WordPress 1.0.1 for Rachel's site

Updated Rachel’s site the other night with the latest WordPress beta (1.0.1). The upgrade went fairly well, although it did take a little tricky manipulation of table names in MySQL. Basically the old b2* tables were still there from an earlier install, and at first I wanted to use the new wp_* table names. So I began by doing a fresh install (of course, none of the old posts showed up). So then I eventually figured out that if I renamed the old tables with the wp_* prefixes that I wanted the new tables to have then the upgrade script would migrate the content properly. This worked well.

I am loving how WordPress is developing as a piece of software. It has vitality. It is growing in elegance and simplicity. It is Open Source.

Particularly, I appreciate the mod_rewrite ease-of-use. Basically, you simply decide what format you want your archives to be in (suggested is something like archives/2004/01/01/post-title-name) and the admin area gives you the exact code to paste into your .htaccess file. It is very slick, and then it works like magic. Considering how tricky many people find mod_rewrite, this alone is an awesome part of the system. 🙂

I’ll be upgrading this site’s installation as well soon, I think. I still have some other stuff to deal with first, though.

Another great feature is the inclusion of an “Edit this post” button in the template tags. Makes it super easy to edit any entry right when you see it. I had hacked this into my installation before, but seem to have lost it somewhere along the upgrade line, so it is great to see an official implementation.

January 15th, 2004

January Updates

Things are continuing to hum along here at Serafini Studios. Kristin is going to be the writing instructor for the Principia Upper School Teton Trip again this year. She is also continuing her other school visits, inspiring thousands of children each year.

On the project front, exciting progress continues with Vibe Phone. We’re working on interface design, graphics, usability and functionality.

Securanix continues to develop in interesting ways. We’re working on the initial plans for a number of security-related products.

Sites we’ve been spending some time with recently:

Also, been thinking about non-profit foundations and how they might relate to helping empower young people (elementary-age and up) with technology education including HTML and publishing to make a difference in their own lives and open up opportunities…

January 8th, 2004

Chiptune Christmas music mp3 album from 8bitpeoples.com

the 8bits of christmas album cover

Found via BoingBoing – it’s an entire mp3-only album of 8-bit video game console composed Christmas music. You can download each song in mp3 format and print out an album cover.

There’s lots of other cool music available on the site as well. Check it out!

Link: www.8bitpeoples.com

My favorite so far: Let it snow by Bit Shifter. Composed using Nintendo Gameboy.
Download mp3 (2.5MB, 192kbs bitrate)

December 24th, 2003

NaomiWrites.com updated with new layout and Gallery

NaomiWrites.com screenshot

Just finished updating NaomiWrites.com with a new layout and the addition of a picture gallery. Using Open Source software called Gallery to handle image management. It is still pretty tricky to incorporate Gallery into a site without a lot of tweaking of header and footer files, but it is a nice and powerful system. You can view a slideshow, automatically order prints of your images and create as many albums as you want. Also it uses ImageMagick to resize images so you can upload a large image and it will create a thumbnail for you. Very nice…

We’re also using WordPress for the blogging software.

Visit the site at www.NaomiWrites.com.

December 24th, 2003

First post using i330

posting using graffiti on my new i330 over at Hal’s place.

December 12th, 2003

Samsung i330 Arrived!

Today I received my new Samsung i330 Palm / mobile phone. I purchased mine from Ebay and so far I’m totally happy with the purchase. Having a Palm again is really nice. It should make things a lot easier on all fronts.

Also, it is possible to skin the phone — check out http://i330.nopdesign.com to see how it works. Very cool.

i330 FAQ- http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/portal.php?device=i330

i330 Forums – http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=114

December 10th, 2003

Google Dance Search Ranking Tool

Found this nice tool for checking all 10 Google datacenter search engine results at once (each updates on a different schedule).

http://googledance.seochat.com/

November 22nd, 2003

SEO – Updated Keywords for NoraLarimer.com

Today we finished updating NoraLarimer.com with updated keywords to help improve search engine placement.

Nora Larimer Painting

Nora is a longtime client, and when the site was originally built we placed an emphasis on clean design and letting her paintings stand on their own. Since then, we’ve added many paintings to the site, her recent work using watercolor tiles and implemented a Paypal shopping cart throughout the site.

Nora wanted to improve her search engine listings — a lot of the new content we’ve added to the site, like giclee prints weren’t part of her original content.

Nora’s current Google results include #1 for her name – Nora Larimer and #7 for watercolorist.

Our current efforts are focused on improving her results for terms including giclee, watercolor tile, watercolor originals and others. These are fairly competitive search terms, so we are not necessarily expecting #1 positions for each. But we should see improvements for each term now that we’ve added them to the site.

Do you come up where you want to in search engines like Google?
Post your site in the comments and we’ll take a look.

November 20th, 2003

Blazing Products, Inc. New Website Launched

The new site for Blazing Products, Inc. is launched.

Formerly known as Tom King Harmony Products, Inc. (TKHP) we helped craft a new identity system for the company.

Blazing Products logo

After extensive consultation, TKHP decided to change their company name, website, and packaging to reflect their core value – helping people in the irrigation and landscape lighting industries install faster. Thus was Blazing Products, Inc. born.

The new site is now live and includes their new logo, layout and content.

Evolution of Tom King Harmony Products - Blazing Products, Inc.

http://www.blazingproducts.com

November 14th, 2003

How to: Add an "Edit" link to each post in WordPress

This hack adds an “Edit” link next to each entry if you’ve logged in and the cookie still exists on your computer. This is not the ultimate security, since the real security functions are still provided by b2verifauth.php, but it does hide the link from users who are not logged in.

To add this to your WordPress site:

1. Add the following code to your b2template.functions.php in the Post tags section:


/* Hack by Gabriel Serafini to add an "Edit" tag by */
/* each post if you're logged in */
function edit_this(){
    global $id, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;
    if (!empty($HTTP_COOKIE_VARS["wordpressuser"])) {
        $output = '- <a href="/blog/wp-admin/wp-post.php?action=edit&post='.$id.'" title="Edit this post">Edit</a>';
        echo $output;
    }
}

2. Add the following code to your blog index page (usually index.php) where you want your edit tag to live:


<?php edit_this() ?>

I’ve placed mine next to the …posted in Category by Gabriel at … links at the bottom of each post.

The final result is a nice link that lets you instantly edit any post on your site, which is very nice if you tend to like to edit your posts on a regular basis.

October 30th, 2003