Sandbox Blogger

Of late, I’ve been receiving some complains about Post Teaser not working with WordPress 2.3.2 (I have yet to hear about WordPress 2.3.3 so, no idea if there are problems in 2.3.3). I’ve done some investigation but so far I’ve yet to find any real issue. I’ve tried to put up a test blogs to re-produce the problem but so far, I’ve come up empty. Unfortunately, if I can see the problem, I won’t be able to do anything to fix it. I’d figure I do not have many options but to call for help on the collective on the Internet to help me pin-point the actual problem. Please look at the description below to see if you have seen it before.

I’m still learning my way around the WordPress Plugins directory and repos. Preparing for a release can drain the energy out of me.

What’s new in 3.10

• Post Teaser now in Greek. Many thanks to Alexander for the translation.
• Added a FAQ entry. I have had quite a few queries about why Post Teaser failed to split some/all of the post. I’d figure that need to be addressed in the FAQ.

For users that is waiting for a fix or feature enhancement, I’m sorry but none made it to this release due to me busy schedule of late. I’ll still try to get one release out by the end of the year and hopefully be able to fix some issue at that release.

UPDATE: I’ve manage to get in touch with the maintainer of the official WordPress plugin site and have since gain control of the Post Teaser plugin page and repository. The only thing now is to also get control of the old WP-Plugin wiki so that I can point users to the new release. BTW, here is the official Post Teaser plugin page.

After much debugging and sleepless nights, I’ve got to fix the Post Teaser plugin. Although if I’m an experienced PHP programmer, I would have manage the fix in a matter of hours but I’m still learning. I still can’t program PHP if my life depends on it (at least not in a timely fashion). Regardless I’ve fix the issue and I’m now happy with the result.

Over the weekend, I was looking at the new features available in WordPress 2.2.1 and I thought “Hey, I really like the widget feature and I don’t need to install anything extra to get it if I upgrade SandBoxBlogger.com to the latest WordPress version.” Boy, how wrong can I be. Once I’ve enabled all the plugins, SandBoxBlogger.com was dead. I mean really dead. No error, no partial site, just a blank page. I was staring at a completely white page. Checking the source reviews that nothing loaded.
The little thought cost me the weekend debugging my blog. By disabling all the plugins and re-enabling them one by one, I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem was because of the Post Teaser plugin.

Whenever I start a blog (my own or blogs I manages for others), comment spam problems are usually the last thing that cross my mind. After all, if a blog is unknown and have virtually no traffic (like SandboxBlogger.com at the current stage), the blog will be of little interest to spammers. Those new blogs may not even register as a tiny bleep under the spammers’ radar. One exception I have notice is that blogging or websites related blog like SandboxBlogger.com seems to get notice very quickly. I’ve seen spam coming in from the first month I’ve started this blog.

I have made the move from Blogger.com to WordPress as a platform for all my blogging needs for a little more then a year. Coming form a Blogger.com background, I’ve since noticed some peculiarities in the WordPress world that never even cross my mind during the days with Blogger.com. One of the most annoying is the lack of or poor support for in-post photos in themes. To begin with, WordPress developers have never given much thought about how to make it easy for bloggers to place photos in posts but theme designers usually just totally ignore the possibilities of photos in posts.

If you are those blogger, like me, who would always customize themes yourself, there is no way to escape learning up some of those technologies behind web pages. No HTML, No CSS, No PHP (or whatever web language your blogger software is based on), No custom theme.

Today, I’ve learn the difference between the DIV and the SPAN tag.

During my WTF moment with AdSense-Deluxe plugin, I was just eager to fix the unsightly misalignment that I have neglect to check the other aspect of the layout.