Place of Stuff

For all those of us running WordPress.org, just a heads up to say that a point released is available. 

Previous big number release was 2.5 and this is 2.5.1.

The Developer’s Blog has full details of the reasons for this upgrade, but in short:
Continue reading ‘WordPress 2.5.1’ »

Well, to all those naysayers, I say blerrt. Yet again I am the Comment King for Untwisted Vortex.

Thanks RT, wonder if I can make it three times??

Oh yes, I am indeed the Comment King. For week ending 5th April, anyway. R T Cunningham hosts a semi-regular contest for the Comment King or Queen on his blog. To take part is easy, all you have to do is to leave a comment against his posts on the specially crafted “comment area”. And that’s it really. The catch is that you have to leave more comments than any other commenter.

Oh, and don’t think you can just spam his site with a load of crap to get this highly prestigious and sought after award. Like most bloggers, most sensible bloggers anyway, RT keeps an eye out for spammers and other malcontents. So be sure to leave only useful and insightful posts. Only the finest artisan created posts get the chance to gain the award (award shown is actual size).

Aside from the award I assume there’s some sort of castle, kingdom and jewellery still to come. I can wait……

Being tech-savvy, smart and (statistically speaking) a good looking reader of this site, you will have no doubt heard of Open ID. Open ID was created to allow you to have just one ID which can beused on multiple websites meaning that you don’t need to remember lots of different user names and passwords. In the words of the site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.

Continue reading ‘Open ID’ »

Ever wondered how I get the site to do any of the things it does? Mmm, me too. The joy of Wordpress (really, most decent blog engines) are the plugins you can use to make your blog do a variety of tricks. Some of the things here are hand-coded, which is a good way of saying “found and copied and tweaked“, but the vast majority are done via plugins: small programs, often one page of php scripting, which add to the functionality of the blog.

I know who the coders are, because I found and downloaded the plugins, but you may not be aware of them. So this is my “credits” post for the people and the tools that make this site work.

Firstly, mine host, Drew very kindly offered me server space and did all the backend bits like setting up the SQL database and configuring everything so that this site is even visible - Thank You Drew. Secondly, thank you to Srini G for the Fluid Blue theme I use here. I’ve seen other sites use it (including Srini’s own) and, at first, I was a bit miffed that I wasn’t a unique snowflake but frankly it’s such a clean and attractive theme I’m surprised more people don’t use it. Srini also helped with suggestions when I had problems with formatting. So Thank You. And thanks to Hari for suggestions for fixes when I broke this place. Thank You Hari.
Continue reading ‘The Plugins I Use on this Site’ »

In keeping with my previous post, I have tidied up a little bit using widgets in the sidebar.  You will notice that the Categories and Archives sections are now drop downs and that I have a recent comments section on there.  The reasons for this are that the Categories and Archives were taking up a huge amount of usable space and I would rather they be kept out of the way until they are needed.  I added the Recent Comments so that I could see at a glance if anyone had noticed anything on the site

Anyway, I don’t think anything is particularly broken, but let me know if something isn’t working or looks strange.