Things are finally getting to a point of slowdown…somewhat anyway. Still very busy at work and at my personal business, but finally getting unburied to the point that I actually had time to write this. I do miss it, and there have been so many things happen and change. So many new blog start-ups, a lot of people struggling like me to find the time or post as often. I’ve done my best to still read here and there but I’ve really in the end have had to just read a few of the *favorites*.

So how do you unthaw a dormant blog, especially one this dormant? I’m not really sure to be honest. Hopefully I still have some of my good readers here and there.

Things to say or things I have not commented on yet:
No more Nice4Rice!!! Yeah, I know, its really old news by now, but I have not been blogging. That is definitely a blog I miss. I definitely understand Spud’s reasonings, but that type of article writing and his absolutely great reviews, I will sorely miss.

I do still plan on creating more PHP Hero cards. I am still a very active PHP programmer, although I have not been able to touch the notes in forever. I mentioned the next upcoming card being one to honor Ed, but then to go without creating one, what kind of a** am I? Just a busy one, I apologize. That will still be the very next card I create, and then, after that, you will see the very first PHP Hero card for a lucky lady…I can say no more…

I still struggle with keeping a blog that is a WordPress blog. It really makes no sense for a php developer to do so, I guess in the end it is just a convenience factor. A matter of convenience in regards to making it easy to post as well as just my pure laziness of not wanting to migrate to something else. Perhaps if I had more time I would look into the other options out there. WordPress really has the ability to be something so much greater, I really wish they would take in all the advice and ideas in a non-hostile manner. I definitely understand why WordPress is number 1 – I just wish the responsibility they have as being the most popular would lead them towards some very needed improvements.

My family is doing quite well. I have the greatest times with my Wife and kids. Really, every free minute has been going towards spending time with them. And it has definitely been the most valued moments in my life.

I hope all of you out there are doing great and if you are reading this, thank you very much for hanging out there, keeping subscribed, or just stopping by. I appreciate all of you probably more than you know.

So we all know that WordPress had a recent update that was also required to fix some security issues. One of the issues that caught my eye was the fact that the default theme had a security vulnerability. After reading that I decided that although I did update WordPress and the problem default theme files, I wanted to get off a theme that potentially could have other security issues if they are just now catching this one. My theme was not strictly the “default” theme, I had done a few appearance changes here and there that made it my own, however, all that back-end code was still the default theme.

So, me still never having any time to design my own theme, I decided to work with a theme of a designer that I have a lot of respect for. I decided to work with the GlossyBlue theme designed by Nick La, located on his N.Design Studio website. It gave me a great “template” to start off of to make it my own. He has such a great set of icons (small gifs) within his themes that just make your page look great.

Making it My Own:

So as you can see by that example picture above, the left side is what this theme looks like by default and after all the image and css changes, what I have made it look like. All and all it was about 45 minutes worth of work to “Reformat” it to my liking. For such a drastic color change there were quite a lot of image adjustments and edits that I had to perform as well as quite a bit of standard css edits. Really not a big deal though. Even though it was already a great design to start from, I do like it much better now! One of the things I just had to do right away was clean up that HUGE HEADER!

So after all the image and css edits, I plugged in all the plugin coding where needed for all the plugins I use. Bob’s Simplistic Navigation suited this theme quite well since there were no single navigation page links coded into it. So always remember, if there is a theme that you come across that you really like but aspects of it do not fit you, well if you know some basic coding you can really dig in and “make it yours” like I have done here.

If you have not already been to Nick’s N.Design Studio website, you are really missing out. This guy is an amazing graphic artist and to top it all off, takes the time to show you some things you can do. Check out his tutorials that he offers and browse other parts of his site. With his more recent iTheme WordPress Theme becoming so popular (you can see it on Saman’s site), he had troubles keeping his site up after all the Diggs.

