Wordpress 2.3 uses Google blogsearch not Technorati

I find this extremely interesting and a bit confusing as a user. Technorati is out, Google is inPrevious version of Wordpress have made us of Technorati to track incoming links to your blog in the admin panel. Now it seems that with a new version of WP comes a change to Google.I am quite relieved about this move as I feel that Technorati has recently lost some weight in the market and is not being taken very seriously in the online market. While I cannot say that Google is any better but their extended reputation does hold them in good stead in my eyes.I just need to work out how Google Blogsearch relates to my links and what it all means. But it is nice to see a change and to know that the WP guys are listening to their users and interacting with us with every upgrade.

Wordpress v2.3 - Tags, Posts and more

Last night with the gracious assistance of one Hartman, I upgraded SA Rocks to Wordpress v2.3.To be honest, this process is not simple for an ignoramus such as myself. It involves database backups, theme backups (which I neglected to do) and plugin deactivation. Sounds pretty easy, but when your entire blogs history is dependant on your capabilities you start to doubt those capabilities.But nevertheless I went forward with the upgrade. I was going to install Ultimate Tag Warrior to handle all my tagging on the various posts, but alas I was disuaded because the new WP has built in tagging capabilities.So here is my immediate impression of the new WP upgrade:1. Posts are easier to manage in the admin section. You can search by status, date, author, category or simply enter a search term. This I love.2. Built in tagging. This is a brilliant update that has been made. I love tagging and this makes it doable right there in your post editor.3. Plugin updates. These have become automated. Now before you get all happy about that, it simply means that you are automatically told when a new update is available for your installed plugins. This might not seem like a great improvement, but wow what a time-saver.I am having some issues with the tagging process on SA Rocks. For some reason when I publish a post with tags, the tags don't actually click through to anything buy an error page. Does anyone have any advice?Then the next stupid thing that I hastily screwed up was my categories. WP v2.3 offers you the ability to make your categories, tags. I wasn't 100% sure what this meant, and hell, I'm still not sure. But what I do know is that out of my carefully crafted 40 or so categories, I am now only left with about 6 (4 of which I recreated) after "converting" them to tags.Now that they are tags, can someone tell me what the hell that means for my blogging?That's my only major gripe with the upgrade. Otherwise I had a good guide through the process and happy with the results.A word of advice: Ensure that you back up EVERYTHING that you want to keep as is on your current blog before upgrading. I didn't save a copy of my most recent updates on the SA Rocks theme and I had to do some of them over. Not fun.

A new theme

Apparently with mumps comes time to redesign your blog! So as of this evening you will see a new look and feel for nicharalambous.com.Something smoother, cleaner, more generic and simple. Colour is sporadic and I have chosen to move things back to a very basic feel.Did a bit of customisation here and there, tweaked the style.css and the images that build the theme. And what do you know, I have a new theme. I think I'll be tweaking it more and more as things progress. But I like what it has turned in to and hope that it has become easier to read, understand and subscribe.Let me know what you think.Oh, one of the main reasons for the redesign is that I realised that I have only been working with Wordpress since January of this year. It's really incredible what one can learn in eight months. I have done a boat load of template designs, redesigns and tweaks since I put the old nicharalambous.com theme. So I thought it necessary to work on my own blog since my skills are somewhat improved from the last time I did this!!Hope you enjoy the theme, I do.

Customizing your wordpress theme

I love Wordpress. I really do. I love designing themes and customizing ones that I have implemented.My favourite part about the themes that I have created for myself and others is the tiny little changes in detail that one can make. Attention to detail is imperative if you ask me.Let me explain. When I write a comment on someones post and then continue reading the thread, I like to know who the author is of the post and read their comments specifically. This can be done but often isn't be designers.When submitting comments I really am bored with pressing the "Submit" button. It's really not very hard to change something like that. SA Rocks features a "Rock It Hard" button in place of the standard "Submit". This makes me slightly more keen to ROCK IT HARD when I submit a post.Doing this is easy: Simply go in to your comment.php file and search for the word "Submit" (or whatever your submit button says.Then in that string of code: [input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit"] <-- that part of the code is what you want to change.For SA Rocks I changed it to: [input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Rock It Hard!"]There you have it. Obviously changing the actual image behind the text is a bit more complicated (not too much more). But the text is a good place to start I fell.There are many other little changed you can make to a theme to make it more interesting for the viewer. One of my personal favourites is changing the Login/Register Wordpress default look to one that matches your theme. If you want an EG of that visit SA Rocks. If you want me to explain how to do that, let me know in the comment section below.PS: I haven't changed the "submit" button on this blog yet. Tsk Tsk.