Useful Tools »

So I finally talked my wife into getting rid of Blogger and transferring to a WordPress blog. It took a bit of convincing though, since Blogger is so easy to use. What was the selling point? Any time she said, “I just wish Blogger did XYZ” I would come back with “Well there’s a plugin that will do that for WordPress.” The trick was that she wanted the blog to be private. She wanted only registered people to be able to see the content and she didn’t want them to see the ugly blue login form when loging into the blog.

Family blogs are unique. Often you want to share your life with your family and…

Tutorial/How-To, Useful Tools »

At the start of this year, I stated that one of my goals for 2008 was to create a mobile friendly version of Simply-Basic.com. Well, January isn’t even over, and I’m proud to say I’ve fulfilled my goal! Simply-Basic is now mobile device friendly. When you point your mobile device to the blog, it recognizes it automatically and displays a simpler, mobile friendly version.

Why make a mobile version? With the growth of mobile devices that are Wi-Fi enabled, it is becoming more and more essential to have your website accessible to mobile users. I often read blogs on my phone that runs Windows Mobile 6. Sites like Gmail and CNN automatically redirect the browser to a…

Tech News, Useful Tools »

So I’ve been looking for an easy plugin that would let me highlight my own comments to help them stand out more. People who comment often have questions or things that I need to address. By highlighting my responses, it can make it much easier for people to find them. There have been number of plugins that do this. The problem is that it usually requires you to access your theme’s comments code and make some edits, a turn off for many people.

Luckily, that process has just gotten much easier. Recently Rob Marsh released a plugin aptly named Highlight Author Comments. It provides an easy, code-hacking free way to highlight your own comments.

After installing, a new…

Announcements »

I just installed two plugins today that you guys should enjoy. The first one has been around for a while. It’s called DoFollow, and it removes the automatic nofollow that wordpress appends to all links commenters leave (such as the website address that your name links to in the comment).

The second, which just came out a month ago, is called CommentLuv. It scans the URL you enter for your website in the comments for your RSS feed. If it finds one, it shows the title of your latest post underneath your comment. If it can’t find your RSS feed, or if you don’t have one, it just posts a normal comment. You can see an example…