Author Archive
WordPress Plugin Recommendation: Zen, Distraction Free Writing Environment
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the both better and more annoying factors of WordPress is the huge amount of core features. Of course it is great to work with a platform which makes almost everything possible but this can also take away from your focus.
I am a big fan of taking out clutter, focusing on what really matters and love to simplify both life and working environment. The WordPress dashboard is well thought out, and popular, but I am the first one to launch an external writing application such as OmmWriter or WriteRoom, helping me focus just on content, especially when writing longer entries. For many smaller projects I am involved in, I prefer ’simpler’ platforms than WordPress, platforms focusing more on blogging rather than on being the awesomest, most complete or extendable platform.
Enter Zen, a distraction free writing environment for WordPress.
If you’re a fan of ‘anti-clutter’ plugins such as simple email notifications, you’ll love Zen for WordPress. More even, if you would have been on the verge of switching to a more writing focused platform such as Habari but on could not decide to ditch WP yet, Zen might be what you are looking for.
If you’re a fan of WriteRoom, OmmWriter, or similar tools that help you focus on your words instead of the tools you’re using, this plugin will soon make your wildest dreams come true (and give you a simple clean environment within WordPress to write to your heart’s content)! While Zen does not replace the existing Edit Post/Page screen, it provides a layer on top that will help you focus more on the quality of your words and less on the distracting fine-tuning of minuscule details.
Zen does not replace your editor or change the look of your dashboard but in the post editor you now can activate Zen with one click and call up the new layer. You can even set ‘Always write in Zen mode’ as standard (in Your Profile).
Zen comes with several themes (which can be selected in Your Profile) making Zen a little more noisy again but you don’t have to use these.
All in all Zen’s a nice and agreeable addition to WordPress and a new recommended plugin for me. Download Zen from the plugins directory or install it within WordPress (search the plugins repo for Zen).
iPhone: BlogPress Embraces Facebook (Maintains Its Lead Against Rivals)
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Perhaps one of the few multi-blogging iPhone apps still alive, BlogPress has recently added the ability to share posts immediately to Facebook, giving bloggers yet another way to easily reach the masses (or at least 400 million of them).
Even though bloggers could originally do this via the Facebook Note importer, Facebook unfortunately limits users to only importing one single blog.
Since BlogPress supports multiple blogs (across multiple platforms including WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger), bloggers can easily share their recent posts upon their Facebook wall from more than one blog, without having to use “work arounds” like Friendfeed.
Despite increased competition from companies releasing their own official apps (like WordPress and Squarespace), BlogPress continues to innovate itself by heavily embracing social networks such as Flickr, Twitter, YouTube–and now Facebook.
Movable Type Monday: Twitter, Google Buzz, Unpublishing, and More
Posted by: | CommentsHappy Monday, folks! I want to start by mentioning a couple of items I missed last week. First, Rob Kenny announced a new version of his HashTag plugin. HashTag posts an update to Twitter when you publish a new entry. In the latest version it works with scheduled entries and pages.
Also last week, Mike released a Google Buzz Action Stream plugin. If you haven’t used Google Buzz, it’s, well, a lot like Action Stream, really: It creates a feed of your activity on multiple social sites. Additionally, you can follow other people’s feeds and comment on items.
This week, Nick from MT-J posted some Twitter tools to tell you about. Motokazu Sekine has written a PostToTwitter plugin similar to HashTag. Also, SKYARC System Co., Ltd created GetTweet, which creates blog entries from your Twitter posts.
Nick also lets us know about the Period plugin from Taku. It lets you set a date when a post should be unpublished.
Besides plugins, we’ve also got a few Movable Type tips for you. Maarten Schenk published the following this week:
- Optimizing Movable Type’s Standard Templates for Speed (part 1) — This is a good explanation of why many of your index templates should not be set to publish automatically.
- Getting the Height/Width of a Thumbnail Generated in Movable Type — Maarten shows you how to access height and width data for your uploaded images.
- Trimming Any Content to a Number of Words in Movable Type — Not every MT tag supports trimming to a certain number of words. In this post you’ll learn how to solve that using regular expressions.
- Blog Specific Content in Signup, Login and Profile Screens — Maarten explains how to give each blog in your MT install a different login page.
- Deleting All Entries from a Movable Type Blog… In One Go! — This is dangerous knowledge, but useful.
Finally, Yujiro Araki explains how to display a list of entries grouped by tag.
What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.
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Movable Type Monday: MT 4.34, Plugins, Themes, Tips, and More
Posted by: | CommentsHappy Monday, folks! We’ve got a lot to cover this week. First off, Six Apart released Movable Type 4.34 on Wednesday. Here’s a few of the highlights from the release notes:
- Corrected a problem with user privilege changes implemented in Movable Type 4.33 that prevented a user from uploading a userpic (a picture of himself or herself) in some situations.
- Fixed a typographical error in the lib/MT/Summary/Proxy.pm Perl module in Movable Type 4.33 that resulted in “subroutine redefined” errors being reported in some circumstances.
- Fixed a problem with the internal search facility within the Movable Type 4 CMS that prevented more than 125 results matching the search criteria to be displayed. Thanks to Mark Carey for the patch.
- Fixed a problem with the internal search facility within the Movable Type 4 CMS that caused all “Regex Match” searches to return no matches.
- Fixed a problem in Movable Type 4.33 where searching for entries by date ranges returned incorrect results. This problem was most noticeable to users of the Blog Stats Dashboard Widget. It often displayed no activity for entries or comments regardless of actual activity.
Lots of new and updated plugins to tell you about this week. First, Dan Wolfgang has updated his More Custom Fields plugin. This new version makes Selected Entries easier to choose, adds a new “Selected Pages” field type, and makes the plugin free for all users.
Mike at Code Monkey Ramblings has updated his Comment Flag plugin. This plugin now sends an email notification when a comment has been flagged.
Mike also has a new plugin. MT Closure Compiler makes use of Google’s Closure service to minify and optimize JavaScript index templates as they’re published.
While you’re there, be sure to also checkout Mike’s WordPress Extended RSS template and all his new themes.
Over at MTJ, Nick tells us about CMSContext, a plugin that allows you to modify the MT admin using MT template tags. It was developed by Junnama Noda.
Hajime Fujimoto is the developer of Numeric Custom Fields, which gives you the option of creating integer and float custom fields.
for out last plugin this week, ParentalInclude by SKYARC System Co., Ltd. makes it easier to include a template from a parent website inside a blog template in MT5.
Over at Movable Tips, Maarten Schenk has several new tips for us:
Template Syntax Highlighting in Movable Type Templating Entries — Maarten uses Google Chrome to add code with syntax highlighting to his blog posts.
Using Movable Type Template Tags to Count Things — Another fun templating lesson. This time, Maarten shows us how to count just about anything, using the like modifier.
Premature end of Script Headers, Error 500, Movable Type and You — This post explains the cause of some common script errors, and gives advice on tracking down the problem.
Displaying a Thumbnail of an Entry Image with the Title of a Post — Here, Maarten shows us how to loop through your entry assets and display a thumbnail image to represent each post.
What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.