This week I have a lot of WordPress information, email newsletters, bicycle commuting and some great videos.

• Facespace – A funny look at what might happen if Facebook and Myspace merged.
• Excerpts and Taxonomies for Pages in WordPress 2.9 – A tutorial on using excerpts and taxonomies with pages in WordPress 2.9
• 16 WordPress Sites to Help You Build a Better Blog – 16 great sites about WordPress. Some of my favorites are on this list.
• How to Secure Your New WordPress Installation – Techniques for securing WordPress during and immediately after installation.
• A Guide to Creating Email Newsletters – A great guide for getting started with email newsletters. The article even discusses email newsletter software, such as MailChimp.
• Philadelphia Vanquishes New York With Highest Bicycle-Commute Rate – An article about bike riding here in Philly.
• 40 Free High Quality WordPress Themes – A great collection of free WordPress themes.
• Hopefully you can park better than this.
  
• This kitty loves her food.
  

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 11/22/09

Earlier this week I wrote about the gallery shortcode that is built into WordPress and is used to display a simple image gallery on a post or page.

Shortcodes are basically shortcuts for inserting something into your post or page that is used frequently.

I can’t believe that I didn’t pay attention to them earlier, excerpt for some plugins that use them, as they have been around since WordPress 2.5

You can create your own shortcode for any phrase that you use often. This does, however, require writing a function and editing the functions.php file.

For example, say at the end of all Facebook articles that I write I wanted to add a link to my Facebook fan page.

In my functions.php file I would add:

function facebook() {
return' <a href="http://facebook.com/Anti.Social.Development"
title="Facebook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">(Anti) Social
Development on Facebook</a>';
}
add_shortcode('face', 'facebook'); ?>

I named the function and then it told it to return the link to Facebook that I specified. I then told it to add the shortcode, which includes two paramters – the name of the shortcode, face, and the name of the function.

The new shortcode is added to the post or page by simply typing:

[face]

This will add the following link in the post.

If I used this link frequently, using the shortcode would be a lot faster than manually adding the link.

This is a simple example of a shortcode and how it can be used. For more advanced examples, please read the article, Mastering WordPress Shortcodes, by Smashing Magazine.

Can you think of something that you write or use frequently that you would like to write a WordPress shortcode for?

photo credit: ehoyer

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Create Your Own WordPress Shortcode

When I was researching the upcoming features for WordPress 2.9, I came across the following: “Add support for ‘include’ and ‘exclude’ to (Gallery Shortcode)”

I didn’t know what the gallery shortcode was all about so I looked into it and was pleasently surprised to discover a built-in WordPress feature that allows you to display a simple image gallery on a post or page.

The gallery shortcode will display all of the images that you have uploaded to that post or page as thumbnails. Here’s how you do that.

1. Upload an image using the upload/insert button for the post or page where you want the images to display.
2. Save the upload but don’t insert it into your post or page.
3. Do this for each image that you want to display.
4. Add
   

   [gallery]
   

   into your post or page where you want the gallery to be displayed.

The gallery will look like the following:

These are all photos of my favorite soccer goalie, Iker Casillas, who plays for Real Madrid. He has nothing to do with this post but I needed images for this article and he is one of my top ten celebrity crushes. ;-)

The gallery shortcode has a number of options that can be added to it. Some of them are:

• columns – You can specify the number of columns for the image display
  

  [gallery columns="3"]
  

• id – This will display images attached to a specific post. For example, the gallery above displays the images for this post but by using the post id number I could display the images from a different post in this one.
  

  [gallery id="292"]
  

• size – will set the size of the images. The default is thumbnail but you can also use the medium and large images.
  

  [gallery size="medium"]
  

Obviously, this is not as full features as a gallery plugin like NextGen Gallery but for a quick and easy gallery on a post or page this shortcode works great.

I just can’t believe that I was completely clueless about it until recently.

