smart computer use?

I recently logged into the Wordpress admin area of one of my web sites to edit one of the pages.

Something was different

Upon opening up the editor for the page, I noticed that the Wordpress visual editor, which is actually a TinyMCE editor was showing my page content in the HTML format, and not the visual format, even though the visual tab was selected. This was kinda strange as it seems usually Wordpress will default to the visual editor when loading new pages.

I then also noticed that there was no resizing pull-tab on the bottom right of the editor frame as usual, so I couldn’t resize the editor window… Then I also noticed that if I clicked on the HTML tab the editor would contract or expand much like the other optional sections below the editor if you were to click on their heading.

What was going on?

I wasn’t sure what was going on, really. At first I thought maybe something had been corrupted during my latest upgrade (to version 2.6.1 I think), but I wasn’t sure this could be the case as I had no issues with the upgrades on any of my other Wordpress sites.

Then I though maybe it was a bad plugin. I still had TinyMCE advanced installed from a while back. I started to disable plugins to see if the plugins could be causing any issues, to no avail.

What to do next?

I pretty much decided to start digging on Google after plugin deactivation didn’t do anything.

I found a couple blog posts from people that were having visual editor problems in Wordpress, and they didn’t seem to have very good opinions of the later Wordpress 2.5 upgrade in general. But, they did help me to find a link to the Wordpress support pages that had information about the issue.

Browser caching issues…

Among the various suggestions on how to fix the issue, I found this one:

2. Clear your browser’s cache, quit it, start it again, go back to the write page and force-reload it several times, while holding down Shift (Firefox) or Ctrl (IE).

This suggestion, as you can see, was number two in the list. There are 4 suggestions of things to try on that page if you are experiencing similar Wordpress visual editor problems.

Personally, I always run into web page issues that can be cleared up through clearing the browser cache, so that is the first one that I tried. I simply cleared my browser cache (Firefox 3) and didn’t even restart my browser.

Yeah! It worked!

I feel lucky because I was able to get this issue resolved rather quickly and after I had fixed the problem it seemed pretty simple to do.

If you are experience Wordpress visual editor problems…

… The you should follow the link above to read the various suggestions and give them a try. It seems that compression issues on a javascript file can also cause the problem, but my guess is that it worth trying to clear your browser cache first, as that is relatively easy to do, and it fixed my problem right away.

I recently visited one of the web sites that I regularly maintain and noticed that the CSS of the web site seemed to be missing. It was all plain text and plain images stacked up down the page in an orderly fashion.

Luckily Wordpress looks pretty decent even when a stylesheet disappears (for the most part). Even then I was pretty disturbed by the fact that the styles were gone. I didn’t think that I had done this. But, nobody else has access to the site. Who knows. I’ve seen my Wordpress themes malfunction or drop while I was developing on them and refreshing the pages quickly and heavily.

Maybe something just malfuctioned and managed to delete every line of code from my Wordpress theme css stylesheet?

The other best bet as to what happened was that I accidentally deleted all the code from the stylesheet when I was modifiying the web site at one point. I guess I would have noticed if I accidentally deleted every line of code from a file before saving it, but who knows.

Luckily I had a backup of the stylesheet on my computer at home. This issue, regardless of how it happened, was an easy fix.

I’ve been using the Wordpress stats plugin for approximately 2 days, so this commentary may be a bit premature. I like it. So far Wordpress.com stats is good.

FireStats?

I used to use the FireStats plugin for Wordpress. At least, as a stat tracking plugin, FireStats was my stat tracker of choice. It was nice. It made my database huge after a while though.

Granted, there is a satellite version of FireStats, but I never have used it. I probably would alleviate the hosted stats taking up a large part of these database issue.

Wordpress.com Stats hosted on Wordpress.com

I like the fact that the Wordpress.com Stats plugin hosts it’s data on Wordpress.com. It really helps take some server load off your server. And it gives you stats right on your Wordpress site dashboard. Good stuff mainerd.

