Category — software
Changing to Wordpress Blog/CMS
Ok, so I made the switch to having my site running completely on Wordpress. Originally it ran just my blogs, and I ran a custom front-end to pull that information out. But, since that site was built, Wordpress has matured a lot, and it’s now able to do a lot of what I wanted my site to do. There’s still a few bits missing, but that can be ironed out.
I’m going to write more on this, but it’s late, and this way I have more to write tomorrow. But so far, I’ve installed several plugins ranging from SEO to a gallery - only pain is having to bring all my images back into the new site.
Blogs were easy as they were already in Wordpress. But it amazes me how easy it was to set-up and install extras. The plugin framework is phenomenally flexible and really impressed me. It is more like a CMS now, managing pages in the same way it manages blogs - a sensible move and one I really wanted to incorporate into my new site.
Then there was the upgrade process. I had version 2.3 installed, and running happily, but then wordpress released version 2.5. Usually I will let a piece of software settle down before taking the plunge, but everything I’d read about this new version made me keen to dive in and try it. It was as easy as dragging files into your site. The next time you go to the admin section, it asks to run the upgrade script - makes some small changes to the database indexes - and that’s it. You’re up and running!
I looked around at several themes, but the Cutline 3-Column Split 1.1 theme from Chris Pearson over at personified.com was exactly what I was after. It’s a nice, clean, 3-column layout that only required a few small tweaks. The header images have been changed with some of my own, and the top navigation was amended.
I will be building my own theme over the coming weeks, but for now, I think you’ll agree, it looks pretty good.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.gregory-brine.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
March 30, 2008 No Comments
RSS Feed Reader for mac
I’ve been a big fan of feedreader on Windows, but I’ve yet to find something comparable on the mac. Obviously there’s the on-line tools, and there’s been a few shareware ones around which were OK.
But, feedreader has a beautiful simplicity. It’s on of those programs that does exactly what you need, and could want and doesn’t try to do anything else. The mac ones I’ve seen either did too little, or fell into that trap of trying to be everything. The elegance and simplicity that using Mac OS X is known for just wasn’t there.
Thankfully, whilst hunting around, I came first across Vienna. A project on Sourceforge that does almost exactly the same thing as feedreader with it’s simple 3 pane layout. You can create groups of feeds, when you click on a feed or group, you get a list of all the blogs in that group in the top right pane. Click on a blog, and you get the summary of that blog in the pane below. Double click on the blog’s title and it opens the full URL in you browser. Everything’s nice a quick, and always accessible. You can change the layout to be horizontal if you prefer. Whenever feeds update, you get a message on your desktop - which you can turn off if you like (amazing how many programs forget to give you that option!).
Then, as if a blessing, along comes another program. Newsgator has just released their NetNewsWire program for free. Working much the same way as Vienna, it has 2 other tricks up it’s sleeve. First off, when you double click the feed, it open a new ‘tab’ in the application showing the full page - you’d be amazed how much difference this little trick makes. And, and this is the kicker, you can connect it to your Newsgator account, synchronising the feeds you add here with those on line, and vice versa. This means all your feeds are available anywhere, any time.
Vienna, great, but NetNewsWire is one step better… Give them a try, you won’t regret it!
March 2, 2008 No Comments
