"WordPress" Category Archives (10 entries)
Topics related to WordPress blogging software community.Parent-Categories are:
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- blogging (253)
Wordpress For Dummies - Review
I waited so long for WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and it was well worth the wait. I had been wanting to learn Wordpress and had been a fan of Lisa's blog so it was just what I needed as a motivator.
It's a "Dummies" book so it's got that easy to use format. And it's a reference book so most of it is not meant to be read linearly. If you've always wanted to set up a blog or switch to WordPress this is the way to go. It explains it from the basics up to the advanced. It's step by step and it'll get you running on your own host or at WordPress.com with ease.
It covers Migrating to WP, 10 Great Free Themes, Ten Great Plugins, Using WP as a Content Management System, Understanding Templates and Plug-ins. It covers pretty much everything you need to know but those are the chapters I've read the most and use for reference. If you don't know anything about PHP you'll painlessly learn the bits that you do need to know for modifying templates (this is optional) and you'll have picked up enough for when you want to use PHP for other "web stuff".
As I'm writing this post, I'm flipping through the book seeing if there is anything I've missed mentioning. There are so many areas of WP that I haven't explored yet, I've read about them in the book and I can't wait to try out some of the other features!
Just about everything I've needed to know was in there, the only thing that I couldn't find was detailed info on custom-fields which was (probably correctly) considered too advanced for a Dummies book.
There are 3 different flavors of WordPress (they host, you host, and multi-user) and they all share multiple features so just pay attention to which flavor she's talking about and you'll be fine.
It's an awesome book! If you want to set up your own blog, self-hosted or not, WordPress is easy to use and WordPress For Dummies is the book to use.
Posted by Gary on Sunday at 9:13 PM on February 3, 2008.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging, books, reviews
WordPress vs. Movable Type
I've always been a huge fan of Movable Type, but I've been playing with WordPress on and off lately and I think it might become my new blogging platform for anything new I create. I'm not sure if I'm willing to export and import my old blog and lose a bunch of Google results because the pages aren't named the same or because of something else unforeseen.
Here's my whole comparison wrapped up in to two sentences -
I think WordPress is easier to setup and it's also easier for beginners to do advanced things with WP than Movable Type. From the other side, I think that doing really advanced things is easier with Movable Type, while doing ultra-advanced things are probably equal between the two.
The biggest thing I don't like in WordPress is how dynamic things are and if your web host goofs something up, the dynamic stuff chokes which would be your whole site; I've seen this happen with several different hosts. In MT I kept my main page and individual page posts static, and the rest dynamic so at least the whole thing didn't crash. Also, the dynamic-ishness of the pages slows things down a little. But it's so very easy, I can't even tell you how easy it was to do an upgrade (one tip: if you modify a default template to use, be sure to rename the folder it's in and you won't accidentally over-write it when you upgrade). On the other hand, when I post something to WP it's very very quick since it's not rebuilding things. That's really nice to be done as soon as you post.
So far it's also been much easier to do (incremental) upgrades with WordPress. It's actually so easy, I'm surprised they haven't added a few other steps which would make it one-click. It's really disabling the plug-ins, copying the new directories over the old and reactivating the plug-ins; I'm sure this could be made one-click to "halt" the plug-ins, copy from the path that you specify, clear the cache and start the plug-ins back up.
Posted by Gary on Saturday at 9:59 PM on February 2, 2008.
Related categories: Movable Type, WordPress, blogging
More Space for WordPress
WordPress.com is a place where you can have your own blog, it's got lots of great features and it's free! They do have some advance features you can pay for like your own custom domain name, more disk space and other great features.
Here's the newest great part: they used to only have free storage of 50 MB of files and they just upgraded your free space to 3 GB (that's 3,000 MB) so that's a heck of a free upgrade! It's not that 50 MB is all that small, but a bunch of photos from your 8-megapixel camera and you can fill it up pretty quick, 3 gig is a very generous amount of free space. Now they are selling 5 GB upgrades for the old price of 1 GB upgrades. If you already purchased a storage upgrade they've automatically increased the storage space.
One of the many reasons I'm liking the WordPress community more and more...
PLEASE Leave comments (or trackbacks/pings)Posted by Gary on Saturday at 10:00 AM on February 2, 2008.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging
WordPress Weekend!
I've got a few posts about WordPress that I've never finished up (including a book review). So I plan to post them and get them out of my drafts folder. I'm writing this down so that I'll remind myself to finally get this done :)
Aren't you excited!?!
I'll probably take my tree down too...
Posted by Gary on Friday at 8:15 PM on February 1, 2008.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging
Let it Snow!!!
So it's snowing and we're supposed to get a lot tonight (the "don't park in the street" siren already went off). I'm geeked about that since it doesn't seem like Christmas without it.
But I've noticed I've still got a fall theme up on my blog so I'll be changing that to a Christmas theme that I've used before (if I can find all the parts). I've been learning Wordpress and so far I've learned it's SO much easier to change themes in WP than in Movable Type...
So it looks funny over the next hour or so, I'm working on getting out the fall colors!
Read or leave comments (or trackbacks/pings)Posted by Gary on Saturday at 10:29 PM on December 15, 2007.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: kilax
Why I want to use WordPress...
So I've really been wanting to try WordPress for my blogging. It's been growing in use (at least the people I'm reading are using it) and more and more internet providers seem to be including it with packages. So it really seems to be a product to use, I've been a devoted MovableType user for just under 4 years and I'm willing to try something new...
