I upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1, but I had to do it manually for some reason. This is one of the reasons that people prefer things like LJ or social networking sites, because they don’t have to mess around with this kind of thing, and go poking at it when it spits out some error. Of course, unlike WP, LJ doesn’t really seem to update or add new features very frequently.

Was talking to a friend about Dreamwidth and new potential features which would make Dreamwidth more useful to people. She mentioned two.

The first was metadata. Say someone is publishing an online literary journal. On LJ, they would have to tag the post as something like “author: charmian” a it to include the name of the author and the illustrator. But then this would make the list of tags unwieldy, if you have a lot of authors. So what would be better, she suggests if there were a field, like the music or mood field, where you could enter in the name of the author. This would be separate from tags.

The second was a thorough revamping of the tags feature to merge it with the memories feature and allow for post discovery. The memories system as it currently exists, sucks. The tags system isn’t much better. With the memories system, you can categorize posts and save them in your memories.

The potential new system would be like delicious: You can memory posts with multiple tags. What is more, if you should choose to publicize them, others may see them. Well, now they can see your memories, but what I mean is, if they look at the post, they can click a link or something, and see who else has memoried it, and using which tags. Then, they can click on that tag in order to see either which posts the user has also memoried using that tag, or which posts all users have memoried using that tag. (I’m not sure which the default would be).

So, if I have a post about pumpkin pie, other users could label it as “pie” or “pumpkin pie” or “thanksgiving food.” They could use this to search for all tags across the site which are tagged as “pie” or “pumpkin pie.”

The only problem I can foresee is that users may be offended by others labeling posts like “this sucks” or “grade: D.”

Anyway, the people doing the project are really, really busy, so I don’t think this is the best time to suggest the thing. I may write it up later in a post to the ML, or if it is appropriate, post it to the wiki.

BTW, I installed a WordPress plugin called Sabre, in order to prevent annoying spam registrations. However, I have been wondering whether it has also been preventing legitimate registrations as well. Has anyone who reads this blog been having problems with registering?

In the future, I may be putting up downloads in posts visible to only registered users, so this is an important point. Well, either that or I could just password things.

I blogged last time about why people might not use WP vs. LJ on technical grounds, namely that it doesn’t have some of the most important privacy features of LJ. (There is also the icon commenting versatility thing, but so far I haven’t seen anyone really talk that up as a problem, and I’m not sure how important it is to the average LJ user. Before anyone comments, yes, I know you can have as many icons you want when posting on your WP blog thanks to various plugins, but Gravatars and other similar services only allow you one icon when commenting.)

Thing is, the “push” factor (LJ’s various missteps) has obviously not been strong enough. Similarly, there is a lack of a “pull factor,” something to convince people to leave LJ. In other words, it’s the “all my friends are on LJ and so there is no reason for me to leave.” Basically then, until LJ falls down, or someone invents something that is an improvement, technically, based on the existing needs and wants of the LJ users then LJ users have a compelling reason to switch. WP is much more powerful as a blogging software, but much less powerful as a social networking software.

I think that Dreamwidth may be one such alternative, because it is a fork of LJ, which is attempting to preserve the benefits of LJ, and build on them, while fixing LJ’s defects. I’m on the discussion ML for the project, and they seem to be full of ideas of how to better improve the features and interface, both in terms of blogging and social networking.

Re: this post on blogs v WordPress.

I actually agree with many of the points, and I did respond in comments. However, I wanted to get in my two cents here instead.

Point one is that you get more bang for the buck by making a blog. Agreed, if you have a paid LJ. However, most LJ users DO NOT have a paid LJ. Therefore, they cannot save any money by making a blog. I should also note that with LJ, a paid user has extra features. With WP, for a self-hosted installation, you need to have money in the first place to even have the basic features. Of course, with WP.com and other WP free sites, you can have a free WP blog, BUT then of course you can’t install your own plugins.

Point 2 is correct, but on LJ you can also choose not to have ads, currently. Also, while many fandom blogs do not have ads, there are also quite a few that do. In any event, neither LJ or the blogosphere is an ad-free place.

