UPDATE: if you respond to the email that says your feeds moved over successfully, Google does actually get back to you several days later with an email that indicates they’re reading the emails and getting to them as they can, but are overwhelmed at the moment. This might be the best way to make sure your problems are known to them. But do please search the forums to see if your problems are already known, … READ MORE

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I haven’t played extensively with Wordpress 2.7 yet, but remember how 2.5 sucked? And we were told we could whine all we wanted but it wouldn’t help? Wordpress 2.7 appears to be a very big improvement which did indeed take into account the issues we were complaining about.

It has automatic updating built in, so you no longer need the wonderful automatic upgrade plugin. The menu that used to be across the top is … READ MORE

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LinkWorth’s instructions for running rotating links on your site involve plain vanilla file inclusion, which my host has turned off because it uses one of the most commonly abused php protocols (fopen). If I sound like I know what I’m talking about, give me an Oscar because I didn’t 15 minutes ago!

I put their code on my pages and it just generated errors. I remembered that this had happened a while back, and another … READ MORE

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Here’s an idea that should make someone rich. I’m not satisfied with FeedBurner’s ability to count my feed subs. It used to rock, but after Google took over my stats bounce around a lot because it doesn’t collect stats from some services one day, others the next… it could use an algorithm to balance those gaps out - say, figure your average with the missing service and provide that as a clearly marked estimate for … READ MORE

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I’m not a great themer. I take other people’s themes that seem to work predictably and I doctor them. My themes have to comply with everything Mark lists here, and while some people don’t worry about having your content as close to the top of the source code as possible, I think it’s crucial. I’ve run the same site both ways, run two sites simultaneously both ways, and every time the theme with the … READ MORE

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I had some trouble getting the captions to look good in Wordpress 2.6. Here’s how I solved it.

First, I added this code from the default theme to my style sheet:

/* Captions */
.aligncenter,
div.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

.wp-caption {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
text-align: center;
background-color: #f3f3f3;
padding-top: 4px;
margin: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 3px;
-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 17px;
padding: 0 4px 5px;
margin: 0;
}
/* End captions */

That should have done the trick, but it didn’t. The problem … READ MORE

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I got annoyed with Wordpress’ counterintuitive changes in version 2.5. Version 2.6 changes nothing I’ve noticed, except introducing a few new glitches. I haven’t really kept up with this post, where I was listing fixes and workarounds for it. Rather than try to keep it all in one (rather painful to read) post, I decided to make a tag - Wordpress 2.5 sucks - which you can check for new posts on new fixes.

Don’t … READ MORE

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I love Alinks and all its cool functions for making phrases on my site automatically turn into links, but one thing about it was driving me crazy:

It spits a huge block of code into your source, between the bot and your content. Go check your source code, if you use it. See that? See how far down your content starts? I don’t know why more people don’t realize this matters for SEO. I see … READ MORE

Posted in Blogging, Tools 11 Comments »

So Wordpress 2.5 doesn’t come with the ability to auto-update the whole installation after all. It also has a tendency to eat your posts if it doesn’t like the way you click publish. Gah!

I’ve found a plugin that upgrades your install automatically, but it’s got some bugs. Plus, one that I found - but there’s a workaround. First, using it in the non-automatic mode where it guides you through the “5 Easy steps” but … READ MORE

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There are tons of articles talking about just how far Twitter, Facebook or your blog can or can’t take you. Is it worth your time to become a high profile Digg user? Delicious user? Etc.

I think it all depends on whether you know what to use social networking for. Namely, the online equivalent of word of mouth marketing, not your own small personal PR firm.

Word of mouth marketing is far more powerful than any other … READ MORE

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