Site Updates to Be Discontinued
As some of you may have realized, our WordPress book was not updated for version 2.5 as originally planned and is unlikely to be updated for any future version of WordPress. We’ve decided, therefore, to discontinue updating this book support site.
The posts that we’ve written and the comments that have been left on this site will remain as an archive. Although quite a bit of this information is out-of-date, there’s still enough useful information to keep it available. Comments for all posts, however, have been closed so no new comments can be posted.
Both of us continue to use, write about, and provide training material for WordPress. If you’re interested in getting up-to-date WordPress materials, we recommend that you visit us at our other Web sites.
For Maria Langer:
- Maria’s Guides (http://www.MariasGuides.com) provides how-to articles about topics covered in all of Maria’s Books and video training materials.
- An Eclectic Mind (http://www.MariaLanger.com) is Maria’s blog, where she sounds off on a wide variety of topics.
- Lynda.com (http://lynda.com) publishes Maria’s WordPress training videos.
For Miraz Jordan:
- The KnowIT bookstore is the home of a new series of practical ebooks for WordPress users. Currently available:
- How to backup your WordPress website
- How WordPress is put together
- KnowIT (http://knowit.co.nz) is where Miraz publishes a wide range of how-to articles for using WordPress and other software products.
- MacTips (http://mactips.info) provides a new practical Tip each week for users of Macs, iPods, iPhones and other Apple products.
We’d like to note that the demise of our book has nothing to do with the popularity of WordPress. It remains one of the most popular blogging platforms out there, with millions of bloggers using WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress installations. It continues to be updated regularly with new features and interface improvements. Both Maria and Miraz use WordPress for all of their blogging and CMS needs and highly recommend it to others.
If you bought our book, thanks so much for your support. We hope you’ll continue to let us help you get more out of WordPress — and your computer — by visiting us at any of the above-listed sites.
Customise the WordPress Search results page
Another in my series of Peachpit Web Design Reference Guide WordPress articles was published the other day — Customizing WordPress 2.5.1: Search:
After arriving at your blog, visitors may want to search for specific items you have written about. Make sure visitors have easy access to Search and that results are useful to them. This article, based on WordPress 2.6.1, shows you how to make sure visitors find what they’re looking for on your blog.
Search is such an important part of any website. Use this article to really help your visitors.
Make 404 Pages much more helpful in WordPress
My Peachpit Web Design Reference Guide article about keeping lost visitors on your site has been published — Customizing WordPress 2.5.1: 404 Pages:
Friendly text and useful links in the
404.phpfile give your confused visitors a much more pleasant experience when visiting your site. They will stay, rather than go, and they may even come back again.
Make your blog just a bit friendlier. 
How to embed YouTube videos without invalid code
I’m developing a new blog and decided to check the validity of what I was doing. Once I recovered from the shock of 67 errors I realised that 2 embedded YouTube videos may well have been contributing problems. So I went searching and found this excellent advice:
If you’re looking to embed a YouTube video in your website’s code and want to retain your validity, … use the following
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” style=”width:425px; height:350px;” data=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U”><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7_6B6vwE83U” /></object>
[Via : Embedding YouTube Videos as Valid XHTML 1.0, Bernie Zimmermann.]
Of course, you need to substitute the correct URL in two places.
In my new blog I fixed up a few other coding errors, used the above technique for the youTube videos and soon had the thrill of seeing the green ‘valid’ ribbon.
Mac OS X and the php.ini upload limit
Finding and fixing php.ini upload limits on Mac OS X.
Last night I was messing round exporting a WordPress blog and importing it into WordPress on my own Mac so I can play around with the design.
The MacTips blog I exported has almost 900 posts (ie 900 Tips). The downloaded file was 2.1Mb. That’s not particularly large, but it was enough to cause a problem when I tried to import it into the blog I’d set up on my Mac.
Maria Langer and I wrote in Chapter 10 of WordPress 2 Visual Quickstart Guide about exporting and importing between blogs.
When I came to import that 2.1Mb file I received an error message: The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini. That upload limit is set at 2Mb, so I needed to change it.
It seemed obvious that the file php.ini was the one to edit, but where and how? Some Googling brought me to Enabling PHP and Apache in Leopard by David Powers.
First I had to create php.ini by copying another file, then it was a simple matter to locate the 2Mb limit and change it. I changed it to 8Mb.
David’s instructions are clear and easy to follow. You need a decent text editor such as TextWrangler (free) or BBEdit, and to paste in a few lines of code in the Terminal.
After amending the upload limit I went to the Sharing System Preference, turned Web Sharing off and then on again. That done, the import went smoothly. Now I can experiment with blog designs, with real content, but without disrupting the public blog.
Upgrade WordPress Plugins Automatically
One of the challenges of keeping a WordPress blog running smoothly is making sure all installed plugins are updated promptly when new versions become available. WordPress 2.5 makes this easier than ever by adding an Automatic Upgrade feature.
As shown in the following illustration, the a note in the Plugin Management administration panel indicates that the Bad Behavior plugin (which I rely on to keep the spambots off my blogs) has been updated.
I have two options for bringing my blog up to date:
- Download version takes me to the Bad Behavior page on the WordPress.org’s Plugin Directory so I can read about and download the update. This functionality has been around for a while — at least since WordPress 2.3 — with all plugins that support it.
Upgrade automatically takes the update process a step further. When I click this link, WordPress automatically downloads, uncompresses and installs the new version of the plugin for me. It displays its progress as it works, as shown here, and confirms that the upgrade has been successful.
I’ve been using this new feature for a few weeks now and it’s worked like a charm. It’s a heck of a lot easier than upgrading the old fashioned way.