This pretty much sums up my feelings about Search Engine Optimization tactics in general. 1% Common Sense and 99% Craziness.

First,  I’m going to be in Boston this weekend for the first ever WordCamp Boston!  I’ll be speaking on the Parent/Child theme structure.  It will be a great conference and I’m really looking forward to networking and all the great stuff that the event planning group has put together!

On January 28th the first Hudson Valley WordPress Meetup will convene.  This will be an informal meeting to establish the group and get to know each other.

My next trip will be down to Nashville to attend and lead 2 workshops at the Blissdom Conference.  I’ll be meeting so many people I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the last year and change, It’s very exciting!

Last, but not least,  I’ll be speaking in the WordPress track at the CMS Expo in Chicago from May 3rd-5th.  I’m honored to be asked to present and I’m looking forward to the chance to help spread the wonderful world of WordPress to a group that does not already use it.  The fact that WordPress is being brought into Content Management circles more and more shows that the platform has matured beyond blogging. Something I’ve seen since I first started working with the system nearly 4 years ago.

That covers my planned schedule for the immediate future. It’s subject to change and expansion

Choosing the Right theme for Your blog

Introduction to WordPress Theming

The sample theme that was discussed briefly in the Intro to Creating Themes Session can be downloaded

[shortcodekeyword]
Sometimes they will have other information along with them like this:

[shortcodekeyword value='somevalue']

Since WordPress 2.5 the process of outputting shortcode has been simplified. Unfortunately it’s not posssible, out of the box, to use shortcodes in the sidebar text widgets. Enabling this feature is simple, though. Simply add the following line to the functions.php file in your active theme:

add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

Of course, if the thought of adding code to your theme gives you hives you can always use this plugin: Sidebar Shortcodes

Read more on the WordPress.org Blog

Here is the login process in detail

In your browser’s address bar type your domain name followed by /wp-login.php

You should then see the default WordPress login page

Complete the username and password fields

If you wish to remain logged into this WordPress website for future visits check the “Remember Me” check-box

Click Login.  A successful login will redirect you to the WordPress dashboard screen

Hybrid by Justin Tadlock

Others Include:

• Sandbox (the grand-daddy of WordPress theme frameworks)
• Thematic
• The Buffet Framework
• WPFramework (not publicly released at time of writing)

Theme Frameworks that do NOT use a Parent/Child Structure

• Carrington
• Thesis (Commercial Theme)

Sets selected text  as bold.

HTML view: <strong>Bolded Text</strong>

Sets selected text as italicized.

HTML View: <em>Italicized Text</em>

Sets selected text as strike-through.

HTML View: <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Strike Through Text</span>

Sets selected text as underlined. This button is located on the second row of the visual editor toolbar, accessed by clicking the “Kitchen Sink” button.

HTML View: <span style="text-decoration: underline;">underlined</span>

The Visual Editor, sometimes refereed to as the, Rich Editor or WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) Editor, is comprised of a sub-set of features from the much more extensive TinyMCE – Javascript WYSIWYG Editor.   TinyMCE has a mind boggling number of options available.  WordPress has, wisely, chosen to include only the most relevant functions to include in the WordPress edit post/page screens.

Here is the Toolbar as it looks when you start.

See that button at the end, with all the colored dots in rows? Click on it and the toolbar will expand to display more formatting options.

It should now look like this:

A whole new world of formatting options are now open to you! Hover over each of the buttons in the toolbar has a tool tip that will give a hint as to it’s function when you hover over for a moment to get a general idea of what each one does.  Some plugins will add buttons to the visual editor toolbar. We will be covering the buttons available in a basic installation of WordPress.

We’ll continue this series by looking at each of the buttons and their functions individually.

This week my energy is focused on finding the best way to use WordPress MU (Multi-User) to build Multiple Author, content focused sites with social and community components built in, but not as the primary focus. I’ve periodically glanced at the MU version of WordPress over the years and I always found it lacking in one regard or another. I was pleasantly surprised to find, now, that MU encompasses all that makes WordPress the incredibly extensible Content Management System that it is with the added benefit of being capable of running multiple sites and even multiple domains from a single back-end. WordPress MU no longer feels like the younger sibling that get’s features added second hand. With the news that MU and WordPress would be merged together at some, as yet undisclosed date, it seemed like a good idea to get a feel for how I might be able to start moving some sites to a scalable system that will give them room to grow and flexibility to choose their own structure.

Next I’ll be looking at BuddyPress, what I think is great, what I think needs work, and what I plan to contribute