So you tell me, what do you think about the new ReformatThis look…thumbs up?…thumbs down?…comments?…compliments?…original better?…free money? I will take either or all…

I requested my plugin to be added to the WordPress Repository back in April when I created it. I heard back yesterday that this request was approved. Upon hearing that, I decided to upload my plugin to the official repository and now “Bob’s Simplistic Navigation” is available straight out of WordPress Repository! I am hoping that this will very likely up its exposure and usage. Its so great that such a simple plugin can be so useful to many people.

Or you can go view the WordPress pages for it by clicking this image below. So go on and check out the WordPress plugin page, if you look real hard, you may notice I mentioned a few people in the plugin documentation:

A New Honorary Blogroll Inductee…
Cast down ye peasantly squire attire young one, for you have been welcomed to my table of Knighthood. I’m sure you always wondered what you would look like with mid-evil armor.

2Perfect is amazingly participative on many a blog. He has put his input in on my blog many a time, added me to his favorite blogs, and also participates on a couple of my Knights ["friends"] blogs all the time as well. He does truly honor me and more importantly, this community of ours.

So…BJ…2Perfect…it is my honor to honor you. I knight’th thou’th Sir BJ “2 Perfect” Nodora of Canada. A place of honor will always be held here for you.

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

I am not a true King and although I knight you, it is only valid in the state of unconsciousness. Whenever you are in the state of unconsciousness, feel free to pretend you are a knight and while you are at it, feel free to pretend that I am a King. In fact, I like that. Offer becomes invalid when receiver enters the state of consciousness…

Today it is my honor to welcome Kelly of KellyCho.com into my Honorary blogroll. Kelly, an amazingly active blogger, has honored me many times over. She has tagged me and/or backlinked me on more than one occasion and even has added me to her blogroll. She has been active on my site since pretty much the beginning. Honor calls for honor so it is my turn to return some honor back to you. Besides, I personally know that Kelly is super-psyched about all the benefits that come along with being an honorary blogroll member of my blog. Read more on that towards the bottom.

And here is the best part, the first female knighting ceremony of my blog’s history! So did you know that a female knight’s surname is a “Dame”. If you are the wife of a knight, than your surname is “Lady”, but to be a female knight you are titled “Dame”. If you didn’t already know that, you know that now

Are you ready Kelly? Tingling with anticipation and excitement? Forever waiting for this moment to come…Kelly, I knight’th thou’th Dame Kelly “Star Gazer” Cho of California.

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

*this planet that I know of refers to the planet Mercury just in case you were wondering. All jewelry discounts apply to any items purchased at a jewelry store located on the planet of Mercury. This is a limited time offer and therefor may be discontinued at anytime. I have to throw that last sentence in or else all of you readers will devise a plan on opening up a jewelry store on Mercury and then getting Kelly, Saman, & Nick incredible discounts. Thats right, I knew exactly what you were thinking

Previously I had a blogroll category called “Friends” with just 1 entry, Saman Sadeghi. Don’t let that just 1 entry fool you, I have at least 3 times that many friends

Actually, I just don’t have that many friends that blog, so instead of having that category, I decided to remove it and add Saman to where he belongs, my honorary link list. I feel that if you have a category called “Friends” and it only has 1 entry, this can fall into the “scare factor”. You know the whole this guy only has 1 friend, must not be interesting! So since that is not the case, I decided to pitch that category, I highly suggest you look that way at your site all the time, look for anything that may scare away a possible future reader.

The simple fact is I would not be blogging today if it were not for Saman. His blog captivated me so much and introduced me to this great blogging community. I do not mention Saman’s site all the time just because of how great a friend he is, its more than that, his blogging site truly does have nonstop great content. Whether it be from him, his fellow authors, or the community that has developed there, it is a very entertaining blog.

So Saman, I knight’th thou’th Sir Saman “-athon in a thong” Sadeghi of Colorado. Feel free to use the title wherever you go, even England!

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

All members of my honorary blogroll get 20% off their purchases at a store that does not exist! 15% off all parking charges at a parking lot that does not exist and to top it all off, buy 1 get 1 free on all shoe items if I were to sell shoes, but I don’t.

