Easy Links & Post ID’s

I don’t know if you noticed this, but on an upgrade this year (which one was it, heather?) we lost the “ID” column in the Manage>Posts screen.  And yes, I know, you’ve never used it, and really don’t care.

But… I do bring you useful information each week, do I not?  Here’s why you care.  That particular column made using the CREF plugin stupid-easy.  You will LOVE the CREF plugin if you:

• have a cooking blog
• photo blog
• write a bunch of posts that you want linked together
• want to add links of your best work into a post or page.

I regularly make lists of my recipes on my gluten-free blog, mainly to participate in Menu memes.  Because of this CREF plugin, this is all I need to do to make my list:

• [cref ID}
• [cref ID]
• [cref ID]

Where “ID” is the number of the recipe post.  How cool is that?  No more find it, copy the url, click on the infinity symbol up there (What’s with that anyway?) and paste.  Times 7 recipes.

Another use is adding links to similar photos in your photo blog.  TOLD you it was useful!

How To

So, first download and install the plugin: Reveal ID’s so now you can see the ID numbers.

Now you are good to go with the Cross-References plugin.  Any questions?

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Everybody’s got one, do you?

It’s one of the cool things about blogs.  You can read them in your very own “feed reader”.  And for those who do this, it is quite likely the ONLY way they will read your blog.  So, we need to make sure that your blog is EASY PEASY for others to subscribe to.  (Subscribe = how they grab your blog and feed it to their reader.)

1.  Find an image of those RSS buttons. Here’s over 35 styles, each with 8 or more different colors and designs.  I’ll use one from my photobucket account.  You may use this one too if you like.

Once you have selected your image, you need to copy the location like this:

<img src=”http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll40/o2cathy/blog%20artwork/feed.png” alt=”button” />

If you have one uploaded to your blog, go to your “manage” panel, and find the image in your media library.  Copy the url (location) from that image.

2.  Find the Address of YOUR feed. Wordpress publishes several feeds for you.  They have their own names, and you can see where they are coded in the header of your blog (if you look under View Page Source).

If you are using the feedburner widget, and have a feedburner url, use that instead.  It will be:

www.feeds.feedburner.com/mommymotivation.

In your page source it will be something like this:

www.mommymotivation.me/feed/rss/.

Or, if you are NOT using permalinks, like this:

www.mommymotivation.me/?feed=rss.

There are several options that you can use, and 3 or 4 different feeds to access.  Find more options on the wordpress manual, here.

3.  Put these two things together in a text widget. In your design admin tab, under “widgets” select the sidebar that you’d like it to appear in.  Then select the “text” widget on the left.  Open it up, enter a title and your feed details like this:

<div id=”rss” style=”text-align:center;”>

<img style=”border:none;” src=”http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll40/o2cathy/blog%20artwork/feed.png” alt=”button” />  <a href=”www.mommymotivation.me/feed/rss” title=”feed”>Subscribe to my Feed.</a>

(Replace the red text with the URL’s that you found in step 1 & 2.)

Sit back and revel in the fact that you did something nice for all your loyal fans today.

Cheers!

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Spyin’ On Dem Dere Vis’tors.

So you want t’ spy on dem dere visitors?  All you need t’b doin’ is ta download this har plugin- Shortstat. It be a great little thin’. I’dunno dere what e’ery number does sayr. But I luve t’ one that tells me whar people be comin’ from. Aarh - and t’ one dere dat does say what thar be typin’ i’google. And then thar be still t’ classic - how many dem visits t’ yer blog?

Translation:  So you want to spy on your visitors?  All you need is to download this plugin: Shortstat. Although I’m not sure what all the numbers are, it is a great little thing.  I love the section that tells me where the people are coming from, what they typed in google to get here, and the classic - how many visitors I’ve had.

Enjoy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Cathy

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Find and Replace is a Gift from God…

Seriously.

You know it’s true.  How much time to we save when we complete a find and replace?  Alot.  And a lot of hassles and headaches too.

I know of so many people who, after blogging for many months, or years even, decided that they were going to stop using their children’s real names.  And so what did they do?

They went back, post by post, and edited them.

By hand.

Can you imagine how long that would take you if you decided to do that today?

You’re shuttering aren’t you?

I know.

Saturday night I had the distinct pleasure of helping Beth and Christy over at Ruby and Roja move their blog to Wordpress self-hosted.  They did an awesome job as the designers.  Because that’s what they do.  And they are good at it.

My job was to make it look like they wanted to within WordPress and then make it function the way that they wanted.  So we set up a test blog, got it all layed out the way we wanted it and then moved it over in the middle of the night.

However, when we moved it, all of the links pointed back to the test site.  All of the graphics.  All of the internal links.  All of the permalinks.

All 575 URLs that were contained within that site.

Lucky for me though, I remembered the plugin that Krissy told me about months ago, so I hopped over to her blog and started looking for it.  I knew she had blogged about it and I found it.  The Search Regex Plugin by Urban Giraffe.

Coincidentally, they were also the ones that told me that I had 575 links.

I installed the plugin, activated it and then did a search for the domain of the test blog and replaced with with rubyandroja.com

It took a minute, if that.

So, if you’ve got a mountain of terms or links that you need to change, I highly recommend this plugin.

And here’s another benefit of self-hosted WordPress… you could never do that with the other platforms… just sayin’.

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I want a siggie too…

So, you see all these cute signatures that people all over the blogosphere have at the end of their posts and you want one too, but you can’t for the life of you figure out how to do it… perhaps you even saw my new signature over at Desperately Seeking Sanity… LOVIN’ the Scribble!

First, you need to get a signature and you can do this in a variety of ways.  You could make one yourself if you’re familiar with a photo editing program.  Simply chose the font that you want and make a signature.  Save it as a png or gif with a transparent background and you’re almost there.

Don’t understand all that?  If you’re not savvy with graphics programs, it’s okay.  There are those out there that are.  Like Karen from Simply Amusing Designs.  Or Beth and Christy from Ruby and Roja Designs.  Or Jo-Lynne from DCR Design.  I can stand behind any of those designers.

But if shelling out a little bit of cash for a signature just isn’t doable and you don’t know how to use a program, there’s another option… it’s simple and it’s free and it’s called My Live Signature All you need to do is type in your name, choose your font, size and color and you’re on your way.

Grab the code or save it to your hard drive to upload to your own server.

Now…

You can either copy and paste the html into the bottom EVERY time you post, which is a pain, or you can set it to post at the end of every post automagically.  I like that option better, don’t you?

And, if you want to get overly complicated, I can show you where within the code you would place this but why bother when there’s a plugin that will do all of the work for you?

Let’s take the easy way.

Simply download the Add Signature Plugin from Dagon Design and upload it to your server via your FTP site.

Activate the plugin, go to settings and then to DDAddSig and you’ll see a box that says primary signature.

Paste your signature HTML code in there, select where you want your signature to appear (on the index page, on post pages, etc) and hit update settings.

Viola!

You now have a quick and easy signature on every post.

And just a note, My Live Signature does offer a plugin however I’ve never been able to get it to work with the newest version of WordPress and I find DDAddSig to be much easier to use and navigate.

So, show us your signature…

Until next time…

Heather

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