Having trouble figuring out how to edit comments in the latest WordPress versions? This is problem that I recently came across in the newer 2.5/2.6 versions of Wordpress. Basically, it’s not immediately obvious where you have to click in the Admin Panel/Comments section to actually edit a particular comment.

The trick is to click on the Name
of the commenter. That’s it!

It’s easy once you know how, lol. It will be easy to find because if you hold your mouse over the name of the commenter, a label will show ‘ Edit Comment’. BTW, it is also possible to click on the avatar image as well to edit the comment.

It’s probably not very intuitive of Wordpress to do it this way and I believe the next major versions will revert back to a more straight-forward method of editing comments.

I hope so, anyway.

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Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

FLV Embed is a super WordPress plugin made to simplify the process of adding Flash videos (FLV’s) into your blog by using Jeroen’s FLV Player. For information about encoding videos into FLV and why you should use FLV, Jeroen has written an excellent article which you can find on his website.

The FLV Embed’s main features are its ease of installation and a no bells and whistles approach to getting this plugin to display FLV files instantly on your blog!

Plugin Features

• uses simple, intuitive tags to generate Flash video (FLV) movies for your posts
• supports video sitemap generation
• standards compliant: valid XHTML
• many options are configurable, such as autostart, show/hide control bar, player colour, poster image, full screen button etc.
• highly interactive admin option panel for player configuration
• supports text only output for RSS that prompt readers to visit the original post for Flash content
• supports outputting poster image for RSS if desired
• accessibility: requires Javascript to display FLV player, but will prompt user to enable Javascript when disabled
• accessibility: prompt user to download latest Flash player if it is not installed or too old
• accessibility: no annoying “click to activate” for IE users

Installation

1. Download the plugin from FLV Embed
2. Extract to the “flv-embed” folder
3. Upload the “flv-embed” folder to your WordPress plugin directory, usually “wp-content/plugins”
4. Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel

Usage

The great thing about this plugin is it uses one universal, standard tag style, which is;

[ flv:url width height] (remove space before flv when using it yourself!)

• url - the URL of the FLV file you want to embed, the path can either be site relative or absolute
• width - width of the FLV movie
• height - height of the FLV movie

Jeroen’s FLV Player also supports the use of poster frames or clip preview frames so that you can use a single still image from anywhere in the FLV video and have it display automatically once the flash player is loaded. (For an example of this see the video at the start of this post.)

A great time-saver when using this plugin is that if you upload an FLV and JPG image and they both have the same name, e.g. demo.flv and demo.jpg, it means you can still use the short bit of code above and it will automatically display the JPG as the preview picture for the video clip. Very Nice!

Download

You can download the FLV Embed plugin 1.0 for WordPress and try it out for yourself here.

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The latest version of WordPress Version 2.3.3 has now been released and it is billed as an urgent security release. It seems a flaw has been discovered in the XML-RPC implementation if you have user registration enabled on your blog. The flaw basically allows a registered user to employ a specially crafted request in order to allow them to edit posts on your blog.

Also, this new Version 2.3.3 release fixes a few minor bugs. There are a couple of options if you want to avoid this latest security threat to your blog. Firstly, if you are only interested only in the security fix you can download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php, or secondly, you can get the new Wordpress 2.3.3 version here and overwrite your existing installation files directly.

So, this could be a good time to update your own Wordpress installation!

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Caroline Middlebrook has just released a free ebook on how you can develop money-making niche sites with WordPress. The ebook is completely free and is available for instant download on Caroline’s WordPress Niche Sites webpage.

The ebook is very well put together and all 41 pages are jammed with useful information regarding configuration, setting up new Wordpress blogs, monetizing your blog and lots more.

So if you’re ever wondering about generating income from your blog or niche site, it is definitely a book thats worth taking a look at.

You can download your free Wordpress ebook here;

http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/niche-sites-wp/

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Chromatic Sites have just announced a brand new WordPress Themes community website which features only professionally made Wordpress themes. You can browse over a small collection of these professional themes right now at their Professional WordPress Themes website. Remember these are still free, high-quality WordPress Themes! Well worth a look.

It is worth mentioning that only themes that satisfy strict criteria will appear on this website. All of the WordPress themes published there will be inspected for;

• W3C validation,
• quality of design,
• bugs,
• profanity

If a theme passes all 4 requirements then it will be published on the Professional WordPress Themes website. This will ensure WordPress theme lovers will get high-quality, bug-free, standards compliant WordPress themes made available to them. The site is deliberately meant to look like the original themes.wordpress.net website but to have a similar website dedicated to quality Wordpress Themes is a terrific idea.

Remember, this site is brand new and so are starting from scratch. There are just a few themes uploaded at the moment. So if you are a theme maker, please do upload to this new site.

You can check them out now by visiting the Professional WordPress Themes website.

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The new WordPress 2.3 will be released in a few short days and it will have loads of new features that will surely make you want to upgrade right away. Some of the new features will include automatic plugin updates as well as the long awaited built-in support for Tags.

