Archive for 2008

As soon as possible!

When a new WordPress release, it normally fixes a plethora of bugs and security holes (WordPress 2.6 patches a round total of 196), in addition to adding useful new features.

One of the biggest reasons people wait to upgrade is plugin compatibility. The best thing to do is to check to see if plugins are compatible with the new release before upgrading. If a mission-critical plugin doesn’t work, let the developer know, and give him or her a couple of weeks to make necessary changes.

That’s also a reason you should upgrade as soon as possible. Plugins. With every release, new features are added that developers may want to take advantage of, and existing functions are changed. It’s a real pain to keep support for older versions for too long. I’m sure there are still people on WordPress 2.2…and they’re pretty much out of luck plugin-wise. If it’s pre-2.3, I’m not going to make sure my plugins work on them. They probably do work, but if they don’t you’re pretty much out of luck. WP upgrades are free, there’s no real reason to support older versions of WordPress that really shouldn’t still be in use.

Of course you have security to. If you have WordPress 2.4 still, your blog is at risk. The same certainly goes for older versions as well. I can’t say this too many times: Your blog is probably at risk if you’e using an outdated version of WordPress.

Sure, wait until your favorite plugins are available for the latest release, then upgrade. But don’t wait longer than a month. Outdated versions of WordPress are a big target for “hackers” (for want of a better word).

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You heard me. Do you have the default wallpaper up still, or did you find one online (or make one yourself)? Do you stuff as many icons onto the screen as possible, or do you prefer a less cluttered approach? If you’re a Mac user, do you keep a lot of icons in your dock? Post a screenshot here, if you’re willing to share, and tell us a little abot it.

A few days ago, Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips asked a similar question. I figured it would be fun to continue it, and see what Webmaster-Source readers have.

To get you all started, here’s mine: (more…)

DBS>Interactive has put together a comprehensive template tag list for WordPress users. The easy to navigate list features expandable JavaScript boxes that display examples and instructions for the tags, as well as a complete list of parameters for the function.

While it has exactly the same content as the WordPress Codex, some may find it easier and quicker to navigate.

I went ahead and bookmarked it for quick reference in the future.

Yahoo recently released a new search API. Known as Yahoo BOSS, for “Build your Own Searcg Service,” the API allows you to query search results from their servers, format them however you want, mash the data up with other services, and even re-order results. You get “Unlimited*” queries (they just reserve “the right to limit unintended usage, such as automated querying by bots”) and they don’t even require attribution.

Even though I’m what you could possibly call a “Google/Apple fanboy” (though you would be advised to not say such things…), and I’ve long dismissed Yahoo as boring, geared towards web newbies, among other things, I have to admit, this is a great API. Google never gave us anything like this (despite their seemingly unlimited resources) and they discontinued their fairly limited search API. (As a side note, I also admit that Yahoo owns some great web services, such as Flickr and Del.icio.us.)

I’ve already got to work playing with the API, creating a sort of search mashup. I figured I’d share a little bit of code, and show you how to create a basic SERP. Be warned, the following requires PHP5 and some cURL black magic. (If you have no idea what I just said, read a book, and come back later.) (more…)

Email obfuscation is a useful technique to use to stop spammers from finding your email address (as opposed to the more common “munging” where you write “me [at] blah [dot] com”). An obfuscated email address is unreadable to humans and most robots in the source code, but is rendered correctly in a browser, and will function correctly in a mailto link. I’ve found it works well…but it’s a pain in the arse to do by hand. There are free online tools that will obfuscate an email address for you, but what if you want an automatic solution.

I didn’t know this until WordPress Garage pointed it out, but it seems that WordPress has a built-in obfuscation function. It’s called antispambot().

The function antispambot() above parses the e-mail address passed by get_the_author_email() (this is the same as the_author_email(), except it returns rather than displays the author’s e-mail address). Use of the echo command displays the output of antispambot(). An interesting feature is it encodes only portions of an address, and does so randomly so the letters encoded are different each time the page loads, adding a little more firepower to the spam protection arsenal.

The wiki page on WordPress.org has an example on how to use the function.

Web Developer Toolbar is one of my favorite Firefox extensions. It makes design and development so much easier.

It can resize your browser window to a specified size (great for getting a rough idea of how a page will look at a lower resolution), check to see if your HTML, CSS, or RSS validate, easily disable JavaScript or CSS, make hidden elements visible, and much more. There are eleven menus full of useful tools. I don’t use half of them myself, because I forget they’re there…

One of my favorite features is Command+Shift+F (Ctrl+Shift+F on PC). It puts you into a DOM inspection mode where you can click an element on the page and get a variety of details, such as the element ID and class, the DOM path, and a multitude of CSS attributes.

If you do even a little bit of design or development, I guarantee you this add-on will make your life easier.

On virtually all web browsers (modern browsers, anyway), you can set a particular page (or pages if you have a tab-equipped browser) to automatically open when you launch the browser.

What page you choose is obviously up to you, and it’s generally a choice made depending on browsing habits.

That brings us to the question: What site do you use for your browser start page? Take a moment to vote in the poll (you’ll have to click through if you’re reading this in an RSS aggregator).

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Are you a Googlemaniac or do you prefer About:Blank? Or do you prefer to load up Netvibes or Pageflakes with RSS feeds and Twitter streams?

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Kreativuse.com has put together a nice collection of interestingly designed Twitter status displays from various blogs.

Showcase: Twitter status design

There are some really good ones in there, though it’s not a definitive list. I’ve seen some really cool Twitter status displays, though I never thought to compile a list. I can’t even remember that really cool one I found through Design Float… (It was a word bubble coming from the blog name, that’s all I have to go off. )

If the showcase inspires you to put your Tweets in your blog template, here are a couple methods you can use to display the updates:

• Alex King’s Twitter Tools Plugin
• Remy Sharp’s Lightweight Twitter.js Script