j’s blog

NewsForge | Review: Wordpress 1.5

March 15, 2005
By: Chris Lynch

There are almost as many blogging tools out there as there are bloggers. In addition to closed source vendors such a Movable Type and Blogger, big players are entering the field, such as Microsoft with its MSN Spaces offering and the lesser-known .Text ASP.net toolkit. But even among both these, and the vast array of open source blogging tools, Wordpress rises above the others for being open source as it should be done.

Wordpress is licensed under the GPL and runs on PHP 4.1 and above, with a MySQL 3.23.23 back-end database or better. To create search engine-friendly URLs, Wordpress requires mod_rewrite for Apache (or its equivalent).

Wordpress is known for, and strongly advertises, its “five-minute installation” process. I have only one Wordpress installation and one upgrade under my belt, but both went smoothly. I used a hosted account to run my Wordpress blog, and the system uploaded, installed, and even configured my MySQL tables without a hitch. You could sit a Linux neophyte down to perform the installation with complete confidence, assuming he had a reasonable familiarity with FTP and a text editor.

When the initial installation is complete, all subsequent configuration and administration of Wordpress is conducted through the Web-based administration interface. Wordpress strives to be 100% standards-complaint, and the administration interface works equally well in Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer.

After the initial login, it becomes clear that Wordpress has the look and feel of an application far past its 1.5 version, with a rich suite of management tools at the back end and a highly customisable front end.

Customising Wordpress

Sites powered by popular software often rely on the standard themes and page layouts that come packaged with that software. For those wanting to personalise their sites, the Wordpress environment offers two options: download a new theme or create your own.

The range of themes available for the previous version of Wordpress was impressive, but few of these are compatible with the new themes system in version 1.5. However, the increased flexibility of the 1.5 theming system makes it easy to try out new themes by simply uploading them into your Wordpress themes directory, then switching your site theme via the administrative interface.

However rich the available templates are, however, most users will eventually want to create their own unique look and feel for their sites. You can create a new look via CSS, if you are happy with the content of your site but not the design, or through a Wordpress theme if you want to alter the page layout directly. Creating a Wordpress theme is reasonably easy, although you need a fair understanding of the Wordpress “loop” structure for retrieving posts and reference to the Wordpress templates command documentation in order to make anything more than minor changes. If you lack PHP experience, I would recommend looking for an existing theme that is close to your design goal, rather than trying to create your new theme from scratch; Wordpress template files can become code-heavy.

Despite the potential complexity of Wordpress themes, the project’s gallery of downloadable themes illustrates the level of diversity that is possible. For a good example of theme construction, I recommend the Wordpress default theme Kubrick, which deserves special mention for its cool graphical styling and the ease with which you can customise it.

Running your blog

The primarily purpose of any blogging software is to accept and publish its owner’s posts. Wordpress accepts posts online, as you expect, and also through an email interface that allows you to send messages to a secret email account that your Wordpress installation will check. This is a potential security hole, as if the address of the email account that Wordpress reads were to become less-than-secret, you could find your blog publishing unwanted posts on your behalf. The second downside to the email posting system is that a cron job is required to run the regular checks of the email account. As I currently run my Wordpress installation in a hosted account, I was unable to configure an appropriate cron job.

New in Wordpress 1.5 is support for blogging APIs from Blogger and MetaWebLog, opening up options for desktop blogging when a Web browser is not available. Though the chances of you finding yourself at any PC with an Internet connection but no Web browser are fairly slim, but the introduction of support for these APIs does open up the Wordpress architecture to other forms of automated posting, either from custom applications or just from better editors and browsing tools.

Editing remains plain text at present, with a set of basic client-side buttons to apply certain HTML tags to your text. Plug-ins are available to provide full WYSIWYG editing, but these are not bundled in the default installation.

Images to accompany your postings can be uploaded directly via the Wordpress admin pages, but Wordpress has no file management interface. Uploaded images can be automatically thumbnailed and attached to specific blog posting categories for automatic inclusion in your postings.

Static pages are now a feature of Wordpress 1.5, allowing you to create pages of content that exist outside of the normal blog category/date hierarchy. Static pages can be linked together in their own hierarchy, providing the potential for rich content management outside of the blog format. This is the first step Wordpress has taken to integrating a wider variety of content into its “semantic publishing” architecture, and it bodes well for a future in which blogging forms the backbone of a more serious content management and delivery platform.

Community features

Wordpress provides standard commenting and trackback features on every posting, as well as a facility for users to log in and create profiles for themselves on the site. Wordpress can be configured to allow these users to create and manage their own posts, as well as grant access to otherwise “private” posts, but for a large number of users with complex or detailed security settings, a community CMS, such as phpNuke, offers far more functionality.

There have been some issues reported in the past with the trackback system, although these seem to be resolved in 1.5. My blog, at least, is receiving trackbacks successfully.

