Continuing this series of articles…

Some Thoughts On WordPress 2.6 (and Plugins Galore) – Part Two
Some Thoughts On WordPress 2.6 (and Plugins Galore) – Part One
Site Updates!! WordPress 2.6

… I wanted to describe a few more plugins I’ve installed on this site and/or afewgoodlenses.

On Saturday, I installed Lightbox 2 from Rupert Morris on both of my sites. Lightbox 2 is one of several similar plugins that add real snap to the appearance of images on a site, and I especially like it on afewgoodlenses. When you click any single image from an article, the background fades to black (or gray, dark gray, or white, your choice) and your visitor can page through the full-sized versions of your images. I liked all the lightbox plugins a lot; this one turned out to be my favorite just because I liked the way the display looked and the color-changing options. I did notice one thing about the lighbox plugins (all of them that I tried) that I don’t understand: the images displayed in the sidebars by scripts like the Flickr badge or MyBlogLog recent viewers are not overlayed by the lightbox images. I’m sure that’s something about Javascript that I don’t understand, but I’m curious about it if anyone can explain it.

I also installed Postalicious by Pablo Gómez Basanta. This post was created by Postalicious, which mimics the delicious daily blog posting function, with much, much greater flexibility than what delicious provides. You can configure a comprehensive set of options for automatically posting delicious links to your blog, by setting such things as a minimum number of bookmarks, the timings between posts, a scheduled time for posting, and an hourly search for new bookmarks. You also have control over the appearance and content of the generated post, with the additional options of specifying a layout for the titles or bookmarks, as well as date and time formats. And, if that wasn’t enough, here are my two favorite features: you can instruct Postalicious to create all new posts as drafts for you to edit later; and you can collect recent bookmarks into a post on demand by simply pressing a button. Smashing! I turned off the delicious daily blog posting function as soon as I saw what Postalicious had to offer.

I am looking into a sporadic problem I’m having with afewgoodlenses, where the WordPress wp_options table is getting corrupted. It happened twice on the weekend (and when it happened, my heart almost stopped when I accessed my site and was prompted to install WordPress), but hasn’t happened since. In both cases, I lost my Internet connection while writing a post using Windows Live Writer, so that may be the root cause. In any case, the experience prompted me to install the WordPress Clean Options plugin — but, honestly, I need to spend a little more time learning about the things it told me about wp_options.

In one of the previous posts, I mentioned that I hadn’t explored the new media library capabilities of WordPress, because I’m using Windows Live Writer to post images and articles. I directed you to a short training video, Managing the WordPress Media Library, but also now wanted to point you to this fine article from Rodney Smith of Hippo Web Solutions:

Managing images with the WordPress media manager

Thanks, Rod! Thanks for stopping by and for taking time to write that article.

Finally, please take a few minutes to read this excellent piece on WordPress and the WordPress community by Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection:

Be Kind, Educate

Mark’s article means a lot to me because, as I spend all this time gradually building — and building up — my two sites, I sometimes get a little discouraged about the amount of actual admin or maintenance work it takes to keep things moving. And, of course — like everyone — I get frustrated when something doesn’t work and it’s a struggle to figure out what’s gone wrong and get it working again. To be fair, the problem is almost never WordPress or a WordPress plugin; more likely, it’s one of the many sites and services that are connected to the blogs that are hiccupping in one way or another.

As I have probably said somewhere here before, I’m not a PHP or MySQL programmer, though I have a smattering of HTML and some web design skill. What I do have, however, is a technical background in various platforms that goes back decades, a willingness to experiment, and a fairly high degree of tolerance for stuff that goes in the ditch. And, I think, I do a decent job of explaining how I do things, or how I fix things, or, sometimes, how I just get over things when the doing and the fixing doesn’t work. So, even though I never intended for either of my sites to have a technical orientation, I realized after reading what Mark had to say that part of being a member of this community means sharing those technical and personal experiences  that make the community what it is. Bravo, Mark, and this post is my answer to the questions you posed at the close of your article.

