Kontan’s Place

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WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.6.

WP has a new release and I must say it has a few features that I like, despite the fact that it has created issues with various themes I like. First, on the site I have linked above there is a quick tutorial (3:29 minutes long) that introduces the new features. I rarely take advantage of the video introductions, but it is certainly helpful to help you get to know what you are working with. It seems WP 2.6 has integrated a scribefire like feature that allows you to add a bookmark or firefox button so you can blog in a new window whenever you find something on the ‘net that you want to talk about. As neat as it is, I still like scribefire which operates within the Firefox browser. If you are still not using FF I have to ask, why? Everyone has their thing I guess. WP 2.6 will also let you know when plug-in updates are available. It is possible other versions did this and I never noticed, but I don’t think so. Many of us like to update our themes frequently. WP 2.6 allows you to preview the new theme in another window before activating it. I like this feature because it lets you see the compatibility of your theme before you agree to use it. The revision feature is really cool. I will not use it often at KontansPlace, but I certainly will be using it with my class websites. You are able to look at revisions, compare them, and choose what works best. Handy tool. If you like gravatars you can assign defaults for those who have not created their universal ‘net image. Cute. There is also a “gear” feature that is supposed to speed things up, but I haven’t tried it yet.

All in all, no major complaints, but then this tech thing is only a hobby, not my life. Like everything else, some like it and some don’t.

Wonderful WP tool!

One of the most bothersome issues with hosting your own site and using WordPress is keeping everything up to date. With recent releases of WP plugins can be automatically updated by a simple click, no download or ftp uploading to be done! Until this plugin it was still necessary to download WP files and transfer to your host if you wanted to avoid bugs and security issues that were fixed in new releases of WP. WP-Automatic-Upgrade is wonderful and makes the WP experience so much easier.

First post using WP 2.5

Sneak Peak of Wordpress 2.5 so I thought I would give it a try. It isn’t up for official release yet. Not all plugins work. One that I loved with 2.3, Advanced-Admin-Menus, messed up the whole thing. The manage features were gone. Once deactivated everything started looking normal again.

A great comparison of 2.5 and 2.3 can be found here. A few features I find cool:

In the “Write Post” menu you can add media directly from the post page. Pictures, video, music, media.

Uploading from computer still has issues, but the from url feature seems to work fine.

One of the things I dislike about wordpress is keeping up with plugin updates. I sometimes let them slide if it isn’t something essential. With 2.5 you have an auto update feature. You simply click, enter your ftp info, which will be saved for later use, and there ya go. Beats downloading, ftp to the site, and activating.

The look is different, the navigation is different. I think it is going to work out just fine.

I’m also using Firefox 3 Beta 4. None of my add-ons work so I’m not thrilled with it. It will be great when the add-ons catch up.

Cool ‘net toys

This post was inspired by Dawn who commented that I had great plugins. I love my widgets, plugins, addons, and extensions…

I spent yesterday afternoon wiping the old laptop and reinstalling the OS. In December we gave my old Inspiron 600m to the girls. It’s battery life was pathetic, but they didn’t care. It was theirs and they didn’t have to use the old PC for games, they could sit in the den with us and enjoy the relaxation room. Before long a couple of lights were blinking red. It still worked, but I couldn’t figure out why the thing was blinking. I determined it had to do with the battery and they should just be certain to plug in for each use. Late January it stopped working altogether. I just knew the motherboard was toast. Big ‘bit received a Bratz doll for her birthday and wanted to use the Be-bratz deal that came with it. Guess what, not compatible with Vista. All computers that were Internet capable would not allow the Be-bratz to install. I was inspired to attempt Inspiron 600 repair. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try a reinstall. After gathering the disks I set off to wipe it clean. This is a scary thing to do. Even though the laptop was unusable it would be more useless if I deleted the OS and couldn’t get it reinstalled. The decision was made to take the plunge and it worked. The OS was reinstalled and things seem to be working smoothly. After the reinstall I had to download AVG for virus protection, Firefox for web browsing, and the necessary add-ons for Firefox.

What is Firefox? You must know. It is what IE7 wants to be and modeled itself after. I love it. You can customize the look and add all sorts of great tools. My favorite part is the button bar. All of my favorite sites are a button click away. No dropping down the bookmark tab and searching for the right site. Just click, and go as fast as your connection will allow. How much? FREE! Where do you get it? Mozilla.com is the place. Here’s what happened. Netscape and IE were in competition. IE became the top browser and was packaged with all new PCs. Netscape sold out to AOL and the guys of Netscape started to create and open-source system. Mozilla Firefox was born. A community of users and developers help to make it the best browser available. Yes, that is jmho, but I think I’m right. If you are familiar with Netscape you will recognize similarities, but it is so much better.

I mention FF because I went to download one of my favorite add-ons for the girls. The Firefox filter made us feel much better about them browsing the WWW. Instead of finding the Foxy-filter I found a new add-on called Glubble. From their site:

Glubbles are bubbles of web content you trust for your child to see online. Discover a wide selection of Glubbles we’ve prepared for you, then modify them to suit your personal family values to build the web you want.

