Safari 3, now for Mac and PC, recently came out in beta form. Included in this release was the ability for users to use visual editors also know as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. No longer do Safari users have to know code to make basic formatting in blog posts.

Safari 3.0.1 Beta on Windows XP

I’ve tested it in Wordpress 2.2 and it works great.* As far as I understand, previous versions of Wordpress don’t support Safari’s rich text editing. Testing it out under 2.0.10 confirms this.

I also tested out Blogger and had no issues. They seem to be on board with the Safari 3 crowd too.

TypePad however didn’t seem to support rich text editing with Safari yet.

With Safari 3 being so new, and brand new to the Windows world, blog software creators are working in Safari support as they feel the need.

If you use TypePad, or other software that doesn’t support Safari’s rich text editing yet, drop and email to their support so they know your interested.

With the recent announcement of the slimmed down version of Technorati, s.technorati.com, my use of the blog search engine is on the increase once again. Now I’ve made it even easier to access by creating sTechnorati.

sTechnorati is a search plugin that works in both IE7 and Firefox 2. It’s actually built with the OpenSerch technology so as browsers adopt to that, they too can install sTechnorati. What it will do is install an option to search from your browsers built in search box and go directly to the s.technorati.com search results page. Just like the Google option that is already there now.

While making sTechnorati I took a few liberties. It’s set to search only English posts and posts with at least a little authority. I felt that would bring back the best results. If you want one with different settings, just ask and I’ll toss a new one together.

Enjoy!

Install sTechnorati

[tags] technorati,firefox,ie7,opensearch[/tags]

Every have odd things happening with your Wordpress blog? Plugins work one minute but then not the next? It could be that you need more PHP memory.

I first noticed this issue when I moved a blog from one host to the next. I had three main issues:

1. The Wordpress Dashboard showed only the right had menu. No news in the main column.
2. My Google Sitemap plugin was now prompting me to download the options-general.php file when I tried to re-create it.
3. Spam Karma worked, but when I tried to manage items, it wouldn’t load anything but the main menu.

Knowing there was something wrong, I tried to contact the host of the blog. They kept telling me that they didn’t give support for third party scripts or plugins. I understood them, but didn’t feel that they were really listening to me. After a bit of searching, I found a possible fix; increase the PHP memory.

PHP is what is used to run Wordpress. It’s usually allowed a certain amount of memory to run scripts and do its thing. If your blog is big enough, or if your scripts are complex enough, it may reach it’s memory limit and quit the script. That’s what was happening in my case.

BloggerDesign just took the plunge and upgraded to Wordperss 2.2 (from 2.1.3). It was simple and easy, just as it should be. Going from 2.1.x to 2.2 isn’t as big of a deal as going from 2.0.x to 2.1 (or 2.2) is.

The biggest update I saw was the hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari. This will make a lot of Safari users happy. Of course, it’s in an up-coming version of the browser. My guess is that Safari in Mac OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) will be a nice upgrade. Can’t wait!!

Wordpress 2.2 also claims it’ll protect the user from activating a plugin or making edits that will break the blog. So far, I’ve activated a plugin that broke the plugins page so it didn’t protect me from that. I’m not sure what I’m being protected from yet.

One GREAT feature is that they brought back the ‘Preview’ post link when writing. And this time, it links out to the actual blog and not just down the page to a preview in an iFrame. I’m really happy to see this feature return as I missed it quite a bit.

Mariner Software is getting ready to release their new blogging client called WinJournal. If you’ve used a Mac, then you may be familiar with MacJournal. Well it’s the same idea, just for Windows users.

WinJournal aims to bring journaling, blogging and podcasting into one application. Its blogging capabilities tie into MovableType, TypePad, Wordpress, Live Journal, Blogger and Windows Spaces. You can even publish your entries to a web server via FTP. Not sure if that includes an RSS feed or not, but it does sound like a great option. Or you can just use WinJournal write your own entries that don’t get published.

Some of the other options include wiki style links, spell check, auto save, security/encryption, WYSIWYG text editor, calendar, multiple journals, labels, full screen mode and tabs. There is also a skins manager to change the look an feel of WinJournal. This is good as the default skin under XP isn’t good. I switched it to WLM and it is much nicer.

Overall, it looks as if WinJournal has a lot of nice features. The folks over at MarinerSoftware are working hard on creating a quality desktop blog client and it’s well on its way.

