Blogging Blog. Wordpress
Wordpress Admin Menu Bookmarklet
I found a really nifty little bookmarklet today, which allows complete access to your Wordpress admin panel menu with a single click:
Apart from a tiny caveat, which is that it only works if you’re *on* the blog you want to administer (IE, browsing), it’s an amazing little implementation.
Doesn’t actually add any functionality but it’s very pretty, and I think if you could set the Wordpress blog that it’s tied to, it’d be even better.
You can find out more over here – at the very least, it’s a very nice implementation of JavaScript.
Menu Manager in Wordpress 3.0
The new menu manager set to launch in Wordpress 3.0 is really shaping up, I think it’s going to be an amazing addition to the core code.
The Wordpress Menu Manager is based on the WooMenu plugin (?) by WooThemes, who donated the code (I think) to the core. Since then it’s changed from how it was in the WooThemes implementation but I have the most recent version from the nightlies and it’s very, very nice (pictures below).
The whole interface is a simple case of drag and drop, and it works perfectly – I used it on the menu of my own blog, shown left. I like that there are more options now than just listing the pages a blog has – I always found that very restrictive in themes and near always removed it. 
I’m looking forward to seeing more themes support the manager (Right now I think you only have to add one line of code, but it’ll be interesting to see how many do). I wonder if a plugin could be made to add the support to themes that *could* support it..
Wordpress Network
Today, I installed the newest alpha version of Wordpress (3.0) on my own blog, and activated the network function. I’m going to use it to keep all the little blogs I have lying around together in one place – it seems simpler. After some definite teething problems, it’s now up and working and serving one of the blogs that used to be a seperate installation from within the main one – that means less to backup and if all goes horribly wrong, less to recover.
I have a couple more to move in, but so far I’m very pleased with how it’s all worked – there seems to be far more in the way of things you can change than I remember when I last used Wordpress MU (although, that was a year or so ago).
The only thing I actually had to change on my blog was that I lost the www. , which doesn’t bother me hugely – I had to do a htaccess hack to get the www. urls to redirect okay though, I’m not sure if this is a mess-up in my installation or whether it’s a bug in alpha software – either way, I reported it, and am talking to one of the developers.
I love the idea of managing all my blogs from one central control panel, one installation to upgrade and maintain and such – it’s brilliant. I’m not yet sure about the security implications but I backup daily and with one central installation I’m very likely to notice any attacks, so I guess in that way it is a plus.
I’m going to look into how possible it is to run multiple top level domain blogs from a single installation, too – that could make a good guide. Stay tuned.
Wordpress: Using Feedburner To Tweet When You Post
One of the great features of Feedburner (now Google have taken over) is that you can use it to post to Twitter, whenever you make a post on your blog. This works with any blogging software that supports RSS feeds. The benefits are that you can expose your Twitter followers to your blog posts, and thus increase your traffic.
Step 1
Well first off you need to setup Feedburner for your feed. If you’ve already done this, skip to step 3.
Okay, navigate to http://feedburner.google.com (or click the link), and sign up / sign in (having a Google account at this point is really handy, it allows you to use Analytics and Webmaster tools).
Step 2
Okay, next you need to setup a feed. When you create your account, you should be presented with a box to put your feed URL in. Input the URL of your blog, and Google should magically find your RSS feed. Click continue, and you’ll be presented with this.
Although yours will probably already be filled in, here you can choose the title for your feed and the URL that it can be accessed at. If you have people subscribe to this feed (or setup email subscriptions) then you can track them, and collect lots of yummy statistics.
Once you have selected your feed details, you can click activate and follow through all the introductory steps that Feedburner provides – it has many more uses than just a Twitter poster, and it is advisable to have a look at the others, because they can bring you some serious traffic (or revenue).
Step 3
Alright, now we have your feed setup, and you’re at the control panel for that feed. Select “Publicize” from the menu bar at the top, and then from the options on the left, “Socialize”. You’ll be presented with the screen below (click to enlarge).
In the picture my own Twitter account is already configured, but you can add yours, and the configure all the settings so Google handles it for you.
That really is it – Google will now post to your Twitter followers every time you make a post on your weblog, and you can set it up for as many blogs on the same Twitter account as you like (although only one twitter account per feed).
This can also be done using the popular website Twitterfeed, but I reccommend using Feedburner because of all the stats you can access.
Could we improve this tutorial? Leave a comment and let us know if you feel anything is wrong – we want to make the resources as strong as possible for you.
Google CSE
I have been looking into the merits of using Google’s CSE (link) as a search engine for Wordpress (and any other blogging software); over the search automatically built in.
I’ve always liked Google’s search, and used it over any other search engine for as long as I can remember. I tried out CSE on my own blog a few days ago because I have multiple Wordpress installations for various other topics – physics and bits. It was simple to setup and as you might notice, it’s integrated quite nicely into the design of my website, which I think is a huge plus. The results are great because unlike Wordpress, their relevancy based; not date – from experience with larger blogs than my own, external searches help me find what I’m looking for *far* faster.
I’ve hooked my own up to Adsense (of course), which means I can also get ad-clicks (from ads that would be there anyway) from my search, as I don’t use ads on the rest of my site as of yet, this could be a small income stream.
Another reason the CSE is great is because it allows the cross-referencing of multiple sites, for instance on my personal site search I can include this site (as I write about similar stuff here) and the other blogs I run / contribute too, which could create a little sort of network-search – very useful for multiple blogs.
Google CSE can be found over here, and is available inside adsense.
Wordpress Networks – Wordpress MU
I’ve been playing with the Networks feature of Wordpress 3.0-alpha, and I have to say I’m quite taken with it.
I think it was a great decision by whoever it was to bring the Wordpress MU project into the main Wordpress release, it means all the developers working on the MU version can collaborate and the entire Wordpress project will feel the benefit. I am interested to see how plugins like the domain mapping plugin come along, because if that were to work for regular Wordpress; you’d be able to run all your Wordpress blogs from a single installation (which would be brilliant).
As it is I haven’t played a huge amount but that will be my next port of call; I’d love to be able to manage all my sites from one dashboard, that’s one of the things I love so much about Wordpress.com.
At first glances, it looks pretty good; although maybe the setup stages are a little intensive; this is still alpha so I suspect much will change.
Yet another thing that solidifies Wordpress (IMO) as the best blogging software out there.
A Bit Of A Trial
Well hello there. This is actually the first post I have ever written from my blackberry, and if all goes well, I’ll have something interesting to do while I travel around.
That aside, the Wordpress for BlackBerry application is brilliant. Its fast, smooth and it does exactly what I want it to for all of my blogs. (I think).
Suddenly blogging on the move seems all the more accessible, I love it.
Well, that’s an end to this completely useless post – now to try publishing 
.
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Yep.
Welcome to my blog, about blogging. It’s a little side project that I took over from Jason Periera, an old friend, as the previous incarnation of this site wasn’t exactly doing much.
So I’m starting a blog, hopefully with a few co-conspirators, and I’m going to write about blogging. As this blog is Wordpress based and I’m a huge Wordpress user; it’ll mainly be following Wordpress but I’ll have a look at other things too, see how it goes.
Never know, maybe I can add my own little flare into the blogging world.
Enjoy!~
