plugins – Climb to the Stars

Facebook Page Like Buttons: Quick and Dirty [en]

[fr] Comment ajouter à votre sidebar WordPress un bouton "J'aime" simple pour vos pages Facebook.

Sorting out my mess of Facebook pages and groups (part 2 coming soon!), I’ve spent way too much time struggling with the Facebook Like Box creator and a couple of WordPress plugins (Facebook Social Plugins and Facebook Like Box Widget). I just didn’t manage to get what I want, which is a simple, minimal list of my Facebook pages and a Like button next to them.

Here’s what I wanted (it’s in the CTTS footer now, so you can also scroll down and see it live… and like my pages!)

I didn’t want a Like Box full of stuff. Just the page name, avatar, and the like button.

Here’s how I finally did it (it’s dirty, but it works — just stick the code in a text widget if you have a WordPress blog):

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?id=7812744463" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:220px;height:60px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Just replace the number after id= by your page’s ID (you can find it easily by going to your page, it’s the number following your page name in the URL.

If your page name is long, you might want to increase the height of your iframe to 80px or 100px (trial and error, you’ll find the right height).

There you go!

Oh, and I added like buttons to my posts, too, with the Facebook Like Button plugin. Dunno if it’s the best one out there or not, but it seems to work and I didn’t have to struggle too much setting it up.

Angst: My Categories are Still a Mess [en]

[fr] Mes catégories, c'est toujours le chenit. J'ai les outils qu'il faut maintenant pour faire le ménage, mais il me manque l'essentiel: quelles catégories un monstre comme CTTS devrait-il avoir?

My categories are a long-standing source of worry.

They were created in an unenlightened effort to “go ontological”, when I [switched to Movable Type](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/01/03/switch-to-movable-type/). By the time I [switched to WordPress](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/06/23/switch-to-wordpress/) over four years ago, I was already thinking about [cleaning up my categories](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/06/24/batch-category-editing-for-wordpress/) (lo and behold, the birth of Batch Categories — I didn’t waste any time, did I?)

My categories are still [a mess](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/18/my-categories-are-a-mess/). WordPress has had [native tagging](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/30/tags-and-categories-oh-my/) for a while now (I’ve happily retired the [Bunny’s Technorati Tags plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunny-tags/)), [Rob](http://robm.me.uk/) has taken over [Batch Categories](http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/batch-categories), so it now works rather than just sit there in lists, and [Christine from the Internet](http://www.neato.co.nz/) has written a nice [Tag Managing Thing](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tag-managing-thing/) (which seems a bit broken in 2.5.x but might still work).

So, I could use the [category to tag converter](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/category-to-tag-converter/) and get rid of all my categories. I would feel much lighter. Then I can use a combination of Tag Managing Thing and Batch Categories (which allows search by tag, and, actually, I see it now, allows not only addition of categories to selected posts, but tags, so maybe I don’t need Tag Managing Thing for this, and this sentence is a bit long so it’s going to end here, sorry) to re-create nice categories for my blog.

But as always, here is where I stall. What categories should a monster like CTTS have?

Want to listen rather than read? It’s here:

December 2007 Recap [en]

[fr] Un récapitulatif de mes publications du mois de décembre. Principalement (vous trouverez le détail dans la partie anglaise de ce billet) des articles au sujet de Going Solo, de mes activités professionnelles, des bidouillages WordPress et quelques sujets divers.

Contrairement au mois dernier (mes excuses plates pour cela, d'ailleurs), j'ai publié un certain nombre d'articles en français. En voici la liste:

Du lavage de linge sale en ligne -- suite de l'histoire Pointblog, et des arriérés de Christophe Ginisty, du coup (son entreprise me doit toujours 1050€)
Blogs en entreprise, un peu en vrac -- quelques pistes pour saisir la problématique du blog d'entreprise
Arghl! Du spam par SMS! On fait quoi? -- conseils pratiques si vous recevez des SMS de pub
Website Pro Day, deuxième! -- l'édition une a eu tellement de succès qu'on a remis ça (s'enfermer durant une journée pour bosser sur son site pro)
Trois heures pour se mettre à bloguer -- concept d'atelier-blogs pour particuliers que je suis en train de mettre sur pied
Qui prendrait des “cours de blog”? -- face au scepticisme de certains, discussion du public-cible pour une telle offre
Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage -- pour comprendre en quoi consiste ce fameux "experiential marketing" dont j'ai passablement parlé en anglais
Qu’est-ce que je fais, au juste? -- une tentative d'expliquer ce que je fais, dans le cadre de la réfection de mon site professionnel

Si vous vous sentez d'attaque pour lire quelques articles en anglais, je liste les 5 (et 3) plus importants en fin de billet.

