Archive for the ‘WordPress’ Category
Blog post directory now available
Look to the right at the list “Reference pages” and lo! you’ll see a new entry: Blog post directory. Click that and you’ll be presented with a scrollable list of blog titles along with the first few lines of each post.
The origin story
I was scrolling through recent posts looking for a particular one, and found the process frustrating because of the length of many posts. So I emailed WordPress tech support to suggest that they offer a blog directory option for those reading the blog. WordPress pointed out that that function is already available, and they told me how to implement it. It was easy, so it’s already done.
WordPress support is absolutely top-notch, the best tech support I’ve ever used. And their blogging software is not only good, it gets better and better.
Enjoy the blog post directory — and, of course, do not neglect the search options: the general search for words in the blog title and the category search.
Progress indeed can be hateful
I am struggling with the enforced transition to the new WordPress editor, though I expect in time I will figure it out. The editor I previously used (with great satisfaction) was finally put to death today, so willy-nilly I am thrust onto the tip of the spear of progress.
I’m still unclear on how to specify categories for my post, so there may be a string of “Daily life” posts until I figure it out.
Today was flip-mattress day (and 3 months from now will be rotate-mattress day), and mattress was successfully flipped and bed remade. A big batch of vegetables was cooked (and some of it enjoyed for dinner). Progress in Esperanto continues, and the tempeh box components have been ordered.
I’m just glad to find a way to edit a post in a comfortable manner. I don’t have a clue as to how to specify categories, but I cleverly wrote this so that the default category (daily life) will work. — Aha! I found it.
Life will go on.
Outfoxing WordPress
WordPress has a problem with horizontal rules. It allows a blank line before a rule but not after, witht the result that the text following the rule is jammed against the rule.
Like this. See how the text is jammed against the bottom of the rule. That doesn’t look right.
If finally figured out a “solution” — the sort of solution someone found once (back in the old days of the IBM 1401 computer with a card reader) when a program bug caused the program to ignore the first card in the input deck. “Solution”: put a blank card at the front of the input deck.
My blank card is a line consisting solely of a single character. After typing the character, I press Shift-Enter to start a new line. Then I make the font color white (just for that character) so that it’s invisible.
x
Like this. Now the rule looks right. I used “x” as the character. Before I thought of changing the character’s font color I used “.” as the character, which was barely noticeable, but with the font color change, any character works.
Linking not working
WordPress cannot accept embedded links: when I try to insert a link, the post is erased. I’ve tried on Chrome and on Firefox. But WordPress is free, so I can’t complain too much.
In the meantime, I’ll just put the links in the post.
Irregular blogging ahead for two weeks
I shall return to full-time blogging later this month.
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 700,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 13 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
“Grub” category created
I wanted to point someone to the “grub” posts, and I found the WordPress search function erratic. So I’ve added a category “grub” and marked the posts that fall into that category, including the initial definitional post, “Food as Grub.” So now you can readily browse past grub-oriented posts.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 640,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 8 sold-out events for that many people to see it.
Time-of-day request
I have had a request that each post include the time as well as the date of the post. That’s a good idea: I like to know when I read a post if it was posted at, say, 2:30 a.m. One uses a bit of Kentucky windage to adjust one’s view of the post in that case.
So I’ve asked The Wife to cast her eyes on the custom CSS for this theme to see if the time stamp can be added. If not, I shall look for another theme.
UPDATE: Had to go with another theme. The time stamp is becoming rare in WordPress themes. This current theme is Journalist v 1.9. Others with time stamp listed here.
Stable theme
I got The Wife (the family Web expert) to touch up this theme ("Enterprise") a little, and I think I’ll stick with it for now. Hope you like it.
Bob, she tried to fix the font. Is this okay?
New theme
The Search function stopped working in the theme that I was using, so I’ve moved to a new theme.
Should I split this blog?
