This plugin outputs a link to an author’s Google Plus profile below her bio on her author archive page.
Get all the details here and please leave comments below.
How to “Steal” Anyone’s Blogroll (From Their WordPress Blog)
No, it’s not really stealing. If you dig a blogger’s blogroll, WordPress provides an easy way to export their list of links into a structured format called OPML. You can import it into your own WordPress blog and then edit as needed.
- Add “/wp-links-opml.php” after a domain name and it will output an OPML file. For example, enter http://sasstrology.com/wp-links-opml.php into an address bar.
- You will likely see an XML file in your window. Go to File > Save and save to your computer. (The browser will append the file name with .xml so it will be called wp-links-opml.php.xml.
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Tools > Import and select “Blogroll.”
- You will then install a plugin called “OPML Importer.” Click “Activate Plugin and Run Importer.”
- Choose the file you downloaded from your local disk.
- Select the category you want to import the blogroll into.
- Click “Import OPML file.”
- Done!
Too Much All at Once: The Excitement and Stress of Growing a Blog
Astrology works in funny ways. All of my big plans for Sasstrology are happening at once. I’m not sure if it’s the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction (which isn’t aspecting any of my planets but is sextiling my MC at 29 Taurus, if a separating aspect counts) or the ingress of transiting Mars into my first house.
Here’s a list of what I’ve been doing:
- I integrated daily love horoscopes into the blog. I paid a contractor in Pakistan to create a PHP tool to make it easy for me to import them into WordPress and eliminate the need to spend time in the WordPress dashboard clicking on checkboxes and pulling down menus.
- I’m doing the finishing touches on a major upgrade to the blog that will include an updated blog architecture and a forum, so that I can leave Ning. I am learning quite a lot about “hooks” in Genesis as well as the importance of testing the compatibility of themes and plugins in a development environment, as I don’t want to “break” my blog.
- I am working with a partner to automate the processing of astrology reports so that I don’t have to manually churn out all the requests for free and paid reports using my Mac software.
I am excited because, with these changes, traffic could conceivably increase by 50%. Yet because everything is happening at once, I am feeling overwhelmed. I am trying to pace myself. Certain tasks have to be done by a specific day no matter what, while others can happen when I have free time and feel inspired. However, when I am in the midst of a technical problem, I do feel obsessive about it, and I would rather solve it now than put it on the backburner. Fortunately, the folks at various WordPress and BuddyPress forums have been especially helpful, as I have no training in web development.
How to Add the Facebook Like Button to Your WordPress Blog
Facebook has recently made significant steps to socialize the entire web. Some of their new developer tools allow your readers to “like” your posts without having to sign in to your site using Facebook Connect. Rather, as long as they are signed in to Facebook, they can “like” a post and that action will show up in their Activity Stream.
When I read about this news at TechCrunch, I searched for information on how to integrate the button into WordPress blogs. Facebook has a form you can fill out to output code to put into your blog. However, this form only allows a static URL. If you want a button for each individual page on your blog, you have to do a little bit of hacking.
I did a little bit of google searching, but the solutions I found (Geekosystem and Ruhani Rabin) did not work on my blogs. (They resulted in errors.)
The following code works for me:
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:70px"></iframe>
The key difference is that instead of the other URLs I used <?php the_permalink(); ?> which is WordPress’ default code for creating dynamic permalinks.
To implement this into your blog, just open the single.php file (or index.php if there is none) and paste this code after or before something that looks like <?php the_content();?>. You will have to experiment to see what works well. The only other change I made to the code is add a numerical value for “height.” Otherwise, Facebook uses a fair amount of space, presumably to display all the faces of your friends who liked the same post.