A few reasons besides jumping on the bandwangon with everyone else (a lemming, I am not): I like the default templates more than MT's, I think it looks easier to use and set up for beginners (this would be for me helping other people, I like complicated) and they're not lacking any plugins (1,198 and counting). Also, it's time to learn something new and this like it's well worth learning...
My copy of WordPress For Dummies still hasn't shipped and I've bugged Lisa (the author) a few times about buying an autographed copy and now she's having a contest to give away a few autographed copies for her anniversary! So this is my post/entry to count as my entry for that...
Posted by Gary on Monday at 1:20 PM on November 5, 2007.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging, books
Thanks for the 2 comments/trackbacks from: Lisa Sabin-Wilson: Nika
WordPress for Dummies
WordPress For Dummies is coming out on Monday (a few weeks early), and it looks like it covers most of the new features that are in WordPress. I've been reading Lisa Sabine-Wilson's blog (JustAGirlInTheWorld.com) for a few years, but generally the tech info doesn't help me since I'm not a WP user. Since I've been wanting to try WP for a while now (I've just played with it a little bit recently) this will help me on my way. So keep an eye out and pick up a copy (or order it on-line) when you get a chance...
I just ran up to Border's to make sure it wasn't on the shelves already and it wasn't out, so I'll leave my pre-order with Amazon (and save 5% since it's a pre-order and the price is guaranteed if it drops).
It's actually in to be shipped with Three Fallen Women by Amy Guth who happens to be another blogger (bigmouth indeed strikes again) that I read. Gotta order $25 or more to get free shipping so it seemed a good time to get it...
Posted by Gary on Saturday at 5:48 PM on October 27, 2007.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging, books
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: kilax
Jott is So Cool!
So many times I wish I could call someone late at night or early in the day to leave a message without waking them. THere are some services that delay delivery like this, but they're (at least in the past) costly and slightly difficult.
Enter Jott: It lets you set up a list of people on-line. You call Jott say who/what you want to Jott (you put yourself in the list too) and then leave a thirty second message and it sends it to their e-mail. Did I leave out that it very accurately transcribes the audio file into text for you too?!? And it's free?!? And it includes an audio file link too, just in case the transcription is garbled. Think about that before I tell you what else it does...
It'll post it to a blog for you too (Blogger, WordPress (even if self-hosted), TypePad, LiveJournal), it'll Twitter and Jaiku it for you too and post it to a Yahoo! Group and 30 boxes and you can use it to get Zillow (home value) quotes too. And it'll set up reminders for you too. It's all hands-free with your phone. And it's free!
I just posted a sample Jott for you to read, if you listen you can hear a slight mistake but it's close enough, you've never know unless you listened to it. Other than the sentence in bold that says to read this message, it's just cut and patse. FYI, the sample is a cheat, I really posted it to WordPress and just copied the post here for demonstrations sake. It currently does not work on Movable Type, I think it's just the way MT handles multiple blogs, but since it uses XMLRPCs pretty close to the other blogs I'm hoping it's a simple fix (but it's beyond me).
You must try this!!! I've get it set for a few friends, my work e-mail and my home e-mail so I can just call with reminders for me or to get free 30 second transcriptions of text for e-mail that I need to send back at the office.
Sometimes it does take a few minutes (no more than 5 minutes, usually 2 minutes) for the Jott to get transcribed.
Posted by Gary on Monday at 12:54 PM on September 24, 2007.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging, web sites
Thanks for the 2 comments/trackbacks from: Jonathan: Gary LaPointe
A Plethora of Things.
So I normally don't put too many topics per post, actually I generally only put one topic per post. But I've been sick and all my little post-its on things to blog about are getting too long. So I'll steal the Bullet Sunday idea from Dave for this week.
WordPress - WordPress is one of the larger blogging platforms, lots of plug-ins and looks well supported. For example, on Wednesday Matt (a WP developer) is having a WordPress 2.3 upgrade party in San Francisco WordPress 2.3 is coming out on Monday, so come out Wednesday evening and upgrade your blog with the pros. How badly can you screw it up when the developers are right there? If you upgrade your blog before Wednesday come and help out others and make feature requests.I think it's kind of a cool idea I'd go if I were in the area and I don't even really use it. I'm hoping I can hold off to really using it until after Lisa Sabine-Wilson's WordPress for Dummies book is published. What I don't like about WP is that it's all dynamic (but that's part of what I do like about it too). The dynamic-ness is just going to slow things down; I liked that in MT you can make some pages static and some dynamic but the cool part is MT will cache the pages once it generates them until the next post so it's semi-static. Keep in mind you break some important dynamic function, everything is probably going to break. I think my next blog experiments will be with WP....
Legion of Super Heroes - Season one was great but season two (started yesterday) has the Superman from the 41st century (actually a clone of the 21st century Superman) who has traveled back to the 31st(?) to work with Legion and (I'm assuming) the SuperBoy/Man of the 21st century. It seems like it's going to be a little two complicated. They characters seem liked the characters have gotten a little bit older too (Duo Damsel is so cute). 
Read or leave comments (or trackbacks/pings)
Posted by Gary on Sunday at 9:04 PM on September 23, 2007.
Related categories: WordPress, general, health, web sites
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: Gary Said...
My categories
I really don't like my categories as they stand. I either want to expand them or shrink them. I'm really thinking of trying something else so I can ultra categorize everything. I'm thinking:
Supposedly WordPress is pretty diverse in this manner, but I'm not sure if it'll cross-reference (like have the FAMILY under ME be the exact same as the one under PEOPLE). PLEASE Leave comments (or trackbacks/pings)
Posted by Gary on Monday at 4:41 PM on May 31, 2004.
Related categories: WordPress, blogging
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