It includes Disney, Nick, and all the usual kid sites along with MANY more. You can add any site you want to their available sites. If they try to go to a site that is not included in Glubbles it will block it. They can send a request to have it allowed. I installed the add-on to my computer so that I can see where they are going on the net and allow/deny requests for other sites. There is a family messaging feature in Glubbles. The girls like to leave comments to each other on “the wall.” The Google searches are modified to block content that may be inappropriate. I have been struggling with the Google search within the Glubble kids window, but haven’t found this to be a problem because I do not allow the girls to search the net for whatever they want. If they have a research assignment we sit down and search together. Glubble is still in development, but I believe it is a great tool for those who have children on the ‘net. You do have to be a Firefox user, but it works with any OS.

Other tools…

I love my Foxytunes. It allows you to control your music player (for me iTunes) from within the Firefox window. There are also search features incorporated, but I do not use these often. Foxytunes will also include your current music into a blog post or email. Just a button click. Example:

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Relaxing to the sounds of: Steely Dan - Josie
via FoxyTunes

If you do a good bit of research you might find Zotero helpful. One-note is an office product that allows cut/paste for notetaking while you browse and it saves the URL for documentation. I like One-note and I use it to stay organized at school, but I do not like it for note-taking while web-browsing. Zotero works within the browser and allows you to add screen shots for later reference. I can not describe it and do the program justice, but they have a great video tutorial here.

Those are my favorite Firefox extensions and it took up a good bit of posting space so I will keep my Wordpress favs short.

First, the new versions of Wordpress allow widget use which makes life so much easier. Less dealings with code and tags. My favorite WP plugin is one that no one sees. Advanced Admin Menus turns your admin page into drop down menus instead of buttons. Yes, I’m lazy. I don’t want to click button after button to get where I need to go. It’s something like clicking 1 for English, 1 for current customer, 1 for billing, 2 for repair, 3 for fed up with automated systems… I also like comment-luv which links to a commenters last blog post. Bad Behavior and Spam Karma do a great job keeping spam off the blog, but I would love to have an anti-troll plugin. Bannage is OK, but really a troll is called a troll for a reason.

Lastly, I found two new programs that have made You Tube use in PPT easier. TubeDownload and Free FLV converter. I think the FLV converter will do the same as the download but I’m still playing with both of these.

That’s it for now…thanks for stopping by.

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Relaxing to the sounds of: Aerosmith - I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
via FoxyTunes

And we’re off for the holiday rush…

We had a really nice Thanksgiving at home. Djembe fixed an exquisite turkey breast that was tasty, juicy, and absolutely perfect if I may say. He also made pumpkin and pecan pies. I am not a huge fan of pecan pie. I like it and all, but I don’t salivate for it every holiday. This was the absolute best tasting pecan pie! OMG it was awesome with a little vanilla bean ice cream on the side! The pumpkin pie was pretty good too. He tried a Paula Dean recipe that involved apple butter, really good. Tomorrow I plan to heat a little and try it with ice cream. The wine library selections paired nicely with the meal. (You may be wondering what my kitchen role was…sides. That’s all. Jem is the real cook and I can accept that. I’ve watched him enough that I could probably do the holiday meal if I had to, but why? He is so good at it!) After a morning of Macy’s parade watching, preparing for the meal, and having the meal the afternoon was spent taking the holiday nap. After playing a game or two with lil bit I curled up on the couch to nap while Jem enjoyed the NFL Thanksgiving day games.

Tomorrow is Black Friday, are YOU ready? Yeah, me either. I am not a Black Friday shopper. I just can’t handle it. TOO many people and most are in less than a Christmas spirit kind of mood. Don’t get me wrong…all about getting a good deal. Just not into fighting some little old lady for it. I have discovered that if I take my iPod shopping in the crowded chaos doesn’t bother me nearly as much. I had to go to Wal-Mart last night and I was completely oblivious to the insanity around me. Wonderful, beautiful, precious iPod. I must again thank Djembe for this exceptional gift.

Obviously I have been playing with my blog. Not really that thrilled with the white theme. I kind of like th header though. I’ll keep playing. I have another that I came up with, but it is dark. I’m wanting to go for something lighter and more festive. I found a wp theme generator that doesn’t allow complete and total control, but it does make things easier.

Finally I stopped ignoring the WP Dashboard notices about version 2.3.1 being available. I was still using 2.1 which was fine and compatible with all of my plugins and widgets, but I still thought it would be a good idea to upgrade. I should have researched a little more. Several plugins were not compatible so I had to go in search of similar tools. I found a great admin drop down plugin that makes site management cleaner. Instead of category-access I switched to hide-this. I tried it on a few old posts and it seems to work OK. I’m not sure if I like the tag cloud feature of the new WP. So many toys to waste time with.

