Webwords

After I upgraded this blog from WordPress 1.5 to 1.5.2, the previous theme I had didn’t work, so I went looking for other ones. I’m now deciding between several themes, so if I’m testing them, the one that appears might vary from minute to minute.

I like the new themes, but each of them requires some customization to suit me. The bigger problem is that with the upgrade, my plugins don’t work any more. That’s a problem for another day.

I admit I haven’t read a lot of blogs. When I see a blog link, I often follow it, but few blogs compel me to return. That isn’t necessarily a negative statement about those blogs; other people may return to them but not necessarily to mine.

We write and read for different reasons. Most of the blogs I’ve seen tend to be about the daily lives of the bloggers. If I know the person, I’m more likely to be interested, and perhaps those blogs are written for those who know the blogger. If they are, they’re serving their audience.

I started this blog to get to know WordPress (this blog program) so that I could provide help hosting other people’s blogs. Since I get paid to write for publication, I didn’t know what I’d write here.

With time, I’ve found that this blog does serve a personal purpose. Most of what I write for my work is informational. I enjoy that work, but here, I can write about different topics and in different styles. I aim to write so that people who don’t know me and those who do will find something they want to read and perhaps see something of themselves in my words.

How personal should a blog get? Do we want friends, clients, possible clients, acquaintances, people who barely know us or who don’t know us, and those who want to attack us all to be able to read our thoughts? Personally, I’d rather not have all those people reading everything I write here, but I accept that they will be able to.

Three days ago, I wrote something far more personal than I thought I’d publish online. But only my closest friends and a few others will know who I was writing about. I had to write it. That part was for me and for the person it’s about. For everyone else, it’s a story. It might leave you wondering, or it might remind you of someone you know.

For some of you, it’s your story too. You were also in my mind when I wrote it. Some thoughts and feelings have to be given words to connect us to ourselves and to each other, and for many of us, that is part of why we blog.

As other WordPress 1.5 bloggers know, WP is supposed to let the blog owner know when a comment is waiting for approval. (To weed out spammers, this blog is set up to have only people’s first comment posts require approval.) WP notified me about comments when I set up and tested this blog a few weeks ago, but yesterday, it didn’t.

Apparently this problem is caused by a known bug in WP. It’s discussed in a WP forum thread titled Comments notification not emailed any more, and the problem and solution are detailed on this WordPress page.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to solve this problem:

1. In your WordPress 1.5 files on your hard drive, go to the wp-includes folder, and open functions.php.
2. Find this line (near the end, on line 1604):
   

   return @mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers, $more);

3. Change the above line to this:
   

   return @mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

4. Upload functions.php to your wp-includes folder.

It worked for me.

In the column at the right, I’ve started a compilation of links to WordPress 1.5 plugins that I’ve tried (for this blog or for another site) and that I’ve personally found useful. Hover the mouse over the plugin links and you’ll see a short description of each one.

These sites have longer lists of WP plugins:

• WordPress Plugins (the official list)
• WordPress Plugin DB

If you’re also a blogger and would like to tell us about a WP plugin that you really like, click on Comments to post about it.