It’s high time for a [December 2007](/archives/2007/12/) Recap. 36 posts, including the [November 2007 Recap](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/november-2007-recap/). In future, I’ll try to do the recap nearer the end of the month. I will.

And I thought November had been busy?!

### Going Solo and Going Far

Let’s get cracking: I’d say one of the major themes of December 2007 was my [announcement of Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/), and a whole bunch of posts I wrote around that. I’ve now [copied the posts](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/15/websites-for-going-solo-and-going-far/) over to the blogs of both [Going Solo](http://going-solo.net) and [Going Far](http://going-far.com), so I’ll link to them there.

**On the [Going Solo blog](http://going-solo.net):**

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/): the announcement
– [Picking a City for an Event: Lausanne](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/picking-a-city-for-an-event-lausanne/): explaining my decision to hold the event in Lausanne, rather than London, Paris or Berlin
– [Headache: Picking a Date for an Event](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/headache-picking-a-date-for-an-event/): where I share some of the pain involved in choosing a date (I actually had to [change it to May 16th](http://going-solo.net/2008/01/10/about-a-date/) later on

For some reason, [Badges at Conferences](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/badges-at-conferences/) didn’t get copied over to the Going Solo blog — but it’s clearly related to this conferency stuff.

**On the [Going Far blog](http://going-far.com):**

These posts are more general musings (most of the time) on the whole “[starting a company](http://going-far.com/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/)” thing.

– [News from LeWeb3](http://going-far.com/2007/12/12/news-from-leweb3/): [LeWeb3](http://www.leweb3.com/) (which I maintain should have been called LeWeb4) is where I started talking about Going Solo and approaching possible sponsors — a very important step for me
– [Why Events?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/16/why-events/): an explanation of why I decided to start organizing events in addition to my current work as a consultant and [speaker](http://stephanie-booth.com/en/speaking/)
– [Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My!](http://going-far.com/2007/12/17/advisors-boards-companies-partners-oh-my/): trying to come to grips with the different levels of involvement others may have in your company (still figuring that one out, by the way)
– [Websites and Blogs, Where Does One Start?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/19/websites-and-blogs-where-does-one-start/): yet another post ending in a punctuation mark — worrying about online presence, and finding it kind of ironic as it’s my job to help people with theirs

Here, too, a post which I think I should also have copied over, but which got left behind: [Feeling Like a Born-Again Blogger](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/feeling-like-a-born-again-blogger/).

### WoWiPAD, WPD, and Work-Related Stuff

While on the topic of events, December saw some action in the “get together and do stuff” department: [Website Pro Day (WPD) and World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/). The [second WPD](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/website-pro-day-deuxieme/) *(French post)* was announced and took place on the 28th. [WoWiPAD1 and WPD2 News](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/wowipad1-and-wpd2-news/) was a short announcement/sign-up post.

As a result, I’ve worked a bit on my [professional site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (this month too, actually), and written about trying to map out what I do and how to “advertise” is: [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (with a French version: [Qu’est-ce que je fais, au juste?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/quest-ce-que-je-fais-au-juste/).

I also decided to start organizing a blogging crash course. As this targets local people, I’ve blogged about it in French: [Trois heures pour se mettre à bloguer](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/trois-heures-pour-se-mettre-a-bloguer/) (the concept — I’ll be proposing this as a workshop at [the LIFT conference](http://www.liftconference.com/) once I’ve figured how to write it up… tomorrow — deadline is 20th!) and [Qui prendrait des “cours de blog”?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/qui-prendrait-des-cours-de-blog/), my vision of the target audience for this kind of course.

I sent in a talk proposal for BlogTalk 2008 ([BlogTalk 2008 Proposal — Being Multilingual: Blogging in More Than One Language](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogtalk-2008-proposal-being-multilingual-blogging-in-more-than-one-language/)). For the funny story, I had a nasty time booking my flights, then my talk was rejected, then I decided not to go to BlogTalk and started cancelling my flights, then I was invited to come on a panel (which I’ve just agreed to moderate), so I had to un-cancel and rebook a couple of flights. Sigh.