I had a client recently ask me about a blog that was using TypePad’s domain mapping feature and it was causing duplicate homepage URLs for the blog. The first was to http://blog.clientsite.com and the second was to http://blog.clientsite.com/blog/. They were concerted that their Technorati rank and linking efforts were being compromised. And, of course, they wanted a fix.

I did some digging around it and it turns out that it’s the way the domain mapping was setup in TypePad that was causing the issue. It can be fixed, but there are consequences.

In the client’s TypePad account there are actually two blogs, each with a unique URL.

1. http://blog.clientsite.com/blog/
2. http://blog.clientsite.com/my_weblog/

Out of the two blogs above, #1 is setup as the ‘home blog’ meaning that it can be accessed via the main URL (http://blog.clientsite.com/) and the unique URL (http://blog.clientsite.com/blog/).

When the domain mapping was setup, the entire account was mapped to blog.clientsite.com, thus the home and unique blog URLs were included.

If just #1 was mapped to blog.clientsite.com, then no /blog/ folder would have show up.

Having recently moved a few Wordpress blogs from one host to another, I thought I’d write up a quick ho-to. It’s actually quite painless.

The first thing you need to know is that you are moving your blog, not re-installing it. Don’t attempt to re-install Wordpress as that may cause more issues.

Step 1 - Backup
It’s very important to backup your files and database. Files can be gotten via a FTP client and here are instructions on backing up your blog posts.

Step2 - Upload Files
When uploading your files to the new host, make sure to either upload the files you backed up, or upload the exact same version of Wordpress you are running on the old host. You can get your Wordpress version number at the bottom of any admin page.

Step 3 - Upload Database
Most web hosts come with a control panel area that gives the user access to phpMyAdmin for managing databases. Other hosts give instructions on how to connect to your database from a desktop application. Either way, connect to your new database. If you feel lost on this step, contact your web host for details on how to connect to your database.

One of my favorite designers (that I only know about due to his blog) is Jon Hicks and he’s just released an amazing Google Reader theme.

The theme cleans up Googles interface so that it makes a better use of the space and polishes it up quite a bit. Jon has re-worked Bloglines in the past and was hoping he’d re-work Google Reader eventually. I tried to create a custom theme for Google Reader once, but gave up a short time later. My CSS skills are good, but Jon’s are amazing.

The Google Reader theme is Mac like (which is one reason why I really like it) and very professional looking. A great makeover!

You can download the files and the install instructions from hicksdesign and have a fancy looking Google Reader in no time.

[tags]google,google-reader,css,hicksdesign[/tags]

A client asked me today for more control in their Wordpress control panel. Specifically, when posting they wanted to control the font sizes, colors and do a bit more. As a designer I always freak at that question as I think the code is going to be filled with massive amounts of font tags and out of order strong tags and ohhh the madness. But, then again, maybe I’m overreacting.

So, I did some researching and came up with one possible idea, Xinha4WP. It’s a Wordpress plugin that replaces the default text editor with a much more advanced version. It also needs the Text Control plugin to work so you need to install that too.

Xinha4WP gives bloggers many features including all font control (sizes and colors), tables, additional smilies, special characters and few more items. The coolest thing is the maximize button that lets you make the editor the size if your browser window.

The downside is that it is a rather large plugin weighing in at 5.5mb. It is also showing up above the built in Wordpress editor widow. This is not ideal to have two editor windows especially since the default Wordpress one is ignored. This could be a conflict with the video pugin they using too. Not sure.

One of the annoyances of Wordpress is that when a new version comes out, you have to take the time to upgrade. Sure, it may be just re-uploading everything, but that still takes a few minutes per blog and I think that’s why a lot of people tend not to do it. To work around this, the InstantUpgrade plugin was created. Good idea, but is it ready for primetime yet?

The plugin explains that it can automatically update to the latest version of Wordpress for you, or you can tell it when to update the files for you. It does all the work and you get to sit back and relax.

The first red flag is how many files you need to make writable by the server. The privileges 777 mean that the files are writable by everyone. This sounds like a hackers dream to me but maybe I’m wrong.

It also concerns me that every time there is a Wordpress upgrade, some plugins must be updated too. Thus, if it upgrades when you aren’t around, and a plugin breaks, how long will it take you to find out and will your blog be down?