9rules, Round 2

The time is now!  submissions are open for round 2, for the love of all that is Holy go and submit your site... help us make the network more diverse (read => site topic as well as all the mundane gender and race stuff) and deep!

The time has come my friends.  Round 2 of 9rules submissions has come.

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CJD Notepad: Released

CJD Notepad has moved out of beta testing and into a release phase.

I have squashed all the bugs that were identified in the beta, and Notepad is now feature complete, at least for this iteration.

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Podcasting with WordPress

I was asked by Matt sometime ago if I would create an entry in Codex describing how to podcast with WordPress.  There is already a nice article there, but I thought I would go ahead and create this tutorial for the sake of completeness.

Welcome those of you surfing here from 9rules, Airbag Industries, Photo Matt and Forever Geek.  I am continually surprised when someone thinks my ramblings here are worth mentioning, so thanks for the linkup Scrivs and Greg!

So here it is, I decided to record this tutorial as a podcast as well as a proof of concept.  Enjoy.

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Secrets of WP Theming: Part 3

Well it is time again for everyones favorite series.  So far we have covered some pretty groovy stuff.  Part 1 showed us how to create custom code laden templates that can be applied to blank pages in WP to achieve some gnarly effects.

In Part 2 we talked about creating custom templates for each of your categories, opening up a whole world of possibilities.  Today we are going to talk about a little used theme template, the Home Template (home.php).

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CJD Notepad in Beta

So my buddy Kartooner tells me he had this great idea for a plugin.  What if we had a place to store information gathered for a post that was outside of the post mechanism, a place to take "notes"?  He had looked around (apparently not very hard), and couldn't find one, so would I like to write if for him?

Oh and apparently our Binary Bonsai friend thought it sounded keen as well.

I am such a push over

So I of course said, "Sure that would be easy.. all it really does is throw data into the DB and then take it back out again."  What a maroon.  I had forgotten how much I like to tinker, and how I like to add features out the whazihoogee to stuff I write.  So a few hours turned into 3 days of an hour here, two or three there.

I have been asked to expound on why this is better than using a draft or private post.  Well for me, and it is all about me, it is better since I am using the post_id in my design.  So if I am planning a longer article, say like my Secrets of WP Theming series, but want to shoot off a couple of smaller posts between, then I don't have to worry about the numbers getting out of order.

For other people, I have no idea.  Kartooner and Michael think it is a good idea, so I could really care less.  3 people wanting to use it is enough to convince me it needs to be written.

So if you would like to check out this plugin, and help beta test, then by all means go over to the announcement page and read through the notes and download it.

And oh yes, I know there is another plugin that does almost the same thing, I found out about it today... but I like mine better, so there.

CJD Notepad, your post research assistant

CJD Notepad provides a mechanism to create and manage "notes".  Notes can hold any information that you are collecting to use in a post later, instead of creating a draft or privte post for these snippets you can now just create a note.

You can always find the latest version of CJD Notes here: CJD Notes.

• Current version is 1.5.5.2
• Last updated on Wednesday July 6th, 2005 @ 3:19 P.M.

Praise for CJD Notepad

Notepad is perfect for anyone who lives by notes and jots. Many times when you are writing an article you need to do some research at different sites, or you need a place to collect thoughts and potential directions you could take in your writing. Notepad is your weapon of choice. -- Clint, aenonfiredesign

And this is a great example of a plugin author is thinking like an end user, adding features that increase functionality and usefulness. Keep up the great work, Chris! -- Lorelle, cameraontheroad

Bugs features and more!

CJD Notepad Version 1.5.5.2 adds:

• bookmarklet code (http://economysizegeek.com)
• fixed the bug that arose when publishing a draft from a note that contained single quotes
• Moved CJD Notepad to respect your pingback and commenting preferences

If you decide to use CJD Notepad and find a bug, or have a suggestion for future development please feel free to register for an account on the Support Forums and leave something.  The CJD Notepad topic can be found here.

Installation instructions

It is fairly easy to install CJD Notepad, you simply download the archive, and once you have unarchived it drop the entire folder notepad into your wp-content/plugin/ directory. Then fire up your web browser and activate the plugin.  You should now have two new sub-menus, one under Write > Note and one under Manage > Notes.

Have fun.

And in closing

If you have any questions or concerns let me know.  I tend to develop at breakneck speed.  There will most likely be changes to the code everyday, your best bet will be to check here for any version number changes or updated on date changes.

Almost go time

There is now a little more than a month till drbacchus and I leave for Stuttgart and ApacheCon Europe.

So here's the lowdown

I am pretty stoked, and a little nervous to tell you the truth.  I can talk all day about this stuff don't get me wrong, but I really want this to be the first of many such trips and in many ways that all hinges on this appearance.

Well nothing to do about it now, I have written what I think will be a good session, and I can only go and do the best I can, hoping to have a good group.

And let me tell you, my Flickr Pro Account (thanks skippy!) will be blowing up while I am there.

Secrets of WP Theming: Part 2

When last we met we talked about Using custom templates to add pages to WP that don't necessarily call for posts or categories, etc.  Today we continue our exploration of custom templates by looking at another little known power hidden within the theme system: Per Category templates.

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