the air

I apologize for not being able to post lately, but my community has been pounded with severe storms in the past 48 hours. Just last night, we received well over an inch of rainfall with thunder and lightning to sweeten the deal. As a result, we had to power down non-essential electronic devices to reduce the risk of damage. Heck, the only things we kept going were the life-support systems (e.g. the air-conditioner) and room lighting.

Internship is over

I’m glad to say that my internship is finally over and I am ready to move on to academia once again. I am going to miss working for Elgin Industries since their working environment is just fabulous. The good thing is that they were very satisfied with my work and have extended a preliminary invitation for another summer internship as well as a possible full-time job upon conclusion of my academic studies. Working ten hours a night definitely paid off, but it is way too early for me to consider any full-time job offer at this time.

Theme issues

It has come to my attention that my current theme is creating certain issues for some people. I have tried to make this theme work for some time, but I cannot get this theme to function correctly. I realize I am not very savvy with coding so I have decided to save up and shell out some cash for a professionally designed theme. Whether or not I go for an exclusive theme is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, I assure you that once I am ready for a new theme, it will be professionally done. As you may have noticed, I do not run any ads on my blog nor do I have any intentions (as of today) to implement advertising. Therefore, much of the money will come from my own pocket. So why am I doing this? I enjoy blogging and I feel a sense of connectivity with other bloggers. Just because you may not subscribe to my blog does not mean that your visit here should be a poor one. That’s why I want to do whatever I can in my power to ensure that your visit to my blog is a great experience and hope that I may retain you as a valued reader.

School is about to start

Since my summer break is coming to a close now, it is time for me to prepare for another exciting (sarcasm intended) year. This year I will be taking senior design, which is considered the final course a student needs to take prior to graduation. I won’t graduate until May of 2008, but I am virtually done with my major classes by the end of this year. Due to the adverse weather conditions, NIU is currently closed and all students are encouraged to exercise extreme caution while outside. I hope to finish moving into my new apartment by the end of Saturday.

No Comments »

The folks over at WordPress have just released a new update, 2.2.2 & 2.0.11. Since this is a security update, there is no need to update all the files, you could get by by just updating the files that have changed.

Today we have two security-related releases available for both users of our main 2.2 branch and the legacy 2.0 branch. As these releases include only security and minor bugfixes they should not cause any plugin or theme compatibility issues, so you have no good excuse not to upgrade.

I upgraded my blog using the WordPress Automatic Update plugin. This plugin will update your blog in five simple steps, including performing all backups. It even downloads the update files from WordPress.org and installs by itself. After each step, it outlines what it did and clearly displays all errors. You simply click to continue. The only problem I had using this plugin for the newest update was the fact that it failed to reactivate all of my plugins. That is a trivial issue and far easier to fix than a broken install. Try it out and let me know how it goes for you.

No Comments »

This is a series of posts designed to illustrate the different plugins that help power this blog. Part I can be found here.

Part II will discuss the following plugins:

• Buy me a beer
• Comment Timeout
• Executable PHP Widget
• Extended Lives Archives
• Feedburner Feed Replacement

Buy Me a Beer

This is basically a “donation” plugin that allows readers to donate any amount of money to you through PayPal. I added this plugin just for fun because I’m an avid drinker and I figured this was something I could enjoy seeing on my blog. The author of this plugin suggests that those who run this plugin instead of simply running a “tip-jar” will see more beneficial results. I can’t comment since I haven’t received any cash, but hey, I’m not complaining! Beer on my blog still looks cool

Comment Timeout

In my continuing efforts to combat spam, this plugin supplements Akismet by disabling comments on posts that are older than a certain date or have been posted for a certain amount of time. As of right now, my posts automatically disable comments once the post is about 90 days old. This way, bots cannot attempt to leave fake comments on posts that are old since many bots are designed to post those pesky “spamments” on older posts. This is definitely a good plugin to have if you quite a few older posts and want to reduce spam on your blog. However, this plugin is not essential.

Executable PHP Widget

This is an extremely useful plugin that allows me to execute PHP commands outside of a PHP file. Why would I use this? This way, I can harness the power of the built-in PHP functions of WordPress on my sidebars. The Port of Air section and the MyBlogLog widgets are all relying on this PHP widget. It is definitely a handy widget to have if you wish to run PHP functions outside of PHP files. Try it out, you may just realize you can never live without it.

Extended Lives Archives

Have you tried my new archives section? This is one of my most beloved additions to this blog since it now has an AJAX-powered archive. It truly is far more easier to find older posts on my blog than if you were to use the traditional archives found in WordPress. In my opinion, this plugin is a must-have for any blog, assuming it can fit into your overall layout and design. Try this plugin and let me know what you think.

Feedburner Feed Replacement

This plugin “hijacks” the RSS feed on my blog and goes through Feedburner, a popular RSS management site. It really is quite powerful and since it has been purchased by Google, we can all expect further enhancements. If you are a blogger, you should already be using this plugin and be a part of Feedburner.