Still in the “work-related” department, as I was booking my flights with [Kayak.com](http://kayak.com), I decided to write up the experience: [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/). This was a chance to share what I’d learnt with my fellow travellers, and in the same time provide a demonstration of what kind of material I might produce during an [experiential marketing campaign](/focus/experiential-marketing/). The very next day, I came upon an article on a French blogger’s site (about some form of blogvertising) which prompted me to give some explanations about the experiential marketing concept in French: [Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/23/marketing-experientiel-vs-publireportage/). So… two rather long blog posts just before [Christmas](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/christmas/). (There would be another post or two to write about the end of my adventures in organizing travel: sites that don’t take non-US credit cards, for example, or various weird pricing structures and policies you can bump into. But not now. Today, my travels for Feb/March are booked, finally.)

Though it was written early in the month, [Blogs en entreprise, un peu en vrac](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogs-en-entreprise-un-peu-en-vrac/) *(in French)* also belongs to this pile of “work-like” posts, as it is an explanation of the issues surrounding corporate blogging and what it involves. I actually wrote it for a prospective client at the time.

### WordPress Things

Another major theme for December was **WordPress-related things** (as you can see, I’ve been knee-deep in code):

– [Ridding WordPress Plugins of Template Tags](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/04/ridding-wordpress-plugins-of-template-tags/): a couple of neat tricks to save your plugin users from having to add template tags all over the place
– [WordPress Sandbox Theme Problems](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-sandbox-theme-problems/): not all resolved, I’m afraid
– [Nasty Problem With Basic Bilingual Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/): [resolved](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/#comment-346641), thankfully!
– [WordPress Deaf to Pings](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-deaf-to-pings/): seems to have mostly resolved itself, though I do often end up republishing posts 3-4 times to help the pingbacks get through
– [Browser Language Detection and Redirection](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/browser-language-detection-and-redirection/): not strictly WordPress stuff, but useful to anybody with a [multilingual](/focus/multilingual) WordPress site
– [Bunny’s Language Linker: New WordPress Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/bunnys-language-linker-new-wordpress-plugin/): now also [in the WordPress Plugin Index](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunnys-language-linker/) — helps create links between equivalent pages on mirror-translated websites.

### The Rest

Now we find ourselves faced with a bunch of posts that don’t seem directly related to one another. My interests are varied, and I must say that I sometimes wonder how anybody else but me would find such a mixture appealing.

Here are some about **Web 2.0-ish related stuff**:

– [Twitter Advertisers and Friend Collectors](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/15/twitter-advertisers-and-friend-collectors/): why I block some people on Twitter
– [Hashtags For My Followees](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/hashtags-for-my-followees/): an explanation of hashtags on Twitter
– [Granular Privacy Control (GPC)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/granular-privacy-control-gpc/): a thought or two on the Google Reader Shared Items “privacy” non-issue
– [Hoosgot: The Lazyweb is Back!](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/31/hoosgot-the-lazyweb-is-back/): announcing Hoosgot, reincarnation of the Lazyweb

What’s left? [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/), where I express that though I’m glad to have my photo taken, I do consider I have some rights to the resulting photo as it’s a picture of *me*. [Fresh Lime Soda Episodes 8 & 9](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/fresh-lime-soda-episodes-8-9/) (yes, that was bad — episode 10 is waiting on my hard drive to be edited).

And two more posts in French: [Arghl! Du spam par SMS! On fait quoi?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/arghl-du-spam-par-sms-on-fait-quoi/) — some practical advice on dealing with SMS spam. And last but not least, [Du lavage de linge sale en ligne](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/05/du-lavage-de-linge-sale-en-ligne/), about using blogs to wash dirty linen in public. The dirty linen being, in this case, the fact that one [Christophe Ginisty](http://www.ginisty.com/) CEO of Pointblog (the company which ran the now-defunkt [Pointblog blog](http://www.pointblog.com/)) owes a bunch of people — including me — money for work we did. This has been dragging along for years now (I wrote an article in early 2006 for a magazine that Pointblog was producing).

### Selection

There you are! A [month of blogging](/archives/2007/12/) in just one post! Not feeling up to reading it all?