If you want to read more about the gallery shortcode, there is information in the codex.

photo credit: voteprime

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

WordPress Gallery Shortcode: Add a Simple Image Gallery to a Post or Page

Facebook is planning a series of changes and improvements that will be rolled out over the next couple of months.

The most important of these changes for those of us with customized fan pages is that there won’t be any more boxes.

That’s right. No boxes! There won’t be a boxes tab, any applications that depend on boxes will need to be added, and we won’t have custom profile boxes in our sidebars.

These changes will negate the article I wrote about creating a custom facebook fan page in which I recommended that the Boxes tab be used for customization. I created a series of Static FBML boxes on my Boxes tab to make a custom page that was the default for new visitors.

As soon as Facebook implements the changes that removes boxes and the Boxes tab, the above page will no longer exist.

The best solution is to use Static FBML to create a custom tab and then create a layout in html.

I created a new tab and default welcome page to my fan site and named the tab (Anti) Social Development.

The applications tab is going to have less space and we will have 510px to work with. Even if you are already using a custom tab rather than the boxes tab, you will want to check the size and make any necessary reductions.

The plus side to this is that I wanted to create a custom tab rather than use the boxes tab and the upcoming facebook changes forced me to do so. Of course, the downside is that if I didn’t make the new tab my customizations would no longer be available.

These changes are scheduled for the end of this year or the beginning of next so there is some time to make the changes.

This does not, however, resolve the issue of other applications that use boxes or customizations I have made that use Static FBML in boxes in the sidebar. These do not warrant their own tab and some of the information has been included on the tab that I made but I will lose a level of personalization to my fan page. Hopefully Facebook will provide a replacement application for this.

This will also affect the Custom Profile box that I have on my profile page that I created to link to my fan page. Like I said, there won’t be ANY boxes used in applications. I don’t know how I can recreate this functionality but, again, am hopeful that Facebook will provide some sort of replacement.

I have not removed the Boxes tab or the sidebar boxes on the wall because I wanted to have them there as examples for this article and to compare and contrast the new tab vs the Boxes tab. I may remove them but since I have already made the new page it is fine with me if they disappear when Facebook makes their updates.

Well, it’s not fine with me but it’s one of those things that I have no control over. I’m just glad that Facebook provided advanced notification – that isn’t something they’ve been known to do.

I really am not sure what will happen to boxes such as favorite pages, the LinkedIn application, notes, etc. I suppose for them to work they will have to become tabs. But how many tabs does a page want to have? After 5 or 6 they don’t fit across the screen and can only be accessed with the dropdown arrow. I suppose we will just have to wait and see what happens.

If you need assistance converting your pages, please contact me as I provide a facebook fan page service.

For more in depth reading about these changes, please visit the following sites.

1. Upcoming Changes to the Facebook Application Platform
2. Facebook Platform: A Roadmap for the Future

photo credit: drp

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Upcoming Facebook Changes to Boxes and the Box Tab that Will Impact Your Custom Fan Pages

Enjoy!

• 12 Lesser Known but Useful WordPress Hacks – Hacks include using custom taxonomies, showing last modified date for a post and inserts ads within RSS feeds.
• Google’s Sesame Street Logos – This week was the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street and last week Google had a different Sesame Street logo each day. This page has all of the logos that were used in one location. (It pains me to say that I am slightly older than Sesame Street ;-)
• Tapping the Power of the Local Library Anytime Anywhere – An article about all of the resources available at the library. I LOVE the library (and not just because I went to Library School).
• America’s Most Toxic Cities – A list of the most polluted/toxic cities in the United States. 1 is the least toxic but I don’t – I’m not living in Las Vegas. Philly is #36 – that’s terrible!
• The 10 Healthiest Cities for Women (U.S.) – Wow! Fargo is a city? I’m moving there – you betcha ;-)
• Thesis Hooks Guide – A great guide to Thesis Hooks by Dave Wilkinson.
• I Live Without Cash – and I Manage Just Fine – An interesting article about surviving without money. He does have land to live on, which helps. Not all of us have that. But apparently, he needs a shirt ;-)
• Game Credits Starring Murray the Talking Skull from Tales of Monkey Island:Lair of the Leviathan. This is how to make game credits so people will want to watch them.
  
