Author Archives: evillaluz

WordPress by Miraz Jordan

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EVERYONE CAN CREATE A WEBSITE OR BLOG WITH MINIMUM FUSS AND EXPENSE. FIND OUT HOW WITH MIRAZ JORDAN. SHE MAKES THE COMPLEX EASY TO UNDERSTAND

“I believe that we can all use technology such as computers and the Internet to bring change into the world, improving ourselves, others and this planet, our only home in the universe.” — Miraz Jordan

Miraz Jordan is a Wellington, New Zealand-based blogger and writer with a particular interest in Internet technology: where it’s going, what’s happening, and how that affects regular folks and community groups. She co-authored the very popular book WordPress 2 Visual QuickStart Guide, and has written extensively about making websites, using the Internet, and using Macintosh computers. She recently created a new blog called Paperchains whose purpose is to help reduce the amount of wasted paper in the world and thereby reduce fuel use, pollution and other negative impacts. Jordan regularly uses Twitter, and dips in to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr. She helped organize the successful Webstock 06 and 08 Web Conferences.

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Adding spaces around images in WordPress

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A short tutorial on how to add spaces around images placed into posts and pages.

Write post window

Write post window

Start from the Dasboard. Create a new post/page or manage an existing post/page.

Click on image to show image editing icons

Click on image to show image editing icons

Clicking on the image will reveal two icons. The left “picture” icon will reveal two settings panels. The red (/) icon will delete the image from the editing area.

Edit image panel

Edit image panel

Add appropriate information here. The image margin settings are in the Advanced Settings panel.

Advanced settings panel

Advanced settings panel

More settings are found in the Advanced Settings panel. This panel has fields for setting horizontal and vertical margins around the image.

Image with 4 pixel margins

Image with 4 pixel margins

Enter values in the fields Horizontal space and Vertical space.

EventCalendar3 patch for WordPress

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I like EventCalendar3 (EC3) because you can subscribe to the posed calendar events from iCal (OSX), Sunbird or Google calendar. It’s now under the care of Alex Tingle and you’ll find it here: http://wpcal.firetree.net.

Starting from WordPress 2.5 EC3 wouldn’t work properly. There are patched files to make it good again. The issue and a downloaded fix is documented here: http://penguin.firetree.net/pipermail/eventcalendar/2008-September/003289.html

Not Everyone Needs a Blog

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Most people I know haven’t the desire to stand on a soapbox and blog. All they want is a web site that provides basic information which they can update from time to time. WordPress makes an ideal platform to do this.

The purpose of this article is to show how easy it is to make a simple non-blog web site using WordPress and a few useful plug ins.

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Scan your theme for suspect code

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Here is a useful WordPress plug in for alerting you to suspect code in theme files. It’s from builtBackwards. If you’re like me I go exploring and download lots of interesting themes. Most times I don’t have time to examine the files minutely. So, this plug in is really helpful for scanning all the files in a theme.

TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)

Scan all of your theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code. Be aware of advertisements or dangerous JavaScript inserted into legitimate themes by third party theme download sites.

http://builtbackwards.com/projects/tac/

Developing content for the iPhone

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Web sites and Internet services that are iPhone friendly will be an important opportunity for web developers and people who host a web site. The next Web Weavers Workshop will feature iPhone expert, Rich Warren, who will share his thoughts and tips on creating content for the iPhone and other mobile devices.

More information about the event here.

Setting the ALT tag in WordPress 2.6

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WordPress 2.6 introduced changes to image and media handling. One thing that might not be easily evident is the matter of ALT tags for images.

susanj at GIRLZWITHURLZ said this:

I also don’t feel good about deleting the caption (although I did that) as WP says that it also serve as the img’s alt tag, and I want to provide alt tags for ADA compliance, not just to be descriptive.

Well, I think you can have your cake and eat it, too.

WP 2.6 provdes another way to ALT an image under the Advanced Setting tab.

In the Advanced Image Settings section under this tab enter your text into the field, Edit Alternate Text. That will do it.

I tested this when I posted my photos of Willie K and Augie T from last night at my photo site: http://www.surfbreak.com.

To create this gallery of nine images I set the thumbnails to 150×100 (original size 640×427). I also set the vertical and horizontal spaces around the image to 3. I did these two items as well as set the ALT text under the Advanced Settings tab. I found the need to set thumbnails in the Advanced Settings tab because when the original is too large, WP does not automatically resize the thumbnail under the Edit Image tab.

The lightbox effect is done with this plugin:

http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/wp-shutter-reloaded/