If you were to read only three posts (sticking to the English ones):

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/)
– [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/)
– [World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD) and Website Pro Day (WPD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/)

Ready for five? Add these two:

– [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/)
– [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/)

Two Plugin Updates: Basic Bilingual 0.32 and Language Linker 0.2 [en]

[fr] Je me suis levée à l'aube pour aller faire la nouille sur RSR1 et prendre un p'tit déj improvisé chez une ancienne copine d'uni. Ensuite, j'ai passé la journée les mains dans le PHP, ce qui veut dire que je n'ai beaucoup blogué, mais que j'ai mis à jour deux plugins: Basic Bilingual, qui permet de tenir sans peine un blog "bilingue" comme celui-ci (c'est ce qui me permet de rédiger et d'afficher ce petit extrait en français) et Bunny's Language Linker, très utile pour afficher des liens entre pages correspondantes des différentes traductions d'un site.

After waking up at an ungodly hour this New Year’s Day (for a [live radio appearance](http://info.rsr.ch/fr/rsr.html?programId=110451&bcItemName=le_grand_8&rubricId=8888&contentDisplay=last_five&siteSect=1000#mardi) and impromptu breakfast at a uni friend’s home nearby) I spent the rest of my day elbows deep in PHP code. As a result, I haven’t written the half-dozen of posts that have been sitting in my drafts list over Christmas, but I have updated two plugins — an old one, and a new-born.

**[Basic Bilingual](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/basic-bilingual/) 0.32**

[Download](/code/basic-bilingual.tgz) | [zip](/code/basic-bilingual.zip) | [.phps](/code/basic-bilingual.phps)

This release fixes the [disappearing excerpts problem](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/) (was fixed in 0.31 actually, but I never announced it) and replaces the ugly “language box” floating somewhere near the top of the post admin page by a pretty DBX (let me know what it stands for) box in the sidebar:

**[Bunny’s Language Linker](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunnys-language-linker/) 0.2**

[Download](/code/language-linker.tgz) | [zip](/code/language-linker.zip) | [.phps](/code/language-linker.phps)

(I always want to call it “Language Links”, which was the initial name I chose — still not sure I was right to change.) Anyway, this version is pretty exciting, as it does something I’ve been thinking of for a while: it puts the link to the other localized versions of the page you’re viewing in the menu bar if you’re using a Sandbox-based theme:

Otherwise, it puts it at the end of the page in its own div (you can style it the way you wish). I’m not saying this is the best, final solution, but I think it’s headed in the right direction.

Upgrade, Shmupgrade [en]

[fr] Comme lors de chaque mise à jour wordpress, c'est la prise de tête. Plugins, thèmes... il faut vraiment que je mette de l'ordre dans mon site!

Like each time I upgrade WordPress, I find myself facing the sprawling mess that my site has become, and the umpteen hacks made to template and plugins to get things working roughly how I want them.

So I think: time to clean up! Get rid of K2! re-write plugins, so they insert fun things in my themes without me having to put them in by hand all the time!

And then it all goes down the drain, because I try one theme, and another, and another, and none really fits, and I don’t want to **yet again** go through the half-dozen addition of template tags to make my blog bilingual and shiny. But I do want it bilingual and shiny, don’t get me wrong.

I want to use sandbox. I’d like to adapt my Basic Bilingual plugin so that it injects lang="fr" and lang="en" where necessary. I want a clean layout, and I still like my [blue header image of Ouchy](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/83450335/) (pronounce “ooshee”, please).

I have tons of things in the sidebar, and they need to be laid out so they don’t look too cluttered (a challenge, yes, I know).

I want my tag pages to link to technorati, maybe show my flickr photos with the same tag, or my del.icio.us links.

I want [ajax-ification](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/1306106896/) so that I can correct spelling mistakes and add/remove tags without going to the admin interface ([Inline Tag Thing](http://www.neato.co.nz/wordpress-things/inline-tag-thing/) looks promising, but I’m not sure I like the interface).

Sigh.

Maybe I should just start a CTTS design contest. Give out prizes. Something like that.

Or stop wanting to push my blogging tool where it isn’t yet? I don’t want to give up.

**Update:** for the curious, the temporary design is [Diurnal](http://www.sndbx.org/results/designs/diurnal/), a sandbox skin. The colours change with the time of day — pretty neat in my opinion.

Tag-Related Wishlist [en]

[fr] Mes idées/prédictions/désirs pour l'évolution des tags et des technologies associées.

I told you my mind never stops spinning, didn’t I? Here are a few follow-up thoughts on my [previous post on tags](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/22/wordpress-finally-has-tags/). View this as my brain dump of what I’d like tags to do in WordPress and around.

