WordCamp SF 2010

I can’t wait to attend WordCamp SF this weekend! If you love WordPress, you should be there! There’s an amazing line up of speakers and awesome WordPress schwag! It’s going to be a lot of geeky fun! I hope to see you there. Be sure to say hi if you run into me. :)

For more information, be sure to check out the official WordCamp SF 2010 website.

WordPress 2.8.5

WordPress 2.8.5 was released last night. Updates were mainly for security reasons:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

Also, if you think you may have been hit with one of the recent exploits, WordPress suggests you take a look at the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin. Read more about the latest release here.

I updated all of my blogs today with no problems, and suggest you should to asap. Be sure to make a backup of your database as a safety precaution.

WordCamp LA

I just registered for the first WordCamp LA and I’m super excited! There’s a lot of great speakers and they’re adding more each day.

What is WordCamp you may ask? It’s a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. Attendees include the casual users, designers, plugin developers to the core WordPress developers. If you have the slightest interest in WordPress or even blogging, I highly suggest you attend!

The first WordCamp LA will be taking place on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at Loyola Marymount University, which is very close to LAX airport for those of you coming from out of town.

Tickets are selling fast, so be sure to get yours soon! I’ll see you there!

Related Links

• WordCamp LA
• WordCamp.org
• WordCamp LA 2009 Facebook Event Page
• WordCamp SF
• My Experience at WordCamp SF

Embedding YouTube videos in WordPress MU

After working with WordPress Mu, I found that I was unable to embed YouTube videos into a post. Instead, WordPress MU would strip my content out without any warning. After surfing around, I found the solution here:
Read more

WordPress Plugins for Portfolios

WordPress is a great tool you can use to build a web portfolio. Since a portfolio may have more “static pages” as opposed to blog posts, you will find yourself using the “add a new page” feature more often. I found some nice WordPress plugins that may help you organize your portfolio better.

I’m going to assume that you already know how to install and use WordPress. If not, see this great “New to WordPress – Where to Start” guide first.

• Breadcrumb NavXT add breadcrumb links at the top of your posts. To use, you need to add in a short snippet of code in your ‘page.php’ template. (Sample – See Home > Portfolio > Photography)
• List Pages Shortcode allows you to use a nice shortcode in a page and display all of its child pages. For example, adding [child-pages sort_column="post_title"] to a page will list all the child pages of the parent page. (Sample)
• Recently Updated Posts displays the last blog posts and pages you updated. It’s pretty handy since static pages need to be updates all the time. (Sample – see recently updated)
• WP Lightbox 2 displays your graphics/photography in a nice lightbox. (Sample)
• WordPress Database Backup is an easy-to-use on-demand database backup script. Since all your changes are stored in a database and not physical files, being able to back them up periodically is a good idea.

After downloading a plugin, unzip the file, and upload the content into the /wp-content/plugins/ folder of your WordPress installation. These plugins were pretty easy to install, but please read the README files first.

WordPress and these plugins should help you get your web portfolio up in no time. Be sure to check WordPress.org for more plugins.

Wordcamp SF 2009

I’m so excited to be attending Wordcamp SF for the first time! I’ve been using WordPress way before it was even WordPress and the evolution of the software has been amazing to watch all these years.

It was originally written by Michel V and called b2 (then cafelog). I use to help him beta new versions of b2. Michel moved onto new projects and stopped developing b2, and that’s when Matt Mullenweg stepped in. WordPress has come such a long way. To me it’s like watching a child grow up!

I hope to see you at Wordcamp SF 2009! It’s on Saturday, May 30th. And I will most likely organize a Tweetup the night before, so keep an eye out. :)

WordCamp San Francisco is a conference organized by the creators of WordPress for our users and developers. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. The event is open to WordPress.com & WordPress.org users alike.

Learning Japanese

I’m doing a few things with this post. First, I’m testing out the Podpress plugin, which I love so far. It allows you to easily embed media files to your WordPress post. No download is required for the end user.

