As I do every time there is a major upgrade to WordPress, and I finally get everything working the way I want, I’ve listed the theme and plugins I have running on this site.

Theme:

Blue Grace: Picking a theme is always the hardest part. For those of you that actually visited the site you saw me go through a couple different themes. First, I wanted a theme that allowed the new WordPress 2.7 features to be used. I’m not that good of a php coder so finding a theme that came with threaded comments as part of the theme coding was a big factor. Then I looked at the overall layout of the site to see if it will work for me. Colors are the least of my worries as they are the easiest to change via CSS. With this theme I decided to stick with the original colors for the first time in a lone while.

Plugins:
WordPress Plugins are the true power of this blogging platform. The plugins add features to your blog in the way it runs, loads, and looks. They are easy to install and you can get lost for hours looking for new plugins to make your blog look and feel the way you want. Below is the list of plugins that are activated at the time of writing this post.

Adsense Integrator: The hardest decisions I’ve made about my blog in a long time was the decision to put ads on it as I upgraded this time. There are many plugins that will manage your ads but I find this one to be easy, flexible and powerful. I decided to put ads on my site for a couple different reasons.

1. I paid $200 in November for all my hosting services. I’ve had to buy a second account at bluehost.com because hosing all 6 (yes 6) sites on one account I was exceeding the CPU Limit on my account.

2. Looking at the stats on the site I found that 51% of the traffic to the site comes from searches, mostly preformed on Google, not from people reading via RSS. So, adding two Google Adsense ads at the end of each individual post means that those searching for information will see the ads. If you read the posts through your RSS reader you shouldn’t see any changes.

3. I also didn’t want the ads to take away from my site. If you visit the home page you will not see any ads. Only when you click on a specific article will there be two small ads at the end of the article.

Will it help me cover my costs? I’m not sure, but every little bit counts.

Akismet: Really the only spam filter you need. It continues to improve to the point where I use to run three spam filters on my blog and I’m down to just this one. It does an excellent job and is fully supported by the WordPress team.

Apture: I need to use this more as I’ve gone away from it lately. A great idea on linking to content that pops up when people roll over it. A great way to link a video or a wikipedia entry that explains a term or concept without having people leave your site.

cforms II: A very powerful form creator. I use it on the contact page. You can customize your form to have the exact fields you want.

FD Feedburner Plugin: If you use feedburner for your RSS Feed manager this is a must have plugin that will automatically redirect all your RSS feeds through feedburner (which was bought by Google).

WP Super Cache: This is a great plugin for speeding up how fast your page loads. Remember that 51% of the viewers of this blog come from searches, so loading an html page is faster then adding all the php coding. This plugins looks to see if you have left a comment before, or if you are just a lurker. It will create the html version of the page on the fly and then cache it so that next time that same page loads faster. If you click to leave a comment it automatically takes you back to the php page so that you can leave a comment. Very powerful if you have a site with a lot of content and you find your load time slowing down.

Google Analytics for WordPress: If you like to track stats about your site then Google Analytics is the best stat tracker out there in my opinion. It has way more features then I’ll ever use. This plugin does a great job of managing the tracking code for you.

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your site. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Maintenance Mode: You can activate maintenance mode when you are updating your site so that others know that your site is in the process of being updated.

Page Links To: Allows you to created a WordPress page and then link that page to an external site. For example if you click on My Bio on my site it takes you to jeffutecht.com and not a WordPress page.

replyMail: For WP 2.7 only. This plugin will e-mail you if someone replies to a comment you left on your blog. Great for tracking conversations in threaded comments.

Sensitive Tag Cloud: This is a new plugin that I found that will change your Tag Cloud on your site based on the tags of the article a person is reading so that they are more relevant and leads them to other information on your site.

TweetSuite: My favorite plugin right now. Really is blurring the lines between twitter and the blog. Adds a “Tweet This” button to each post, and tracks who has Tweeted about your article and adds
them to the comments…very cool!

WordPress PDA & iPhone:With more and more people getting iPhones and mobile devices this plugin is a must have in my book. It reformats your blog so that it looks good on a number of mobile devices. Check out this site on your iPhone to see how the formating works.

