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Anybody use Twitter?

I found an awesome Twitter client for Mac: Twhirl. Since Twitter doesn’t work with, well, anything, I had to do updates online. Where’s the fun in that?

Twitter is just another silly little time waster, but if anyone has it, you can find me as misangela. DUH. I’d like to track others besides Wheaton.

Anyone use it?

Anyone?

Bueller?

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WP wrangling

I understand why some people just can’t deal with packaged apps like WordPress. If you like your site to look a certain way or use certain fonts, WP is a challenge. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: WP is not for the faint of heart. Being a CSS Ninja helps.

Just now, I spent about 20 minutes ferreting out an offensive character in the search results. Why this guy used a stupid, non-standard character I’ll never know – probably the same reason he chose serif fonts and defined every possible bit of CSS that there is to define. For someone who proclaims himself a “typographer” he certainly screws the pooch in more ways than one. I think he’s too enamoured with his “flair”. But I digress. You do not use stupid characters, serif fonts and 300+ lines of CSS for a simple blog, dude. Get a grip. It’s a nightmare to troubleshoot.

Anyway, unless you’re someone who is content to use a straight up template with no modifications, WP will drive you batshit. This is probably why Kate has had enough and wants me to put her site back to html. ::sigh:: It’s too bad, really. But I totally understand her frustration – besides, all she wants is a portfolio site, not a blog. It’ll allow me to brush up on my scripts usage in any case.

Which reminds me of something funny! All the young 20-somethings are totally in love with that 90s mainstay: the splash page. LOL  They are so cutting edge and artsy, oh my, but in love with that stupid time waster of early web design! Too funny! They think it’s so cool. Gods. I’m positive they’ll be asking for a Flash intro next. The horror!

What comes around, goes around. I doubt that Flash intros or splash pages will ever really come back. They are too annoying to the masses.  But as long as there are people who’ve only been on the web for a few years I suppose that old shit will still keep turning up as cool.  ::rolls eyes::  Hey, at least it’s nice to have something to rag the youngsters about! They think they are so hip about clothes, hair, etc. it’s nice to be able to say “Gods, that is SO outdated!”  The bennies of being on the web for over a decade, I suppose!   :-)

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Busy geek!

I woke up with my geek on today! I updated MINT, Heather & IndigoDragon. I also created Restaurant Operations Advisors (my latest gig w/ Rob) and Regency Homes (a site for my brother’s home building biz in Knoxville) [edit: I found out that they are retiring that name, which means I’ll have to redo the domain to some form of my brother’s name. I’ll point regencyhomesknoxville.com to the proper site. -A]. W00t!

Now I’m geeked out and ready for beer. :-)

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WP Plugins you must have

Also, WP uses plugins, which totally rock the house. Talk about EASY content? Well, this is pretty damn easy. Here’s a list of must-haves (look for them here):

  • Akismet is pre-installed w/WP. It’s an anti-spam utility for your comments. The only problem is that you must get an API from WordPress, which involves setting up an account. Last time I tried this for a client, I couldn’t get an account. No idea why, but no account means no API, which means no Akismet.
  • Broken Link Checker is my favourite plugin to date. It checks ALL your posts for broken links every coupla days. ROCK!
  • Events Calendar I installed this for the art folks. It works ok, but the interface is clunky. I hope to find a better one soon, but for now, it works.
  • Add META Tags does just that. Rather than have to dig into the headers of the template (horrors!) you can just put in your tags here and they magically appear. Schweet!
  • KB robots.txt makes you a nice robots file so you can order around the various web bots and spiders. It can keep the indexing ‘bots out of your private stuff and tell them when to return. Great for beginners who have no idea what a robots.txt file is.
  • LiveJournal Crossposter and LJ Comments are how you LJ people see this post. It’s great to be able to crosspost to both journals at once. You can also choose not to crosspost and choose if the post is private on LJ. (You can make them private on WP, too, btw.) These are two plugins, not one.
  • Simple Popup Images will put any image you’re posting into a pop up window if you desire. It’s a bit of functionality from MT that I liked. I’ve not used it here yet.
  • WordPress.com stats gives you very thorough statistics of your blog, but like Akismet, requires that damn API key. Good luck getting one. (I sent a complaint email to support about this and some guy responded with a link for me. It worked, so if you get errors, etc, make sure to send them an email when prompted to do so.)
  • Flickr will integrate your Flickr account into your WP blog.
  • WPG2 will integrate your Gallery 2 photos into your WP blog.

These are only the ones I have installed right now. I’m sure there’ll be gobs more. The plugins are the most powerful part of WordPress. Use them!

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Wasted day

I’ve been fucking around with this gods forsaken template ALL day. To no avail. I just don’t like it and no amount of tweaking will save it, I’m afraid. It seems that you can only do so much with a template without breaking it. Sad. I was trying to remove that ugly ass menu thing on the top and put a graphic for the title and a background image. Nope. Not gonna have it.

Eh. I knew that WP was extremely theme driven and I traded that inflexibility for the  much more poweful plugins and widgets. But still…

I’m just disappointed that it’s so very very difficult to do the simplest things like change text or background color.  Today, I wish I still used Movable Type. ::sigh::