LibraryTechtonics

I took the plunge this weekend and managed to bang it all out. Blake Carver at LISHost is my hero, installing WordPress and importing my posts, which was totally half the battle for me (at least, timewise). Just goes to show you can’t beat the service at LISHost. Thanks, Blake!

So, quick overview of the new and of note:

• It’s WordPress, not Movable Type. Yippee!
• My feed URL has changed. Grab the new feed for your newsreader, so’s you get the new stuff.
• Comments! Yes, you can finally leave comments on my posts. They’re not broken anymore.
• The layout a bit nicer now. I didn’t mean to pick as pretty a theme as I have, I was just looking for something usable, and this happened to be usable *and* my flavor of zen. I made a few minor changes to the theme, Cherry Blossom 1.0, including spacing and color nudges here and there, and making it widget-friendly in under 10 minutes.
• Everything is way more printer-friendly, even if you don’t use the new print links, which will actually render you a printer-friendly, text-only version.
• Recent Flickr photos in the sidebar, if you happen to be in the neighborhood and not feed reading.
• A Lijit widget to tell you how to find me elsewhere online, with a sort of Russian Roulette feature to explore my content online.
• Consistent sidebar navigation on every single page. w00t for that, finally.
• Usable, usable, usable, for readers and for me. No more sacrifices.

Much of the new functionality is hidden in the plugins I chose. Here’s what I’ve got under the hood, and why it’s cool:

• Akismet 2.0.2, Bad Behavior 2.0.10, Spam Karma 2 2.3 rc4: My bad boy trio of digital bouncers, protecting me against spam. I’m on the beta test list for a new spam plugin in development called Defensio, but I haven’t heard from them about a beta download yet.
• Better Feed 1.1: I’m still playing with the configuration on this, but the plugin lets you customize your feed, adding social bookmarking links and other features that allow readers to do stuff with your posts in the feed reader without going back to the original post.
• Contact Form 7 1.4: I’m really excited about this plugin, which is now powering my Send Me Email form. Not only is a pretty AJAX form, so it processes everything without refreshing the page, but it also runs all the email from the form through Akismet to filter for spam. I need to install this one over on the PLA Blog, too.
• creative commons license widget 0.5: Nice little widget adds the new and improved 3.0 version of the Creative Commons license to my home page.
• Event Calendar (+widget) 3.1.0
• Flickr Photo Gallery 0.92: This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts, without having to leave WordPress. The photos appear in a tab under the content box on the post page, and it’s as easy as clicking on the icon, clicking on a size, and typing away. Many thanks to Snowy in Second Life for the tip that Thursday morning at Coffee @ Crayon.
• Share This 1.4: Awesome little AJAX plugin for social bookmarking and emailing posts without cluttering up the page with more little icons. Just click on the Share This link on each post or page, and a tabbed box gives you social bookmarking and emailing options for the content. Sexy.
• WP-Polls (+widget) 2.20: Because someday, I may want to ask people stuff in a poll, and this plugin makes pretty AJAX polls that don’t require refreshing the page.
• WP-Print 2.11: Hurray printer friendly posts! Clicking on the Print This link on posts and pages will give you just text with related metadata.

I’d still like to add a CV page of speaking/publishing engagements, and a page for handouts/lesson plans for classes at the library. But overall, I’m quite pleased with the results of the overhaul. Now I just hope that everyone’s feeds get changed over. Heck, I hope that people realize that I’m posting here. I’ll be posting more often going forward.

Tags: blog, plugins, redesign, widgets, WordPress
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