Some changes will be made to this weblog over the next few days or weeks. This means there will be times when this website will be completely non-operational, and other times when what appears will not even look like a webpage. These less-than-ideal changes will be temporary, as we upgrade some of the software.

We currently use ancient (in android time) weblog and anti-spam software. While it used to work superbly, changes our host has made, that I will not attempt to explain except to say we now have hanging MySQL queries, are causing problems for folks trying to comment.

So, be advised that our websites will be non-operational at times, but that these glitches will hopefully be temporary.

Update (of same day): The upgrades went a lot smoother on this weblog than I expected. Now I have to watch how it reacts in actual operation. This weblog is the test box.

Update (Saturday, March 21 2009): Made it through the night without any apparent issues requiring manual maintenance! This is a tentative, “Yay!” Even if the current solution is not as good as the old one (it may be better), our need to make the change seems somewhat forced by realities of our current host’s and the recently-increased existence of the hanging queries that manifested as several different interactivity problems.

In my last post I wrote about one technique proofreaders use when checking their documents, and offered simple instructions regarding how to modify a WordPress 1.5.2 wp-admin.css file to help bloggers use the technique. Unfortunately, the 2.x versions require changes to post.php to achieve the same effect.

This post shows how to have more than one Post Preview section on the Write Post page in 2+ versions. It involves slightly altering the /wp-admin/post.php file with a small portion of ever-so-slightly altered code that was originally included in the same file from the earlier 1.5.2 versions. If you decide to try this, any WordPress upgrade you perform will overwrite these changes, and the programmers occasionally make changes to this file (version 2.0.5 to 2.1.2 had changes), so saving it from version to version is not a very good idea. You’ll also want to make sure you save a backup copy of the original file so you can easily undo these changes.

These instructions are specific to WordPress 2.1.2. This has also been tested to work in WordPress 2.0.5. (more…)

One of the techniques used by proofreaders when checking their documents is to change the font from proportional to non-proportional and read again. I’m no great proofreader or writer, however, this is a known technique. In reading, I’ve noted that I often look quite quickly at the whole word, or several words, instead of focusing on each separate character in each word. Changing from a proportional font to a non-proportional one, and increasing the line-spacing as well as line-height, helps me to see each and every letter in each word.

Therefore, I wanted WordPress to show me the post text in several different fonts on the Write Post page as a proofreading aid. The following How To applies to WordPress 1.5.2. This will not work in the newer 2+ series because the Write Post page, specifically post.php, has been completely reworked in the newer version. It is possible to recode post.php to do this (I’ve tested it in 2.0.5); however, that goes beyond the scope of this post which is limited to a simple CSS formatting change.

This was first implemented as a project on another 1.5.2 blog that I participate in as co-administrator, and it seemed like it had been quite awhile since I had posted anything here, so I thought why not share the template modification. (more…)

Jamesoff, coder of the RBL plugin for SpamKarma 2 has decided to shut down his blacklist at blbl.org, he writes:

“In due time, I’ll shut down rbldnsd too, but that’ll be a while yet. If you’re using the SpamKarma2 plugin for WordPress, or any other RBL lookup plugin on any blog software at all, please remove blbl.org from the lookup list (bl.blbl.org and uri-bl.blbl.org).”

Thanks for all the help, Jamesoff. Your decision seems a good one: if your heart is no longer in a project, then what’s the point?

The files that appear to have changed in WordPress version 1.5.1.2 from 1.5.1.1 are:

\wp-content\themes\default\header.php \wp-includes\functions.php \wp-includes\template-functions-category.php \wp-includes\template-functions-general.php \wp-includes\version.php

Please note that the above is not an official WordPress list. It was made using the win32 program WinMerge, from zip downloads of WordPress versions that I have saved.

I’m making available the basic template we adapted from Ruthsarian’s Skidoo Too layout. In my mind, it is only fair, since his template was in the public domain. The colors were modeled from the bird named the California Scrub Jay of the Pacific Coast, a sub-species of the Western Scrub Jay.

While the older templates below for Wordpress 1.2.x are still available, they will not be updated. I’ve updated the basic template for WordPress 1.5.x using newer versions of Ruthsarian’s Skidoo Too HTM templates. Portions of these templates have been copied from the WordPress Classic theme by Dave Shea and Matthew Mullenweg, covered by the GNU GPL.

Disclaimer: I’m not a programmer, nor a commercial site designer. I will change the template used on this site somewhat from time to time, and the files below will probably not be updated. If you notice any bugs, feel free to make a comment here to tell me, but consider that the files are offered “as is”, and any features that you don’t believe are working correctly are your problem to figure out.

Update of 12/12/2005: Fixed a left-column rendering issue for visitors using Internet Explorer 6.0. This issue was related to WordPress’s calendar and my lousy CSS skills. Please note that this update only applies to WP version 1.5.x. The template for the older WP version, 1.2.x (see below) was not updated as I no longer use that older WP version.

One file below, comments.txt, has only one or two minor changes versus the released WordPress 1.5.1.2 Classic theme.

index.txt style.txt comments.txt

Save the three links above by renaming each one:

1. index.txt as index.php
2. style.txt as style.css
3. comments.txt as comments.php

Create a new directory in your WordPress 1.5.x theme folder, I have assigned the name “bluejay” to that directory:

/wp-content/themes/bluejay/

Move the three files you saved from here into that directory on your blog using an appropriate tool such as FTP or a file manager of some kind. You can change your blog’s active template in the Presentation > Theme administration area of your blog.

Simply open the two links above then save the index.txt file as index.php, and the wp-layout.txt file as wp-layout.css. Before uploading them to your server, make sure you backup the files of the same name used on your current Wordpress 1.2.2 blog: rename them to something like index_backup.php and wp-layout_backup.css. Then upload the files you saved from here to your blog.