Herself’s Webtools

All the major blogs on blogging were urging their readers to start Twittering a few months back. I had heard of Twitter, looked Twitter, but hadn’t yet done anything with Twitter. So I signed up for an account: Twitter.com/timestocome.

There it sat with nothing but the default tweet for over a month. I then attended a garden blogger’s convention in Austin and several garden bloggers said they were using Twitter on their blogs and quite happy about it. ( And I’m thinking I’m really behind the times if my fellow garden bloggers are out teching me. )

So things have finally quieted down and I had a chance to play with Twitter again. There are several plugins for Wordpress blogs and Twitter. I started using Twitter updater to post notices to my Twitter account when I have a new blog post, but it updated Twitter every single time a file saved, even if the post date was in the future and the post wasn’t completed.

I’m trying Twitter for Wordpress to publish my most recent Twitter in my sidebar on my personal blog.  So far it seems to be working well.

There is also a Twitter Tools plugin which allows you to send notices of your posts and also add tweets to your sidebar. I’m now using that to send tweets for new posts. I’ve found it also updates Twitter when you update an existing published post, but not for pages.  So that was a bit of a pain.  It also posted a link back to the Twitter Tools plugin page on each and every tweet.

As well as announcing new blog posts you can use Twitter from your cell phone with SMS. It is extremely simple. Go to Twitter->Settings->Devices and plug in your mobile phone number. Twitter then gives you a code, you send an sms to Twitter ( 40404 ) with the code and you’re good to go. Just sms to 40404 any thing you want posted on Twitter from then on.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters so like text messages you’ll need to be short and to the point.

Twitter might turn out to be useful for blogging, but I’ve yet to find a plugin that updates only new posts with out adding stuff to the tweet.  So for now I’ll be updating Twitter manually to announce new posts.  Twitter has badges for MySpace, Blogger, Facebook and TypePad.  Just follow the ‘Display Twitter on your website links’ while on Twitter to build a badge.

I’m also noticing that none of the profiles on the techy forums I post at have Twitter spots in user profiles.  So I’m thinking it’s not really mainstream yet.  At least among the geekiest of us.

This plugin adds a Manage page to your admin area. This page allows you to see a list of users, the user email, the date they registered, the number of comments they have made and the date they last commented.

The user email address is clickable so you can easily send email to your users to inquire why they have not commented recently.

The user registration captcha plugin I use no longer works with the new version of WordPress so I wrote this to sort through bots from humans. Bots tend to not leave comments right away.

This plugin ( version 2.0 ) also checks the email address of the user against the Stop Forum Spam database of known spammers.

You could also use this as a way to email users who you haven’t heard from in a while and let them know you miss them.

User Comment Count Plugin

I compare the new users who haven’t commented against the Stop Forum Spam list of email addresses and black list users or domains that are on that list using Registration Blacklist plugin.

If you have questions about new users who show up on your website, be sure to check Stop Forum Spam and or Spam Haus

I recently switched webhosting companies. One of the many little glitches that appeared was that when I would edit an entry in Wordpress it would erase all the new line and paragraph breaks.

I did lots of digging and found a zillion hacks only one of which works.

Log into Wordpress
Click ‘Users’ ( top row where you see the Dashboard button )
Click ‘Your Profile’ ( second row next to Authors & Users )

Uncheck ‘Use the visual editor when writing’
Click ‘Update Profile’

Now go to options->writing and change the size of the text box to about 30 or 40 lines.

It’s perhaps not the best work around, but it is the one that works.

I have to say this is the easiest of all the Wordpress upgrades I’ve done.  Previously I had troubles if I didn’t delete the previous Wordpress install.  Not this time.

I upgraded 8 blogs today.  I just ftp’d the new files up to the server and everything went painlessly.  Database upgrades took mear seconds, all the plugins I have installed work.  The automatic update plugin worked flawlessly.

I find I like the new dashboard much more than I thought I would.  I played with the release candidates last week and was so so on the new dash.  However I find in actual use it is greatly improved.

The new editor alone is worth the upgrade.  This one remembers where the line breaks and paragraphs are located.

The new multimedia is not yet ready to replace Coppermine or other galleries of that sort as I hoped but has greatly improved the ease of storage and embedding multimedia into your site.

I think it is a huge improvement over 2.3.x and highly recommend it.

Wordpress 2.5 information