Laptop Legal » WordPress

Using markdown to make posting easier

Jordan — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:27:08 +0000

For all you legal bloggers out there that prefer coding to clicking through WYSIWYG editors, Daring Fireball‘s Markdown is a user friendly syntax that allows you to quickly draft blogposts without using full HTML and without having to highlight and point and click to get all the formatting you want.

So instead of typing out:

"I'm a quote!"

All you have to do is type:

>"I'm a quote!"

No more typing out bullet point code or long “a href=” you can simply use asterisks and square and curved brackets.

Install it into your WordPress blog to give it a run. As an added bonus, if you use MarsEdit, it has a preview text filter for Markdown.

There are a few plugins to choose from, I’m using Michael Fortin’s PHP markdown.

Mobilize your site

Jordan — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 07:04:23 +0000

Just a quick note that I just installed WordPress Mobile Edition on laptop legal as a test. Seems pretty handy — I just had a look on my iPhone and it’s a nice clean interface with good navigation. I recommend checking it out for your site.

I might try and do some customisation of the theme this weekend just to play around with it a little…

WordPress 2.7

Jordan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:29:00 +0000

Managed to update one of my other blogs to WordPress 2.7 and the latest Thesis theme — went pretty smoothly especially with OpenHook for Thesis. I did a whole new install and imported my old site and had my plugins installed and site configured pretty quickly (couple of hours total).

I very much recommend upgrading if you haven’t already, especially as it looks like it has several SEO features already built in. It also might be a good time to try a new theme that takes advantage of some of the changes in WordPress.

OPML of full WordPress linkroll

Jordan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:31:12 +0000

WordPress doesn’t have a linkroll export function, though it does have an import function. Want access to your full set of links to export? Go to: /wordpressinstallfolder/wp-links-opml.php In your browser, and “save as”, making sure the extension is “.xml”. Bonus – Firefox 3 already recognises that it’s an OPML file (what links are stored) in and does the “hard work” of renaming your file for you.

The only drawback is if you are importing it to another WordPress install that it doesn’t import your categories (if you have different categories of links).

See /stats on your WordPress blog

Jordan — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:02:15 +0000

I’ve just migrated one of the sites I maintain and had to re-edit the .htaccess file to allow /stats to be available. Before, every time I tried to visit foo.com/stats it went to a 404 error on my WordPress install (it couldn’t find the page).

This is because I had URL rewriting turned on with my blog, which allows user friendly URLs but can prevent accessing server stats locating in the /stats folder (because it rewrites that too).

The solution is to edit the .htaccess file, which is a file that tells the server how to behave when it comes to URLs.

I use Dreamhost, which has a solution in its wiki. All it takes is firing up TextEdit in plain text mode and adding the following before the WordPress code:

rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUESTURI} ^/(stats|failed_auth.html).*$ [NC] RewriteRule . - [L]

I used Cyberduck to FTP into the site, set it to view hidden files (files starting with a “.” are hidden) downloaded it as a *.txt document edited it, and popped it back on the server (again using Cyberduck). Finally rename the current one to something like htaccess.bak (as a back up) and change the name of the file you just uploaded to “.htaccess”.

And you’re done!

Favicon for your wordpress blog

Jordan — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:08:40 +0000

I was looking to add a favicon to one of my other blogs today, and discovered the Blog Icons plugin for WordPress that lets you do it relatively painlessly.

Blog Icons WordPress Codex

I made a 16 by 16 pixel favicon in png format using GIMP, the open source photo manipulation program I tend to use on the MacBook Pro. You can also use Seashore, which runs in OS X without the need for the X11 Window system.

You simply need to just download the Blog Icons plugin and upload it to your plugins folder in your WordPress install. Go to you admin page and enable the plugin. Afterwards there is a new option in your settings folder for Blog Icons.