And yes, I’ll actually blog about something other than my own site in the near future

1. From the Valleywag blogger dinner entry.
2. From some stupid splog.
3. From the movabletype.org Donors page. (Yes, I was once a loyal paying customer of Movable Type).

It’s kinda funny. Especially the donor list, which must’ve been updated recently, because I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any hits off that thing until now.

Huzzah for feed integration!

• Changed my static pages (About, Links, Published, and Résumé, respectively) to look a little different from the rest of the regular blog entries. This basically meant creating a separate Pages Template for them, removing the extraneous stuff like titles, dates, comments, etc. I had to create a separate Links template though, because the regular Pages interface on WordPress can’t handle PHP (ie. I couldn’t use the get_links_list function otherwise). I still have to format that Links page properly though — my list is getting out-of-hand.
• I cleaned up the sidebar. Archives are now in drop-down menu format (full details on how to do so are at the WordPress Codex), links were all transferred to the aforementioned Links page (though I may add a “most recently updated blogs” list later), and added my Upcoming.org schedule for kicks (Using this handy-dandy Feed to Javascript wizard. I tried using a plugin solution, but that didn’t work out too well).
• As for the iTunes-is-playing thing, that was done via the WP-iTunes plugin. I use RecentTunes to upload my iTunes information to the site. I downloaded and installed the plugin, entered an iTunes key variable (just made something up), entered my Amazon.com dev token (for the album images), and activated it. Then I configured RecentTunes as follows:
  - under the Upload tab, I selected HTTP GET, and entered this site’s URL.
  - then under Templates, in Get Args, I typed in something like this: wpitunes=$itunes_key_var&track=^t&artist=^p&album=^a&genre=^g, with the “$itunes_key_var” being the key variable that I selected.
• Added Technorati tag functionality to my blog entries via the Bunny’s Technorati Tags WordPress plugin.

If any of that was unclear, and you want to do any of the above yourself, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to help.

Anyway, yeah, not that much of an update really. But still wanted to chronicle it in case I forget how I did any of this stuff.

Check it out: WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn” is finally live. I’m at Matt’s WordPress upgrade party, and have thus updated to the latest stable release. It is tres awesome.

Update: I decided to post a 60-second video of Eric Haller providing us with an impromptu live living room concert. Here’s hoping my bandwidth survives (Update: I changed the movie format to .MOV because some people were having download issues with Safari).

PS. The wedding day entry is coming soon. Give me time, k?

I must admit that the move was much easier than expected. Everything from blog installation to entry imports took about ten minutes tops. After that, it was a matter of customization. Since WordPress publishes instantly with no rebuilding, even the customization process flew by (I was especially impressed with how easy it was to change the structure of the permalinks). I was used to fiddling with templates via MT’s web interface, but with WordPress, I found it easier to edit the templates directly via a text editor and a SFTP client (I’m quite used to hand-coding, so this was great for me). There was a bit of a learning curve though, but it wasn’t too bad. I went through all the different tabs and settings, asked questions on the support forum, and generally learned through trial and error. I thought my lack of PHP knowledge would cripple me, but that was not the case. I didn’t need to know that much PHP at all — the instructions on the forums as well as the WordPress Wiki helped a lot in this regard. There’s also a lot to WordPress that’s very intuitive, such as its built-in links manager that rivals Blogrolling in its ease of use (You can even import your Blogrolling OPML file into the WordPress link manager if you want).

Overall, the move was relatively pain-free. Sure I had to adapt to a new way of doing things, but it didn’t take that long, and I actually prefer it this way. It’s just plain faster and more intuitive to handle. I haven’t run into any problems yet, but I’ll be sure to note any bugs I can find later on. Meanwhile, I’m knee-deep in WP love.

PS. I recognize the newer version of MT supports dynamic publishing as well, but as I’ve had no experience with that, I can’t speak for its speed.

1. Upload the .php into the plugins folder
2. Upload the witty.txt into the wp-content folder
3. Activate the plugin from the Plugins tab
4. Edit the witty.txt file (you can do this from the WP interface as well). Make sure you have the right file permissions (eg. CHMOD 666).
5. Include the string <?php witty(); ?> wherever you want in your template.
6. Let the random silliness begin.

Some of my favorites include “for hot girl-on-blog action” and “it’s always the quiet ones.” I thought of these during one of those late-night brainstorms, so some taglines are probably lamer than others.

PS. Oh, and another site-related thing. I have my Atom feed link on the main page now. That’s for those who were asking for it (that’s you, J).

• The look — Customize it. Will have to probe into CSS.
• The sidebar — Again, needs to be customized. More below.
• Links — Incorporate my blogroll. Plus other links. Might have to have separate links page as well.
• Configure Flickr code to span horizontally on top (align left), instead of vertically on the side. No idea how to do this, but will figure it out.
• Archives look abit unwieldy. Needs to be streamlined by date, and month/category pages need to be paginated.
• Search field non-existent in this particular stylesheet. Will have to look into default stylesheet to figure out why.
• Perhaps have drop-down menus on the categories and months at the sidebar.
• Create a specific CSS code for the del.icio.us stuff, to differentiate it from regular content.
• About page. Resume page. Articles page.
• Restoring old entries — already in the process, will take weeks.
• Redirect neekole.com/weblog to neekole.com.

That’s all I can think of for now. There’ll probably be more as I think of them.