No Comments »

I’ve gotten a few requests to talk about the current plugins I use for my blog since its redesign. I guess some people were correct in assuing that I have been busy adding and removing plugins to better suit my blog. I am currently running about 25 different plugins to help provide a better experience for all you readers. Since I have so many plugins, I am going to split up this post across multiple posts.

Part I will talk about the following plugins:

• Advanced Search Lite
• Akismet
• All In One SEO Pack
• Blogstats PCC

Advanced Search Lite

You see that search box at the top of the right column? That’s the plugin in action. By default, most WordPress themes can harness the power of the search functions built into WordPress. However, by many means, that search function is ok and nothing exceptional. This little plugin is able to improve on that search function by finding posts that contain the actual word(s) you are searching for and highlighting those terms throughout the posts. This is one of those plugins I wanted to implement to improve my blog with its new look. I’m not sure how many people use the search function on my blog, but I can bet that this small improvement definitely helps.

Akismet

Ok, if you’re blog is NOT running this plugin then you really need to reconsider your decision. This is basically a spam filter for all the comments on any blog. The plugin is actually very good at what it does and I consider it a de-facto standard for any blog. If I’m not mistaken, this is one of those “default” plugins included with every WordPress installation. If your blog does not have this plugin, make sure you have another solution handy or go for this plugin and get things in order and stop comment spam NOW!

All In One SEO Pack

I learned about this plugin from John Chow. In all honesty, this is definitely a must-have plugin if you have monetized your blog or are trying to improve your ranking on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. It also helps keep your posts relevant to a variety of search terms and could potentially help others find your content through search engines more reliably. Since my blog is not part of a niche topic, I don’t see myself using this plugin quite often, but I do think that it is a good plugin to have. You can easily manipulate the meta tags and title of your post (the title that appears at the top of the browser) for each post and your blog as a whole. Give it a shot if you are serious about blogging and making money.

Blogstats PCC

This plugin is actually more for authors who would like to display certain statistics about their blog to visitors. It has the ability to display:

• total number of posts
• total number of comments
• and much more

I typically use this plugin just to display the total number of posts on my blog in the left column under Port of Air. I think it’s pretty sad that I use a plugin to do just that, but once I decide to remove the total number of posts, I may go ahead and delete that plugin. In my opinion, this plugin is not really necessary.

1 Comment »

Any blogger will tell you that unless you have great content, your blog will not attract readers nor retain readers. With great content comes great responsibility, wouldn’t you agree? The problem with many blog authors is that they don’t bother to meticulously redesign or create a new theme/layout. Little do many people realize, but in addition to great content, you have to have a great layout so that it is visually appealing to visitors and grants them easy access to the information on your blog.

Learn some HTML and CSS

Honestly, HTML and CSS are extremely easy to learn. If you harness the power of Google or any other search engine, you can easily learn the basics of HTML. In my case, I compose all of my posts using the HTML editor in WordPress, hence, it forces me to learn some of basic HTML tags and write my posts in code. Did you know that the CSS (cascading style sheet) that comes with your theme is where most of the customization takes place? This is where you can define colors, margins, images, and much more. Think of CSS as a library that has a list of all the “decorations” your website can use. Once you start editing the PHP files (the PHP files are where your layout is actually coded), you can call upon certain elements within your “library.” If all of that sounds confusing, don’t worry, it’s not at all. I happened to learn CSS just by reading my own CSS file and experimenting, not to mention that I also used Google.

Study other blogs

Spend some time looking at other blogs. You don’t necessarily have to look at blogs that have good layouts, look at the bad ones too. See how blogs that run ads look and what kind of layout they use. Thousands of blogs use the MistyLook theme, which is a very good theme to start out with. One of the things you may want to remember is the fact that implementing ads does affect layout and how your posts look, so be aware of that. Compare the benefits of three column layouts versus two or one column layouts. My blog is now using a three column, fixed-width layout, which is far more versatile than a two column layout, in my opinion.

Start with something

I spent a few hours trying to design my own theme from scratch and guess what? I could not do it! It’s not because it was too hard, but it was very time consuming and required way too much creativity that I just could not muster. So what did I do? I did the next best thing and spent some time trying to find a theme that was as close to what I wanted. For the most part, I was looking for a three column layout that would have my posts in the middle and a left/right sidebar. Once I found the theme, I then went about and customizing the hell out of it. I changed the colors, graphics, width, layout structure, and even added new pages. By no means am I done with everything, but I am learning quite a bit about how WordPress works.

Is it all worth it?

Is all of this work really worth it? Well let me ask you this, “how serious are you about your blog?” Are you blogging because you want to make money? Unless you are willing to blog seriously, you have no reason to spend so much time to make your blog look nice. However, in the event you are serious, spending the extra time modifying the theme and personalizing your blog will complement your content greatly. In addition, if readers like the content and layout, the better the chances of them coming back regularly. There is nothing wrong with using someone else’s theme, but personalize it to your preferences. Your blog is your thoughts, so it should display your mind as well.

Resources

HTML & CSS Guides
• HTML Tutorial
• Introduction to HTML
• CSS Tutorial
• The Complete CSS Tutorial

WordPress Themes
• WordPress Theme Viewer
• Additional WordPress theme resource

1 Comment »