• NewsGator Enterprise Server – RSS In The Enterprise – “Bloated in-boxes conceal rather than expose critical e-mail messages, and vast archives of spam and useless messages clog servers and network pipes. Skilled professionals waste precious hours scanning in-boxes and browsing Web sites for vital information. Saying ‘enough is enough,’ many IT pros are turning to RSS technology for relief from e-mail malaise….”
• The Evolution of RSS – WebReference.com – “We look at how RSS has evolved from its humble beginnings through present day and beyond. We survey all versions of RSS, including a feature comparison, a new RSS usage survey, and format and validation information. We also interview the people and explore the standards behind RSS. Learn how the newest version of RSS will move us towards a more Semantic Web.”
• RSS – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays…. The benefit of RSS is the aggregation of content from multiple web sources in one place.”
• Enterprise 2.0 2008 – Transform Your Organization – The Enterprise 2.0 Conference will return to Boston from June 22-25, 2009….
• List of tools for the internal blogosphere – digital<?>query – “We’re all loving the increasingly rich set of tools and services that exist for the (external) blogosphere. But, as many companies start to allow employees to blog internally, there is a need (and an expectation) that equivalent tools will be available – after all, much of the power and utility in blogging comes from having these extra pieces of functionality available.”
• Enterprise social software – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “nterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing social software used in “enterprise” (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company itranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.”
• Design for Emotion and Flow – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design – “We create software and websites to display and represent information to people. That information could be anything; a company’s product list, pictures of your vacation, or an instant message from a friend. At this moment, there’s more information available to you than at any other time in history….. All this information has a lot of positive effects, but it also creates challenges.”
• A Web 2.0 Tour for the Enterprise – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design – “Thanks to the hype generated by Business Week, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek (among others), Web 2.0 has captured the imagination of consumers and businesses alike. But knowing how to leverage Web 2.0 concepts to fuel collaboration and innovation among employees, partners, and customers is another story. Web 2.0 can change an enterprise but recognizing how, and determining whether you should, do so is confusing. This article aims to dispel some of the myths surrounding Web 2.0 while discussing its practical applications within organizations. Then the enterprise—businesses and their practices—can embrace and extend Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0.”
• Web 2.0 in the Enterprise – “The old models of how people publish and consume information on the Web have been radically transformed in recent times. Instead of simply viewing information on static Web pages, users now publish their own content through blogs and wikis, and on photo- and video-sharing sites. People are collaborating, discussing and forming online communities, and combining data, content, and services from multiple sources to create personalized experiences and applications…. Commonly and collectively called “Web 2.0,” these new content-sharing sites, discussion and collaboration areas, and application design patterns or “mashups” are transforming the consumer Web. They also represent a significant opportunity for organizations to build new social and Web-based collaboration, productivity, and business opportunities….”
• Web 2.0 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “Web 2.0 is a term which describes the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.”
• XML.com: What Is RSS – “RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it’s not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS….”
• The Grill: Avi Rubin – “The e-voting critic talks about the inherent weakness of software, the critical need for audit trails and the ‘perfect storm’ of the 2000 election.”
• Creative Capitalism: About This Site – “Creative Capitalism: A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book — a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development….”
• Creative Capitalism: Profit-maximization as the sole goal of a corporation – “… a company is viewed in the Anglo-American world as a bundle of contracts. But companies are also social organisms created by a highly gregarious mammalian species with a unique capacity for large-scale co-operation over time and space. Companies have cultures and histories. For many of those most closely associated with them, they also have (and offer) a certain meaning…. [The}dea that a company is an entity that can be freely bought and sold is culturally specific. It is the view, above all, of Anglo-Americans. It is not shared in most of the rest of the world. The reason for this divergence is that, for many cultures, a company is viewed as being an enduring social entity….”