Point 3 is correct, although I should not it’s not like most people were willing to leave LJ over these issues anyhow.

Point 4: The author overestimates how much skill the average LJ user has. Many people don’t know FTP from a whole in the ground. Editing a few lines of a script is scary.

Plus, while I love WP, it honestly takes TIME to maintain an up to date WP install if you use plugins and like changing your theme. It can be super easy to maintain WP, IF you do not want to run it like an LJ and use certain features.

Also, while there is documentation, that means you have to do it yourself, vs. LJ, where maintenance matters are handled by the staff.

Point 5: Granted, but this does not address the issue of how to make friends-locked posts and use filters. While there are plugins out there that do handle this, the fact is that this is not an out of the box feature supported by WP core.

Point 6: LJ’s interoperability does suck ass, but I think for a lot of LJ users, this is not a huge concern anyway.

People keep using LJ because of the lock-in feature, and because there are certain features there which are difficult to find in other places. I’m hoping nowadays that Dreamwidth does have some effect on LJ fanfic fandom, and that some of the big communities and more influential users do move there.

BTW, for everyone following on feeds, I’ve changed the layout to something white and minimalistic, but compatible with WordPress 2.7. It also has a nifty alert box feature where you can write a little note that floats above your entries.

I’ve also updated the FAQ on Saiunkoku (not really a very informative FAQ, though. Most of it consists on what we don’t know.)

Anyway, one of the negative points about WordPress is that you do need to change themes or edit your theme if you want to take advantage of new features when they update. But on the other hand, it is very, very customizable, and you can have it your way, as opposed to Livejournal, where editing your theme is a paid feature, and you can only have a limited number of themes. Personally, I much prefer the WP user experience. The interface is a lot more usable, and there are many appealing features. I am still frustrated by how LJ shows no interest in either creating a stats function with referrer, or in allowing us to use an external service, such as Google Analytics. Now that they’ve laid off the US staff, I wonder what’s going to happen with the development situation there?

I have created a page here for translations. Just look above; it should be right next to “About.” This page serves as an index to my summaries and translations. It will be periodically updated, because I have to do it manually.

Because wordpress.com bought gravatar, now gravatar support is native. That’s how I have the baby sloth icon. Anyway, if you want your own gravatar, you can go and register at Gravatar.com. The gravatar is linked to your email address, so if you enter it when you comment, blogs that support gravatar can display it.

Am messing around with themes, so new themes may appear and disappear. Am also working on an index page for the translations/summaries.

Hurray, I’ve finally upgraded to wordpress 2.5. This shouldn’t (hopefully) mean many changes for the people using this site. Please tell me if there are any major problems.

At the same time, I’ve switched the plugin used for threading comments. Brian’s threaded comments wasn’t being updated, and it meant every time I installed a new theme I had to switch the comments file, but with this new plugin, that isn’t supposed to be necessary. Anyway, I’ll see how it works.

Apologies, this site was down for awhile while I tried to get everything working again. Things now seem to be mostly back to normal, although I need to go and reinstall some plugins.

BTW, I have uploaded an archive of the data to my backup site.

I just installed WordPress 2.3. Out of all of my plugins, only Simple Tagging was not compatible. Anyway, it is made obsolete by 2.3. (BTW, if you have either of these installed, make sure to run the converter).

The major upgrade this time is tags. However, this means that you need to upgrade your theme. This is one way in which WordPress shows that it’s not made for the complete newb. Look. The average person doesn’t know php. Okay, they may be able to c&p, but how are people supposed to know exactly where to paste to get the results that UTW and Simple Tagging achieve effortlessly? Also, since php is code, you can induce errors by putting in special characters, like colons.

Anyway, what you need to do is this. In your theme, there will be an index.php (main index file) and a single.php (single post file). Locate these files.

Then just follow these instructions. http://iivee.com/add-wordpress-23-tags-to-wordpress-theme-bogart/33/

So far, I’ve updated the Skittlish, Lainlog, and Tarski (actually found an updated version) themes. I hope to go through my themes and update the rest of them soon. Actually, now that I’ve gotten Skittlish working fairly well, I might just go with that one. Or maybe I’ll whip up my own header for Tarski.