Comment spam remains an issue however, and it is one of the most significant problems with Wordpress. The comment filtering system has been strengthened in this version, and several plug-ins now exist to strengthen the system further. My personal advice on this is to block unmoderated comments after installation until you can build up a decent list of terms to filter, or download one from another site.

Expanding Wordpress

Wordpress exposes a plug-in architecture that allows you to add additional functionality with ease, assuming you have a reasonable grasp of PHP and an understanding of the Wordpress architecture. The Wordpress community has already produced a wealth of plug-ins, from minor content output alterations (such as my Autolink plugin) to almost complete applications in their own right. Personally, I found it easier to code my first Wordpress plug-in than to complete the customisations to my Wordpress theme, as the amount of code required is far less.

A complete list of plug-ins is maintained as part of the Wordpress Wiki. Of course, on top of the plug-in architecture you still have the freedom to alter the Wordpress code itself, although the plug-in architecture appears to make this unnecessary for all but the most major of personalisations.

Installing a plug-in simply involves uploading it into a sub-folder of your Wordpress installation via FTP, and then activating the plug-in via the online administration tool. Plug-ins can be subsequently deactivated without being deleted from your installation directory, a useful feature when developing a new plug-in or trailing a fresh download.

Wordpress uses a Web-based wiki for documentation and support, to allow users to contribute as well as consume documentation. The active user community provides frequent and worthwhile wiki updates. If you find you need more help than the wiki can provide, the #wordpress IRC channel on the Freenode IRC network seems to play host to a stream of experienced users as well as developers and admins who make frequent appearances.

Wordpress is a strong blogging platform and an exemplary open source application. With the launch of the new wp-plugins.org to further support the user community, and the general call for translators to internationalize Wordpress, this is software that has the potential to go from strength to strength.

Chris Lynch is a writer and IT consultant who has been working with open source technologies for the past five years.

www.blogsome.com :: View topic - Sub Categories Not Working Right

spoutnik:

It works fine for me this time.
I have the following code in my sidebar

Categories:

insert argument children="1"

It turns out spoutnik did know, adding the children argument did the trick

Thanks spoutnik and all

www.blogsome.com :: View topic - Sub Categories Not Working Right

Splash,

Thanks for the fix, but I can’t get it to work for me. Could you telll me how u got it to work on your site? Could you send the link to your site or a blogsome site with sub-cats displaying properly so I can see what it should look like?

This is what I found at the link u gave:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_cats
"hierarchical
(boolean) Sets whether to display child (sub) categories in a hierarchical (after parent) list. Valid values:

* 1 (True - default)
* 0 (False)

Note: The hierarchical parameter is not available in versions of WordPress prior to 1.5"

and this is what I have that doesn’t show sub-cats properly:

• Categories:
  {list_cats hierarchical=’true’ hide_empty=’0′ optional=’1′ all=’All’ optioncount=’1′ sort_column=’name’}

I also tried =’1′ instead of ‘true’ , but that was no more successful

both cat and sub-cat have posts assigned to them

did I input the argument correctly?

any other suggestions?

also, does anyone know why blogsome doesn’t upgrade to wordpress 1.5? or offer both versions? and more plugins?

Thanks, Jim

www.blogsome.com :: View topic - Sub Categories Not Working Right

Ok, I finally found an answer on the sub-categories. Basically it doesn’t work, but I haven’t been able to find out why. See forum thread above.

I don’t know if this is a Wordpress, Blogsome or me problem.

So, I give up for now, I just made all categories parents or top level and will leave it at that for now.

Well, lookie what I found. Here’s an spell checker extension for Firefox and it’s even supposed to work under Linux, which is what I primarily use, even tho I’m a dual-booter.

I’ll look into the spellchecker for Wordpress under Blogsome, but I suspect I’m not the first to want to spell check and if Blogsome wanted me to spellcheck my stuff, they would have installed the plugin already.

Not to worry, I prefer the easiest built-in sprell checking possible, but will find one way or another eventually.

I just installed this extension, so I probably have to restart firefox to get it to work, so, back in a few…

SpellBound - Spellchecker for Firefox and the Mozilla Suite
What is SpellBound?
SpellBound is a port of the spellchecker code and user interface from the Mozilla Suite’s Composer that enables spell checking in web forms such as html textarea / input elements (html input password elements are not checked by SpellBound) and rich text form elements. This allows you to spell check forms (e.g. message board posts, blog entries, wysiwyg, etc.) before submitting them when using your Mozilla Firefox or Mozilla Suite browser.

This person over here created a spellchecker for wordpress. I wonder if it would work on Blogsome. I got the feeling they ain’t gonna let me add just any old plug in, but I’ll look into it. I seem to recall firefox or one of the other browsers had a spellchecker plugin or extension, I guess I’ll go look and see what I can find. I really ought to have some kinda spellchecking, so I at least don’t appear so ignorant.

coldforged.org » Blog Archive » Spelling Checker plugin for WordPress
I’ve been looking for a spelling checker plug-in for WordPress for a while. Didn’t find anything to my liking, so I figured I’d create one myself. The fruits of those labors are now here!