Bear in mind that I haven’t tried 2.3 yet, don’t know exactly what it does and doesn’t do, and haven’t done much homework. So (hopefully!) some of the stuff I’m speaking about here already exists. If it’s the case, please leave a note with a pointer in the comments.

Some of the stuff here might also be stupid. If it is, please tell me.

I don’t think all this should necessarily be in the WordPress core. Plugin makers, feel free to delve in here for inspiration. If I like your plugin, I’ll plug it.

#### Links Between Tagspaces

So, based on what I’ve understood, WP2.3 will provide a local tagspace. This means that if I tag a post “cat”, the link on that tag will take me to something like myblog.com/tags/cat. That’s cool.

But I want more.

I want the myblog.com/tags/cat page to contain configurable pointers to other tagspaces. For example, [my Flickr photos tagged “cat”](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/tags/cat). [My del.icio.us links](http://del.icio.us/steph/cats). [My videos](http://www.viddler.com/explore/steph/tags/cat). [The Technorati tagspace](http://technorati.com/tag/cat).

See what I mean?

Somewhere, WordPress would ask me “What other tagspaces would you like links to?” and I’d enter “http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/tags/”, “http://del.icio.us/steph/”, “http://www.viddler.com/explore/steph/tags/”, “http://technorati.com/tag/” in some pretty form (we know how to do those now, don’t we?)

#### Alternate Tagspaces

Some people may not want to use the local tagspace. Hell, most people who tag their posts right now point to the Technorati tagspace. An option to do so could be nice.

#### Tag Combinations

I’d like my local WordPress tagspace to allow tag combinations. This is [the stuff I wrote about nearly 3 years ago](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/01/16/thinking-about-tags/). Del.icio.us does it: here are [my links tagged “books” AND “read”](http://del.icio.us/steph/books+read/).

We need more of this, particularly if we start thinking multilingual. I want to be able to point to a page containing posts I tagged “adolescents” OR “teenagers” OR “ados” or “teens”. I use all those, but I’m sure (given the nature of tagging) some posts have slipped through the cracks and have only one or two of these tags.

Less multilingual, maybe I just want to have “cats” or “cat” (sometimes I use plural, sometimes singular, and the distinction isn’t important to me in this context).

#### Related Tags

Del.icio.us does this. My local tagspace pages should have this feature too.

And how about an option to be able to see (in a click) posts tagged “cat” AND all the posts tagged with one of the related tags? (This could become a bit unwieldy though.)

#### Tag Management

The “obvious” stuff. Rename tag “stephaniebooth” to “Stephanie Booth” everywhere it is. (Flickr does this well.) Merge tags. Add a bunch of tags to all the selected posts (result of a search or by-category selection). Remove tag X from all posts which are tagged Y.

This is the kind of stuff I wanted to make possible for categories when I wrote [Batch Categories](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/06/24/batch-category-editing-for-wordpress/), a lifetime ago. I haven’t touched this “hack” for years now, and I’ve heard conflicting information about its compatibility with recent WordPress versions. I think somebody somewhere updated it for WP2.x — if you search you might find it.

#### Public Tagging

Now, this would be a source of tag spam, unless it’s for example limited to registered users of the blog, or people identified by OpenID or on a “trust list” (e.g. people who have commented on the blog before). I’ve encouraged people to [open up tagging to the community on Flickr](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/06/20/flickr-open-up-tagging-your-photos-to-the-community-please/), and the feedback from those who have done it has been great. I’d like a way to do this for my blog posts, too.

I’m sure [structured portable social networks](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/16/we-need-structured-portable-social-networks-spsn/) have a part to play here.

#### More Importing/Conversion

Ages ago, I [added keywords](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/07/11/multilingual-weblog/) to my blog posts. (I now know it’s not very useful — [maybe even, not at all](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/14/le-placement-dans-les-moteurs-de-recherche/).) Around the same time, I used [Topic Exchange Channels](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/07/19/easier-topicexchange-trackbacks-for-wordpress/) for some of my posts, making the ITE channel visible on the post by adding a link to it (gosh, come to think of it — I hadn’t heard of tags yet, but what I was doing was some form of proto-tagging… quite impressed with myself!)

Anyway, leaving the self-congratulatory stuff aside, my wp_postmeta table contains old information about posts which has long since disappeared from this blog, but which is still there, ready to be recycled. I could turn those old keywords and ITE channels into tags with an importer.

