As a little bonus, [version] 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will [be] displayed rather than the default error message.

It is important to note that the custom db error page file is not under the theme folder, but rather in wp-content folder. Also, it is important to avoid using any template tag (in db-error.php)¹ that queries the database for stored information; because when the database is down, you cannot get a reply back from the database to show the queried info on the error page. Obvious, but if it wasn’t to you, then you know now.

As always, Wordpress team listens—that’s something I really like about them. It doesn’t matter who you are, your suggestions are always considered. That’s the strength of the community.

1. I use plain html/php coded content in my db-error.php file.

1. The feature itself was via a plugin, and I wasn’t sure how it would get integrated in the future.
2. I let a set of categories (or topics) develop first over a period of time.

Seeing my del.ici.ous account grow quickly into a dust of tags in horror reminded me of not having another chaos in the name of classification. Tagging is addictive and tends to grow out of control and very fast in number.

To me, tags compliment and extend a category’s context, not replace it. As an example, every time I wrote about Wordpress, Movabletype or some weblog software, I made a decision to put those posts under the category: software → weblog. A better way to extend those posts, thus categorized, now would be to consider the actual names (like wordpress, movabletype, for example) as tags.

With that in mind, while I am not about to unleash tags en masse on this site just because the feature is now natively in, I might consider for select posts. In addition, whenever tags debut on this website, the plan is to display them only on post pages (or permalink pages). Adding them on main page, to me, is like adding textual noise. A tag cloud, in addition, may appear on archives page in future.

Update: Okay, so they’re now on. Archives section shows how, as well as the individual posts, where tags are used. Template tags the_tags() and wp_tag_cloud() make them all look so easy to implement. However, I am yet to see conditional functions for tagging in Wordpress like is_tag() and single_tag() to better use these new features.

A feature that just landed today allows any Page to be used as the front page in place of the usual blog page. You can display your About page as the front page and move the latest blog posts to a Blog or Journal page. Any of your Pages can be used as the front page or the blog page.

This was a feature I requested in response to Matt’s call for new ideas in the upcoming version of WordPress.

English please: Well, it elevates WordPress from being a blog only software to a full fledged content management system. Treat pages as your sections and you can deploy WordPress to completely power your site, and manage all of its content from a single console. How wonderful!

ETA: To be completely honest, the idea of a homepage was started in an earlier thread on the list. My example/feature request was based on how Textpattern treats its sections. In it, you can switch certain sections to appear on the front page at the click of a choice. Not only that you can choose it to be or not to be included in search and in the syndicate. That I think is quite elegant for a CMS. Now, I am not quite sure whether that is the way WordPress team is implementing it. To me, it looks like you can only set a page to appear on the front page, if you like (from what I see in this code change). But, nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction.

ETA2: It does look like feed and search part of the frontpage package. Can’t wait for the next version.

The most important—and mostly taken for granted—aspect of this system is that its founders and contributers got their basics right from ground-up before building on new features. I have written something about this before, but let us take another example: the feeds.

If you use Wordpress yourself or if you subscribe to a Wordpress powered weblog, you know how to subscribe to a whole set of blog posts. It would be something like this:

http://somesite.com/feed

What if you were interested in only one particular category of posts? Simple. Just change the URL to your taste. Say for example, I have a category called musings. Here’s how you pull-in only those posts marked “musings” in your feed reader:

http://somesite.com/category/musings/feed

Note: You may have to note down individual blog settings, like for example in this blog, I use a custom permalink structure that includes “archives” in the path. Call it a purist dig, if you like, but I prefer a top-down structure. So, for posts in feed categorized as “musings” in this blog, you’ll point this URL in your feed reader:

http://ckunte.com/archives/category/musings/feed

The best way to do this for any website, powered by WordPress, is to first click on a category. You’ll see the full path of the category[1] in the address bar.

http://somesite.com/category/musings

Now, just suffix that above URL with /feed like this:

http://somesite.com/category/musings/feed

Go on try it. You can have RSS or Atom feed for each of your categories, if you like.

[1] On a related topic, you might want to read Carthik’s excellent post, Tags are not Categories.

It’s been a while since I wrote about WordPress, so I thought I’ll turn this post into a WordPress exclusive, just before WordPress brings on more mojo with ver 2.0 scheduled to be released very very soon.

