Word Press Interface

Tips and Tricks for the WordPress interface- and updates on revisions.
How to get the most out of plug ins- themes and the Word Press blog engine.

WordPress Hooks

WordPress Hooks

If you are interested in all the code hooks in WordPress- this site is a work in process.

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Bad WordPress themes aren’t always obvious

One of the biggest overlooked problems with Word Press really isn’t a fault of WordPress: bad themes.
Because it is so easy to modify a theme, to customize the look, many people do- and then post their theme for others to download. Doing this can be an act of kindness- or have some ulterior motives- such as including a link back to the theme builders site- or even semi evil- by including code that delivers ad words proceeds to the theme builder.
In general, people who post themes have good intentions and there are a lot of very good themes out there. But- what are the deciding factors that make a theme good or bad? (more…)

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How To Blog: Comparison of WordPress and TypePad by someone who has used both extensively for over a year

How To Blog: Comparison of WordPress and TypePad by someone who has used both extensively for over a year

On her “How to blog” site Emily Robbins goes to great length to compare WordPress to TypePad and comes down pretty strongly on the side of WordPress. What she fails to mention is the fundamental difference between the two.

While both store your data in a MySQL database, how they display the data is different. This is a very important difference.

Blogger, Moveable Type and Radio UserLand all generate static pages once you hit publish. The database takes your entry- and builds a static page that sits on your site just like a traditional HTML page. Every comment rebuilds the static page. If you change your theme, the server then has to regenerate the entire blog/site.

WordPress, TextPattern and LiveJournal all generate each page on the fly. You enter the data and when someone comes to your site, the page is pulled from the database using whichever theme you have selected.

While I could go into the pro’s and con’s of each system, in the on-demand, fast paced world of the Internet, I prefer the build on the fly scenario. It’s fast, it’s elegant, and it’s always fresh- it also allows for much more customization and change options since each change doesn’t require a complete regeneration of your site.

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