So, how about a very “customizable” importer? I would give the meta field name I want to convert to tags, and indicate if the tag data is comma-separated, space-separated, or simply placed in multiple fields.

(For my old keywords, there is one meta field called “keywords” which contains a comma-separated list of words, whereas for the ITE channels there is one entry per channel called “ite_topic” (IIRC) with a unique word as a value — but there can be more than one channel per post.)

So, “manual importer”, anybody?

#### That’s All, Folks!

There, I think I’ve told you what was on my mind. Feedback welcome. And plugins. Code. Solutions.

Trying WPMU [en]

[fr] Très bref compte-rendu de mon installation de WordPress multi-utilisateurs, la version sous laquelle tourne WordPresss.com, qui existe d'ailleurs maintenant en français. Jetez-vous dessus!

I gave [WordPress Multi-User](http://mu.wordpress.org/) a try (that’s the version of WordPress that WordPress.com runs on). Took me roughly half an hour to install from start to finish, then about an hour or two of diluted DNS/vhost troubleshooting until I was told to add ServerAlias *.wpmu.domain.com to the vhost file.

I installed the [theme pack](http://wpmudev.org/project/Theme-Pack), and I think I got my [technorati tags](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BunnysTechnoratiTags) and [basic bilingual](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BasicBilingual) plugins working (not 100% sure because I haven’t tried using the template tags yet). [PHP Markdown Extra](http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/) works but only if you activate it at blog-level.

I have great ideas about creating a “bunny-approved” package of WPMU now 🙂

Plugin Updates for WordPress 2.0 [en]

[fr] Les plugins "Bunny's Technorati Tags" et "Basic Bilingual" fonctionnent à présent avec WordPress 2.0.

It took me a couple of hours, but both [Basic Bilingual](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BasicBilingual) and [Bunny’s Technorati Tags](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BunnysTechnoratiTags) are now WordPress 2.0-compatible.

A few minor tweaks have been made, most significant of which is that these two plugins can now be used for Pages in addition to normal posts.

They should work, though I haven’t troubleshooted them extensively — please ring the bell if you bump into any problems.

Kit d'installation de WordPress en français [fr]

Quelques liens et instructions très sommaires (un pense-bête, plutôt) pour installer Wordpress en français.

[en] A few links and very brief instructions to install WordPress in French "my way".

Avertissement: WordPress 2.0 sort bientôt, et la suggestion présentée ici sera très certainement caduque à ce moment-là .

Il vous faut:

– le “pack” [Wordpress en français (1.5.1.3)](http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-i18n/fr_FR/branches/1.5.1.3/wordpress-1.5.1.3-strayhorn-fr_FR.zip) ([instructions](http://xavier.borderie.net/wp-fr/installation-de-wordpress-en-francais/))
– [Spam Karma 2](http://wp-plugins.net/sk2/sk2_final.zip) ([instructions](http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/))
– [Bad Behavior](http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/bad-behavior-download/) ([instructions](http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/installing-and-using-bad-behavior/on-wordpress/))
– la documentation française sur la [syntaxe Markdown](http://www.michelf.com/projets/php-markdown/syntaxe/)
– un [joli thème](http://themes.wordpress.net/) (qu’il faudra peut-être [traduire](http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes/Theme_List#Localized_Themes “Un petit nombre le sont déjà …”)) — ou au moins le [Kubrick header generator](http://www.skeltoac.com/kubrickheader.php) si vous décidez de garder le thème par défaut
– [Un plugin pour les tags](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BunnysTechnoratiTags)

Côté réglages:

– chmod 775 (ou 777, j’ai un doute) sur le répertoire wp-content/plugins ainsi que wp-content/themes
– uploader un .htaccess vide, chmod 777
– dans les options, copier-coller l’exemple donné pour les permaliens
– activer le plugin Markdown (et les autres plugins qu’on a installés)

WordPress 1.5 est sorti! [fr]

WordPress 1.5 est sorti! J’aime: les thèmes, de meilleurs plugins, les pages “statiques”, et de façon générale, toutes les petites améliorations par-ci par-là .

[en] WordPress 1.5 is out! Here is why I like it: themes, better plugin architecture (and more powerful plugins), static pages, and general improvements.

Voilà , c’est officiel, vous pouvez tous passer à WordPress 1.5. Si vous n’utilisez pas encore WordPress, c’est le moment d’essayer.