WP-DBManager: Let’s you manage your Database from within your WP admin site. Quick and easy way to preform backups, and clean up your database from time to time.

WP-DownloadManager: Keeps track of file downloads on your blog. I use this to track that over 150 people have downloaded the interview questions for administrator PDF files.

WP-EMail: I wasn’t going to use this plugin again, but after I saw how many people actually e-mail articles to their friends I figured why not. It does take a little bit of coding but worth it. You can see it in action on any individual blog post right above the comments. You’ll see a little e-mail icon.

WP-Print: Again wasn’t going to activate this one again, but then saw how many people have printed off articles. I love the way it formats for printing, and although I’m against printing stuff off the web I understand for some it’s more meaningful if they can print an article and then put it in their colleagues box at work to read later.

WP-RecentCommnets:This is an enhanced comment widget that gives you the name of the person who left a comment and a link to that specific comment. You can see the widget in action on the site.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: This plugin looks for and recommends related posts to readers. I use it myself many times as it recommends posts that I have forgotten about and can then go back and read. Also comes with a sidebar widget to display popular posts, etc.

So that wraps up everything you’re looking at on this blog at the moment. If you are using a self-hosted WordPress blog I hope you found something useful here.

I wrote this page for the Shifting Our Schools site to share with others the set up I use to stream, record, and converse all at the same time. I thought I’d share it here as well. You can find links to the different equipment I use at my Amazon Store as well.

The Set Up:

It all starts with the Mic! You’ve gotta have a good mic to feel like you really are producing something of quality. Besides, you want the quality. I use the Samson CO3U USB Mic. I love this thing. Mounted on a shockmount, the sound quality is fantastic and you get little to know vibration noise.

Next you need a piece of software to record your podcast into. I’m digging GarageBand on the Mac, but love Audacity (Mac and PC) as well. Both programs are simple enough for you to get started, and both can expand and give you the control you want over your audio.

We’ll need a way to get the audio from Skype if you are doing an interview into the audio stream. I try and do things as cheaply as possible. On a PC I use Virtual Audio Cables (free) which will take the sound and pipe it through your sound card so that Audacity can pick it up.

On my Mac I’m finding this step to be so much easier. After reading all the reviews I broke down and bought WireTap Anywhere. This program is awesome and worth the $129 price in my opinion. You can watch the video on the site, but it is really just that easy. Tell WireTap that you want the audio from the Samson Mic and from Skype and you want it to be pushed out to GarageBand and the sound card. You can add sources on the fly, and best of all…it just works! The one thing to note is that you will want to start it before you start Firefox for streaming on the web.

OK, so now we’ve got the mic, the software to record and the system in place to push all the audio you want through your sound card we’re on to the fun stuff.

You’re gonna want some intro and exit music. You can spend a lot of time on the web searching for that perfect sound, that prefect entrance to your recording. I find Free Play Music to be a great site with loads of free to use sounds and short loops.

Or if you really want something original you can use a paid service like Beat Suite. A great site that has original sounds and all of it is Royalty Free.

If you want to stream live using a service like ustream.tv or stickam.com is easy enough to do. Just sign up for an account, create a channel and allow your audio to be piped out over the internet.

Now that we’ve got all that sorted it’s time to talk about editing your file. There are many tips and tricks you can find on the web, and at the end of the day no matter how good you are at setting the volume it always seems to be off. This person is to loud, that person can hardly be heard. Thanks to a free program created by podcasting experts you can now level your sounds to perfection. The Levelator is a must have for any podcaster. It’s simple drag and drop any .aif or .mp3 file on the program and it will level the sound for you and give you a new file that makes everyone sound perfectly the same.

So here’s how I edit my podcasts:

• I record straight into GarageBand

• I edit the recording in GarageBand, take out the mistakes, the Skyp recalls, and anything else that doesn’t sound right.

• Next I export the file in .aif uncompressed format. This keeps the sound as original as possible. I take the .aif file and run it across the Levelator to get my three or four voices at all the same level.

• Take the output track from Levelator and import it back into GarageBand. Add the intro and exit tracks (some people do this before they use Levelator….it’s up to you as I’ve found the quality to be no different) and then export as an mp3 file.

