.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Yah so I finally got around to revamping this site, I've been meaning to do it for ages, I was still using WordPress 2.0.10 and hadn't even moved up to 2.2 branch yet.

Plus I was getting really bored of the old Chinese takeaway font header and the whole thing was too cluttered, it was giving me a headache.

This theme has been up since January 1st 2006 when I switched over to WordPress from bBlog. This was v2.0 of shaolintiger.com.

I did like it when I first did it, but moving to WordPress I think I went a bit overboard with things, especially the 10-mile long sidebars.

The loading time was a bit of a pig, it's much faster now..I feel anyway

Previous to that I was using bBlog since October 2004 when I launched this blog, that was v1.0 of shaolintiger.com.

I still really like the simplicity of bBlog and the template I was using.

bBlog was just getting bogged down with spam and lack of updates...that's why I jumped camp to WordPress, I can't say I've regretted it at all. I feel totally comfortable with WP now and power all of my sites with it.

I've updated all the plugins to the latest versions too, included proper tagging and a tag page.

Most of the clutter is gone including the long ass sidebars with all the useless junk. I've just kept a few things I like and find useful.

I've added a few more web2.0 widgets so you can stalk me easier and of course got a new header image.

It's about time I updated the About Me page aswell I think.

If you notice anything wrong or something out of place, or anything missing from v2.0 let me know in a comment or via the contact form.

I had a problem with wordpress when I first started using it, being based in Asia most of my commenters are from this region, mainly Malaysia.

So when I tried to look up the commenters IP addresses in Wordpress, I didn't get any information because it defaults to ARIN (The American Registry) to lookup the IP addresses.

Like for example this:

http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=60.48.199.141

It just says registered to APNIC (Asia Pacific Registry).

Where as if you use another service like Whois.sc, it will show you proper location like so:

http://www.whois.sc/60.48.199.141

To fix this, you need to edit the /wp-admin/edit-comments.php file.

The lines you need to edit are 92 and 145.

You need to change:

http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=

to

http://www.whois.sc/

Then re-upload the edit-comments.php file to your active install, and refresh the comments page, you can now click the IP address of the commentors and get the correct information!

Digg this article

So I woke up this morning bleary eyed to check my sites/stats/etc as I normally do and I noticed quite a lot of users online..

This is normal though, sometimes I get hit by trackback spambots and have 50-60 users online, but this time, they were legitimate, and all looking at the same story - How to use RSS feeds on your Wordpress site.

Then I thought hmm...so I checked my sitemeter, and low and behold I had a whole load of referrals from digg!

Hmm so I checked the traffic for today, yup a massive spike!

And there I was, my face on the front page of digg and my story on my little blog

I've seen other people get 35,000 hits in a day from the digg effect, so hopefully the traffic a) will keep coming and b) won't crash the server Seems pretty steady so far.

Something like the Slashdot effect but I think not so extreme

Anyway here's the digg URL:

http://digg.com/programming/How_to_use_RSS_Feeds_on_your_Wordpress_Site

Well I've had the capability to do this for quite some time, but I didn't bother before now, as I didn't really want a load of pages no one ever looked at before about viruses, security news and so on as now I can just use my customisable Google homepage to keep an eye on those.

With the advent of the new kid on the block SpyMy, comes some interesting new RSS feeds with issues/news/blog posts very pertinent to this region, and therefore to me, and more than likely my readers so I shall use this as an example.

Step 1: Get & Install the RSS feedList Plugin

First things first, you need to get the plugin. You can do so here Wordpress Feedlist Plugin (formerly rssLinkedList).

If you are familar with the Wordpress plugin system you should be able to install the plugin with no problems.

If you aren't basically you need to upload the plugin the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, then go the admin panel and look for the plugins section (/wp-admin/plugins.php).

In here you'll see a new plugin which is not activated yet, click the "Activate" link, the block should then turn green and the plugin is active!

