WordPress Wednesday #4: Configuring the Settings

Need a little more help?

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Now that you have your recommended plugins installed, let’s go through the basic settings for your blog. Some will be self-explanatory, while others a little more obscure.


All of the settings are located in the lefthand column of your blog dashboard. Look at the bottom link, cleverly called Settings, and click the arrow next to it to open the submenu.

Click on General.

General Settings

Your blog title, tagline, and email address should have been set up when Fantastico installed WordPress for you. If it isn’t right, you can correct it now. The WordPress address and blog address were also automatically set up. Do not change these — this tells WP where to find your blog, and if you change them, you and your visitors will see only a database error where your blog should be.

Next comes Membership. The “Anyone can register” box is unchecked by default. Since your Subscribe2 plugin requires that people be able to register, you should check this box.

“New User Default Role” is Subscriber. Leave this as is.

Timezone: Choose a city in your time zone. It’s a long list divided up by continent, so you may have to do a little looking. Or, if you don’t see one and you know your local offset from Universal (Greenwich Mean) Time, you can enter that instead. It’s better to choose a city if possible; WordPress will automatically account for Daylight Savings Time when a city is listed, but it will not if you use a UT offset.

Date format, Time format, Weeks starts on: Self-explanatory. The default values are usually fine.

Scroll to the bottom and click on Save Changes.

Now click on Writing.

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Friday 5 #2

Friday5In which I bring to you every Friday five cool sites or items or other things I’ve noticed during the preceding week, many (but not necessarily all) fiber- or art-related. Feel free to chime in with your favorites in the comments.


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WordPress Wednesday #3: 10 Free Basic PlugIns You Should Add

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One of the most versatile features of WordPress is the thousands of plugins available to make tasks easier or to add functions to the main program. Using plugins, you can set up WordPress as your entire website, as a PayPal shopping cart, as a membership site, as well as other exciting possibilities.

This week, let’s talk about the most useful plugins that I think every installation of WordPress should have. The first four are must-haves, in my opinion. #5 is optional, and the rest are ways to help increase reader interaction on your blog. Because who wants to write just to themselves without a conversation?

After the list, we’ll talk about how to install them.

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Cultivating your eye – and your voice


Even if you don’t subscribe, you have to read Robert Genn’s newsletter today. Dry plot summary: He is painting plein aire in a town plaza somewhere in Mexico. He describes the scene around him, a conversation with a passerby, the sounds of mundane daily life.

Yet because of his practiced eye and cultivated voice, he makes this experience completely come alive with gorgeous sentences: “A two-litre bottle of Fresca came by with a four-year-old girl attached.” Isn’t that so much more evocative than an ordinary description of a little girl drinking a big soda?

Read. Observe your surroundings today. Then plan how you can translate that experience into your art — in words or in images — and go make something beautiful from something utterly ordinary.

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Go make a mistake today.

“Codeine Dreams: Hole in the Sky” (2005)

An entry from my own file of past mistakes… in retrospect, not a bad image after all.

Today’s is the second in a blog series by Mark McGuinness, “Breaking Through Your Creative Blocks,” entitled “Fear of Getting It Wrong.” This one jumped out at me because I have been there oh-so-many times myself, and there are oh-so-many times worried fiber artists have written to the QuiltArt list asking “What am I doing wrong with this piece? Please take a look and give me your opinion.”

The post uses musicians and writers as the examples of creative people, but there is much there for us as visual artists as well. I especially like point #1:

“… do something to get out of your head and into your body. Your head is where all the worrying and judging and agonising happens. Your body is where the rhythms live, where your heartstrings are.”

Go read it. Then head to the studio and make a mistake today.

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A New Year’s Gift for completing Month Zero

For everyone who has been following along with the Month Zero goal-setting, here is a gift for you:

permission-slip

Click on the image to download a PDF version. Print it out and post it on your wall.

Then head into 2010 knowing that you are a month ahead of the rest of the world… and that you don’t have to be perfect!

Happy New Year!

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