• How to wait for the bus
  
• Awesome 7 year old break dancer.
  

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 11/15/09

WordPress 2.9 is due to be released on … soon-ish (probably in December) and I thought it would be fun to review some of the upcoming new features.

My biggest hope with this release is that there will not be as many security updates are there were with 2.8. I always say wait until the .1 release to upgrade but I did not foresee .5 with the 2.8 series. Yikes!

Cool

1. Trash Status – when posts, pages and comments are deleted they will go to the Trash rather than being permanently deleted. This is very similar to the way the Recycle Bin works on Windows. I can see this being useful and also contributing to the size of the database.
2. Image Editing for Media Library – Simple edits will be possible on images in the Media Library. You will be about to rotate, resize and crop images.
3. Media Embeds – This one sounds good and I’m planning on writing an entire post about it. Basically WordPress will be able to automatically embed media from a variety of sources such as flickr and youtube. For example, if I have a url for a flickr photo and I paste the url into my post, WordPress will be smart enough to find the photo and embed it into your post. The photo will show up rather than the url. I think this is really going to help people use media in the blog posts.

Good

1. Better feedback on publishing of future posts and pages – I’m not sure what this feedback will be. I thought this was improved in 2.8 by providing the date the post was going to be published rather than saying in 5 days or whatever. I guess more feedback is good, right?
2. Allow blogs to be available in search engines checked by default – I wonder if this was a problem for people. When WordPress is installed, this needs to be checked so that the blog will show up in search engines. I actually prefer making the selection because I am frequently working on sites that are in progress and don’t want them to show up in search engines until the work is done.
3. Show correct max upload filesize error message – Correct error messages can only be considered a good thing ;-)
4. Allow a plugin to do a complete takeover of Post by Email – I don’t think the Post by Email feature has ever worked very well. I’ve never used it. But it looks like a plugin will do this now rather than it being a part of WordPress.
5. Add means of automatically repairing tables – I’m a little cautious about whether this is good or not. I would rather repair my own database tables and would be hesitant of having WordPress do it for me. I’ll need to see what it actually does.

Makes Me Laugh

1. Eliminate the redundant and confusing comment threading depth of 1 – Well, yes, a threading depth of 1 makes no sense because there wouldn’t be any depth.
2. Don’t offer to make a category its own parent – Umm … yeah, that really doesn’t make any sense.

Huh?

1. Fix race condition with autosave when clicking Publish immediately after entering post title – I have no idea what this means as I don’t know what a race condition is. This is far from the only thing on the upcoming features list, however, that I don’t understand.

If you want to read more about the upcoming features in WordPress 2.9 they are available in the codex. We can count and see how many make us say “what is that supposed to mean?”

photo credit: Clearly Ambiguous

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

WordPress 2.9 Upcoming Features

Many people put off upgrading to the newest versions of WordPress because they are concerned about plugin compatibility.

So, a plugin compatibility application has been developed and is now part of the WordPress Plugin Directory.

On the right side of any plugin page will be a box where you can select the version of WordPress and the version of the plugin to find out if they are compatible or not.

What is really cool about this is that the data is provided by the users. If you have an account, you can login and provide information by selecting either the Broken or Works button.

WordPress requests that people only select broken if the plugin really doesn’t work with the version of WordPress and not just because they are having problems with the plugin. They are also requesting to vote for Works just as much as Broken in order to gather accurate data.

What do you think? Useful? Will you check this before upgrading a plugin or WordPress? Will you vote? I think this is great and is a real step in the right direction in dealing with WordPress upgrades and compatibility issues.

photo credit: Roadsidepictures

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

WordPress Plugin Compatibility Beta

Recently I attended Biketoberfest sponsored by the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition and held at Dock Street Brewery

Biketoberfest is an annual fundraiser for the Bike Coalition and features beers, brats, bikes and bands.