Step 2: Creating the page for the RSS Feed

Next thing you need to do is in the Wordpress admin panel go to Write - Write Page, and create a new page.

You can call it whatever you like, depending on what you are planning to do with it, Feeds, My News or in my case SpyMy as it's for feeds from http://www.spymy.com.

If you want it to the very last page in the pages list on your main site, go to the bottom right and set Page Order to something like 100.

Step 3: Adding the RSS Feed and Testing it

After you've created the page you can add the content, in my case the content of the page is:

Syndicated from <a href="http://www.spymy.com">http://www.spymy.com - Spying the REAL Issues</a>.

<ol>
<!--rss:rss_feed_url:=http://www.spymy.com/rss2.php?time=86400,num_items:=10,random:=false-->
</ol>

To break it down what you need to add to the page is:

<!--rss:rss_feed_url:=http://rssurl.com/rsslocation,num_items:=10,random:=false-->

For EACH RSS Feed you wish to add, the options are quite self explanatory, there are more such as adding custom tags before and after each item in the list, by default there is <li> before and </li> after each entry.

After you've saved and published the page, you can check to see if it's worked.

Go back the main page of your blog and check to see if the link is there, on mine it's as I wish, at the bottom of the navigation list titled "SpyMy".

On clicking it I'll go another page where I can see the contents of the SpyMy RSS feeds neatly laid out.

If you see this, it works!

In my case I have 3 feeds on this page, all from SpyMy, you can customise it however you like and have as many/few feeds as you like.

Step 4: Conclusion

See it looks cool, but it's not difficult

Try and setup an RSS syndicated page for yourself on your own Wordpress site, it could add value for your readers, or you might just find it interesting for yourself.

Hope this was useful anyway, I seem to be teaching you guys a lot lately

digg this article please!

I've had to do this quite a few times lately seen as though I moved from bBlog to Wordpress, there were some things I wanted to change, for example all posts that references /contact.php I wanted to change to /contact/ to fit the new permalink structure.

So for example in that case go to Cpanel (assuming you are using it) which will give you access to phpMyAdmin.

First you need to login to Cpanel with the username/password provided to you by your host, following that find the MySQL Databases link and click that.

Then at the bottom you'll see a link to phpMyAdmin, this is a web based management system for MySQL databases.

At the top left you can then select your database.

After that click the small SQL icon and a window should pop-up like this:

There you can enter your SQL statement.

To update something it's in the form of:

update table_name set field_name = replace(field_name,'replace_this','with_this');

So the example I used above for Wordpress would be:

update wp_posts set post_content = replace(post_content,'/contact.php','/contact/');

Pretty useful for general housekeeping or during a conversion/update.

New look, new Wordpress 2.0, goodbye bBlog, you served me well..

Couldn't handle the spam any more though sorry. It was progressing pretty well, and I loved the Smarty templates, but well it wasn't going fast enough and as many hacks as I could put in, it was just too simplistic to get into shape.

Happy new year, let me know what you think of the new features/new banner/new layout.

I'm pretty proud of what I've done with it actually, took me about 48 hours solid, hardly slept..

Oh well, happy new year to me, it was starting to bug me. And people were complaining they were bored of the banner aswell, so two birds with one stone?

I've been experimenting with Wordpress for a while, and well 2.0 just came out so it was ideal opportunity to get dug in at the deep end.

Will probably blog about my experiences, had plenty of headaches getting it all set-up. Quite a lot of plugins that didn't work at all, a lot that just plain messed up, some I hacked to get to work.

The import from bBlog to Wordpress itself was a bit of a nightmare and took 3-4 hours of hacking to get it back in shape.

To all the guessers, I think Lionel got it pretty much right.

• I am NOT getting married.
• I am NOT getting engaged.
• I am NOT commiting to anything.

Nothing that serious really, just a shift to wordpress, few new features, new banner, less clutter, more blog!

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM SHAOLINTIGER.COM

Yes this is first proper post from wordpress, in the new st.com, best BLOG EVAR!