Secrets of WP Theming: Part 1

Today I am beginning a series on some of the lesser known features of the Theme System in WordPress 1.5 , I am not sure how many parts there will be, might be just this one.  But don't count on it.  Here are Part 2 and Part 3.

So lets talk about Custom Templates, and more importantly how we can bend them to our will.  Now I am assuming that by now everyone has at least a passing familiarity with Templates in WP 1.5, for those who are not up-to-speed, lets cover some back-story.

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The Proper use of Base HREF's

I am helping, off an on, a friend with a project that is powered by WordPress.  One of his latest hijinks, involved named anchors.

Basically he was having trouble using them across varying sections and templates.  He was creating absolute URI's and tacking on the anchor pointer, lets say #top on that generated URI.  The problem of course is that WP dynamically generates its content, which gives you all kinds of URI's.

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And the Saga is complete

At this very moment my wife and I along with a handful of friends are watching the scrolling text of a Star Wars opening.

So ends the Saga of Anakin Skywalker, the Force and out of control marketing and merchandising.

I will share my thoughts later.

Hey look, its later.

Thoughts from around the web

I had intended to write something here about my experiences, but as always I have found that others have gone through the trouble, and with more skill than I could.

So here are some links to reviews that say everything I had wanted to:

1. Rob Wychert basically everything I wanted to say as well Jason
2. MHG
3. And Kevin Smith - rough waters ahead, my dopple-ganger is not shy with the colorful words... I warned you.

Well that is enough for now I think.  Other than to say that yes, it was a good movie, not a great movie but a good one; and that I am going to see it again, probably at least two more before its over.

This is not the Baton you are looking for

* Makes waving motion with hand *

This never works for me.  Bah, well I guess I have to participate in this meme then.

I have been passed the musical baton meme by Shawn so here we go:

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Tiger Tip #2

If you are having problems with the finder recognizing blank media, a DVD or CD then this tip is for you.

The Finder has been giving me this error all day:

This disc could not be used because the disc drive is not supported (Error code 0x80020025)

I finally found a solution, albeit a very strange one.  It seems there is a bug in the Finder that is only seen the first time you try to insert blank media, it can be cured by restarting the Finder, either by logging out and back in, or by force restarting the Finder by executing an option-apple-esc and selecting the Finder from the Force Quit Applications window.

The finder will restart and all should be happy once more.

CJD Rate-it!, finally

Yes, yes I finally got around to releasing my plugin that I use to add hearts and stars to my posts ala Binary Bonsai.

It is fairly well documented and easy to add to your site, take it for a drive and let me know what you think, the next version will include user rating, and a function to list your top-rated articles.

You can grab Rate-it! from wp-plugins.org, and soon from an archive on this site... somewhere.  Stay tuned.

Oh and if you are having problems with the unicode HTML entities you can change the icons to whatever you want by finding $heart and $star at under the function rating_icon (3rd function in cjd_rate_it.php) if you want to use images just change the HTML entity code to the path of your image:

That's all for now.

The Problem of Syndication

Lo many moons ago Sillyness only served its RSS feeds as excerpts.  My thinking behind this was that I did not want the majority of my traffic to become RSS readers (programs) as opposed to people.

For most site owners this would be a no-brainer, and I must confess that one side of me agrees, readers are readers and traffic is traffic.  Why should it matter the avenue by which your site visitors are able to consume your content?

It is a good question, and personally I do think it matters.

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I am sooo behind

It is unbelievable how behind I have gotten on some more personal tasks.  Ever since I started the new job my time has become less and less free.

This morning I finally got around to importing the last 105 photos I took from Pascha (Orthodox Easter) this year, now I just need to weed out the bad ones and create a gallery of them.  Here are a couple to wet your appetite:

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Two important points

Today I learned two important things:

1. You can trust Optometrists.
2. You can't trust Computer manufacturers websites.

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How Many Rules?

Today is the big day, today I can announce that I am one of the last two members of the design/personal category of the 9rules network.

You can find Scrivs all-too-kind words over at the official site, and just let me say that Scrivs gets a +10d to his flowery words skill for that right up.

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