Google Analytics?

I like Google Analytics. It’s very easy to install on a Wordpress site. Easy installation is due to the fact that nearly every single Wordpress template has a footer include to easy install the Google Analytics tracking code into.

I consider Google Analytics to be the backbone of my web site stat tracking endeavors. Stuff like Wordpress.com stats simply allows me to see stats realtime, on the fly, on a day-to-day basis if needed.

If I wasn’t using Google Analytics, I’d probably consider using FireStats Satellite hosted feature to run that stats system in my Wordpress sites.

Blocking the traffic I create on my own site

I like the ability to easily block the traffic that I create on my own sites. With a newer site, my development traffic always overshadows the actual traffic of the site.

I have been using the filters available in Google Analytics to block the my traffic to my web sites. I wanted to be able to do the same with my Wordpress.com Stats.

After a little bit of investigating, I found that the Wordpress.com Stats plugin does not show any stats that I create if I am logged into my web sites. That is pretty cool, and pretty easy to deal with.

So, for Google Analytics I’ll need to remember to keep my filtering IP addresses updated. For Wordpress.com Stats I just need to remain logged in to my web sites. Easy enough.

Yeah.

Earlier today I was working on some quick updates for this site. I wanted to add a tag cloud. I do think that sometimes tag clouds are tacky, but I wanted to try it and I think it’ll help users understand this site faster and find content on this site faster. Ease of use is top priority.

I found that the tag cloud is easy to implement on the code side. So easy, in fact, that I might argue it’s easier than dragging and dropping a widget in the admin side of the web site.

Here it is:

<?php wp_tag_cloud(''); ?>

That’s all there is to it.

I found these options to be suitable:

<?php wp_tag_cloud('smallest=7&largest=25&number=50'); ?>

These options set the smallest font size to 7, the largest font size to 25 and the number of tags to show to be 50. Pretty easy.

There are also some more comprehensive explanations of the tag cloud code available.

I have to admit, as much as I like the huge overhauls on the admin side of Wordpress 2.5, I really need to just get comfortable with the changes.

Interface changes cause mixed feelings

As any computer use knows, when your interface for whatever program you like changes, it takes some getting used to.

I like all the new changes in Wordpress 2.5. It’s great stuff. But, at the same time, it’s different, and I gotta concentrate a bit harder when putting new content on my Wordpress driven web sites. Just today I started to feel pretty comfortable with the Wordpress 2.5 admin layout changes, but it’s taken a week to get that comfortable.

Examples of what I’m ranting about

For one, on the admin side, when making a new post, the Categories section is now just below the post. I can’t even drag-drop it to the right side where I used to have it. On several occasions I have simply forgotten to put my new post in any categories. After an hour, or a day, I notice that I hadn’t assigned the post to a category and need to hop into the admin to make the category assignment. Oh well. I’ll get used to it.

I am really liking the built-in tags, built-in galleries, and the now better built-in media handling. I no longer need a third party plugin to easily add YouTube videos, for example. I like it. At the same time, I still kinda miss the ease of use of Viper’s Video Quicktags, but my plugin still works so it is there and available if I need it.

Speaking of which, with Wordpress 2.5, I was able to update the Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin using the simple built-in plugin updater. Nice!

All in all, Wordpress 2.5 is a nice remix and upgrade

Wordpress just took a huge leap forward with these new admin updates. That’s GREAT! At the same time, it’s gonna take some time to get comfortable with it. But I’m fine with that.

It’s great to be a computer user, eh?

That’s just part of being a computer user. Always having to jump over a learning curve to reap the benefits of the latest and greatest things to use on your computer. Yeah!

Edit: Lol. I posted this without assigning any tags or categories, and just noticed when reviewing the post on the site. Hehe. Good stuff. I gotta remember to scroll down instead of looking to the right when adding new content to my Wordpress sites now.