• In GarageBand I export to mp3 format at good quality. Because it’s only voice 64kbps is good enough. We’re not going to get CD quality out of a Skype call anyway and quality means size. I’d rather have an hour long podcast at 23MB than at 46MB and really not have a sound quality difference. If you look at most podcasts through iTunes you will notice that most are rendered at 64kbps.

• Next import your mp3 file into iTunes (I have a playlist called podcast just for this reason). iTunes makes it easy to edit the ID3 Tag. The little information that accompanies the mp3. This is where the title is stored, the producer, and that all so important image art that shows on the iPod.

• Lastly you need a place to put your file so others can access it. Using a blog is great, as it comes with a built in RSS Feed. People can subscribe to your podcast blog and listen to your podcast right in their reader. Or head over to iTunes click on Podcast and in the middle of the screen you’ll see the button to “Submit a Podcast”. You’ll need an RSS Feed, but after that you will have your own podcast site on iTunes. Just keep uploading files and linking them into your blog posts and iTunes will pick them up. For an easy way to do all this I recommend using a WordPress blog with the popular Podpress plugin. Or look at other options like Podango which give you a place to host your files.

So that’s it…Jeff’s guide to creating podcasts. Head on over to sospodcast.org and listen to our latest episode that was created using the equipment and steps outlines above. Or head directly to iTunes to add use to your podcast list.

podcasting, garageband, audacity, leo leporte, iTunes, wiretap anywhere, ID3 Tag, podango, sospodcast, podpress, wordpress, levelator, ustream.tv, stickam.com, beat suite, skype, samson co3u,

So here you go…a list of plug-ins we have running here on our WordPress MU 2.6.3 install. Please note that this site has been created for teachers to communicate with parents. As of now that is its function within a larger picture of a learning/communication portal we are creating here.

This is a list of installed plugins so far. If you have others that you feel are must haves please leave a comment as I’m always looking for ways to make this a better platform for teachers.

Theme Pack:

Farms 100 Big ones theme pack

Plug-ins:

AHP Sitewide Recent Posts

Rollover Themes List

Sitewide Comment Tracking Revisited

Login As…

WP-reCaptcha

Audio player for WPMU

The EARCOS Staff

I had two great days in Manila spending time with the EARCOS team looking at how technology and the web can help to streamline some of their internal practices and also looked at how EARCOS can use technology at both it’s Administrator and Teacher conferences to help connect participants.

Up until now, the team at EARCOS has been sending a Word Document to those giving workshops. The presenters fill out the form and then e-mail it back. The EARCOS staff then copies that information into a FileMaker Pro database where they create the schedule.

So we sat down and talked and created an online form that presenters will use for workshop submissions. EARCOS doesn’t have a license for a FileMaker Pro server (and it’s expensive) so the data will be created in a MySQL database. Once all the presentations are in the MySQL database, it can be saved as an Excel file and then imported into FileMaker Pro…taking a total of maybe 5 minutes.

When we started adding up the time the office staff sits around copying and pasting data for the two conferences alone we figured we picked up close to 3 hours of productivity time a week total among the staff.

We then looked at other ways we could use this same method to streamline data collection. Membership directory, Salary Survey, Principal’s Salary Survey, Weekend Workshop Proposals, etc.

Their webmaster has some skills and started cranking out forms left and right and also created a web based interface for in office use to view the data. This became essential when we talked about how much the Executive Director travels around Asia visiting the 110 member schools and looking at sites for future conferences. By creating a web interface the director can login and view the data that he needs like the number of sponsors for a conference, or quick access to information about a school.

We then turned our focus on the conferences themselves and this March with the teacher’s conference we will launch a conference website in the form of a wiki that will allow presenters and participants access to information and each other before, during, and after the conference.

While I was talking to the staff they mentioned how much time they spend updating presenter handouts for the conference. A presenter e-mails them the material and they publish it to the website. They figured 75% of the time the presenters send a second or third batch of handouts and files to be replaced and uploaded taking time away from the staff to have to continually update the site with the new information.

We decided that instead we would have a wiki where once a presenter was accepted the staff could create a page for the presenter and then give them access to that page to upload, write, and change their handouts as many times as they like. The wiki would also allow workshop participants the option to leave a comment or write their notes as a threaded discussion on the wiki page. Creating a collabertive atmosphere to the conference.

