail generated and specify its size. When you have specified all your options, click the Upload File button. WordPress will tell you it has successfully uploaded the file and display the details of the image, including the name, file size, and type. It will also give you the code to display the image. You need to select the code it gives you and copy it to the clipboard. You can then paste that code into your blog post. This way of adding images to your post is less than satisfactory. If you are in the middle of creating your post and you decide to upload an image, you need to save the post as draft, go to the upload page, upload your file, copy the code to the clipboard, click back to the Manage Posts page, click your draft post, find your place, and paste the image code into your article. If you forget to save the post as draft, you will lose what you have typed so far. Because adding an image this way is so inconvenient, the next version of WordPress will probably have a different image upload interface. In the meantime, there is a much better way of handling images. Using the IImage Browser Plug-In WordPress allows you to install third-party plug-ins as add-ons to the software. These plug-ins can be created by anyone with an interest in changing the way WordPress works, adding extra functionality to WordPress, or even taking away functionality. Many, many plug-ins are available for WordPress more than 400 at the time of writing. A few good places to look for WordPress plug-ins are The WordPress Plugin DB (http:// www.wp-plugins.net/), the Plugin Directory (http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/PluginDirectory), and the plug-ins list on the WordPress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins). The particular plug-in I m going to introduce to you here is called IImage Browser, created by Martin Chlup .c. You can get it from his web site at http://fredfred.net/skriker/ index.php/iimage-browser. This plug-in is an enhancement of the Image Browser plug-in for WordPress 1.2, created by Florian Jung (which you can find at http://www.bistr-o-mathik.org/ code/wordpress-plugins/). Installing and Activating the Plug-In You need to download the latest stable version of the plug-in (1.4.2 at the time of writing) from http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/iimage-browser. Download the zip file to your computer and unzip the files. Using your FTP program, upload the iimage-browser-plugin.php file to your wp-content/pluginsfolder and the iimage-browser.phpfile to your wp-admin folder. You don t need to upload the third file, insert_image_placement.txt. To activate the plug-in, go to the Plugins Management page of your blog. You will see the new plug-in listed, along with any other plug-ins you have installed. (If you do not see the new plug-in listed, make sure that you uploaded the files to the correct places.) Click the Activate link on the right side of the plug-in description. WordPress will highlight the line to indicate that it is activated, as shown in Figure 15-8.
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CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING (Web hosting colocation)

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY 409 the original date and time the post was published. This is so that when you re making a minor correction to the post, for example, it retains the original timestamp. If you use the date (or even time) in the permanent link URI of the post, retaining the original timestamp is more important than it might seem at first. If you were to change the date, you would also change the URI. This would make the permanent link somewhat less than permanent. Tip If you set the Edit time control to a date and time in the future, the post won t show on the main blog page until that date and time is reached. It s great for putting together an article about, say, an announcement that you cannot publicize for a few days. Or, you might use it to post a message about a coming birthday or anniversary and have it automatically show up on the correct day. Additionally, if you know you are going to be away on a particular day, you can use this feature to post stories in advance and drip-feed them to your audience while you are gone. Using Custom Fields The last editable section in the Advanced Edit mode is the Custom Fields section. These are fields available to be used by various plug-ins you can add to WordPress. The use of these is always specific to the plug-ins you have installed and enabled. If you need to use any of these, the documentation for your plug-in will tell you. Previewing Posts The final advanced editing feature is the Post Preview section. When you are in Advanced Editing mode and click the Save and Continue Editing button, the post is saved, but you are left in edit mode with the same post still loaded. The Post Preview section displays the last saved version of your post. It will include any formatting added by you or any plug-ins you have, but does not use the style sheet of your theme. It will also display any images you have added to your post, which is the topic of the next section. Adding Images to Your Posts WordPress allows you to upload images to your site, and you can use this feature to add images to your post. However, a more convenient way to add images is to use the IImage Browser plug-in. Uploading Images with WordPress The Miscellaneous tab of the Options page holds configuration options for image file uploads. The first consideration is to ensure that the Allow File Uploads option is checked. The second consideration is the location that WordPress uses to store images you upload; the default location is usually adequate for most circumstances.
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408 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND (Web site counters)

Friday, January 4th, 2008

408 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY Using Advanced Options More options are contained in the Advanced section at the bottom of the Write Posts page, as shown in Figure 15-7. Figure 15-7. Advanced options in Advanced Editing mode These options work as follows: Post Status: Just below the standard editing controls, you will find radio buttons to set the post status. These statuses Published, Draft, and Private correspond to the statuses resulting from clicking the Save as Draft, Save as Private, and Publish buttons, as described earlier. Send trackbacks to: This field corresponds to the TrackBack URI described earlier. Post slug: This strange-sounding field is the part of the permanent URI to your post used in the search engine-friendly URLs you can configure in WordPress. See the Improving Search Engine Visibility section later in this chapter for more details. Post author: This drop-down list allows you to assign the authorship of a post to another author. If you don t see this field, that s because it works only if your own user level is level 7 or greater. If you do have access to it, you can assign posts only to authors of lower levels than yourself. (See the Assigning User Permissions section later in this chapter for more details on user levels.) Edit timestamp/Edit time: These options allow you to edit the published timestamp of the post. As a general rule, you probably won t want to modify this. It can, however, be used to post blog entries in the future. To use this control, fill in the date and time fields as you want, and check the Edit timestamp check box. If you are editing a post that has already been published, the box will be checked for you. The date and time will be set to
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CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO (Web server on xp) BLOG AND BUILDING

Friday, January 4th, 2008

CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY 407 Figure 15-6. A password-protected post Caution The protection of posts available through WordPress s Advanced Editing mode is quite rudimentary. The password is stored in plain text in a cookie on the reader s machine. Anyone else using that same browser will be able to read that post for the next ten days (the lifetime of the cookie). The password is even stored in plain text in the database. Please don t use this feature for anything that is really sensitive. Adding Excerpts The next advanced feature is the Excerpt box, where you can write your own excerpt to describe your post to people browsing feeds. When a reader subscribes to one of the XML feeds available from your blog RSS, Atom, or RDF one of the pieces of information provided as part of that feed is a description, along with the title, date, and so on. This is usually an excerpt of the post content. By default, Word- Press will create that excerpt for you by stripping all the tags from your post and extracting the first 250 or so characters. Often, this will be sufficient for most people s needs. Sometimes, however, the opening sentence or two from your post isn t really a good description of what it is about. It s kind of like the difference between the blurb on the back of a paperback novel and the opening two sentences. If you want to make sure that people browsing the latest feeds will want to visit your blog and read your posts, you should write the excerpt yourself. Think of it as a targeted summary of the post that may additionally improve your site s search engine visibility, as discussed at the end of this chapter. Note You can change the default setting so that the full contents of the post will also be sent with a feed. Click Options, then Reading to display the Reading Options page. In the Syndication Feeds section, check Full text for the For each article, show option. If you specify Summary for that option, only the excerpt is contained in the feed.
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