It’s already been mentioned on a couple other sites, I really need to mention it on my own
One thing you may notice on my site reviews is I may call out the fact that there is no way to navigate forward and backward through your single posts. To me, when reading blogs, I really appreciate a way to navigate through your posts without having to go back to the main page, scroll down, and than continue reading the next. To me, it just has to be easy to get to the previous or the next post. This especially makes it easy on your active Commentators to travel from post to post and keep actively commenting on your site.

I noticed that there are a good amount of great looking themes being produced these days that look great, but do not include these links. I know that a lot of bloggers out there are not necessarily coders, and may not no exactly how to add nav links in the posts easily. So I decided to create a plugin to make it very easy to do. If you are currently using a theme that does not include nav links, I highly suggest you add some. My plugin makes it very easy to do! You can even include them multiple times if you wish! If you look at my site, currently I have the links at the very beginning and at the very end (when you are in the single post view of course). Both of these link sets are generated from my newly created plugin.

This plugin also works great on themes that perhaps do have nav links coded into it, but maybe just once and you would like to have more.

My WordPress Plugin is located at this page:
Bob’s Simplistic Navigation

If you use the plugin and like it. I would love you to add a mention about it in a post with a linkback to the plugin’s page.

Thanks for stopping by today and please let me know below if you have any questions or comments about it at all. Have a great day!

I’m so new to WordPress that I had no idea that it threw in the NOFOLLOW tag in all the comments by default. Its funny, I have read many articles about how bad this is, but never even checked my own blog site. I just never thought that would be something WordPress would have coded into by default with the Akismet plugin available by default. Its funny that they do that isn’t it? Here is a great tool to keep out SPAM – but just in case – here is the NOFOLLOW tag for that .0001% that gets through. The community on your site is far more important that that very obscure .0001%. So I have removed the NOFOLLOW tag and I would very much like to credit Saman’s post titled “Say Goodbye To The NOFOLLOW Tag At Samanathon.com!” and/or “I Follow List” for pointing this out to me.

If you are interested in getting rid of the NOFOLLOW tag, be sure to check out Saman’s post about him removing it from his site. It will give you the information and links that can make it happen for your site. Blogging is about community and sharing what you build. If you have not already removed the NOFOLLOW tag, you really should.

I liked this plugin so much I just had to fix it and use it!
Brian’s Threaded Comments is such a powerful tool to be used on a bloggers site. It really encourages interaction between yourself and all of your Commentators as well. In fact, on Saman’s site I was able to get into a great Haiku/Zen fight with Natron that was easily readable thanks to this plugin. I have seen the successes of it many times over on many blogs including the great Saman Sadeghi and the great John Chow.

So what on earth is my problem with this plugin? Well its really very simple, I’m a “tabber”. When I fill out a web form, I use my tab button to tab from one field to the next. I fill out my name, press tab, fill out my email, press tab, etc…. Well the problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments is once you hit tab after the Comment box, you are sent to the top of the page rather than being sent to the Add Comment Button.

Example:

The Problem:
Is actually very simple. When putting the code and output together, Brian assigned a tabindex to the four text input fields, but not the button. So your browser being the good little trooper it is follows in the tab order given, then resets back to its default for the remaining items. Your page itself is typically the first tab, when you override that, it waits its turn and than takes the soonest opportunity. Thus, that is why right now when you tab from comments hoping to be sent to the button, you get sent to the top of the page.

The Solution:
Or should I call it “a solution”. There are many ways to fix this, but perhaps the easiest way is to just assign a tabindex to the button. What you want to do is find the following line in your custom comments.php code:

<input onclick="if(typeof(onAddComment) == 'function') { onAddComment(); } else { alert('ERROR:
It looks like the website administrator hasn\'t activated the Brians Threaded Comments plugin from the plugin page'); };" name="addcommentbutton" type="button" id="addcommentbutton" value="Add comment" tabindex="5" />

Due to limited space, the above wrapped, but this will be just one line in the code (unless your coded editor wraps text). The location of it will most likely be different for everyone as we have all added custom code for avatars and such, but for me, this was at line 203. So my guess is it is in that general neighborhood for you too. As you can see by the code example above, I just added tabindex="5" at the very end. That fixed the tab order issue and now all the “tabbers” like me will love posting on your site again!

