FindComputerStuff

It’s Cleaner and Faster

The Wordpress Dasboard has been screaming “Ella is out, 11 days ago” since God knows when. I’m not really a fave of the “upgrade as soon as a new version is out” thing, because when you get used to a programming tool, and the software company says they have a new version which may change the way you work, it gets to me. For instance it took me a long time to accept VB.NET. Even now I use C# more, cos it’s a new thing instead of a modified tool. I was skeptical about upgrading, because the version numbers werent so different. Ok, so I just upgraded to wordpress 2.1. I swear its faster than 2.0.4, and it looks a little cleaner too - I refer to the admin interface. Okay, so the fonts are bigger, for semi-blind nightcrawling computer-screen-staring people like you and me.

Link Categories, Please

One major annoying thing is that I find I cannot add new categories for links anymore. I categorise my links, man! The Links Manager is now called Blogroll,what a narrow-functioned name. People like me use it for other links than blogs, you know. Funny thing is, there was an empty post category called “Marriage and Family”, and WP listed it as available for link categories! (Hmm so that’s how they differentiate them, eh?)Anyway, I had to go and inspect my wordpress database tables in phpMyadmin.

I noticed that the link categories have been merged with post categories in the same table, so a query like

$link_cats = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM $wpdb->linkcategories“);

in my templates/themes wont work anymore, because that table simply no loner exists. Yet there I was, wondering why I was getting this this error

WordPress database error:
[You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1]
SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM

where my “customized list of links” should have been. So much for ‘newer is better’, I should have known, with all those functions getting listed as being deprecated in 2.1. Anyway, I am now trying to work on a plugin/function that will allow me to add links the old way (if that is possible), and also to differentiate btw list categories and post categories.

Exec PHP

In the meantime, I have transferred the live RSS/Atom feeds from my friends to a new page (BlogLinks), because I have to work on the new blogroll anomaly in wordpress (boo, its annoying), and also because the list is expanding beyond the limits of my sidebar.php, lol. Now, you may wonder how come I can put the Aggregator plugin’s code into the main post/page? I am using another plugin, Exec PHP. It allows me to use regular PHP tags in my post. It does introduce a concern for security, but I wanted the functionality so bad, I didnt mind! They said this plugin would only work with higher versions of wordpress, I’m sorry I didnt check and i’m too lazy to do that right now.

Other Features

I’m still playing around with the new features, and I really like the new upload manager. I used to be annoyed that i had to search for a particular post just to modify the associated picture/file. Someone mentioned somewhere that the editor has tabs for switching between WYSIWYG and code view. I aint seen that yet. Needs more playing around, maybe? While rooting around in the source code, i also found that I can use the %postname% in my permalink structure intead of %post_id%, and it seems more SEO friendly, so I’ve changed my permalinks. Technically, that’s not a new feature and shouldnt be here, but it’s my mouth (keyboard?) and I can say what i want. I havent noticed anything else new yet.

The categories thing is still bugging me.