Off to bed before I decide to mess with the theme again. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Themes

Wasting time on Searching the WWW I found a WordPress theme generator that I can not wait to play with. I want to have the option of a cute cheap and I didn’t have to pay for it theme, but without tiny text boxes for the body. I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but unless you are willing to pay for the design, or take the time yourself, the themes for WordPress are not that exciting. Don’t get me wrong. I love my three column Journalized by Mike Little, and my current tiger/turtle/sea theme. I just want to have something that I had a hand in creating. Now all I have to do is make the time to play. Maybe if I would procrastinate less the time would make itself…

Can only imagine

If you are not a teacher, married to a teacher, or you don’t have close teacher friends you can only imagine what the first few weeks of school are like. I had NO idea what I was getting into when I agreed to be student council sponsor. I keep hoping that things will slow down, and I guess they have. It just doesn’t feel like it. Working with students is strange though. They are instructionally challenged and suffer from selective hearing. So far I am still happy with my group though. I haven’t been directly insulted, threatened, or even blatantly disrespected. For the most part they have been pretty good. Yes, several like to talk…but this can be dealt with. Now if we can just get the instructions and listening thing down they will be more successful.

Today we attempted to vote for student council officers. It amazes me that teachers tend to scatter when help that requires you to give up prep time is part of the deal. Fortunately I had two that stuck with me the whole period. Despite a few serious snags getting the net up and running the wp-polls was a success. I have to offer great thanks to GaMerZ. He has the best wp plugins and support is top notch. In a bind to remove the coding that lets users see results GaMerZ jumped in and helped. Without the help I would have been belly up in the water. As a precaution, since this was a trial run for online voting, we did paper ballots too. WP-Polls was right there with the paper and I got the same results. Pretty awesome. I think we will tweak the organizational bugs and try it again next time.

With carpal tunnel setting in I should really restrict my typing, but I love my new notebook and this brace makes everything better…or maybe that could be the serious doses of prednisone and ibuprofen. Either way, it no longer feels like I’ve broken my wrist. It is just a simple sprain feeling now…and not even that if I do absolutely nothing with it. Back to the doc for blood work tomorrow. I’m on the verge of old, arthritis meds here I come.

Blog warming

Hello!  Thank you for stopping by, so nice to have you today.  Welcome to my new place.  As many know I have been working on Kontan’s place for a while now. I tried various programs to set up a site and even tried directing Blogger here.  As Sage reminded me when I started this latest venture, that didn’t work too well. As you can see, embarking on wordpress operations turned out OK.

I started looking at wordpress a few months ago.  The school year was so busy and I just couldn’t figure it out.  The summer is still busy, but I figure if I’m teaching from 7:45 utnil 3:45 I’m not bringing anything home so I can spend an hour or so at night working on this.  Only this time, I read the instructions!  If you are considering WP let me stress to you the importance of reading ALL instructions before you start.  It really isn’t hard if you have an idea of what you are doing.  However, if you miss a part of the instruction process it will not work and it will drive you nuts.  That is where my webhost came in handy.

I use 1and1 as my host. Their customer service is pretty good. I have had only one problem with a service call and that was a miscommunication error.  Usually your wait time for help is short. With the right software you can give them visual access to your computer so that they can see what you have done wrong and talk you through fixing it.  I had pointed my FTP to the wrong spot this last time.  With just a few clicks WP was up and going. I host my teaching website there too.

Since you’re here, let  me show you around…

This is the home page where I do the blogging. As you can see there are entry and link categories.  I tried to get all of my links in the correct place.  My post categories include Imports, all entries imported from Blogger, Latte thought, imported posts from Comprehensive Chaos dealing with history and reading, Frappes are blogthings that amuse me, Flavor of the day is the miscellaneous catch all for the day to day posts.

You can also visit the barista page. That is the about me page.  Currently, I haven’t figured out how to point the link to the about me page if you are not on the home page.  Still working on that part. The mi famiglia page is to tell you about the family.  There you will learn about who I have nicknamed what and why.  The espresso page is where you will find a shot of color with photos that I find interesting and pics of the family.  Of course if you have read my site before and wanted to find something specific there is the search feature that will take you to the bottom of the page.  It is most helpful if you are looking for a history post from compchaos.

As you can see there are various features that I didn’t have at blogger. It is also less “busy”.  I love this simple coffe and butterfly look.  The coffee cup came with the template. I added the title and butterfly for kontan flavor.  Since there were butterflies included in the comment template I thought it would be appropriate.  This look is very fitting for me.  Pretty mellow, but has the coffee and butterfly which most who know me would associate with me.  I’m a coffee nut and the butterfly thing just sort of happened.  OH, btw, look up at your URL search bar.  Isn’t that a neat little thing.  That is a favicon, you can create and insert your own favicon.ico here.  Working with the template is similar to working with blogger templates. It uses php instead of html, but if you figured out how to manipulate your html template it is the same process to figure out WP templates.  The help forums are top notch and you can almost always find what you are looking for or someone to point you to it.  I find google searches of what I want and including wordpress in the search usually leads me right there.

I have rambled enough. I allowed myself til only 8 AM to create an entry and it is 6 past now.  Have a great day!