WordPress

Experimenting with Lightbox for WordPress

eirikso11 Comments

Most of the pictures in this blog are thumbnails with a bigger version of the picture behind it. If you click the picture it will simply open the large version in a blank page.

There is a nice java script based plugin for WordPress that gives a bit of extra functionallity for pictures. When you click a thumbnail the bigger version will open on top of the same page with the rest of the page “dimmed”.

The question is: what do you think?
Leave a comment here if you have any thoughts…

The plugin seems to automatically work on all pictures in this blog. Click around and have a look. Should I leave it on, or would you like the good old “open-the-picture-in-a-blank-page”…?

You can try it here by clicking on one of these images (you can simply click it again to close it):

Matterhorn and a plane 3883 meters above sea level

Some info about the images. Taken above Zermatt, Switzerland. With a Canon S2 IS.

The one to the left is the top of Matterhorn. Snapped at the right moment when a plane passed by. The one to the right is at the top of Rothorn. 3883 meters above sea level. Move slowly…

Experimenting with Lightbox for WordPress

Cool statistics for your site: Have a mint!

eirikso2 Comments
Mint

Thanks to Oyvind I have just installed Mint on my server. This gives me very nice statistics from my site. It runs locally and stores the data in a mySQL database on my server. It works in realtime and shows statistics as people browse your site.

One very nice feature is that Mint supports Peppers. Peppers are plugins made by all kinds of very cool people.

Some good peppers:
Referrer Rollup
Gives you a very nice and tidy list of all your referrers

xxx Strong Mint
Show the IP of your visitors

Sparks!
Sparks! visualizes your visitor data.

Adsense Click Pepper
Get valuable info on how people click on your adsense ads

Foreign Pepper
Show where your visitors are coming from

Feedburner Stats Pepper
Show stats and circulation from your Feedburner RSS-feed

Fresh View Pepper
Fresh View uses XML-based SVG to visualize your Mint visitor data.

Google Images Pepper
Tracks hits from Google Images and let you know about the most popular images on your site. This one is supposed to be replaced by the Referrer Filter pepper, but that one did not work on my first install – so I kept the Google Images pepper.

Trends
Trends analyzes your website’s usage over a set period of time.

Cool statistics for your site: Have a mint!

Fighting spam in WordPress

eirikso1 Comment

A quick update on the situation
I have been using BotCheck to fight comment spam on this site. After a while I realized that BotCheck also killed all trackbacks. So, I deactivated BotCheck and installed “Bad Behavior”.

Still, after a while some spam got through. To prevent that I installed SpamKarma 2. After I installed SpamKarma I have had absolutely no spam, and one single case of a trackback that was stopped unintentionally.

So – basically I am happy as can be. Bad Behaviour + Spam Karma 2 = No Spam

Fighting spam in WordPress

Problems with BotCheck and trackbacks

eirikso6 Comments

BotCheck
I just noticed why trackbacks have been failing on my site. The plugin I have been using to prevent comment spam, BotCheck have been stopping trackbacks.

In my quest to solve this someone recommended using a plugin called Bad Behaviour instead.

So, I have just deactivated BotCheck and activated Bad Behaviour. Trackbacks should be back working fine, and I will report back later on how this new plugin prevents both comment spam and trackback spam.

Problems with BotCheck and trackbacks

Utilizing feedburner

eiriksoLeave a comment

I have just started utilizing Feedburner for my site. It is a great tool that let you add functionallity to your RSS feed. Get statistics for your RSS feed and in general help you with your syndication.

One example is the fact that it can make your feed look nice in any browser. Have a look at my feed here. Another is a bunch of predefined buttons for people to use when they want to subscribe. Look at the Yahoo, myMSN, NewsGator etc… in my sidebar to the right.

But, to make use of all the functionallity it is important that all your subscribers use the feed from feedburner.

So, here’s a wish:
All of you out there subscribing to my old feed:
http://www.eirikso.com/wp/index.php?feed=rss2

Could you please change your subscription to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/eirikso

The old one will not stop working, and at some point I will make an automatic redirect to my new feed. But, for those of you that have a minute, please change to the new feed.

For those of you that is wondering what this RSS thing really is, have a look at my introduction to RSS.

Continue reading “Utilizing feedburner” →

Utilizing feedburner

How to set up a blog

eirikso13 Comments

I am currently running several blogs. This one – www.eirikso.com, the hit tracking tool Trendmapper, my Norwegian food blog etc… I have made homepages using flash, I have made them using various web editing tools. I have made them using free blogging tools like Blogger or WordPress.com. I have hosted them at my ISP, I have hosted them at different hosting companies. But right now I have a solution that I really like!

It’s time to sum it all up and tell you what I would have done if I wanted to start a blog from scratch today.

1. You would want to host at a proper web host.
Your ISP gives you crap. Free blogging tools are limited. Go for a blog at a proper host, and you have space to grow in and possibilities to play with.

So what do I choose?
Continue reading “How to set up a blog” →

How to set up a blog

How to include “Popular posts” in your sidebar in wordpress

eirikso10 Comments
Popular Posts

I just included an automatic “Popular posts” list in my sidebar.

It is a very efficient way to show your visitors other popular content on your site. It is automatic and does not need you to do any manual work after you have installed it.

This is what you do:

Continue reading “How to include “Popular posts” in your sidebar in wordpress” →

How to include “Popular posts” in your sidebar in wordpress

How to include a trendmap in your sidebar

eirikso1 Comment

Add a thumbnail of the trendmap
First, go to the page with the trendmap you want. An example:
Trendmap for eirikso.com

You find the complete list of trendmaps here.

Then click the link: “- Go to code examples for this chart – “

Then open the template for your sidebar. For WordPress 1.5 that is:
/YourWPdirectory/wp-content/themes/YourCurrentTheme/sidebar.php

Insert the code for “Code to add a thumbnail of the trendmap for…” from the code example page.

Eirikso badge

…or you can insert a badge with a link to the trendmap. Simply insert the “Code to add a trendmap badge with a link to the trendmap for…” from the code example page.

How to include a trendmap in your sidebar

Experimenting with automatic email notifications

eirikso1 Comment

Using a plugin called subscribe 2 I have set up a system that lets my readers subscribe to automatic email notifications.

Not everybody are using RSS yet, so for the people that want another way to get notifications this system seems good.

I have only found one bug, and that is not a bug in the plugin, but a bug in WordPress. If you post by mail or by using software like w.Bloggar people will not get a notification.

You can register for automatic updates from eirikso.com here.

Experimenting with automatic email notifications