found_drama

Two things to say about WP-Footnotes:

(1) I love this plug-in.  Truth be told, I probably abuse it.  The right answer would be to develop a better writing style and use the footnotes only where they’re really needed.  The easy answer is: fuck that, I love my footnotes.

(2) Could we have the “opening” and “closing” syntax¹ be a configurable option?  The defaults don’t work for me and I hate having to go back through the source code and fix this every time the plug-in requires an upgrade.  Seriously, there are so many other settings in the current version that this one seems the logical next step.

Give us a break?

That is all, thanks.

1. The default being ” ((” and “))”, respectively.[↩]

I get the feeling that I should really be titling this post “The Trials and Tribulations of Automating My Linkdumps”.  But now that I’ve set the tone…

For those unfamiliar with Del.icio.us¹, it’s a social bookmarking app (and a Yahoo! property) that allows you to keep your bookmarks all online, in one place, and “tagged” for easy categorization.  Add in the description field on top of that and you have a pretty neat utility.  While I don’t use Del.icio.us’ social component all that much², I do use the tagging quite a bit.  And when I discovered that you could set it up to automatically dump (nee ”post”) your links from the day onto your blog…  Well, I was sold.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Now “Delicious.com” but you’ll always be “Del.icio.us” to me.[↩]
2. I’ve shared a few bookmarks and had more than a few shared “to” me; but the “social” aspect is definitely in the background for me. Especially since, in all honesty, isn’t Google’s “relevance” and Quality Score business just another social index anyway?[↩]

WordPress 2.3 upgrade here at F_D is … well, it’s more-or-less complete.  The Extended Live Archive plug-in had some compatibility issues so it was discarded for the simple and effective “Compact Monthly Archive” plug-in.  At least for now.  At least until I can roll-my-own archives plug-in¹.  On the flip of that, switching to the native tagging system was a snap.  The main thing that I’ll miss from Ultimate Tag Warrior however is how it automatically appended the assigned categories as tags.  Oh well..  My other plug-ins worked: SparkStats, FootNotes, the FeedBurner plug-in, and (of course) Akismet.

So here we are … up and running on 2.3.  w00t!

1. They’re all so chronological … where’s the categorical? the taxonomical? the tag-based folksonomy?[↩]

F_D in transit to WordPress 2.3…

Plugging in the new native tagging API was a snap (10 minutes max). There’s a built-in migrator for existing Ultimate Tag Warrior tags (bonus) so getting this rolled out to the live environment should will go nice and smooth.

The bummer part is with the “conflict” reported on the Extended Live Archives plug-in that we’re using for the archives here. What’s weird (at least to me) is that the reported issue talks about “problems when editing or creating new posts due to the database changes” whereas I couldn’t even get the plug-in to work at all in my sandbox environment (wouldn’t load Taxonomy or Folksonomy clusters). So now we must decide whether to strip it out, wait for the fix (or try to fix it my own self), or re-invent my archives all together. I’m leaning toward the latter because of some other UI tweaks that I’m considering (may as well do it all at once, eh?)

• K2

  More of a skin framework for WordPress than a skin in and of itself… A follow-up to the classic Kubrick design; makes good use of ajax and is generally pretty snappy.

  (tags: K2 ajax blog framework wordpress)

Updated WordPress to version 2.1 this weekend and performed some other assorted maintenance. The upgrade (I discovered) was crucial in light of some PHP security issues in version 2.0.6 and while there was an intermediate 2.0.7 release it was followed so closely by 2.1 that I went ahead with the full upgrade. “While you’re at it,” I said to myself, “go ahead and drop in that Footnotes plug-in and wrap up your first CSS project of the year.” (More on both below…)

Unfortunately, the update appears to have wrecked some havoc in the process. As with any change of this nature, there are going to be some independently-maintained plug-ins that don’t play nice with the updated version. Most of the ones that we use here at F_D are just fine. The newly installed Footnotes plug-in for example¹ required no additional downloads. The Sidebar Modules plug-in was listed as “iffy” but I had no problems. Akismet’s new version shipped with 2.1, so no issues there. SparkStats wasn’t on their list at all but seems fine. Alas, it’s the heavy-weight plug-ins that appear to have issues. Ultimate Tag Warrior is apparently commiting folksonomic suicide when comments are approved. And while the Extended List Archives plug-in is listed as fully operational, the archives are misbehaving around here².

So where does that leave us? Limping into the week with most of our functionality correct but a few spots a little rough-around-the-edges.

All that said:

1. The Footnotes plug-in that I mentioned above appears to be working out nicely. Might I suggest (however) changing up the syntax to use double-carets to open a footnote and triple-carets to close them. Their default syntax of “((” and “))” probably makes more sense for quickly adding/removing the plug-in but with if you write at all like I do, you’re too likely to accidentally invoke it. Or prematurely close your footnote.
2. The 10-strip of Flickr photos just beneath the header has been updated from a hacked version of their default table-laid-out horizontal “badge” to the freeform CSS-driven badge. This was my first personal CSS project of the year (following my goals and all). Nothing particularly challenging but given my approach to learning this year, I felt it wise to start with small successes.

