First of all, “WordPress SEO” (read more here) by Joost de Valk is FAR superior than than “All in One SEO“, it also does the XML sitemap and the SEO (better than all in one). In fact, the SEO is done in a better and more intuitive way with multi-step recommendations.

As for the “AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget“, delete this. It’s pretty terrible because of the JavaScript loading times and the dependency on that JavaScript to be loaded. In my opinion, install WordPress.com’s “JetPack” and put their share widget in there (it’s way better and coming from a better and faster download source).

Can’t beat “Flagrant Disregard’s Feedburner Plugin“, you should be using this.

Must have plugins

1. Google Analyticator
2. WordPress SEO
3. JetPack
4. Flagrant Disregard’s Feedburner Plugin

TL;DR (summary)

Less plugins are good, because:

1. less to update
2. less to debug
3. less to manage
4. easier to install again on other WP sites

Installing JetPack will save you a lot of time in the future as Automattic are going to eventually be adding all the good functionality, availability and extensibility of the plugins at WordPress.com.

More about JetPack

Check out JetPack, read more about it on WP Founder Matt Mullenweg’s blog and the ultimately important link.

Now to google bot, go update these pages from cache please:

Page rank and MSN avatars. This is a shameless plug to get these pages updated in Google.

Now, more that ever I feel inclined to track earthquakes since Haiti and Chile had some pretty devastating mass movements, but also because I now live in Costa Rica, which itself is an earthquake zone (see map below). In fact, we felt the fall out from an earthquake off the coast of Chile just last week.

Apart from the US Geological Survey’s latest earthquake site, the best and most concise resource I have found is on Twitter and by following WheresItShaking. These two sites alone can keep me up to date with what’s going on in the world.

At school, I always wanted to get involved with Geology and enjoyed the study of Plate Tectonics. As well as my studies as a Chemist, I won’t ever forget the enjoyment of studying rocks and the earth, most likely because of the fact that the school trips (or at least one of them) was most legendary.

And yes, I wrote this on the WordPress app on my iPhone.

• New admin UI and WordPress 2.5.1
  You might want to hold back on upgrading if you feel like it’s a pain. If you need help with WordPress upgrades, get in touch and I am always glad to help.
• Guide to the WordPress loop
  Great guide, I’ve skimmed it. I know that sucker inside out but if you need to theme or add functionality to your WordPress then learn this.
• New bbPress (v 0.9)
  With the update of WordPress, bbPress has undergone an upgrade. It’s just as yummy as the WordPress upgrade and you should check it out if you use it already.
• Fix for Simple Trackback Validation by Donncha
  Just before I had LASIK I had fixed this issue in WordPress 2.5 RC1 after noticing the same errors in my logs. Donncha Ocaoimh has released a better fix than mine and I’ve replaced my sloppy code that did the job with his.

I wanted to test some new caching I’ve been working on that augments GZips compression. Well, perhaps “augments” isn’t a great choice of words, maybe “enhances”.

Did I mention WordPress 2.5 has been released already? ;)

Check out the announcement about the WordPress 2.5 release here and here is the official announcement on WordPress.org.

It saves me time from showcasing and documenting the new version. Have a hop along to the WordPress development blog and have a peek.

• Ad Server development – running locally, serving file from localhost, developing plugins and skins.
• WordPress development – again, running locally and being served from localhost, making/changing/hacking plugins and themes.
• We site development – you guessed it, it’s running locally using PHP and screwing with/tweaking Apacge.

I’m about to tell you the secret – I’m using MAMP. It’s a little like a LAMP except it’s a Mac which in itself is part of the UNIX operating system family with a hybrid kernel type. So Mac + Apache + MySQL + PHP = MAMP. It’s pretty awesome. It has configurable ports, PHP version 4 or 5 availability, Zend Optimizer availability and two choices of PHP accelerator (XCache or eAccellerator).

I don’t usually drop shameless links (except for that time when I thought it would be cool to monetize this site with stupi text links and sponsored posts, bad idea I know).

If you tinker with Macs have a peek at MAMP.

So far I have been following the testers mailing list (which you’re free to join) and watching for the bugs and what not. There have been a issues with the old K2 theme I used previously, hence the step up to the new theme and the auto downloading of plugins was a little flaky but now they work.

I’d love to hear from anyone else out there who has installed the latest WordPress.

Note. You should (in theory) never publicize your WordPress version because there are a lot of people out there dorking Google for URLs to break your blog and spam or hack it.

The best thing you can so is always keep up to date with the most recent WordPress version.  It keeps you hacker proof (most of the time) and will keep you up to date with the recent advancements with arguably the best blogging platform in the world (insert evil laugh here).

update [table_name] set [field_name] = replace([field_name],’[string_to_find]‘,’[string_to_replace]‘);

OMG, I am glad I listened in the database classes all those years ago :) I’m upgrading an older WordPress blog to the latest version and that lil query saved my life!