WordPress—as a software—has something for everyone. It appeals to both the end-users as well as geeks alike by letting them choose their poison (as in features). One such highly underrated but extremely efficient way of accessing your WordPress blog—or for that matter anyone else’s—is by turning your address bar into a WordPress command line¹. Here’s how:

Type Alt+D. The cursor lands at the address bar waiting for your “command”. Go on, type the address of a WordPress powered weblog and press enter (I’m in a “don’t disturb the sleeping mouse” mood).

http://www.somesite.com/

The site loads-up. Nothing great happening there. Now, you want to go to the next page. So, you start looking for that link at the bottom that says “Next Page” or “Previous Page”. Stop. Don’t bother. Instead try this:

http://www.somesite.com/?paged=2

In the same manner, if you want to look at page 10,

http://www.somesite.com/?paged=10

After a bit of browsing, you now want to search for “something” on the WordPress powered blog you’re browsing. But you’re dismayed to find that there’s no search bar. Well, you don’t need one. Simply turn your address bar into a search bar like this:

http://www.somesite.com/?s=something

If you’re looking for “something good”, try the following:

http://www.somesite.com/?s=something+good

But, unlike Google treating it as a phrase, WordPress just looks for single words “something” and “good” within a post and lists them if found. If any WordPress guys are reading this, may be we could have this as a feature?

My archives says that I have 35 categories. I want to look at posts from a random category, say 20. Easy peasy:

http://www.somesite.com/?cat=20

I also have posts from 2001 to 2005. Just for the heck, I want to read what I was thinking in the month of December, 2004. So here’s what I do:

http://www.somesite.com/?m=200412

Going another step, I want to know what I was thinking on a particular day of that month, say 25th:

http://www.somesite.com/?m=20041225

If there are any entries for the day 25 December 2004, they’ll be listed.

Now, you’re a feed warrior and want a specific type of feed say: rdf, here we go:

http://www.somesite.com/?feed=rdf

All of these work irrespective of whether you have permalink structure defined or not. See what I mean when I said WordPress impresses the geek as much as the end-user?

What we might otherwise think as ugly characters in the address bar are in fact beautiful, help get-things-done and really useful. Kudos to the WordPress team for getting this in order right from day one. They’re now catering to the niceties and low-tech blogging =).

So, if you’re a die-hard command line warrior and a WordPress user, this one’s for you. And the next time you go surfing on your favorite WordPress blog, don’t bother looking for archive pages or a search page, just remember these commands.

Update: I was looking for some more variety in letting the user manage how he wants to read the feed. My requirement was to serve full content, but let my user decide what he or she wants: full content or a summary. Hackers to the rescue. Within an hour of posting this to WordPress hackers, Mark Jaquith provided an extremely simple and highly usable solution. I’ve saved the plugin file for download (Upon downloading, rename it to feedtype.php, upload to your plugins folder and activate it).

Usage:

For full content, use either default or the following:

http://www.somesite.com/?feedtype=full

For summary of content (excerpt):

http://www.somesite.com/?feedtype=excerpt

All credits to Mark for this extremely usable feed plugin. Thanks Mark!

1. This is applicable generally to WordPress powered blog sites, and may or may not work with sites that are not essentially blogs, but use WordPress as a hacked CMS. Nevertheless, there’s no harm trying.

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

..it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.

Yes, the father of read and write web now has a blog. You bet, I’m subscribed.

Washington Post on Blog Business Summit: It’s pathetic — as well as amusing — to watch representatives of multimillion-dollar corporations shell out their hard-earned cash to buy what amounts to bottles of freshly packaged air. The concepts behind blogging are not difficult to understand, nor is it difficult to throw one onto the Internet. I’d be ashamed to charge for my services so I’ll offer them for free. Want a blog? Go read some. Do what they do. There’s your Blog Business Summit.

Bottles of freshly packaged air?! Un-believable! Washington Post, your rank just dropped from 8 to 0 in my eyes. Blogging produces quality material in companies on subjects that we do business in and about which, your reporters are incapable of, and don’t have knowledge about.

Blogging is about software; making information exchange easier; making information universally accessible not to mention ease of use, and let me tell you that it’s not just about reporting some news. It is about empowering ordinary people to share their immense wealth of knowledge and ideas with their colleagues and affiliate companies and put that to good use for the benefit of their clients and profit.

We need simple tools to put our experience, research and development, customer experience and interaction, feedback and inherent knowledge to good use. Blogging software provides us that.

Do you still think it’s bottles of freshly packaged air?

Update: More views on this by: Adrian Trenholm and Evelyn Rodriguez.

If they ever considered TinyMCE due to my comment, the credit for it should really go to Mikhail, because he listed it first on his blog. Thanks, Mikhail!

One of the very fundamental concepts of making any software usable has been in implementing control interfaces that are known to normal users. With this, you’re going to get a Word like toolbar. Anyone that does not know how to use a Word toolbar, raise your hand, we’ll take you to a special therapy =).