Before I start, I want to make clear that I’m not an expert. I’m not a programmer or computer professional, just a user. A lot of people have expressed interest in using and customizing WordPress, so I decided to write this guide. Feel free to ask questions, and I’ll try to answer them.

Installing

To use wordpress, you must know how to use FTP. Knowing how to chmod (change file permissions) also helps for some plugins.

To install WordPress, you need a webhost which meets certain requirements, namely PHP and MYSQL. Mosts hosts will meet these. Some webhosts have Fantastico, which allows a one-click installation of WordPress. If you’ve got that, then, just install WordPress, and go to the customization settings. Yay.

If not, you should follow these instructions. Basically, you must first create a MySQL database, then just alter wordpress file, then run the script. It’s a fairly simple process.

Configuring

Okay, you’ve got wordpress. First, you should login (http://yourblog.com/blog/wp-admin) and start to configure your wordpress.

First, let’s go to Users.

One thing I recommend is turning OFF the rich text editor unless you like to use them. I don’t, because I’m used to just manually typing in links. To do this, go to Users, and find yourself. Go to the Edit page and there should be a box saying “use visual text editor.” Unclick that box.

While you’re on this page, you may want to give yourself a Nickname. Otherwise, any posts that you write will be attributed to Admin. Write a nickname in the box, and Update Profile (click the button). Then, under Display Name Publicly, choose that nickname.

Then, go to Options.

Under General Options, fill in the correct information. Remember to hit the Update Options button so that the changes are registered!

Under Writing Options, you can change the size of the text box you post in (I find the default too small, so I increased it to twenty lines).

Under Discussions, you can change the moderation options. Here you can set whether you are emailed when someone comments, and decide how much comment moderation you want. The default seems to be that you must approve comments before they are displayed, so change that if that’s not what you want.

Privacy determines whether your blog can be crawled by spiders and whether you ping Technorati or not. However, for added security, I suggest using .htaccess.

Now, you can start installing themes.

Themes are like layouts. To get themes, you can go to various sites and download them. This is the official site. Or, there are many recommendation lists.

However, some themes may have problems. They may not be widget-ready, which means that your widgets will not display, and some may not be compatible with some plugins, such as Brian’s Threaded Comments. Others may work in your preferred browser, but not in others. (IE is especially bad in this department, because of a CSS bug)

Once you have found a theme you like, load the folder to wp-content/themes, using FTP. For some themes, additonal menus may now appear under the Presentation category. To customize your sidebar for a widget-ready theme, go to Presentation>Widgets and just drag-click away. You can put text or even Javascript in the Text widget, but to put in PHP code, you must install a plugin.

Okay, now you’ve got a pretty nice looking blog, right? Okay, here comes the exciting part.

Plug-ins

Now, there are many plugins out there, and many sites offering them. There are several things you should keep in mind when installing plugins. Firstly, make sure they’re compatible with the version of WP you’re using. Secondly, sometimes plugins interfere with each other, so you may not be able to use all of the ones you want at once.

Here’s some plug-ins I use.

Akismet: comes bundled with WP. To activate it, you need to register with WordPress.com and receive an API key (it’s like a string of text). Then activate Akismet in the Plugins menu and input the key. Akismet protects against spam. There are other anti-spam plugins out there, but I haven’t used them.

Brian’s Threaded Comments: This is probably the feature people most miss when leaving LJ. Brian’s threaded comments works, but it is incompatible with some layouts. If you look through my layouts on the theme viewer, you’ll see that some don’t have threaded comments. To install threaded comments, install the plugin normally (put it in the plugins folder), then, VERY IMPORTANT, take the copy of comments.php that comes with the plugin, and REPLACE the comments.php in your current theme (meaning go into wp-content/themes/yourcurrentheme) with the Brian’s Threaded Comments comments.php. Otherwise, this plugin will NOT work. Then, activate the plugin, and configure it under Options, where a new menu will appear. For many themes, it will work, but for others, it will not. I am working on figuring out why this is so, and seeing if I can fix the problem.