Of course we’re using a Wetpaint wiki (Full Disclosure: I am an educational consultant for Wetpaint.com) because it allowed us to do exactly what we wanted. First, we can point the domain name to the wiki so participants do not have to remember a long address (a free service). Secondly, Wetpaint allows us to customize the profile page that each person will fill out to give the information that is relevant to the conference. We don’t need to know peoples age. But knowing which school they are from, what position they teach and how many years overseas are all fun facts that could be shared among conference goers. We are planning to use the wiki at the upcoming teacher’s conference in March as a “soft opening” and then using it exclusively next year at both conferences. Third, because it’s an educational conference it qualifies for ad-free status.

Next, we looked at the EARCOS website itself. We found that any updates to the site were going through the webmaster onto static html pages.

In the office there is one person in charge of the teacher’s conference and one in charge of the administrator’s conference. When updates needed to be made they would have to e-mail those updates or files to the webmaster who would then put them on the site.

Our thought…..what if they could edit the pages themselves without knowing any html coding?

So we talked about using WordPress as a website with a website theme such as this. This is the same theme we used for a site we set up last year in Shanghai that is working out really well. After the webmaster and I get the site set up and running each staff member will get their own login and be responsible for their own pages. Being able to upload and update files more quickly. This layout will also allow them to feature the great articles that are written by educators throughout the region and submitted for their “Trianual” magazine. Now, not only will the articles be featured in the magazine they will also live on the web helping to show off just how involved EARCOS is in schools in the region.

We even got the executive director to agree to start a blog on the site called “On the Road with Dr. K” where he can post about the schools he’s visiting and his travels in the region. He used to have a section in the magazine that he quit writing a couple years ago. He’s now getting excited to start writing and sharing his stories again via the web.

In the long run we’re hoping to be able to sell ad space on the site to create a revenue stream…but that’s down the road a ways.

All of that in two fulls days. We laid out some launch dates and created a time line for completion of tasks. When I left everyone seemed energized that we were headed in the right direction and everyone in the office would benefit from the changes by gaining productivity time….in an office of 7 that’s a big deal!

So let me know what you think…I’m still testing it on all browsers and there an issue at the very bottom with the about part sliding down the page. But then again…this site is always a work in progress.

The theme is called Padangan 1.3 by Nurudin Jauhari. I fell in love with it and the php and css is very easy to hack up with clear image files as well. I love good themes that make it easy for you to turn them into your own design.

It’s funny to think that 2 years ago I didn’t know what php or a css was. Today I hack up themes for fun, run WordPress MU sites for my school, and understand more coding then I ever thought I would…all because of this blog.

Of course what makes WordPress amazing is all the plugins that allow you to completely make a site yours. I’ve added some real funtionality, I think anyway, to the blog this time and have also upgraded some of the ways in which I organize my posts. So if you are into WordPress and are looking to upgrade to 2.5 here are the plugins that I’m running and other geeky things I’m doing on this site.

Plugins

Add to Any- Bookmark Button: Lets readers share, save and bookmark your posts using any service and browser.

Easy plugin puts itself in the right spot on your blog post. With so many educators using Diigo I’m trying to find a way to move it up the list when you roll your mouse over the button.

Akismet: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

A must have…but if you use WordPress you know that already.

Brian’s Threaded Commnets: This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form.

I’m probably excited most by this plugin that allows commenters to reply to a specific comment. This replaces the comment.php in your theme, but what I did is find the things I liked about the comments in this theme and then copy and pasted that code into the Brain’s Threaded Comments comments.php file and played with it until I liked what I saw. A lot of guess work involved but well worth the time…I hope

Creative Commons Configurator: Adds a Creative Commons license to your blog pages and feeds. Also, provides some Template Tags for use in your theme templates. Please visit the plugin’s

A simple plugin that just works. I like plugins like this. Install, activate, walk through the menus and done!

Google Analytics for WordPress: This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog

Google Analytics is fun to play with….and this plugin allows you to look at traffic coming to and leaving your blog. If you are interested in this kind of stuff Google Analytics is a great place to start…and of course free.

