Just you and your thoughts

In 2007, I wrote this about the job of software:

That’s when I know WordPress is doing its job: when people aren’t even aware they’re using it because they’re so busy using it!

I cited that more as a direction, than a goal. If the job of software is to get out of the way, it never completely reaches it — it just gets closer and closer. Sort of how dividing a number in half an infinite number of times never quite gets you to zero.

Today, in 2011, I took this screenshot of the Distraction-Free Writing interface for the upcoming WordPress 3.2:

How’s that for getting out of your way?

Custom WordPress laptop skin

Jealous?

Custom WordPress skin for MacBook Pro

It took forever to cut out, because it was printed against a white vinyl background, and I wanted the background to show the aluminum of the laptop. But I think it turned out pretty well. What do you think?

Customize the WordPress Login Screen Logo

I’ve customized the WordPress login screen for several of my clients. It is a nice professional touch that goes a long way toward making a site feel like “home.” Today, I’ve released a plugin called Login Logo [install] that lets you easily do the same. There are other plugins that let you customize the login screen logo. But this one works with zero configuration. You just create the logo (PNG image with a transparent background), name it login-logo.png, and drop it into your /wp-content/ directory.

That’s it.

Here is an example modified login form

The plugin takes care of generating the correct CSS, based on the image’s size. For best results, use an image that is less than 326 pixels wide.

The source image that produced the above login screen

Install “Login Logo”

Click this link: Install the “Login Logo” plugin.

Alternatively, you can download it from the WordPress plugins directory.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 410,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 18 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 15 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 171 posts. There were 43 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 330mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 25th with 13,614 views. The most popular post that day was New in WordPress 2.9: Post Thumbnail Images.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were codex.wordpress.org, wordpress.org, WordPress Dashboard, shexperience.com, and slashdot.org.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for wordpress post thumbnail, wordpress thumbnail, wordpress thumbnails, wordpress plugin tutorial, and post thumbnail wordpress.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

New in WordPress 2.9: Post Thumbnail Images December 2009
521 comments and 26 Likes on WordPress.com

2

WP Tutorial: Your First WP Plugin March 2006
418 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

3

Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress July 2010
182 comments and 17 Likes on WordPress.com

4

WordPress Error: You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page March 2006
226 comments

5

WordPress 2.0.3: Nonces June 2006
108 comments and 3 Likes on WordPress.com

Post Formats vs. Custom Post Types

Some people are confused about the Post Formats feature that will be made available to themes in WordPress 3.1, especially how it differs from Custom Post Types.

Custom Post Types

These were poorly named. Think: Custom Content Types. That is, non-post content. Examples: employees, products, attachments, menu items, pages, pets. If you want it to show up in your site’s main RSS feed, then it’s probably not a custom post type.

Post Formats

A Post Format is a formatting designation made to a post. For example, a post could be a short “aside,” or a Kottke.org-style link post, or a video post, or a photo gallery post. The data you input might be slightly different — video post should contain a video, an aside should probably not be very long, a link post should have a link. And the way that the post is displayed on the site might be very different — an aside will typically be displayed without a title, a link post may have the title point to the link. A video post may be wider, or have social sharing buttons auto-appended. But they’re all still posts. They still show up in your feed, and you still find them in the Posts section of the WordPress backend.

The important thing to note about Post Formats is that they are going to be a standardized convention. So any theme that supports Post Formats and follows the standard will display your posts in a way that makes sense. Before, themes had to set up category-based conventions, and these conventions weren’t shared by other themes. This is a better way of handling that, and it should make it even easier to switch between themes than before!

Themers should turn to the Post Formats page in the Codex for info on implementation. Note that we’re not yet in beta, so expect this page to change a bit.

WordPress Q & A: Week of September 27

Ricky asks:

Thanks for your time. I’m working on a site where I’d like members to be able to submit posts, but I’d like to be able to moderate them first before they go live.

Kinda similar to what WP can do for comments, I’d like to do for posts. Is that possible?

Certainly! What you want is to open up registration and make the default role for new users “Contributor” instead of “Subscriber.” Contributors can submit posts for review, but not publish them. They’ll show up as “pending review” in the backend, and will require an Editor or Administrator to publish them. There are even plugins available to facilitate posting from the front end, such as Gravity Forms ($39 and up, GPL).

Allan asks:

I have hit an incredibly frustrating hitch with WP, and that is getting a text file with the content of my posts. I need a single file I can load into page layout software. I know about Blog Booker and Blurb but would like more layout control than those services offer.

If you need this for a bunch of posts on an ongoing basis, I’d create a custom page template and just have it do query_posts('posts_per_page=9999'); (or however many posts you want), and then do a basic loop. Look at a simple theme for inspiration on the template tags… it all depends on how you need it formatted.

Import a Vox blog into WordPress (or almost anything else)

Six Apart is closing the doors on Vox, a blogging service they launched three and a half years ago. You have until September 30th to export your content from Vox, or you’ll lose access to it. Yikes!

They helpfully included a link to WordPress.com’s importer help page. WordPress.com has a Vox importer. What isn’t immediately obvious is that you can use WordPress.com as an intermediary on your way to a final destination. That is, you can import your Vox blog to a temporary WordPress.com blog, and then do an export from WordPress.com. Now you’ll have gold: a WordPress export file. You can take this file and import it into a standalone WordPress site, or a plethora of other blogging tools or services.

I recommend that everyone who has Vox content they want to save do this. Mark your WordPress.com blog as private if you don’t want that to be its final destination — just do it (and soon!) so that you have a copy of your site in a useful and portable format.