WordPress Zen: Tightening the Wrench on the Equilibrium Theme

Posted September 15th, 2011 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis

Equlibrium: WordPress ThemeI’ll admit, I really have a man-crush on themes like Made by On‘s Equilibrium WordPress Theme. They are so open and fresh and so easily readable. With ton’s of white-space, this theme really let’s a LOT of fresh air into the page.

And then… I start to hate it. :(

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Fixing Facebook Status Updates & RSS

Posted July 31st, 2011 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis

Facebook has crushed its competition: MySpace & Friendster. Still, Facebook continues to make a mess of its “friendliness” towards its users.

I will not attempt to answer that question, but will do my best to alleviate one of Facebook’s major flaws: Status RSS Feeds.

Twice in the last three months, Facebook (and its programmers) has completely messed with the ability of its users to make use of their Facebook Status Updates on the own personal websites & blogs. I mean, if they want us to use your service… then allow me to use your service! If you are like me, what you’ve been seeing is this in your widget: Facebook Syndication Error.

Gah! Again? What seems to be happening, is Facebook has chosen to periodically change your Authentication Key. It’s the piece that indicates that “Yes”… you ARE who you SAY you are. Continue Reading »

Well, that was stupid…

Posted July 28th, 2011 in SiteNews, WordPress by Dennis

So, I finally took matters into my own hands and took the necessary steps to un-install, re-install, update install various versions of WordPress so that it would quit “complaining” that my previous install didn’t go “according to plan.” It all began with me growing tired of my hosting service’s inability to keep up the technology. WordPress bugs had been found that could be devastating if I didn’t upgrade, but my host simply hadn’t made that upgrade available and I became worried. So, I used the “automatic upgrade” feature… made me happy at the time… but made further upgrades through my host much more difficult.

Perhaps I should have waited.

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WordPress Zen: The Morning After Theme [Resurrected]

Posted February 6th, 2011 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis

The Morning After WordPress Theme: by WooThemesUsing the “OLD” version of TMA? The version before WooThemes took it over? Still having problems? Well, quit using that antique edition and download the latest version of “The Morning After” from WooThemes and get busy!

I had tried to put the “beat down” on TMA back when I’d first started blogging… it was a rather disappointing endeavor… my PHP and WordPress skills were simply not up to the task. But, I’d blogged about the experience never-the-less. Mr. Spencer, the master behind the men’s fashion website at i.con{blog}, pinged me a few weeks back… asking all sorts of questions regarding “The Morning After” WordPress theme and my experiences. What began as a simple query, turned into a slew of emails on Categories, Tags, SEO, PHP, and The Morning After theme modifications.

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WordPress Zen: Gridlock Theme is Back?

Posted December 6th, 2010 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis
Gridlock Theme

Gridlock Theme

Well, knock me down with a feather. I haven’t looked at hyalineskies Gridlock Theme since I began using WordPress back in 2004. Hailed by many as one of the first ‘magazine style’ themes, I cut many a tooth during those months attempting to force Gridlock to bend to my bidding. It was work. Gridlock was a pretty locked-down theme as far as WordPress Themes are concerned. But, things have chanced since the days of WordPress 2.x and I was curious how Gridlock had grown. Hyalineskies is not longer available, as Eston Bond has moved on to other things. But a decent run-down of its functionality is still up on his site and is still being managed at Github.

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WordPress 3.0 and the Boldy Theme

Posted August 24th, 2010 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis

Boldy Theme by Site5Site5 put together a pretty sweet theme when they created Boldy. I’d been considering it for this blog for over a week and decided to give it a try. Alas, in the end, I ditched the idea. But, only because I couldn’t quite massage it to meet my needs. However, for someone putting together a portfolio, this theme should be near the top of your short-list.

While working with the theme, I ran across a quite a few confusing problems that I would like to address / fix here.

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WordPress Zen: Social Network Plugins

Posted March 13th, 2010 in Programming, WordPress by Dennis

wp-social-300x237This is not so much a “How To” guide as much as it is a mild warning to the developers of Social Networking plugins for WordPress.

I run another WordPress powered website for Comics In Action, an improv comedy troupe I organize. So, I’ve played around with various Social Network plugins for the various networking websites like YouTube, MySpace (Ugh!) and Facebook.

Mostly, I’ve tried-out Social Links by Kareem Sultan and Social Links Sidebar by Commareus. Both have wide support for Social Network website, even sites I’ve never even heard of. A bonus if I ever find the need to use them. :)

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