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And so it all ends with a flurry of snow on a sunny yet cold spring day. I ponder as I look outside the breakfast table window, whether my break this year has gone to waste. The more I think the more I am satisfied, for my break has been most productive recreation-ally. Academically, not so much, it’s somewhat disappointing, as I’d brought home all my books to look over. Foolish me, to think I’d study ahead this spring break if any at all.

It all began Friday morning when I visited UIUC once more, for an interview to see if art is what I really want to pursue rather than computer science. I decided with certainty and turned in my applications. I’ll be crushed if I’m not accepted. Graphic design is ranked 7 in the nation, not as great as computer science, but still pretty good. I’ve decided to minor in computer science instead.

Friday afternoon, my family and I boarded the van and drove to Chicago for my brother’s state chess tournament. The ride there took about four hours, and I “slept” most of the way there. I rarely ever actually fall asleep on car rides or plane rides. His chess tournament was to take place Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and end Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. with the awards ceremony right afterwards. The area around the park district where the chess tournament was hosted was pretty nice. It seemed like a rich district. The middle school was huge. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for your comment: Lani, Anja, Wyther, Mara (Despair), Kimmy (endless), Jen, Lisa, Morbid Romantic, Vickie, Chelsea, Yara, D, Ken

If you have multiple sidebars, or multiple themes with multiple sidebars, it’s a good idea to use dynamic sidebars. WordPress Widgets (WPW) is like a plugin, but designed to provide a simple way to arrange the various elements of your sidebar content (known as “widgets”) without having to change any code. What’s nice about using widgets is they’re easy to use and you have the contents of all your sidebars on one page so they’re easier to edit. When using different layouts with the same sidebar contents, all you need to do is call the sidebar functions to get the contents. If you want to insert php in your sidebar, there’s a plugin called PHP Exec. Click on that link and scroll down to where it says execphp.zip, and download it.

In order to use widgets, you need to place this bit of code in your sidebar.php or whatever your sidebar page is:

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('graphics') ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Where it says “graphics”, replace it with whatever your sidebar name is mentioned in functions.php below.

You’ll need to make sure you have a functions.php in your theme folder. Inside functions.php, put this:

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'journal',
'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar">', // Removes <li>
'after_widget' => '</div>', // Removes </li>
'before_title' => '<p class="navi>', // Replaces <h2>
'after_title' => '</p>', // Replaces </h2>
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'about',
'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar">', // Removes <li>
'after_widget' => '</div>', // Removes </li>
'before_title' => '<p class="navi>', // Replaces <h2>
'after_title' => '</p>', // Replaces </h2>
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'archive',
'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar">', // Removes <li>
'after_widget' => '</div>', // Removes </li>
'before_title' => '<p class="navi>', // Replaces <h2>
'after_title' => '</p>', // Replaces </h2>
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'gallery',
'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar">', // Removes <li>
'after_widget' => '</div>', // Removes </li>
'before_title' => '<p class="navi>', // Replaces <h2>
'after_title' => '</p>', // Replaces </h2>
));
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'graphics',
'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar">', // Removes <li>
'after_widget' => '</div>', // Removes </li>
'before_title' => '<p class="navi>', // Replaces <h2>
'after_title' => '</p>', // Replaces </h2>
));
?>

Make modifications where it says “journal”, “about”, etc. Also you can chose different tags before where it shows comments such as //Replaces…The number of calls to register_sidebar depends on the number of sidebars you have.

Now when you go to wp-admin, under “Presentation”, there should be a link to “Widgets”. From there you can drag boxes under “Available Widgets” onto a sidebar box. Some widgets allow you to edit the contents or settings. Click on the icon on the right of the widget box in a sidebar to see what you can edit. Click on the “X” when you’re done editing. Don’t forget to “Save Changes”. To view changes, refresh your browser, or delete your cache and refresh again if you don’t see the changes.

Thanks for your comment: Skogul, Ann, Chien Yee, Crystal, Destiny, Munin

Have you ever wondered if there’s a way to create a page that displays all your friends’ recent entries so you don’t have to visit their sites individually every time you want to see if they have updates? Well, I have created just the post for you. I still need to find a way to display full entries though, and possibly categories the entries fall under, the author’s name, and a comments link with the number of comments already posted. Basically, I’m looking for something like Livejournal’s friends page or Xanga’s subscriptions page.

Here’s the bit of code you will be needing:

<?php
require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss-functions.php');
$url = 'http://sue.com/feed/';
$rss = fetch_rss( $url );
if ( $rss ) {
echo "<h4>" . $rss->channel['title'] . "</h4>";
$i = 1;
foreach ($rss->items as $item) {
$href = $item['link'];
$title = $item['title'];
$pubdate = $item['pubdate'];
$author = $item['author'];
$category = $item['category'];
$description = $item['description'];
echo "<span style=\"font-size:16px\">$title</span><br /><b>$pubdate</b><br /><div style=\"padding:0 20px 0 20px\">$description</div>";
if ($i == 1 ) break;
$i = $i + 1;
}}?>

The only part you really need to change is the part that says
http://sue.com/feed/
Change that to whatever URL the feed page is to your friend’s web site. Usually they provide a link for you. If you have Firefox, you can view that page by clicking on the orange square icon on the very right of the address bar. Otherwise you can right click and view source to find where it says link rel=”alternate” and find the URL of the feed after that. Be sure it ends with rss, or feed. Somehow atom feeds don’t work with this code.

For each new feed URL you want on the page, you’ll need to copy and paste that code again and insert the URL.

For an example of a working Friends/Affiliates page, click here.

Edit on 1.30.2008: To display full entry feeds, use this bit of code in place of where it says $description = $item['description'];

$isset = $item['content']['encoded'];

and replace where it says $description with $isset.

To display the author’s name use this:

$author = $item['dc']['creator'];

And be sure to include echo “Author: $author”;

Oh yeah, and here are the instructions for how to apply the code:

To set up the dailies page, you need to create a template. Let’s call it “Feed”. To create a template, basically copy the code from page.php or if you don’t have that use index.php, but delete wherever they call the comments function, the date, and anything else you don’t want to show up on your dailies page.

Create feed.php with that copied code from page.php or index.php. At the top you should write <?php /* Template Name: Feed */ ?> or whatever you want the template name to be. Then you should paste that bit of code I mentioned in this post in place of where it says <?php the_content(); ?> or something similar to that.

Create as many duplicates of that bit of code as there are feeds you want to read from people. It only creates one entry per site. Be sure to replace the URL with whatever feed URL you want. After that, save the feed.php, and upload it on your server under your theme’s folder.

Then create a page in Wordpress, and name it “Dailies” or something like that. Be sure to select the template “Feed”. You don’t have to write anything on that page. Hit publish, and you should be able to view that page.

Thanks for your comment: Roz, Katie, bec, Destiny, Kimberly, lisadragon, Sue, Brenda, Yara, Angela, stanch, Xuan, Chien Yee