At any rate: Sunday morning and a cup several cups of coffee gets us through the first survey of what does/not work following the 2.1 update. It’s also a fair way of procrastinating on starting the living room painting… *shudder*

UPDATE: the K2 updates for 2.1 are in place with a little maneuvering and a couple of compromises. The Rolling Archives feature appears to be broken (with and without my customizations to header.php) so that’s been turned off for the time being. Also, my Oblique Strategies and little rabbit graphic have disappeared from the header for no apparent reason. *sigh* Win some, lose some? Actually: scratch that.  Dumb mistake now fixed.

1. Well, it took a couple rounds of tweaking to get this one right. But that was related to be customization of its syntax and had nothing to do with WPv2.1.[↩]
2. Although that might actually be attributable to the K2 framework update that I haven’t installed yet.[↩]

• Footnotes 0.9 Plugin for WordPress 2.0.x
  (tags: blog wordpress founddrama todo)

• Creating Themes (WordPress Codex)
  (tags: webdev wordpress)
• Theme Development « WordPress Codex
  (tags: webdev wordpress reference)
• WordPress cheat sheet (PNG)
  (tags: wordpress reference)
• Cascading Style Cheatsheet
  (tags: CSS reference)
• Ultimate Tag Warrior
  by/via Neato: robust and thorough tagging plug-in for your WordPress folksonomy needs…
  (tags: wordpress blog tags tagging reference)
• Extended Live Archive
  by/via Sons Of Skadi: super cool AJAX method for browsing WordPress archives
  (tags: blog ajax wordpress)
• SparkStats
  by/via SeanMcb.com: neat recent post visualization plug-in for WordPress (decorate your sidebar)
  (tags: blog wordpress visualization)
• WpLicense
  WordPress plug-in for adding CC license(s) to your blog
  (tags: wordpress blog CreativeCommons)
• Find a Park
  via National Park Service website (suite!)
  (tags: outdoors travel kayaking hiking camping reference)

Earlier today we embarked on a little upgrade here at F_D. We ditched our old [tag]Kubrick[/tag] bastardization (ne “Mario”) and upgraded the front-end to use the next-gen, deliciously [tag]AJAX[/tag]-y [tag]K2[/tag] framework. From there, we installed a slew of supporting plug-ins and tweaked the look-and-feel until we had achieved an approximation of our wireframe from yesterday. We have dubbed this skin “[tag]Pemulis[/tag]“. (Bonus points if you know where that comes from.)

So what’s the pay-off?

• Improved sidebar. From the admin side, it’s more easily maintainable/customizable through the SBM plug-in. On the user/front-end of things: better search, better highlighting of recent content, and more.
• More compatible styles. The del.icio.us link dumps should look right on the first hit now (for example). A wider content region gives us a little more wiggle room, too.
• Better tagging. We discovered Ultimate Tag Warrior (nice) which happens to be compatible with my old/existing tagging from SimpleTags (very very nice).
• Improved archives. We now have a dedicated Archives page that takes advantage of the Extended Live Archive plug-in for Chronology (time-based archives), Taxonomy (category-based archives), and Folksonomy (tags baby! - - but these still seem to work a little strangely). And the “rolling archives” feature built right onto the homepage gives instant, “no refresh required” access to all prior posts.
• Refreshed look. Our Pemulis skin on top of the K2 framework gives us a cleaner, more fluid look-and-feel with enhanced features.

So why now? Because I was sick this weekend. And it was raining anyway. And IE7 came out so (in theory) all of my old [tag]PNG[/tag] woes should be a thing of the past anyway. And I tipped over 1,000 photos in Flickr. And our 1 year anniversary of switching to [tag]WordPress[/tag] was coming up anyway. And/but we’ll be busy with NaNoWriMo next month. And what do you care “why now” anyway?

Enjoy. (And chime in if you see anything broken or if you like and/or hate the new look!)

currently playing: Portishead “Only You”

When we last saw our hero, he was pondering the question: “How do I teach web publication to a scientist and/or university professor? Someone who is obviously smart but also technologically UN-savvy?”

It is a tough question.

As we previously discussed, the question is not just “how do I most easily make an HTML document?” but also: “How do I publish it so that it is accessible by my audience?”

Let’s use this “part one” of the series to make a couple of ground rules and assumptions:

1. “Really Simple Publication” is aimed at answering the above question and assumes an audience that is NOT interested in become particularly web-savvy. Our audience is about as push-button as we can get.
2. Given #1, we want to use as few applications to create, edit, and publish our content as possible. We’ll set 2 applications as our absolute maximum. In fact, if we can’t do complete this assignment with only one application, we only get partial credit.
3. Given #3, web-based blogging/[tag]CMS[/tag] utilities (e.g., our dear [tag]WordPress[/tag]), while not out of the question, are given secondary status because:
   1. We must assume the most bare-bones of server environments (e.g., no server-side scripting, no database access, etc.), and
   2. For the sanity of our subject (i.e., consistency of user experience, etc.) we want to keep this on the desktop
4. This solution should apply regardless of platform (assume our subject will be flipping back and forth between a Windows-based PC and a Mac)
   

   CAVEAT: Linux will not be under consideration here because it is fair to assume that a Linux user is already out-classing our subject in the “tech savvy” realm.

5. Our solution must be flexible and user-friendly enough to easily accommodate posting a variety of media (e.g., video content, images, PowerPoint presentations)

Alrighty… Let’s get out thinking caps on and … begin!