Quoi de neuf, alors? Je ne vais pas vous faire un détail par le menu, mais voici quelques nouveautés que je trouve bienvenues (j’utilise 1.5 depuis un moment déjà ):

Les thèmes

WordPress 1.5 sépare véritablement le côté “présentation” du blog de la partie “mécanique interne” en introduisant le concept de “thème”. De nombreux thèmes (autrement dit: des mises en page toutes faites) sont à disposition. Il suffit de les copier dans un répertoire de votre installation WordPress, et vous pouvez ensuite passer de l’un à l’autre en un clic de souris. (Et bientôt, même plus besoin de copier, on aura un système qui vous présentera une liste de thèmes, et en un clic, hop! vous pourrez en installer un nouveau. N’est-ce pas, neuro?)

Pourquoi c’est si cool? Si vous n’êtes pas designer dans l’âme, cela veut dire que vous avez à disposition toute une série de magnifiques layouts pour habiller votre weblog. Bien sûr, avec 1.2 vous aviez les fameux “styles” d’Alex King — mais les thèmes vont encore un cran plus loin en permettant facilement la modification de la structure de la page (le HTML).

Si vous êtes du genre à faire votre propre layout, vous allez aussi aimer les thèmes: faites une copie du thème par défaut, puis lâchez les chiens et modifiez tout ce que vous voulez. En un clic, vous pouvez appliquer votre thème en cours de développement à votre blog, puis revenir à l’ancien thème si le nouveau n’est pas encore terminé. Vous pouvez également facilement créer des mises en page un peu différentes pour la première page, les archives, les pages individuelles, ou encore les pages statiques. J’adore.

Les plugins

Les plugins existent depuis longtemps, bien entendu, mais dans 1.5 toute l’architecture permettant de faire intéragir ces extensions avec le coeur de l’application a été étendue. Ca intéresse les geeks qui écrivent des plugins, mais aussi les utilisateurs “normaux”. Eh oui, cela vous permet d’avoir à disposition une kyrielle de jolis plugins bien plus puissants que ceux que vous aviez jusqu’à maintenant. En particulier, un plugin peut maintenant avoir son interface d’administration, ou bien modifier les formulaires permettant d’écrire un post.

Pour ceux à qui le mot “plugin” fait peur, ne vous alarmez point. Un plugin, c’est simplement un “machin” qu’on peut ajouter à son WordPress pour lui permettre de faire des choses qu’il ne faisait pas encore. Par exemple, ajouter des tags Technorati à vos billets. Et avec le gestionnaire de plugins, en installer un est aussi simple que le choisir parmi la liste des plugins disponibles!

Pages “statiques”

Voici principalement la raison qui m’a fait passer à 1.5 “avant l’heure”. WordPress 1.5 vous permet d’ajouter à votre weblog du contenu “non-weblog”. Qu’est-ce que j’entends par là ? Un weblog, c’est avant tout un site web dont le principe d’organisation fondamental est le temps. Certains types de contenu, cependant, se prêtent mal à cette organisation. Par exemple, la page sur laquelle je tiens une liste des articles pour lesquels j’ai été interviewée, ou bien la page sur les TMS. Clairement, c’est intéressant de savoir quand ces pages ont été écrites, mais ce n’est pas primordial.

Jusqu’à maintenant, ces pages “annexes” au weblog (mais qui, en ce qui me concerne, l’ont précédé) n’étaient pas gérées par WordPress. Pas de trackback possible, pas de commentaires, elles n’apparaissent pas dans les résultats d’une recherche sur le site. Avec 1.5, je peux profiter de la puissance et de la facilité d’utilisation de WordPress pour gérer également ce type de contenu. Petit à petit, je suis donc en train d’ajouter ces pages dans WordPress.

Cerise sur le gâteau, chacune de ces pages “statiques” peut avoir son propre layout, et on peut les organiser en hiérarchie.

Moins de bugs, meilleure ergonomie

Bien évidemment, le nouveau WordPress est plus stable, il a moins de bugs, il fonctionne mieux, il est plus facile à utiliser, bref, il est mieux que 1.2 🙂

Vous pouvez utiliser les fichiers de langue en français de la version 1.2, en attendant que la traduction de 1.5 soit prête. Il manquera juste certains morceaux de traduction.

Tentés? Téléchargez!

Tag: plugins

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