Creating a dropcap is very easy. First we assign a new class and wrap it in span tags then we define the new class in the style sheet. Using the first sentence of this post as an example …

<span class="dropcap">A</span>while ago I showed you how to use a technique ...

Now we define the new class “dropcap” in the style sheet. This is what I added to my style.css

.dropcap { float: left; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 3.25em; line-height: 0.75em; color: #aaa; padding: 0.08em 0.1em 0 0; }

You may have to adjust the line-height and padding to fit the look of your current theme. Obviously you can customize this anyway you want by changing the font-family, size, color etc.

Easter Egg in WordPress 2.6 from Len Kutchma on Vimeo.

We analyze your post through our proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compare its context framework to our preindexed database of other content.

It also offers a photo gallery of relevant images you can insert into a post if you wish. The suggested images have all been copyright cleared in case you’re wondering with the bulk coming from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers.

If that’s not enough the application also provides a list of suggested tags and links to use with your post.

As the service is new they currently use a list of about 300 media sources and blogs from which they derive the related articles and links from but more will be added as it grows. For the present, Zemanta supports WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.

The links you see in this very blog post and related articles at the end were all suggested by Zemanta and were automatically inserted with the click of a button. The suggested links and tags appear below the write post window while the related articles and images appear in the sidebar to the right of the write post window. The icon immediately following the end of the post was also inserted. While they maintain you can remove the icon if you wish they ask that you don’t as they rely on it for exposure.

As the service grows and matures look for the efficiency and accuracy to improve.

Below are 2 screen captures. The first is the addition to the sidebar containing the related articles and images while the second is of the area directly below the write post window where you will find the suggested links and tags.

Related articles and images. (click to enlarge)

Suggested links and tags. (click to enlarge)

Lest anyone get the wrong idea I’m not here to crucify Small Potato. He made a business decision and that is that. His blog his business. It’s just a little disheartening to see what has since become of his creation. A talented designer, SP took the world of WordPress by storm with his great themes and outgoing personality. The man actually built up somewhat of a cult following. His tutorials are second to none. He took wpdesigner.com to amazing heights becoming one of the most popular websites covering WordPress in an incredibly short period of time.

On March 28 Pawel Ciszewski introduced himself on wpdesigner.com as the site’s new owner and promised new and better things to come. He stated that it was his intention to continue with the themes club started by SP. He claimed to be in the market for designers to carry on the work. And that was the last we heard from him. The site has since become barren leaving all of the little potatoes wondering what is going on.

What first started out as warm welcomes from the site’s loyal followers has since turned to wonder, agitation, impatience and outright condemnation. Not a single update has been posted since the original announcement on March 28. Not even a scrap. The comments thread has turned into a spamfest. The spammers have even begun to infiltrate the forums.

I realize it’s just a website and we shouldn’t get all bent out of shape over it but it was a wonderful place to visit while SP was in charge. He poured his heart and soul into his creation. Small Potato was wpdesigner.com. You see, it was more than just a website. It was the embodiment of SP himself.

It’s just a damn shame to see what it has become.

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /path/blog/wp-config.php:34) in /path/blog/wp-login.php on line 42

There are many variations of this error message but the bottom line is it’s caused by excessive whitespace. In this particular case line #42 of wp-login.php is being affected by a problem at line #34 of wp-config.php and it is most certainly excessive whitespace. The file listed first in the error is always the culprit while the second file is the victim. Open the problem file in a PLAIN TEXT EDITOR and check for whitespace where none should be. Better yet, upload a fresh copy of the offending file.

Warning: main(ABSPATHwp-admin/includes/admin.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/host/public_html/site/wordpress/wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php on line 5

Again, there are many variations of this error message but the cause is always the same - a missing or corrupt file. Look carefully at the error - No such file or directory in … Unfortunately sometimes things go wrong during an upload. Simply re-upload the problem files.

Learning to interpret the various error messages you may encounter will go a long way to preserving your sanity.

Watcha gonna do Anil when the Big W runs wild all over you brother?

Think back to the time when you filled out university applications. Which of the following might have suggested to you that the educational institution in question was not a great choice?

1. Its web site is the world’s worst-looking WordPress page
2. It has been sued by the State of Hawaii and ordered not to present itself as an educational institution
3. It is selling .edu blog space for $50 a month
4. You can contact the management through a Hotmail account
5. Its online application asks for your passport number… and whether you are currently “Employed”
6. All of the above

It seems that owners of .edu domains are allowed to resell subdomains. Because the Pickering Institute is technically (note the term technically) an educational organization it falls into this category.

Pickering Institute was established in1994. It was incorporated and registered in the State of Missouri. Pickering Institute is an institution offering Certificate, Associate, Undergraduate and Graduate degree programs in many majors. Pickering Institute is accredited by the Association of Christian Schools and Colleges.

Now far be it for me to deny anyone the opportunity to make money for I am a capitalist afterall I just can’t help but feel this scheme is a dangerous one. With an .edu domain comes instant credibility. When people see an .edu domain they automatically assume the site attached to it carries some integrity. While Pickering claims to have strict standards for inclusion I have my doubts. Does Handbags In Our Life contribute anything to academia?

According to Ars Technica the entire scheme appears to be run by a group called LinkAdage who referred to it as “a very unique opportunity for Webmasters and SEOs not affiliated with a university to control a personal EDU blog.”

As more and more people criticize the move by Pickering and LinkAdage, the increased exposure hasn’t gone unnoticed by Google who, according to Christopher Dawson, will no longer index the site.

First of all, create a new file called search.php which contains the following,

<?php header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/search/' . $_GET['s']); ?>

Upload that file to root. Next, look in your theme’s folder for the searchform. Change the action to,

action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/search.php"

All done. Test it out for yourself. Type the term WordPress in the search engine and look at the URL.

Further reading:
http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_Advanced_Topics

Remember back in November when I showed you how to add a couple of buttons to the toolbar to automatically align images to either the left or right? (see Customizing WordPress Text Editor Toolbar) We are going to do the same thing here. The file we need is located at wp-includes/js/quicktags.js. Open up quicktags.js and look for the following at around line 60 …

edButtons[edButtons.length] =
new edButton('ed_block'
,'b-quote'
,'\n\n<blockquote>'
,'</blockquote>\n\n'
,'q'
);

Somewhere below that block of code add this …

edButtons[edButtons.length] =
new edButton('ed_pull'
,'p-quote'
,'\n\n<blockquote class="mag">'
,'</blockquote>\n\n'
,''
);

This will add a new button to the toolbar called p-quote. To add a pullquote to your blog just click that button. Below is a screen capture of what my new toolbar looks like. (click image to enlarge)

One thing to remember, since you are modifying core files the modification will vanish the next time you upgrade your WordPress install.

This is a pullquote made possible by adding a new class to the existing blockquote.

First, we need to assign a new class to our blockquote so that all blockquotes don’t inherit the styling we’re going to give it. When writing a post you could add class=”mag” to the blockquote tag so that the entire tag will look like <blockquote class=”mag”>Your text</blockquote>. Then it’s simply a matter of styling the new class in your style sheet. This is what I added to my style sheet to achieve the look of the pullquote in this post …

blockquote.mag{float:right;
font-family:Georgia, Arial, Serif;
margin:.5em;
padding:.5em;
font-size:1.25em;
background:none;
width:150px;
border-top:#FFA500 2px solid;
border-bottom:#FFA500 2px solid;
color:#FFA500;}

You can style this in so many different ways. Add a background colour or image. Modify the borders. Alter the margins and paddings. Float the block left. You are limited only by your imagination.