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Simple and easy. You can check out the site map at the bottom of my page in the footer.

Maintenance Mode: Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.

If you are constantly playing like I am, this is a great plugin that tells people you are working on the blog.

My Page Order: My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.

Let’s you order your pages the way you want. A great plugin!

Page Links To: Allows you to set a “links_to” meta key with a URI value that will be be used when listing WP pages. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your blog.

Love this one….allows you to link pages to other sites. So when you click on My Bio above it takes you to an external site.

pMetrics: pMetrics base plugin

I love pMetrics a service I pay for (the only service I pay for) to track traffic on my sites. Love that it has RSS feeds so I can see who and where people are viewing my site from in an RSS reader. Between pMetrics and Google Analytics you can get a well rounded view of your blog or website traffic.

Riffly Video/Audio Comments: Mixed video and audio comments integrated with the standard comment system.

Fun and the future of commenting

Twitter Tools: A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter.

Use this to send a Twitter message everytime you post a new blog post. A lot of other features too.

WordPress Gravatars: Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section. Uses the comment authors email to display their Gravatar. It also gives the user an Author Profile picture, based on his or hers Gravatar.

Using this for the first time…we’ll see how it goes. I like that it pulls from a couple different sites.

WordPress PDA & iPhone: This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser

I think this is a must have…especially with all the mobile devices out there and specifically the iPhone. Can someone check my site on their iPhone and let me know how it looks?

WP-DBManager: Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports
automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

I’ve used a couple different database managers in the past, but this one is by far the best I’ve seen to date.

WP-DownloadManager: Adds a simple download manager to your WordPress blog.

Allows you to track downloads from your site. Also comes with a Sidebar Widget that you can easily install. Check the bottom of this page to see it in action.

WP-EMail: Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.

So easy to set up. You do need to put some code in your theme were you want this to show up. You’ll find mine in the comments section. Also comes with a Sidebar Widget so you can see what articles are being e-mailed the most.

WP-Print: Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

A great plugin that formats a blog post for printing. I love it when stuff just works. You do need to add a snipt of code where you want it to appear. You can find mine again on a single post page.

WP-ServerInfo: Display your host’s server PHP and MYSQL information (integrated into WordPress Admin Style) on your WordPress dashboard.

If you’re into this sort of stuff…a good one.

WP-SpamFree: A powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates automated comment spam from bots. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog!

I haven’t used this Spam plugin before but it’s had good reviews so I thought I’d give it a try. So far so good!

WP-UserOnline: Enable you to display how many users are online on your WordPress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots)

Ever wonder how many people are viewing your site at one time? A fun little plugin. Comes with a Sidebar Widget. Check mine out at the bottom.

WP Contact Form III: WP Contact Form III is a simple drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post using the code.

Again, really easy to use just install, activate, create a page called Contact Info and put the code on the page where you want the contact form to be shown. You should give people a way to contact you and this works great as it keeps your e-mail address off your site and can reduce your spam mails.

WP tags to Technorati: Simple plugin to convert WordPress 2.3’s tags to Technorati (’http://technorati.com’)

Really excited about this one. I can now just use tags for my posts and this plugin automatically turns my site tags into Technorati tags. Write once and accomplish two tasks. I’ve been looking for a plugin like this!

So there you have it. My new theme and plugins for WordPress 2.5. You can see I’ve added the drop down box for archives and my tag cloud. To find past articles and ideas I’ve talked about.

But probably the best way to find information is to use the Search box at the top. I’ve created a Google Custom Search Engine that searchs not only this site but all 4 blogs that I run and post at. It works great and I use it all the time to find my own past articles.

You will also see for the first time I’ve put some ads on my site.

Bluehost.com is where I host all my websites and I highly recommend them. If you sign up via that link I get one year of hosting free.

I also highly recommend pMetrics as a stats program. I’ve been using it for two years now and love it.

Wetpaint wikis for educators is just a link to their site. I do not make money….just wanted to support them as I believe they are the best wiki out there for educators to get started with.