From time to time I’ve heard from readers who were interested in a single strand of this blog (e.g., politics only, shaving only, movies only, food and cooking only, etc.), suggesting that I have multiple blogs, each a single-interest blog.
Certainly that’s easily done: WordPress.com will allow me to have multiple blogs, and then each blog would be separate by category. I do think I’d probably have to have a “Misc” blog.
But what do you think?
WordPress problems
WordPress was having its troubles yesterday, with the result that for most of the day the only way to view new posts was to click the date in the calendar at the right. The posts would not automatically display. Sorry about that. Things are back to normal now.
Getting a shaving (or Megs) feed only
A commenter asked me whether he could get an RSS feed of just the shaving posts. I told him I would check, and on looking at the WordPress FAQs, I see:
Just go to any tag page, like this one, and add /feed/ to the end of it. To get an Atom feed just add /feed/atom/ to the end of it.
So https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/category/shaving/feed/ should get you only the shaving posts, https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/category/megs/feed/ only the Megs posts, and so on.
I just tried it in Google Reader, and it works.
Seeing only some posts
Some who come to the blog for shaving info are dismayed to discover my political leaning is toward the left. So here’s a way to see only posts in a given category. Use a link of this form:
https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/category/category-name
For example, https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/category/Megs will display (in abbreviated form—click post title to see the entire post) only posts about Megs; and https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/category/shaving will display (again, in abbreviated form) only posts about shaving.
WordPress weirdness
WordPress’s editor has conked out, dropping most of each post. Fortunately, I have the very handy and pleasant BlogDesk to fall back on. Great little program. Maybe it will become the default for me. One nice thing: I can use Alt-Tab to switch now between editor and the page I’m viewing. 🙂
More WordPress goodness
As you know, I ran out of upload space on WordPress and cast about for solutions. I also informed WordPress, and they have already solved the problem. The first fix was to include a little notification whenever a file is uploaded about how much of you allotted space you’ve used so far. The second is to sell more space if you need it: 1 GB for $20, and soon you can buy 5 GB or 10 GB. For me, 1 GB will be plenty now that I know how to save photos for the Web.
This is a VERY responsive company. I can’t count how many times and how many requests I made to Blogger.com when I was using that site, with never so much as an email back. WordPress emails fixes and is responsive in every way.
What are you waiting for?
Image tsuris on WordPress
I have a cute photo of Megs to post, but can’t because WordPress tells me that upload quota has been reached—and even though I’ve deleted several MB of photos, still can’t put up a new picture. And she’s so cute in this one. 🙂
So I’m looking for an image hosting service. What I would like is to have a service that does what WordPress does, in this sense: gives me a thumbnail to put in the post, and when the reader clicks the thumbnail, gives the full photo (generally too large to fit the relatively narrow column the WordPress template allows). Anyone know anything like that?
Until this is solved, I can’t post photos, so let me know…
WordPress having problems
There’s a duplicate post I can’t delete, and putting up new posts triggers error messages in BlogDesk, so not much posting today. Sorry. More posts tomorrow, and kitty photos to make it all better.
UPDATE: Seems to be fixed for now.
Nice list of WordPress features
Here’s a useful and interesting list of WordPress features. As some of you know, Later On started on Blogger.com, and I moved to WordPress just this past July. I’ve never been happier with any decision. It was hard to make the move (psychologically only, not in practice), but it’s worked out extremely well.
If you’re thinking of starting a blog, look seriously at WordPress. If you currently have a blog on another platform, seriously investigate moving to WordPress. That was certianly the right decision for me.
And just look at those features!
BTW, if you’re interested in communicating with just family members, it easy to set up a private blog—or, indeed, to make a private post that only those who know the secret password (“shazoom” for me) can see. This is useful if you’re sharing family photos, for example: much nicer than sending large photo-files via email—not to mention that some Hotmail and Yahoo mailboxes can’t handle large files. Not only can the whole family easily see the photos (and the WordPress photo uploader works like a dream), they can comment on them as a group and see the comments.
