URL’s frequently employ potentially conflicting characters such as question marks, ampersands, and pound signs. Fortunately, it is possible to encode such characters via their escaped hexadecimal ASCII representations. For example, we would write "?" as "%3F". Here are a few more URL character codes (case-insensitive):
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Dead Letter Art (DLa) is an esoteric underground art collective. The collective consists of eight core members that have known each other since high school, and have been creating and sharing their art for well over fifteen years. Sharing many common interests and influences, the DLa collective explores diverse artistic media, both individually and collectively. Their vast media expertise includes everything from drawing and painting to website development and multimedia production. Further, the group also embraces the fine art of desktop publishing, employing their periodically printed zine, Dead Letter Art, with their recently redesigned website, deadletterart.com, as their vehicle of choice for sharing, discussing, and exploring their highly creative, collective universe.
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We are happy to announce the release of AddMySite (AMS) version 0.77. The new version features support for syndicated content feeds, and enables users to add their site’s feed to fifteen different feed-syndication and social-aggregator sites. Plus, the new version of AMS includes twenty-five social-bookmarking services to which users may easily add your site. The entire list of 40 sites is concisely presented via drop-down menu or as a customizable list. One file. Simple installation. Easy to use. Clean output and XHTML strict. Plus, the new version of AddMySite is fully compatible with WordPress 2.1 (Ella).
Click on over to the AMS download page to check it out »
Note: This article continues a series of tutorials covering the very basics of using WordPress.
Now that we are comfortable logging in, publishing a post, and saving and editing posts, it is time to look at a few other useful posting options. In this tutorial, we explain how to set and change the post date, post author, and several other useful post options.
Setting/changing the post date and time
By default, the date & time associated with a post is the same as the date & time when the post was originally published. To change the default date & time to something different, follow these steps:
- 1. Login and locate your post
- Login to the WP admin area and navigate to the post for which you wish to change the date & time. This may either be a new post that you are going to create, or a post that you have either saved as a draft or published to your blog. For additional help locating previously created posts, go here. For additional help writing & publishing a new post, go here.
- 2. Open the Post Timestamp subpanel
- Once you have your post displayed in the "Write Post" panel, look to the right-hand side of the screen and locate the "Post Timestamp" subpanel (see example). If this subpanel is closed, open it be clicking its plus (" + ") symbol. For future reference, the subpanel closes when you click the minus (" - ") symbol.
- 3. Check the Edit Timestamp option
- Within the Post Timestamp subpanel, put a check in the "Edit timestamp" option box. This is very important — no changes will be made to the date and/or time unless this option is selected.
- 4. Change the date and/or time
- Next, use the dropdown menu to change the month, and edit the numerical fields to change the day, year, and time, respectively. It is important to emulate the date & time format of the preexisting values. The time values must be in military format.
- 5. Save the changes
- Finally, after you have entered the desired date & time, save the changes by clicking either "Save" (to save and exit), "Save and Continue Editing" (to save and continue working), or "Publish" (to publish an unpublished post).
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Note: This article continues a series of tutorials covering the very basics of using WordPress.
After logging in to WordPress and publishing a post, you may wish to return to the post for additional editing or to add new content. Or, perhaps you draft a post for which you would like to postpone publishing until later. This tutorial covers both of these processes.
Editing a post that has already been published
To edit a post that has already been published, login to the WordPress Admin area and follow these steps:
- 1. Click on the Manage tab
- Click on the "Manage" tab (see example). After clicking the Manage tab, the "Posts" sub-tab should be displayed automatically. If not, then click on the "Posts" sub-tab to open and display the Post Management area.
- 2. Locate the post
- Within the Post Management area, locate the published post that you wish to edit within the list of recently published posts (see example). Recently published posts are listed first, so if you wish to edit an older post (i.e., one that doesn’t appear on the first page of the list), you will need scroll down and click on the "Previous Entries" link to see the next set of items in the list. Or, if you know the post title or any key terms found within the post, you can use the "Search Posts…" feature, which will return any posts that match your search term(s) (see example). There is also a dropdown menu that allows you to list all posts from a specific month (see example).
- 3. Click the Edit link
- Once you have located the published post that you would like to edit, look for the post’s corresponding "Edit" button, which is located to the right of the post (see example). Make sure you are in the row that corresponds to the post that you would like to edit, and then click the "Edit" link to display the post for editing.
- 4. Edit your post
- Your published post should now appear in the "Write Post" panel, which is the same panel that you used originally to write the post (see example). As you edit your post or add additional content, remember to save your work occasionally by clicking the "Save and Continue Editing" button located at the bottom right of your post (see example). Remember that the post will also be updated online every time you save your work.
- 5. Save your changes and exit
- Once you have finished editing your post, click the "Save" button (see example) to finalize the changes and return to the Manage Posts screen. Note: if the post remains on the screen even after clicking the Save button, click Save once more (just to be sure) and then you may leave that screen and go elsewhere (e.g., back to the Manage Posts screen. After finalizing the post, check it online to make sure everything went according to plan.