The Spelling Checker plugin for WordPress

With this plugin a new button appears alongside the rest to pop-up a spelling checker derived from the Speller Pages SourceForge project. No more typos!

Ok, found something, here’s what the old wiki, the one before the codex wiki, says about categories:

WordPress Wiki - Categories

WordPress posts are filed in one or more categories. Currently, each category name must be unique.

Each category may be assigned to a Category Parent so that you may set up a sub-category hierarchy within the category structure.

By default, WordPress creates links to the categories, when are they are listed on the weblog. Clicking on the link will deliver a page with the posts belonging to that category on it.

By the way, that’s my first blockquote, with this s/w anyway, I suppose it’s used for such quotes.

Anyway, the old wiki, as u can see above, says:
"By default, WordPress creates links to the categories, when are they are listed on the weblog."

Creates links where? under the category list or with the post or both? I think it’s supposed to be both. For me, the links are showing with the posts, but not under the categories list on the right column. So either I did something wrong, or the software isn’t working as indicated or it no longer does this (or some other unknown reason). Unfortunately, the new codex wiki that is supposed to replace the old wiki doesn’t have any info under categories yet, so I don’t know what’s what.

I’ll look a few more places and then it’s on to the forums to beg for help. Back in a few…

p.s. my spelling sucks and there don’t appear to be no spellchecking, so, I guess I’d better look for a solution. The poor mans way would be to copy and paste to a doc or email and spellcheck it there and then come back here and make corrections, or copy and paste it back again, but I’m too proud or lazy for that, so I’ll keep an eye out (not literally for my foreign readers) for a solution to that as well.

I’m beginning to understand why people end up blogging about blogging and create websites on how to create websites and wikis on how to wiki, etc. Well at least I’m blogging about something.

If by some miracle you happen to be the programmer who programmed the categories display in the right column, or wherever and you know that I only have to make an extremely small change to make the selected categories display properly, then I hope you’re getting a good laugh, cause this little epi-sode is burnin’ daylight don’t ya know. Yeah, I’m ignorant, but at least I know it

Administering your blog « WordPress Codex

I just tried to look up "categories" on the wordpress codex-wiki thing and there ain’t nothing there as of this moment. Now what? Look for other docs, such as the old out of date wiki that preceded the codex (I think)? Or maybe I’ll hit the Blogsome or Wordpress forums. I wonder how many people have run into the same problem and had to spend time trying to figure out what was wrong and what to do about it? I know this is probably something a 10 year old should know, but where do you find a 10 year old when u really need one?

Anyway, I wish some brainy programmer would fix the category list feature so it was fool proof and all the selected categories and sub-categories displayed properly on the first try. That way a lot of us end users, who are really more interested in blogging itself rather than the inner guts of the software, wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time learning what the problem is and how to fix it, each new blogger over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I loves the learning, yes sir I do, but I don’t want to have to learn everything, just the stuff I’m interested in.

I suspect some of you might be thinking that I shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth. But, you know, nothing is really completely free. I mean, my time is worth something, to me anyway.

Ok, maybe this is just a minor snafu, on with the search for a solution

New Problem. I have about 6 categories and sub-categories selected for my posts, but, only 2 categories are showing on my blog. I closed and reopened browser, looked in the wiki and docs, none of that helped. I found someone with a similar problem in the forums, but I don’t want to and shouldn’t have to mess with a plugin to fix this. If a blogger creates and selects a category for his post, it doesn’t seem unreasaonable to me that all those categories and subcategories should appear under the categories section on the right column of the page. Chosen categories attached to a post should display under the categories section, seems like the most likely outcome to me. So why do only 2 of my chosen 6 categories display under the categories list? I guess I’d better try and find out. Ok, off to the docs and forum again, back in a while.

Tried to add a new page and this is what came back at me:

"Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/blogsome/wp-inst/wp-includes/functions.php on line 1353"

When I clicked the linked fatal error, hoping for further explanation, this is what I got:

404: The requested URL /blogs/jsblog/wp-admin/

“Comment Moderation

Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than [X] links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.)”

I just set this to one link per comment until I learn more and decide what’s best. No big deal tho, if you include more than one link, I’ll probably review it within a day and let it thru as long as it’s not the dreaded spam.

“Newly registered members: May submit drafts for review”

I just allowed this feature. Not sure how it works, but if you figure it out be my guest (and maybe let me know how it works). I assume you register and then there’s somewhere on my site you can submit your draft to me. If I think its ok, I approve it and it appears on my blog. Will look into it and let u know. Of course if it dosen’t work you can always email me your draft.

Ok, got tired of looking for in in the docs, so I went back to the dashboard thingy and started poking around. Good thing it wasn’t a snake…

It was hiding under Manage > Categories

I guess I’ll either have to remember where this stuff is or draw me out a menu tree till I do

Adding new categories doesn’t seem to be foolproof, can’t find how to add. Initial search of docs was no help, may have to hit the forums.