Executable PHP Widget: I installed this so I could use PHP in the sidebar. But, this is not a very critical plugin, unless you have a desire to do this.

LJGravatar: A modification of Gravatar which allows you to display LJ usericons. I talked with the plugin author here about it. Also, to use this, you must alter comments.php to put in the code so the gravatar can appear.

LJ crossposter: Allows you to crosspost to LJ. Watch out, though, if you create new categories, it will automatically check them as crosspostable. So, if you only want certain categories of post to be crossposted, make sure you uncheck them.

Simple Tagging: allows you to use tags. Now, LJ also allows tags, but they don’t have categories. Many people use WP’s categories feature to organize their posts, you say, so what do you need tags for? So, if that’s all you need, you might not want to include a tagging plugin. But, I find it useful, because I don’t want to have five bajillion categories. I think of the categories like a Table of Contents, and tags as the index at the back of the book. So I wouldn’t make a catgory called ‘Code Geass’ because I think eventually I stop posting about it, when the show is over. Instead, I make an anime category, and a Code Geass tag. That way I don’t have extreme category multiplication, but I still am able to just click a link to get all the Code Geass posts together.

WordPress DB Backup: This is a very important plugin which allows you to easily make backups of your database. It’s easy to install and use. You can also schedule backups.

WordPress OpenID+: This is a fork of the Verselogic OpenID, which I like better because it doesn’t make a new blank; you can just type your LJ URL into the webpage blank, and it will authenticate.

ThemeSwitcher: Not really that useful, but a lot of fun. Lets you change what theme you’re looking at.

WP-Polls: Lets you use polls. Fairly straightfoward to use.

WP-Slimstat: Stats program. Easy to use.

Hints: If you have trouble with a plug-ing, try visiting the webpage, or searching in the wordpress.org forum.

I’m continuing to modify my wordpress, and I discovered this plugin that lets the viewer pick which themes they want to see and use! :D Themes in wordpress are like different layouts. So far I have about ten of them, some of which are quite cool, so check them out. To navigate between themes, use the dropdown menu named theme viewer.

Actually, aside from being oh so cool, this plugin does have a use:  if you favor an eye-bleeding theme, your users can switch to a more sedate one. IIRC there are other plugins in wordpress which allow users to make the type larger and to perform even more customizations.

Heh, I changed the version of theme switcher, and now it seems to be working fine, so switch away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get Brian’s threaded comments to work in all the themes. :(

However, it works in both the default theme and Lainlog, so comment away.

I also have added a page featuring a chatroom, and a del.icio.us sidebar. I think the sidebar is getting sort of overpopulated.

After a bit of mucking around, I’ve gotten OpenID working. Although as Meril says, free software is only free if your time is not money (although in a way, that’s also true of LJ), wordpress is not hard to use at all, as long as you just stick to the basics. I’m not a Comp Sci major or anything like that, so I didn’t have much prior knowledge; yet, I was able to resolve most of the general issues with the plugins and themes that came up. Many of the plugins are just plug n’ play. So, if you’re interested, I urge you to get on board so I can link to more people. XD (or, use <a href=”http://wordpress.com”>wordpress.com</a>. You won’t be able to install plugins, but there are many useful features.) Anyway, on the blog now, all you need to do is just comment with http://username.livejournal.com to trigger openID, I think. If you have any criticisms of or suggestions for the bloglayout etc., I’d be glad to hear them.

Ah well, I shall stop boring everyone with tales of wordpress. Next up:  some short JLit.

I managed to get the gravatar part of the LJGravatar plugin running. What you need to do is just install the script, and then put in some code in the comments.php to have the image show up in comments. Okay, pretty simple. So now I have a gravatar. The problem, though, is now getting the LJ part to work. This plugin doesn’t seem to be used that much, so there don’t seem to be many people to ask for advice. I’ve tried asking on the LJ comm, though, so we’ll see if I can get more help with this. I asked some other people who use wordpress, but they looked at the code and didn’t think there seemed to be any problem with it. I also chmoded the folder to 755. So it should be able to create a new folder.