My new logo was created for me by my good friend David Gran. This year he is teaching elementary technology but next year will be back in the art department where he belongs. He blogs at U Tech Tips with me and his blog Carrot Revolution is a must read for Art teachers. He is a great digital artist and also has done all the logo work for the Learning 2.0 and Learning 2.008 Conferences we’ve put on. If you are looking for a logo…he’s your man!

My Amazon Picks are books I recommend from Amazon.com. I’ve seen more and more people put these on their site and I personally have found some great recommendations through them. I also make it a habbit of going to someones site and clicking on the link to purchase a book. You don’t get a lot of money through these ads but every bit helps right?

My Diigo Tags are all the bookmarks I have saved over the past two years of using Diigo.

Well there you go. WordPress 2.5 is worth the upgrade if you have a theme that you love you might need to wait awhile for the maker to update it. Or you now have an excuse to change your theme!

Click here for WordPress 2.5 compatibility themes

and

WordPress 2.5 compatibility plugins

Next up a new look/theme for U Tech Tips.

We have been getting this warning for a couple of months now, but as we continue to add more blogs and users in Moodle, it’s happening more frequently. Yesterday I was trying to help a 5th grade class learn how to add pictures to their blog posts, while another class was blogging in a computer lab, and a class of 7th graders where blogging about their YouTube videos. Not one class accomplished their goal for the lesson. I have talked to admin about purchasing a dedicated server just to host our educational services. They agree we need to do something fast before we lose the great momentum that we have right now around technology, so I’m looking for help. Can anyone recommend a good dedicated server company that runs Linux and supports php and MYSQL, has great support, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?

We don’t want to host the server ourselves for a number of reasons. One, none of our technicians are familiar with Linux and all the open-source add-ons. Two, it’s hard to beat the prices that some of these companies are offering with full technique support. Third, we are in China.

Even though the admin is behind the move and the cost associated with it, there is a very compelling argument that can be made on why these learning sites should be top priority. Student learning is (or should be) at the center of what we do, of where we spend our money, and where we focus or time and energy. These programs we are using go directly to the heart of student learning, extending the classroom beyond the four walls. Most of the discussions on Moodle happens after school hours. The blogs are accessed throughout the day, and looking at some of the times when posts were created also well into the night. We talk about wanting our students to be self-motivated learners and yesterday I ran into an 8th grader who has a blog. I asked him what service he used and he said he set it up on our school’s blog site. I found that odd, because to my knowledge there are no 8th grade classes using blogs. So I asked to see it and sure enough there it was. He said he set it up over the Chinese New Year holiday because he was bored and he’d heard others talking about the site.

We have students creating their own blogs, posting to them on their own, and reflecting on their school day because their bored at home? Doesn’t anyone else think that’s cool? We are dedicated (pun intended) to student learning here at our school and that’s exactly why we need to move to a dedicated server as soon as possible. Otherwise, we are standing in the way of student progress, reflection, discussion, communication, and learning.

[tags]moodle, wordpress, 21st Century Learning[/tags]

Technorati Tags: dedicated server, jeffutecht, blogging, moodle, wordpress, 21st Century Learning

Those plug-ins include:

• WordPress Wii Edition Plugin
• WordPress DS-Lite Edition Plugin
• WordPress PSP Edition Plugin

To that I would add the WordPress PDA plugin and that about covers it.

I already have the PDA plugin installed and used it while in Vietnam to view my site via my Palm T5.

Why would you want to install these? Because you’re a geek.

[tags]wordpress[/tags]

Technorati Tags: WordPress plugins, WordPress

Theme: Unnamed One – I wanted something that tool advantage of WordPress 2.0. If you click on the open/close button in the right hand corner a slide drops down with some hidden info for you…I’m still deciding what should go here.

Extreme Video Plugin – The easiest way to get video into your WordPress site in my opinion.

PDA plugin – Allows you to view the site on a PDA. I’ll be taking my Palm T5 with me to Vietnam. I want to see if this allows me to post to my blog from there…will test it out this week.

Ultimate Tag Warrior- I couldn’t get this to work propertly with the old theme I was using, but it’s working great with this one. So now instead of using categories for my post, I can tag them on the fly.

Sidebar Widget- If you’re not using this and a widget ready theme…you’re working way to hard.

