Top 5 Features to look forward to

Warning: Highly technical one and a half hour video on HTML 5 goodness.

Setting up the connection info is a snap. You just have to enter in the URL of your site, the info of the user you want to post as and you are on your way.

I’m not sure if I will continue using Word 2007 to post as some of the advanced options for images and post layout are a bit finicky, but it is a great way for average users to use an application they are comfortable with to post to their blogs.

It has been a long time since I've been able to get myself together to post something of worth here.  Life has been very busy, yet at the same time nothing much of note has happened, tech wise at least.  The baby continues to grow inside mommy, the babies room has been finished and a major overhaul to the basement and driveway has taken place.  So you can see why I have had little time for a tech blog.

On to something tech.  I've installed a new photo gallery for the site.  Unlike Gallery2, NextGEN Gallery is a Wordpress plug-in and as such is tightly integrated into the blog.  Something I wasn't able to accomplish with the very powerful Gallery2.  There are a few integration plug-ins for G2, but they a pain to install.  I've also included a nifty javascript operation into the gallery so viewers can easily see a larger sized version of the thumbnail.  It is quite nice and it seems to load the images faster than G2 does.  Go take a look for yourself.  I will keep my existing Gallery2 install up at least until I have move the photos I want over to NextGEN.  I still need to upload a pileof photos and figure out how to exclude the NextGEN plug-in and widget from WP-Cache.

I have also been mulling over an application switch of the minor hockey site I administer.  Currently I have them using PostNuke.  I am seriously debating the switch to Wordpress.  I am in the process of looking over the existing plug-ins Wordpress has to offer to make it into a viable CMS.  So far the results are promising.  There are 2 aims with this migration;

1. Update the theme using a platform I know quite well, HTML.  The current theme is just a heavily modified existing theme that I was never happy with.  I am sure I can come up with something better using Wordpress.  The latest versions of PostNuke use a templating system that I've never gotten my head around.
2. Increase the security of the site.  I have had a number of issues with hackers attacking the site and I trust Wordpress a lot more than PostNuke these days.

So those are my non-work related tech plans for the coming months, which are in addition to a new baby and list of honey-do's around the house to complete.

On another note, Kris is leaving for Toronto this afternoon and will not be back until next Wednesday.  Our furry lil beasties will be extra needy while she is gone, so I will have my hands full.  I do have a few things planned already so I will not need a honey do list left for me, and I can always waste time playing WoW.

My Facebook community is really growing.  It started very slowly, then yesterday exploded when I was able to find a number of old school mates, some I haven't seen in over a decade.  It was good to catch up on what they have been doing all these years.

I haven't upgraded to WP 2.1 yet, but I hear that there is an updated version of Akismet included in the update.  Akismet is free for personal use, and if you have a WordPress blog, I urgently recommend using it.

Here are the step by step instructions to get Ad-Rotator to work.

1. Download the software from Angsuman's website .
2. Unzip the script to your desktop.
3. Connect to your site via FTP/SSL.
4. Upload the adrotator.php script to the wp-content/plugins folder.
5. Activate the plugin.
6. Create a txt file (use notepad not MS Word) and call it banner.txt .
7. Copy and paste the script your affiliate program gives you into the banner.txt file.  Each banner ad must be on one line only.
8. Save and upload the banner.txt file to your wp-content folder.
9. Paste into your template, this is where you want the ads to be displayed, and save your changes.

Users report that getting ad-sense to work for them is a major pain.  Angsuman was able to clarify this via our email conversation.  Below is the code Google gives you to display their ads.

[code]<script type="text/javascript">< !--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxx";
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 15;
google_ad_format = "728x15_0ads_al_s";
google_ad_channel ="";
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "9C0000";
google_color_url = "9C0000";
google_color_text = "000000";
// -- ></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
xsrc="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>[/code]

The above code needs to be edited to get it to work in Ad-Rotator.  The < !– &  // — > need to be removed and the code needs to be on one line.

If you follow the instructions abvoe, Ad-Rotator will work like a charm for you.

Update:Download this file to see how the one line of code should look like.