Category: Technical

Site update: Sidebar login

After unsuccessfully implementing an integrated logon page within my WordPress sites, I discovered today this great plugin at Blue Anvil that allows login through a sidebar widget. Initially, I had trouble setting it up because it kept pointing to the server name minus port (my IIS and network setup prohibits this). After some tweaking in the code to make the path include the server port, I managed to get it working right. Thanks, Mike at Blue Anvil!

Looked for the following code:
$_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']

And changed to:
$_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']

Site update: WP 2.2.2 and WP-Simpleviewer

  • upgraded to WordPress 2.2.2
  • widgetized sidebar for this theme (Almost Spring by Beccary)
  • installed and active WP-Simpleviewer galleries
  • reactivated WP Database backup (because it looked like it was turned off) and performed backup
  • went through entire site and re-classed images to utilize imageleft and imageright alignments in the new theme layout
  • added WP-Slimbox plugin

In previous update, installed and configured Cforms2 contact form plugin for WordPress.

Frustrations in garden photography

Photographing with an unfamiliar camera causes a lot of headache when many of your shots turn out blurry and grainy. I’m currently using a Canon Powershot A710 IS…a beginner-friendly camera with a wealth of extra options. I would like to take close up shots of flowers at distances less than two feet away but apparently I’m not geared properly or shooting correctly. I’ve turned to the following page for some assistance in photographing my garden subjects, especially if I plan to venture into manual adjustments.

Lost and missing posts prompts reorganizing

After the February crash of my server box, I lost many posts written up to this time. I am considering redesigning the site and perhaps move it to a paid hosting solution. We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I hope that the Internet Archive will soon have some copies of this site available for me to recapture some of the lost data.