Here’s my question:

What is the best way to optimize an old WordPress blog that is running on the latest WordPress version, keeping all active function data and removing all the inactive function data from old plugins?

Essentially, a fresh new install of WordPress but with all the old data minus the crap.

• smallest – Use 8 point font-size when displaying the tag with lowest count value
• largest – Use 22 point font-size when displaying the tag with highest count value
• unit – Describes ‘pt’ (point) as the font-size unit for the smallest and largest values
• number – Display at most 45 tags
• format – Displays the tags in flat (separated by whitespace) style
• orderby – Order the tags by name
• order – Sort the tags in ASCENDING fashion
• exclude – Exclude no tags
• include – Include all tags

My only problem with this is that if you use the sidebar widget you can’t pass any parameters. Doh, previously I coded it into a php exec sidebar before the final release of 2.3 but now I used the widget, why not.

The long and short of it is that the widget inclusion needs to have a menu allowing you to enter some parameters. that’s kinda the point of this post, how are you all liking version 2.3?

Da da da da daaaaa, I’m lovin’ it. McLovin it even.

More about the wp_tag_cloud function here from the official WordPress website.

Dave brings up a good point that many good people leave community built and inspired projects (like WordPress) because of peer flaming and being shot down by people who have “been around longer”. I like the term “Founder’s Syndrome” – I know all too well about this theory and I can definitely relate to the roles that are played from both ends of the stick. I’ve been the Founder and wielded the mighty Stick of Doom and been the lowly mortal who suffered at the hands of another Immortal’s G-dly stick (sounds kinky).

Anyway, building a project and growing a project in a community means that there should be no room for condescending remarks on tester lists and there should definitely be a feeling that that community fosters newbies. More often than not people learn by their mistakes and screw things up, change their email and start fresh because now they know better.

I would like to rant on about this all morning but I have to do some work.

Another solution is to use Category Converter by Timothy Haroutunian. I’m probably one of the biggest advocates of this plugin because I think I posted about it a long time back when I discovered it and even helped Timothy bug fix it. Anyway, I can move categories fairly easily using this plugin, however, if I want to tag them then I think it’s not for me…

Let’s think, two database tables and one query, no, wait, in my head I know how to do this via two queries… I am glad the Nintendo DS Brain Age is helping me out with my thought process these days because life is complex and I have gotten my brain down to that of a 36 year old. That’s +6 on my current age. Anyway, that’s my rant for today over.

Check out the box in the bottom right. Yes, dummie, the one that says testing tags tag cloudage. I’ll most likely change that header for the cloud (in fact I just have) but at least I have a working tag cloud under the latest WordPress version using WordPress native tagging – booya. Stoked. Props to WordPress on the latest version.

Edit: I ran Leeroy Jenkins into this one and forgot to upgrade the plugins. Kids, don’t forget to upgrade your plugins. Oh well, at least I have chicken…

Nothing really much to add to this post, I am just testing the alleged tag support. So far I add the tags using the new functionality and it doesn’t display and if I use the added UTW plugin tag functionality it adds it, see above (right under the post title).

Let me know if anyone knows how to fix this, I saw an article that discusses how WordPress and UTW shares a similar function name and thus produces 404′s. I could fix it because it means I only have to rename all the functions in the plugin and widgets that use it but I’d rather wait for the official fix because I like to tweak my plugins :)

Anyway, I started writing this on thursday and UTW is installed, yay! :)

Carlo,

We are aware of this problem but unfortunatley don’t yet have a fix for
it. We have the z-index pretty high to deal with most of these problems
but Flash is what causes this problem in particular.

Sorry I can’t be of more help.

Brad
Snap Customer Service

>
> [Carlo - Mon Mar 26 14:02:22 2007]:
>
> Feedback Type: Snap Preview Anywhere
> Rating: 5
> Name: Carlo
> Email: Carlo
> Comments: On this post on my website
> http://nostatus.com/blogging/03/2007/crazy-mufti/
>
> You can see the link the the bit that says “check this” makes the snap
> preview appear under the video layer.
>
> Is there any way to prevent this or change the Z-INDEX of the CSS to
> make it appear on top of any layer?
>

I’ve tried to deleting the files but no luck there. I renamed the folder and we’ll see how it goes from there. I’ve contacted the guy who made the plugin and we’ll see how it goes from there, I’m very tired and very disappointed :

As it turns out, it wasn’t the plugin – just some tards writingto unsecured directories. My fault and they are jerks.

As well as the upgrade from 2.1, there is a new release for the 2.0 branch and they both have fixes for cross-site scripting (or XSS) attacks as well as a host of other bug fixes. It’s considered a low to moderate risk but hey, go do it and don’t worry about it later!

I don’t wait around for my blog to be attacked, I usually upgrade as soon as I see the notice from WordPress in my feed reader that there is a new release. I only wish Fantastico could handle an update really quickly!

More info on the new release here.