fluid.app and wordpress
I was finding it frustrating finding the wordpress dashboard tab in firefox as I was browsing the web, looking for solutions, or simply wanting to credit my sources properly. I remembered something about being able to run a web app as a separate application, and set out to find it. fluid.app is the program I was looking for. Cocoa based for smooth integration with macintoshes, fluid takes the url, an icon (if not the website icon itself) and makes an application that you can launch on it’s own. The biggest advantage I find is being able to use the apple-tab keyboard shortcut between my wordpress dashboard and firefox, my web browser.
![[wordpress fluid.app preference pane]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3428/3233355378_e5e2081e41.jpg)
To set it up, I downloaded fluid.app and ran it. It asks for the url of the web app you would like to run, the location it should install (Applications is the default), and the icon. (You can set this later.) Now, I was at the wordpress dashboard log in page. It wasn’t working quite as I expected, so I checked the password, yep, it was the right one. Still no go: a new tab would open in firefox with the log in page, and not log in on the fluid.app. I found what was the problem, under Preferences -> Advanced -> Allow browsing to any url. Make sure this is set, otherwise you won’t be able to progress beyond the log in page. “Remember me” is a handy to have checked too.
Making it pretty: I downloaded my wordpress icon from WordPress Logos, go for the biggest of the sizes so your dock icon doesn’t look stretched, pixelated or both.
Minor gripe: the speed doesn’t seem to be the same as firefox, it’s a bit slower. I’m going to install gears and see if that helps. There are also no specific “back” or “forward” buttons, but these can be reached through the “history” menu.
![[screenshot of wordpress fluid.app ]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3262/3232434255_d13776e430.jpg)
Apparently there is Mozilla’s Prism for non mac users, or Adobe Air for a proprietary product that is similar.
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victories in website crafting
Today, I attempted to fix the rss feeds. I could see the solution, glistening on a third story windowsill, with me out of reach below. I looked around for a ladder- and found one in the fixrss plugin. However, this ladder was in pieces because it only came in a rar format archive. On downloading it to my computer I found I could extract it and repackage it as a tar format archive, thus fixing the ladder. However I then found that I could not easily transport my ladder back to the tall building as the Rsync truck was inexplicably broken. I uploaded my tar file to a free hosting service and used the wget truck to transport my ladder back to the tall building. I leaned the ladder up against the wall, and discovered it only came half way up the second storey. I wasn’t going to change the permissions of every file on my server as that was inviting more breakage. So, I put down the ladder and read up about the problem. Then I found the solution, I needed to scramble up the last few feet, manually editing the wp-rss.php, wp-rss2.php, wp-atom.php and wp-config.php files to remove whitespace from the end of the file. Success! I was at the third window sill, and I reached the solution. The subscribtion feeds should work fine now.
The next thing I tackled was the About Page, which I copied and pasted over from a google document to a new wordpress page, which was very painless.
After that, I implemented a new plugin (Contact Form 7) on the contact page and started to update the links across all the pages that had the menubar on them, all 5 or 6 of them. “Hang on, this is silly.” I thought. I read up on a bit of php, and put my links in their own php file, (lets say menu.php) and changed all the other pages to reference that:
<?php include("menu.php"); ?>
Now when I want to update the menu, I only need to do it in one place and not in many.
Now I went after the broken archive and useful links pages. This proved to be more elusive. Apparently you can’t put php in a page and expect it to be executed. I have decided to call it an evening, with the links not broken, but not exactly finished yet.
Edited to add:
I found how to add a template to a wordpress page, on the quick edit of a page, you can change the page template. To get a new template to show up, you need the following type of code on the top of the template php file:
<?php
/*
Template Name: Archivalist page
*/
?>
(thanks WP Hacks.com, which also has the relevant code for the archives page.) I found that I needed to name the template page archivalist.php, not archive.php, because otherwise the regular functionality of the archives and categories was broken as it tried to use the new template. Now I just have to add my links page, and improve the regular archive and category pages to link to the original posts.
End of insert
What are your website headaches? Victories? Have you seen something that I really need to fix because it’s annoying you? 
Leave a comment in the box below, they are always welcome.
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tiredness
I’ve been pretty tired lately. It’s been for a good cause as we have been running a kids afternoon program, and a cafe for the community at our church this week as part of the urban summer program. We have also been doing some community service and mentoring about 25 young people (aged roughly 12 to 18) who have been our team.
Friday night, our last night of cafe, we ran the cafe from 2pm till 10pm, instead of the usual 2pm til 5pm. This is a total of 8 hours and is more than anyone in these kind of things usually runs. To cope, we made sure we took some time out to chill. I took a 20 minute break, and as part of that had a little doze.
As I lay on the floor, I had a conversation with an imaginary spider that had crawled up on my shoulder.
Surreal. But I felt well rested and went on to enjoy being useful for the rest of the evening.
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busyness
So, this week I’m going to be working on a program called urban summer, so won’t have a lot of time to update my website. On the upside, if you are in the area, come swing by the cafe, it will be fun! Facebook event for the cafe.
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success installing WordPress
I’ve finally moved my blog onto a current blogging platform. While there are some detractors, wordpress is a current and active project, with lots of options for hacking the code about to customise it a lot. I’m excited about the options for widgets and other fun things, as all the tutorials you tend to run into online are all about wordpress. If you can’t beat them join them I guess.
Thank you for your patience as I fix up broken links and add features. If you see anything missing, have any ideas or any comments, as always, leave a comment in the box below.