Matt, over at the Wordpress Development Blog, has just released some ideas that will help you prepare for this major new release of Wordpress 2.3. The following is a small list of some of the things you can do to help prepare for the big upgrade on Monday;

• Back up your blog. Check out the Codex page with a few different methods.
• Check for the latest versions of your plugins. Here’s a list of known compatible and incompatible plugins with 2.3, Google Sitemaps seems to be one causing a lot of issues. (Forum thread)
• Enjoy the last time you have to check for plugin updates manually as Wordpress 2.3 will do it automagically behind the scenes.
• Read up on how to modify your theme to add tag support.
• Consider switching your install to use Subversion to make updating ultra-easy.
• Make a list of your friends who are less computer literate so you can help them upgrade. Maybe throw an upgrade party?

Have Fun!

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I just came across a very useful post on the weblog tools collection blog about using Keyboard Shortcuts in Wordpress. Using the basic keyboard shortcuts in Wordpress have been a great timesaver for me, but I had no idea that there were as many shortcuts as there actually are.

The following list features probably the most used and useful Keyboard Shortcuts you are likely to need for your Wordpress blog.

• Bold: ALT+SHIFT+b
• Undo: ALT+SHIFT+u
• Redo: ALT+SHIFT+y
• Link: ALT+SHIFT+a
• Italics: ALT+SHIFT+i
• Align Center: ALT+SHIFT+c
• Align Right: ALT+SHIFT+r
• Align Left: ALT+SHIFT+f
• Insert: ALT+SHIFT+s
• Delete: ALT+SHIFT+d
• Code: ALT+SHIFT+c
• Read More: ALT+SHIFT+t
• List Item (li): ALT+SHIFT+l
• Ordered List (ol): ALT+SHIFT+o
• Unordered List (ul): ALT+SHIFT+u
• BlockQuote: ALT+SHIFT+q
• Unquote/Outdent: ALT+SHIFT+w
• Advanced Editor: ALT+SHIFT+v
• Publish Post: ALT+SHIFT+p
• Edit HTML: ALT+SHIFT+e

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A new version of the WordPress Database Backup Plugin has been released. This V2 Version works great in conjuction with the latest WordPress 2.1 version and gives you the ability to schedule automatic backups of your WordPress database either hourly, daily, or weekly and also with the ability to have the DB backup file emailed to an email address of your choice, automatically!

Once installed there are several new options under the Manage/Backup menu in your Wordpress admin panel. The top section of the Backup screen is for doing immediate backups while the bottom section is for scheduling automatic backups. The created backup will be in the form of a SQL script file that contains all the data of your blog as well as the proper commands to restore it. To restore the data you will need to execute the SQL on your MySQL database, using PHPMyAdmin, which will recreate the tables and repopulate the data into the proper fields.

The new automatic backup feature makes this a must-have plugin to have on your blog. Check it out.

Download: WordPress Database Backup Plugin

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One of the great things about Wordpress is the wide variety of themes that are available for it. However, often when I change my theme, I forget to change the Statcounter code that I had to manually put into the footer.php file of my original theme. This can become a real pain, so I went looking for a “Set and Forget” solution to changing themes without having worry about manually adding the Statcounter code each time. I found two plugins that will do the job and I will list them here for you;

#1. Citizen K’s Statcounter Plugin

The first plugin I found is simplicity itself. It’s by Citizen K who has developed this Statcounter Plugin. To use this plugin, simply download from here, upload to your wp-content/plugin directory, activate in the plugins admin area and then add your statcounter code in Admin Options/ Statcounter section. That’s it! Remember, that you will only need to add the invisible counter code that is provided by Statcounter.com.

#2. Luke’s Statcounter Plugin

The second plugin is slightly more advanced but it is also an Set and Forget method to get Statcounter set up on your blog. It’s by Luke and it can be found here. Luke developed this plugin based on the works of Ronald Heft and his Google Analyticator WordPress plugin.

As before, simply upload, activate and configure. The admin options for this Statcounter Plugin are slightly more involved than the one above. You need to add the three bits of information required and then enable the tracking for it to work. Again, this plugin does not create a user-viewable counter, it simply adds the proper javascript code for an invisible Statcounter.

Download

So, if want a simple solution to add Statcounter tracking to your blog, download the Citizen K version here. For a slightly more advanced option, you can download Luke’s statcounter plugin here. Both work great, so the choice is yours.

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I just came across two very useful resources for Wordpress Theme and Plugin customization. I found these on the excellent 480x.com blog which features a special Theme and Plugin Cheat Sheet that are very useful when you want to dive in and manually configure a theme or plugin.

These two cheat sheets are in PNG format and are designed to operate as a desktop wallpaper if anyone would like to do it that way. Actually, I decided to print these out onto glossy paper, and even laminate them, as they are a great reference for tweaking Wordpress to suit your own needs.

The Wordpress Theme Cheat Sheet (above) is for WordPress theme developers or theme customization and is 1280—1024 pixels and PNG format. It features a list of all the Template Tags (eg wptitle(), the_content() ) , Include Tags, BlogInfo function and a basic example of the entire Wordpress Loop.

The Wordpress Plugin Cheat Sheet (right) is also 1280—1024 pixels, PNG format and features a list of all the add_actions() and add_filters() functions which form the basis of all plugins. This cheat sheet is useful for Plugin customization or even creating a Plugin from scratch.

Tip: Print the two cheat sheets onto two pages of glossy paper, then place together with the glossy side up at the front and when you turn it around the other one is also glossy side up, then laminate the two sheets together.

This makes a very useful reference for tweaking Wordpress without having to go and search through the entire Wordpress documentation.

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