My Wordpress Upgrade and Plugins
I've upgraded to Wordpress 2.3 and things went (mostly) well.
If you'd like read more about the upgrade and some new favorite plugins (Holy Scripturizer, WP-Print and Advanced Tag Entry), continue reading below the fold.
Tags
Tagging is WordPress 2.3's raison d'etre. I've been using Categories as Tags, but they are really different animals.? Categories are supposed to be few in number and relatively distinct from each other. The frequent analogy is aisles in a grocery store. In contrast, tags are free-form, ad hoc and can overlap. A tag is an attribute. A category is a structure and can be hierarchical.?Clear? Maybe not.
The tagging structures in 2.3 are strong, but the user interface is still weak. That's why I'm using the Advanced Tag Entry?plugin. See below for more information. Eventually, the base code will include the capability to manage tags, but not yet.
The WordPress import function gives you the ability to convert selected categories to tags. The utility worked well with one excepton. Before importing I created one tag with the same name as an existing category. The utility did not convert that category to a tag. Most posts now show themselves to be "uncategorized,"?with the exception of the one category the utility did not convert.?
To display the tags, I had to?add code to my template.??New template tags include <?php wp_tag_cloud('');??>?and<?php the_tags();??>. Click through to the documentation for more on the parameters these functions take.
I'm still playing with the wp_tag_cloud function and haven't yet decided whether to use it. The default formatting doesn't look good with my template.
Upgrading
Upgrading is easy. I just copied the new distribution over the old files, ran the upgrade script and everything worked like a charm.
What didn't work like a charm was trying to move the blog to the root of my domain while still using the same database. I thought that this major upgrade would be a good occasion to do that, but it was a disaster. (Modifying the .htaccess file to create a 301 redirect from /blog/ to the root directory worked fine, but not much else. Glad I backed everything up.
Plugins
Holy Scripturizer?automatically creates links to esv.org or biblegateway.com. No special coding is required. Once the plugin is installed, you use the dashboard to set your options. Then presto, the links appear wherever a bible passage?appears in the text. Example:?Genesis 1, John 3:16, Rom 3:23-25. I did nothing to create these links except type the book name, chapter and verse in a standard format.
WP-Print adds a "print friendly" page. Once installed, you have to update your template to include the code to call the page. See the link at the bottom of this page for an example.
Advanced Tag Entry?adds much needed capability to the Wordpress 2.3 user interface. Version 2.3 has no native ability to select existing tags or delete tags. This plugin is a step in the right direction. It might even be considered a necessity if you are going to use tags.
Filed under: Admin