The mission of the Bike Coalition is:

“Making bicycling better through advocacy and education by promoting biking as a healthy, low-cost, and environmentally-friendly form of transportation and recreation.”

Anyone who is interested in biking, carfree cities, and the environment should support this organization and this event. And bonus! Awesome beer brewed right on site and local indie bands. You can’t ask for much more than that.

We had a beautiful day for the event. (Although it was rescheduled from the previous weekend due to rain.) I did not, however, win the main raffle prize of a new bike, which I was certain I was going to win.

Here are three of the bands that played at Biketoberfest. I was really excited that someone posted a video from the actual event of the band that I liked the best. :-)

Grandchildren

TJ Kong and the Atomic Bomb

Pony Pants

Do you like biking, beer, or live bands? ;-)

I would have taken my own videos or photos if I had bothered to put down my cup of beer long enough to do so.

photo credit: Philly Bike Coalition

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Biketoberfest: Benefit for the Bike Coalition of Philadelphia

This week I have Facebook, WordPress themes, Star Wars, cargo ships and more.

• 5 Ways to Instantly Boost Your Facebook Page Traffic – A couple of ideas on how to get more visitors to your Facebook fan page. I would have to agree with adding the widget to your website. I only added it to write an article and got 20 new fans overnight!
• Did the Web Kill Gourmet Magazine? – An article about how the Internet may have contributed to the demise of this print magazine. Personally, I think Gourmet is responsible more than the web.
• Where Cargo Ships Die – Shipwrecks in deserts? Yep! I guess that ship in the middle of the Lost island isn’t so bizarre after all.
• What Star Wars Teaches Us About Career Management – I lived with someone obsessed with Star Wars for 7 years so I found this article really funny.
• 45 Great Looking WordPress Themes – A nice collection of WordPress themes.
• What Happens to Your Facebook Profile After You Die – Apparently if death is proved, the profile can be removed or memorialized. I know it’s a little morbid but I often wonder what happens to all of our online profiles after we die.
• Fake AP Stylebook – This is one of the funniest twitter profiles I’ve encountered in a while. An example tweet is “Avoid using question marks as they remind people of hook-handed serial killers.”
• @FakeAPStylebook Editors Explain Their Overnight Success on Twitter – An article on PBS MediaShift about the above Twitter account.
• Crazy Aztec Opera Singer – you can see anything in NYC
  
• My video from The Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan. Murry is a talking skull featured in the earlier Monkey Island games and he returns in Episode 3 of the new series. Guybrush Threepwood finds Murray when trapped inside of a giant manatee.
  

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 11/8/09

If you have a blog and you use Facebook, you should be using the NetworkedBlogs application. It’s a great way to promote your blog and to find other blogs on similar topics.

Until recently, Networked Blogs could only be integrated with Facebook profile pages. Now, however, the application can also be used with Facebook Fan or Business pages.

The most popular feature is to automatically post your blog posts to your profile.

Here’s how to add Networked Blogs to your Fan or Business Page. This is assuming you have already added your blog to the Networked Blogs Application on Facebook.

1. Locate your blog in Networked Blogs.
2. Click on Feed Settings on the right.
   
3. You will be given the option to post to your personal profile and to fan pages that you are an Admin of.
4. For the personal profile, you simply need to check the box and your blog posts will auto-post to your profile.
5. For a fan page click on the configure button.
   
6. You will then get a check box to auto publish your posts to the wall of your fan page.

Personally, I am not a fan of auto posting anything. I manually post to twitter, facebook and my fan page. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I like to control the what the message says – say something funny or unique to generate interest. And the second is that not all of my blog posts are appropriate for my fan page. I try the information on the fan page about WordPress, Facebook, blogging and othere related topics. It just doesn’t make sense to me to auto-post my recipe for Broccoli Cheddar Loaf ;-)

But I know that many people like to streamline their social media and that they would prefer to auto-post. Somehow it is supposed to save time. ;-)

photo credit: obLiterated

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Networked Blogs on Facebook Now Supports Fan Pages