Stephan Miller

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

And it was a mother. This was why I wait so long to update.

First, I made sure that all my plugins were current, but it turns out that this new version of Wordpress is a big change and it really didn’t matter if they were current because a lot were not going to work.

Alinks

This is a plugin I had on every installation of Wordpress. And I am tired of messing with it to make it work with Wordpress 2.6.1 or the theme at Digital Products Review. I am not really sure which it is, but I am done for a while. But when I turn it on, my homepage looks like the picture on the right. It did nothing to the other pages on the site.

Not sure why. Looked at the source code of each and did a compare. They came out exactly the same. Done messing. Just done.

I want to use the same autolink plugin across all my Wordpress installations, so if it doesn’t work with one, it is not going on any.

So I went looking and came back with KB Linker, a very simple way to autolink keywords, which I may edit so that it can import true CSV files. The Alinks import and export function was very proprietary. I just want a simple “keyword,url,title,target” type CSV file.

But I found a lot of autolink plugins, enough for another post sometime.

Simple Tags

This S.O.B. stopped working too and it did a lot. It gave you tag suggestions and gave you related posts for both posts and feeds. The replacement is supposed to be Simple Tagging which doesn’t even do half as much.

So now, no suggestions. I have found that Similar Posts works pretty well and I will be using Sniplets to put the code under each post. Sniplets is a pretty sweet plugin. It’s almost like having widgets you can put anywhere, not just in the sidebar.

Sezwho

They have two plugins you can download. Don’t make the mistake of installing the wrong one if you have Wordpress 2.6 or higher. On this site, it messed up the javascript in the admin to the point I had no HTML editor and I had to build the sidebars in the correct order the first time, because drag and drop was gone.

The Turbo Link

I use Flock. Nuff said. Can’t use Google Gears on Flock. So I have no idea how well this works. I guess I could fire up Firefox just for blogging, but why. I have Live Writer and ScribeFire.

Wordpress MU

I do have one of these installations now and I can build subdomain blogs on the fly. It’s pretty damn cool. I can also clone any one of these installations to create a new one.

Ch-Ch-Changes

These times start out shitty, but in the end they are much better. I took a normal work day off to get all of this done. I will not go broke making my boss rich. I make more on my own than my day job. Therefore, it gets second place.

I realized my priorities were out of wack. If anything needs to have the focus of my work, it is my sites, not my job.

And I will be using Atomkeep to send out my resume, like Tim Ferris suggests in The Four Hour WorkWeek. I need to see what’s out there.

And I changed the theme. It was time and it was free. And I think I like it a lot better.

Right now, for some reason, I can’t access my Wordpress admin. Well, I can. In one way. I can click around on the top menu. The thing is that, nothing appears below as I do this.

The cause: rebuilding my PHP install to add new modules.

The solution: I have no clue until I start sniffing around a bit.

Troubleshooting route:

Upgrading my Wordpress installation to the latest version and hope for the best. This worked once for an issue I was having and I didn’t ask any questions. And it needs this anyway.
Rebuild again, paying much more attention to the options.
Uninstall plugins [...] Continue Reading…

Other working titles for this article were “Guerilla Programming” and “How to Build Rube Goldberg Apps”, but I had to make a choice.

I fell into programming because I was broke and bored, and I knew software would speed up some of the things I do, so I learned a few languages. All you really have to learn is one major language and then you can write code in a lot of the rest, because most of the common languages are very similar. At least that has been my experience. I started with Basic on a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, wrote [...] Continue Reading…

Writing Down the Bones
If you have not read this book, do so now. It was written by Natalie Goldberg. It will change your attitude about writing and is my backpack, wherever I go. Does writer’s block happen? Is it a cop out? The answers don’t really matter when you are facing a blank page and your fingers refuse to move. Or on those days you are sure you could write, but no idea seems right.
I remember writing in school. It was a chore and it was boring. That’s because it was taught incorrectly. You studied for tests. You practiced [...] Continue Reading…

This is a incomplete, random list of tools I use with social networks. Not that I know what I am doing quite yet with social networks. It will take a while. I am just an app, software, and addon junky. So I look for software all the time and usually find something. Be sure and add your own in comments. I will probably try all of them.

First, I would like to invite all of you to Social Median, a different sort of network. It works like Digg, because stories can be "clipped" and commented on. It works like FriendFeed [...] Continue Reading…

Capitalization is a dying, so what the hell. I am not sure what that indicates. But I went with it. They don’t capitalize, so I won’t.

I have a lot of online profiles. Every now and then I run into a new one. Not new really, just forgotten. Unless a site is brand new, chances are, I might have a profile there. So, first I try to log in. And if it works, who knows the person I will find in my profile. He might live in Kansas City, Phoenix, or Lawrence, Kansas. He may be single or married. He [...] Continue Reading…

I have never been one to hold a job for long. I don’t have a degree. About two years was my limit. It has not been the pay as much as the boredom. Once I could do the job in my sleep, there was not much keeping me there. The internet has been the only thing that has held my interest for this long.

And the degree thing. I am still sure to this day that if I would have had a degree, it would have been the same. I would have spent four or more years to get [...] Continue Reading…

I do work in a lot of different areas on teh internets. And each job I do has different effects on my mind. I have to enter that job’s mind mode for a short or long period of time. I like writing mode but it is one of the hardest to come back to. Not sure why. It always has been.

When I was around 14, I picked up "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg. It’s a book on writing practice. A musician will play hundreds of songs in practice for every one he plays on stage. A boxer [...] Continue Reading…

Doing one thing at a time. It’s a nice concept and may seem easy, but I guess it depends on how you handle things. I know it works. I know the sense of accomplishment that comes with actually finishing something. But that does not stop me from getting caught in the whirlwind of multitasking.

The computer is a mind trapping machine. I bounce from thought to thought, task to task, until I get about 50 things half done and nothing completed. When I do a lot at once, I make myself look like I am getting a lot of work [...] Continue Reading…

Wordpress plugins don’t stop coming. My initial idea with this blog was to build a set of plugins and then once I thought I was set, download the plugin folder and use it for my other blogs. But, like I said, the cool plugins keep on coming.

So today I took a random walk though the Wordpress plugin repository just to see what’s up. No search terms. Just some browsing. And here are some cool plugins I found.

Ad-Minister

A complex ad serving and content plugin. It supports ad-rotation, scheduling, and works with widgets.

Sniplets

A plugin that will automatically insert things in your [...] Continue Reading…