Podpress- The best way to embed podcasts and videos into your site. If you’re a podcaster on a WordPress theme use it!

Page Links To- Allows you to create a page that links to a page outside of your blog such as my Wiki up there at the top.

One year ago- I found this one a week or so ago and got it working today. A cool little plugin that will display a postings from a year ago. It’s kind of fun to go back and see what I was posting a year ago that same day.

Edublogger and Edublogosphere plugins- By Chris Craft these allow you to submit a post to these two Digg like sites for the edublogophere. Edublogger and Edublogosphere

Random Header plugin- Each time you refresh or visit the site there will be a new header. I have 8 that I made today…all pictures from around China…enjoy!

That’s about it. I’ve checked the theme in IE7 and FireFor and it seems to work good. I don’t have a Mac, so if your a Mac user and you have problems let me know.

[tags]Wordpress, theme, plugins, update[/tags]

Technorati Tags: WordPress, theme, plugins

Monday, I kept getting a 500 server error on the Thinking Stick at it’s old home. jeff.scofer.com/thinkingstick/ and actually I’m still getting it and can’t figure out what I did. I contacted my host support and received this reply.

Hello Jeff,

Your site has caused high server load this morning. This forced our
system administrators to restore the default memory limits for your
account in order to secure the server’s health. As a result these 500
server errors started occurring.

Please note that by default the resource usage of each account on our
servers is limited. On shared-hosting environment there are specific
limits that are imposed on every account. The default memory limit is
65MB. A month ago your memory limit was raised to 95MB, which was an
exception. However this setting endangers the server stability as your
account is consuming too much memory resources and affects the server’s
performance. Therefore we had no choice but to set your memory limit to
default levels.

OK, so I’ve been looking for an excuse to move my blog to it’s own server space. I’ve owned the domain name for about a year now, but didn’t really have a reason to move the site, plus how do you move all those links that people have to you? The last thing I want to do is break the conversations.

So, this was my opportunity, and thanks to my wife for my 2010 birthday present. I bought a new hosting serves and started migrating the site. I’m not real good with php and databases so all my tags are gone at the moment and I can’t seem to get them back. Help!

I’ve tried everything I can think of at the old site to try and get the processes down. I’ve upgraded the site to WP 2.0.5 thinking that might help. I’ve deactivated all the plugins, but that’s about it. Even when I’m logged into the admin side I get the 500 server error, so I’m limited in what I can do.

So my questions, if you can help are:
1) What can I do to get the processes down on the site enough to at least navigate it? (I haven’t change scripts in months)
2) Is there a way to forward links that link to the old site to the new site? Or do I just leave the old site there once it’s working. It looks like that’s what Miguel has done.
If anyone can help I’d appreciate it.

This just added to my awe of how all this stuff works (See my post Outsourcing to America at Techlearning).

Within 1 hour last Monday I:
1) Purchased new server space through bluehost.com (50GB, $6.95/month, and the fastest connection I’ve seen to China…can’t beat it)
2) Changed www.thethinkingstick.com to point to the new space
3) Installed WordPress, copied over the theme and images
4) Exported and Imported the two major databases wp-posts and wp-comments
5) Reattached the recent podcasts and fixed a couple of things.

On another note, people sometimes asked me why my site was at jeff.scofer.com when my name is Jeff Utecht. Well, the answer is when I set up the blog I was just playing around, so I didn’t give much thought to the domain, the name, or any of that logistical stuff. Scofer.com is my first web site, a site that my wife and I started before coming overseas as a place to commutate with friends and family back home. Over the years it has basically become a place for me to practice my web building skills. Last year I loaded WordPress on it and used it to test themes and such. It’s gone through more face lifts in our 5 years overseas then anything else. The name Scofer came from a book that my wife loved and that when we were dating I read too (the first book I finished from cover to cover since 4th grade…now that’s love!) The book’s name: Spring Came on Forever became our site.

I’m still working on the site, but to be able to do all of that in one hour while sitting in Shanghai with one server in Hong Kong and the other in Utah, and while baking cookies for the LAN party. You want to talk about a flat world….there you go!

[tags]upgrades, wordpress[/tags]

Technorati Tags: wordpress, bluehost