Another thing is, you can also hear what JapanesePod101 has taught me. Click on the little arrow at the bottom of this post. I hope my pronunciation sounds ok. That’s one of my favorite podcasts, and there a few more sister sites if you want to learn other languages. I use to listen to it on my ipod a few times a day. I need to start doing that again.

Also, my husband gave me his gaming headset and told me to download Audacity, so I’m going crazy creating audio files now. :) I’m hoping to edit some video footage this weekend. That’s another software I highly recommend.

Blogging as a Requirement

How interesting… there are positions that require WordPress knowledge now.

I remember when I started blogging. This was the order of the software I used: Blogger, Greymatter, b2 (cafelog), Geeklog, Xanga, Livejournal, Tabulas, Vox, and now only WordPress and Twitter.

Do you remember any of these? The evolution of blogging software has been an amazing journey. ;)

WordPress Visual Editor

Wow, my name was mentioned on The Neal Show! Thanks Jeff! Thanks Neal!

As for the media upload problem, it may be the Visual Editor breaking the code. I remember embedding a flash video once and my post just kept breaking every time I edited it. I ended up turning the Visual Editor off so I can paste HTML code without the editor changing it.

If you’re still running a WordPress version older than 2.5, you can turn off the visual editor by doing this:

• Go to the “Users” tab, and find your author (usually ‘admin’).
• Click on “Edit.”
• Uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing. (See image above.)
• Click on “Update User”

This will then give you only the basic buttons when editing.

WordPress Image/Media Uploader Error

I just upgraded to WordPress. 2.5.1. But I can’t seem to get the WordPress Image Uploader to work at all. I keep getting this error in both version 2.5 and 2.5.1:

And it doesn’t look like I’m the only one either!

I’ve tried all the fixes, but only one worked for me. I ended up removing the flash uploader entirely. If you’d like to do that also, try this.

1. Download this No-Flash-Uploader plugin.
2. Upload it to your plugin’s directory
3. Activate the plugin.

And now you should be able to upload images. Worked like a charm. No use making a simple process harder. ;) You can only upload one image at a time anyhow.

Now that this is sorta fixed, I’ll start updating all of my blogs!

Jeff’s tweet motivated me to get to the bottom of this. ;)

Retro Web Theme

This is my favorite April Fool’s joke today, so far. ;) Doesn’t it bring back memories??

Google AdSense is my second favorite.

What was your favorite joke of the day? Check out myaprilfools.com for more fun tricks.

WordPress 2.5 Released

Yay! WordPress 2.5 is out! Go updated! :) I will have to do that later today. :) Their new website design is very nifty too!

All Things Twitter

If you’re looking for Twitter-related apps, be sure to check out franticindustries’ list of All Things Twitter.

I like what the simpleTwitter WordPress Plugin can do. I’ll have to test it out and let you know how well it works.

WordPress 2.5 RC2

WordPress 2.5 RC2 is coming! Check out the video about the new features! I love the cleaner new look.

WordPress 2.5

WordPress 2.5 looks great! I can’t wait until it’s released.

WiiPress, the WordPress Wii Edition

This is an interesting WordPress Plugin. It’s called the WiiPress! It’s great for those of us who like to surf on their Wii Browser (Opera) as well as their computers. ;)

About The WordPress Wii Edition Plugin:
The WordPress Wii Edition Plugin is a plugin that automatically renders an optimized version of your blog when visitors come to your blog on a Nintendo Wii running the Opera browser. Wii’s are automatically detected, there is no configuration needed. The theme used by the plugin is based on the colors of the Wii interface and uses the “Wii” font at sizes that provide for easy reading on TV screens. This plugin was inspired by Alex King’s Mobile Plugin.

Why is this plugin useful?
Webpages on the Wii are hard to view on default zoom and on many pages (designed wider then 800 pixels) you will have to scroll from side to side. In addition, font sizes that work on a computer screen don’t render well on a TV screen. As such we put together this plugin to make our favorite blogs a bit easier to read.

 Read more..