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Note: This article continues a series of tutorials covering the very basics of using WordPress.
Once you have successfully logged in to the WordPress Admin area, you may want to publish a post. To do so, follow these steps:
- 1. Locate and click on the Write tab
- Within the WordPress Admin, there are many menu tabs. Each tab provides access to a different feature of WordPress. To write and publish a post, locate and click on the "Write" tab (see example).
- 2. Write the title of the post
- After clicking the Write tab, you should find yourself within the "Write Post" panel (see example). Within this area, you will notice two main text fields, one for the title of your post and one for the post itself. Go ahead and write a title for your post within the "Title" text field.
- 3. Write the contents of the post
- After writing the post title, go to the next text field and write the content of your post. For now, you may wish to simply write a sentence or two about anything just to see how it works. Later, we will explore post writing in greater detail. The point for now is to simply add some text so there will be something to look at after publishing the post.
- 4. Select a category for your post
- To the right of the screen, you will notice several subpanels. Each of these provides you with options for your post. We will explore most of these when we take a closer look at writing posts. For now, we only need to concern ourselves with the "Category" subpanel (see example). The category subpanel toggles open and closed via the plus (" + ") symbol. At this point, if it is not open, click the plus symbol to open the subpanel. Inside, you will see a list of category options. Select the category or categories for your post by putting a check mark in its corresponding box.
- 5. Publish your post to the internet
- Now that you have created your post title and post content, and have also selected a category for your post, it is time to click the "Publish" button (see example) to publish the post to your blog. After pressing the button, your post will be publicly available on the internet via your blog. If you see it online, congratulations — you just published a post using WordPress!
Next up in the WordPress Basics series, Editing and Saving Posts via the WP Admin »
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Update (May 2011) – New screencast available on how to login to the WordPress Admin using version 3.1.2 (current). The article below may still be useful, but is quite old now and refers to an earlier version of WordPress.
Note: This article begins a series of tutorials covering the very basics of using WordPress.
To login to the WordPress (WP) Administration area, follow these steps:
- 1. Go to the Admin Login screen
- Go to the WordPress login screen, generally located at
http://yoursite.com/wp-login.php or http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/ (note: if WordPress has been installed in a subdirectory, the login screen should be located at http://yoursite.com/subdirectory/wp-login.php).
- 2. Enter your username and password
- The Admin screen presents two text fields: one for your username and one for your password. Enter each accordingly (note: make sure that caps lock is off, as the information is case-sensitive).
- 3. Set the "Remember Me" option
- If you would like WordPress to remember your login information to make it easier next time, check the "Remember Me" option before clicking the Login button (note: anyone who has access to your computer will be able to login as you if this option is selected — not recommended for public computers! use with caution).
- 4. Click the Login button
- After entering your login information and making a choice concerning the "Remember Me" option, click the "Login »" button to gain access to the WordPress Admin area.
- 5. Success!
- If you were successful logging in to the WordPress Admin area, you will be greeted by the WordPress "Dashboard", which presents a neat summary of both internal (your blog) and external (WP news) WordPress information.
Next up in the WordPress Basics series, Publishing Posts via the WP Admin »
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This brief tutorial on hiding content applies to Windows 95, 98, and 98SE. Although this method may be old hat or even irrelevant, I have found it useful on a number of occasions, and therefore found it worthwhile to include here for the sake of prosperity.
On Windows 98SE (and others), it is possible to create a folder that is both listed and inaccessible via the Windows file system. Using an old DOS trick involving an obscure character reference, we create a folder that, when clicked on via Windows, produces a "The File does not Exist" error message, thus denying any access. This "hidden" folder is completely accessible via DOS, and functions as any other "regular" folder. In Windows, the folder will appear with an underscore preceding its given name. For example, using this method to create a hidden folder named "test" will produce a folder that appears as "_test" when viewed via Windows.
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This post contains random notes for embedding QuickTime within web pages.
QuickTime Embed Attributes via CSS
<style>
<!--
embed, .embed {
pluginspage: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/;
controller: false;
autoplay: true;
bgcolor: #000;
loop: true;
}
//-->
</style>
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This quick tutorial explains how to add images to both Atom and RSS feeds. Although both formats allow for image-inclusion, feed-reader support for image-display is currently quite limited. Hopefully, that will change in the near future..
Images for Atom Feeds
Images included within Atom feeds must have a ratio of either 1:1 or 2:1. There are no other restrictions as to file type or size. Use the <icon> XML element for URL’s targeting 1:1 images. Otherwise, use the <logo> XML element for URL’s targeting 2:1 images. Either element should be placed in the <feed> element:
<feed>
<icon>http://domain.tld/path/icon.ico</icon>
<logo>http://domain.tld/path/logo.gif</logo>
</feed>
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