Diary of a Network Geek

I know I should be headed for bed, but…
But, damn, I’ve been having fun with plugins again! Okay, so you’ve noticed that I have fancy-schmancy titles, right? That’s the Title Images 2 plugin by Chris Cogburn. The nifty “posted at blah-blah-blah” thing is the Time of Day plugin. The GoogleAds are served up by the Moose Candy plugin. (You’ll have to go read up on the plugin to see why it’s called that!) And, behind the scenes, we have the Auto Shutoff Comments plugin, obviously, closing comments over a certain age. (I’ll let the spammers try and figure out how far back I go!)

I’ve also been working on my own plugins. Notably the Full Moon plugin, the Chinese Zodiac plugin and the Forgotten Realms Date plugin. These three aren’t quite ready for production, yet, but they will be soon! The Full Moon plugin is already running on this site, as you can see. (I tried to get it working for b2evolution, but their documentation just isn’t as clear as WordPress’ is. Oh, well…) Trust me, when these bad boys are ready for public consumption, I’ll post about them here.

Of WordPress, that is.
I can’t tell you how much I love this new blogging system. Well, okay, not new, but new to me. Not only is the interface much cleaner than MovableType, but I don’t need to do anything special or funky to make posts happen in the future! Yea! Also, developing for WP has seemed easier than it was for MT. (For instance, I did the nifty MoonPhase dealie that tells you what phase the moon is in for each posting. Not to mention the moon over in the margin.) And, it seems like there are more people developing cooler things for WP. Take the way cool titles, for instance. Notice how they look all OCR-like? That’s a plugin!
Also, I like being able to directly edit posts. That way, when I find a misspelling, which I often do, I can quickly correct it without too much fuss.
But, by far the best thing, to me, is the comment moderation system. This is the coolest thing since sliced bread. Why? Because when some naughty person, or bot, posts something I find objectionable, it doesn’t automatically hit the blog! It has to be approved before it gets posted. So, I can look at it, think about it and approve it, if I want. Or, delete it, if that’s my choice. Or, even save it for later when I’m bored and need a quick pick-me-up.