*Update – Turns out I was not the only one who was annoyed by this error. Ryan J Parker had also written a post about it too, it can be found here: Fixing the Tab Index with Brian’s Threaded Comments

Saman really went above and beyond. Earlier today I noticed that he wrote a blog introducing my blog to his community! Saman has interesting perspectives and great technical writing abilities. Because of this, his community has grown quite a bit. So for him to introduce me to that community is a huge deal and I am very very appreciative!

With more visitors coming to this start-up site comes some responsibilities. First off, I have noticed, when you comment on a site, whether you are doing it for promotion of your own blog site or you truly are passionate about the given subject, you still like to get “credit” for these comments. So I have added the Top Commentators” plugin to my site. Currently, I have it set to tally on a monthly basis and show the top 10. I have actually upped it to the “all” setting now. I’m looking at it from the non-scare factor. If readers see such low numbers, they may be scared away. So until my site starts to see a lot more participating traffic, I’m going to leave it at “all”. If my traffic and comments show a great increase, than I will definitely have it cycle more than that in the future as my friend Saman does.

I have also shifted the items in my sidebar around a bit. I think it is just right to Prioritize and give credit to those who stop by your site. So I wanted to make sure that the Top Commentators and Recent MyBlogLog visits are at the top of the page. Because without a doubt, it is the bloggers that make other blogs successful!

Speaking of giving credit! It has only been a short time since Saman wrote that blog, and already both Shawn Knight and Culture Shiok!, members of the Samanathon.com community, have stopped by to welcome me aboard with comments!

Thank You Saman!
Saman’s most recent technical article was entitled “Windows Hack: Delete The eBooks Folder Forever!”. You will find his site full of useful information like this. When it comes to Saman’s site, it is actually hard to pick just a few articles to write about. He has so many great ones and his site keeps you very entertained!

Thank You Shawn!
Shawn just recently wrote a great article titled “Blogging for Money: My Thoughts”. Its very interesting to see his perspective on this. I think I am in the middle here too when it comes to this subject. Sure I would like to blog to make money, just not only blog to make money! Its a great read – check it out. Shawn, you have been added to my RSS list buddy!

Thank You Culture Shiok!
This man does not seem to blog as often as the usual blogger, but don’t hold this against him. He is very active in the blogging community and is constantly commenting on other bloggers sites. In my way of thinking, that is one of the best bloggers you can find on the net – you want to make sure you say something nice about a guy like that – so maybe he will come back

So I have decided something. If I wait to blog until I have designed my own site from scratch, well, I will never ever blog. I code all day at work, than I come home and code some more when I can for my company. I have a large back log of coding I still need to do, so why I add to it?

Therefore, I just made a couple tweaks to the default WordPress theme. I liked the theme itself (except for the extremely large header), but I still have to have a few personal touches that I can call my own. So I designed up my own custom header real quick (you will notice that it is much smaller) and played around with some of the css styles to make it more “what I would have done”. Which basically just comes down to smaller headers and footers.

I think as default themes go, WordPress has an excellent one. I was amazed by how easy it was to start right off the bat! I was so impressed by it, that I have no problem keeping it as the one I use.

So anyway, since I’m no longer waiting, I have also added some more content. You can see on the right side I have 2 about pages. I have added a great deal of content to both of these pages.

If you are even reading this, you are either Saman, or somebody who came here from Saman’s site. I’m new enough to not have been spread around much, so any traffic that I get, I know that I can pretty much say 98% of it comes from Saman’s site. So first off, thank you very much for stopping by! I hope after doing this for a while I will have some great content, and hopefully will keep you stopping by!

If you are that 2% that came here from some other route, you need and I mean need to check out Samanathon.com. Saman’s website is packed full of great blogging articles and has a community involved with it that will welcome you right in. Follow that link, and it will hook you too!

But keep an eye out for me in the future. I plan to start posting some good content. But at the moment, I want to prioritize design. Once I have custom designed my own WordPress Template, I will start blogging away.