Lost In Cyberspace

Archive for the ‘WordPress’ Category

Like most WordPress users I quite often pop over to Lorelle VanFossen’s blog for news and tips, and one of the nicest things that I first noticed when I went there was her signature at the end of every post. I wished I could have the same on my site but I thought that this was probably something she had paid quite highly for as a special feature on her blog, something that I would never be able to afford. Well now I have something similar on my own blog, and it’s free! My Live Signature (aff.) allows you to add your signature to your blogs, e-mails and forums. There are plenty of fonts to choose from and you can select the colour that best suits your blogs stylesheet. There is a WordPress plugin that makes the addition of your signature to your posts automatic and retro-active. The static versions are provided free of charge, if you feel the need to go for an animated version their prices are pretty reasonable ($19.95), and if you want to have a template made specially from your own hand writing they also provide this service for $9.95, though I would advise against using the same signature as you use to sign your cheques! I think they make a nifty addition to the blog and add a little more personalization. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

clipped from www.mylivesignature.com MyLiveSignature offers the services of creating and animating personal signatures. You can use it to easily create your own signature using a set of templates or to allow our designers to create your signature based on a scanned image. At the same time, our animators will give you the true impression that you sign your message with your own hand in real time.Such signatures will allow you to easily and quickly breathe the energy of your personal presence into email messages, blogs, forums and websites and also they will serve as a pleasant present for your friends and relatives.

*EDIT: As an added bonus, there is a WordPress plugin that automatically adds your signature to the posts, thanks to Lorelle for pointing me to this*

There has been some discussion around the blogosphere of late about the need to add other languages to your blog, really allowing more people to "join the conversation"; see Lorelle Van Fossen's guest post at ProBlogger and catch up with what has been happening over at the "Weblog Tools Collection" site and "The Blog Herald". Well today I came across this plugin, Robs Translator, that does just that via the "Google" translator. This will allow you to add 11 languages to your blog and is based on the plugin created by Scott Trough, which can be found here. I will be adding this to my Sandbox blog at first and then hopefully adding it to my blog here if all goes well. Give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments, or if you are using one of the other translators out there for your site feel free to recommend it. :-)

According to sys-con media SplashCast will soon be available to use on WordPress hosted sites, sounds like very Shiny news indeed!

clipped from splashcastmedia.com clipped from www.sys-con.com SplashCast achieved the following milestones during its first 30 days: -- The company today announced a strategic alliance with Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress hosted blog service http://www.wordpress.com/ . SplashCast subscribers can now easily publish their channels directly to a WordPress blog with a simple 'point and click' from their dashboard. Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic, noted: "SplashCast is pushing the envelope with their innovative rich media syndication solution. Having SplashCast integrated into WordPress.com helps our mission to empower our bloggers with the best content creation and publishing tools on the web."

What is Splash Cast? According to their site:

SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages 'tuned' to that channel.

I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet, but you can bet I will be trying it soon!

Once again it is time to upgrade WP with the latest fixes, nothing too major though:

We’ve got a new bugfix and security release for both of our actively maintained branches of WordPress. Version 2.1.1 includes about 30 bug fixes, mostly minor things around encoding, XML-RPC, the object cache, and HTML code. It’s available for immediate download on our download page.

Fortunately Mark Jaquith has kindly prepared a smaller .zip file that just includes the updates that are needed if you already have 2.1 installed, though if you have downloaded that file previous to today you may need to do it again as a couple of files were apparently missing from the previously available .zip Thanks Mark. :-)

The other day I had planned to write an article about divShare on WordPress, but being unable to get it to work in its Beta format I had to delay my article, but now they have released the full version 1.0 everything seems to be working right, for me anyways.

After three days of very productive Beta testing, the DivShare Uploader Plugin for Wordpress is officially moving up to version 1.0. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

So what is divShare? This plugin allows you to post your blog images directly from your divShare account or upload an image or file via a new interface on your admin "Write" page, as demonstrated in this capture: So far it seems to work better than the standard uploader that is provided with the WP install, though I will need to do a little more testing to see how I get on with accessing pictures on my account. Have you tried divShare? How have you got on with it so far?

In my Google Alerts today I found an interesting article about clipmarks, a social network type site that is also a very useful Blogging tool, see the demo below of a clip from the article that led me to them:

clipped from home.nestor.minsk.by The Clip-to-Blog feature makes it easy for people to add fresh content to their blogs. When users come across something on the Web that they want to add to their site, they can instantly Clip-to-Blog it, eliminating the back and forth of copy and paste. The service is compatible with all leading blogging platforms, including Blogger, Wordpress and all Six Apart services (TypePad, LiveJournal, Movable Type, and Vox).

It is a very easy to use little tool that can be added to your Firefox browser. When using the clipper you can customise the CSS to a certain extent, which helps to stop the clips you post to your blog being too jarring, note that the border and link colours are in line with my current theme. The version I am using is v2.0, so if you have used this service in the past you may want to update. The site itself does also act as a social network, a bit of a Digg type site that allows other members to vote on any publicly saved clips that you may make to your profile. All in all a pretty good tool to have in your box of tricks, though an option of whether to post or save as a draft would be a helpful addition. Give it a go yourselves and let me know what you think. Do you use a similar tool that you would recommend I try?

Well I am almost done with my Blogging Challenge of a post every day for the month of February, I think I have learned and gained from the experience, and I hope my blog has too. Already I am trying to think of some new projects to set myself for the next month or so, there are some good ideas that I saw in an article posted over on Glenn Wolsey's blog that may help me set some long term goals. Of the six ideas that Glenn posted in his article I think I may concentrate on "New Relationships Made" for the immediate future, set myself a "Blogging Challenge" of leaving a comment on at least one blog per-day for the month of March. Go take a look at the article yourselves and remember to check back to see what ideas other bloggers add to the list. Thanks to Daily Blog Tips for pointing me in Glenn's direction. :-)

A little while ago I came across an article on the wp-amazon plugin, though for the life of me I can't remember where. Anyways, I made a mental note to give this one a try at some point as it looked like a very useful tool. What is it good for?

Have you ever wanted an easy way to link to a book, movie, or product that’s relevant to what you’re writing about? Typically, this is a pretty cumbersome task—open up a browser, go to Amazon, look for the product you’re interested in, copy the URL, then paste the link to your entry. Not anymore. With WP-Amazon, the Amazon product catalog is available right from WordPress. This plugin will allow you to search Amazon as you compose your post or page entry.

Sounded pretty good to me, so I have now added it to my site. Check out the demo video on their page too, it's a surprisingly easy and versatile tool. If you have an associate id with Amazon this can be integrated in the "Options" area of your admin. It is now fully functional for WordPress v 2.1 but there are still other versions available here for those who may have chosen not to upgrade yet, or maybe can't due to some problem with their website host. There is also a Google Group support forum. So, here is my first attempt, and if I can do it, so can you. Do you use a similar tool on your blog? Do you use it to monetise your site or just to add a feature to your posts?