A Fresh Start

Getting irritated by a couple of “features” in WordPress 2.0.3? Like those “Are you sure?” dialogue boxes and the mess they make of comments afterwards?
Get this plugin. Now. Go on - you can trust me.

I was chatting to young Daisy and the subject of banners raised its head.
She’s understandably attached to her doggie but has a couple of other banners she’d like to use.
I suggested having a different banner for single post pages, for pages, for search results, etc. and this is how you’d do this.

It’s now a quarter past four. The tweety-birds outside my window have been screaming for the last half hour.
I’ve given up on the notion of sleeping tonight - if I go to sleep now I’ll definitely not get up in the morning. I’ll just have to “power nap” on the train to the […]

Don’t tell Tall Andy, but Croila has been working me hard this afternoon, in spite of my clearly being at death’s door *ahem*.
Well, not that hard, really. All I was doing was clarifying a code snippet I’d suggested she use. Actually it was hardly work at all.
Anyway, testing that what I’d suggested actually […]

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but the G.B.H.A.A.A.P post has stayed on the top of the pile even though I’ve been publishing the normal drivel.
This is thanks to Owen Winkler’s Adhesive plugin - I’ll take the stickiness off the post once it’s run its course.
The other tweak is that I’ve expanded Owen’s Countdown plugin […]

As I couldn’t find a plugin to automatically assign a (different) default category for “guest” users, I’ve had to do a little hacking.

After having spent most of yesterday on the phone to Thomas, Richard and Harold regarding Dad, it was a pleasant change to return to the orifice today and get some work done.
In preparation for the guest blogging extraveganza (and despite the growing suspicion that I may well regret this) I’ve installed a couple of plug-ins […]

Using <pl> I can pull quotes to the left hand side.
Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a duck …
This is normal text obviously. It’s amazing - hard to believe myself, in fact.
While <pr> allows me to pull quotes on the right side too. Shall I finish that rhyme? Um … maybe […]

One of the features of WordPress’s built-in spam combatting are the two levels of moderation.
You can set your version up so that it automatically requires moderation and also set words or phrases that will blacklist comments with requiring you to delete them yourself. I’ve found that these two settings can handle the vast majority […]

The second release is now available and it’s up to version 1 already!
Rather than clutter the blog with this stuff, there’s now a My Plugins section which I’ll fill up with my little tweaks, just posting a note here when plugins are updated.

Now that I’ve written it, I’m sure other folk have written more accomplished versions. Still, here goes.
In conversation with young Miss Pickard (of Little Red Boat fame) the subject of blogrolls arose.
“Ooh,” I typed. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a plugin that built a blogroll automatically from those who’d left comments […]

Just testing a plugin I’ve knocked up to replicate something I found something in the archives over at Mandarin Design (thanks to Lynne’s comment). It’s rather a nice effect, isn’t it? I wonder whether there’s a way to automate it so that the first letter of every post gets a dropped-cap effect. […]

The giraffe above will have to get changed in time, but what a fabulous theme, eh? […]

I’ve finally upgraded to version 2.0.2 of WordPress.
All well and good except … where’s the bloody banner gone?!
[later] Ok. Seem to have bodged that into working again. The image display script’s not working as well as I’d like so I’ll fix that at some time. If you spot anything that’s definitely not working, […]

Issy has written asking:
Hi, I’ve been looking surfing all over to find out how to include the title in the miniposts. How did you do it? I’d appreciate the help. Thanks.
Oh dear. I remember I had to hack the original plugin file to do this but can’t remember exactly what I changed.
I don’t know […]

I’ve rewritten my thumbnails plugin for Wordpress (v1.5) and it should work on other sites now - maybe even yours!
It’ll work on WordPress2.0RC but you need to hack one of the core files to get it working (to change where WP2.0 stores uploaded images)
Who wants to test it? The zip file’s here.

Do you like the way that Google changes its masthead for special occasions? Would you like to do this on your site?
Daisy and I have the solution for you and it’s all rather simple (he says, ignoring the schoolboy error that flummoxed him for far too long earlier).

Here’s a simple plugin for you. I’m compiling a short quiz and, rather than keep a separate note of the answers, have encoded them into the post itself (makes my life easier and I’m all for an easier life). The trouble was, of course, that anyone savvy enough to view the source […]