I am going to explain in a few words how to take a video from youtube.com and embed it so your visitors can see it directly from your blog.

So …

First thing you need to do is to write a new post or go and edit one. Put the cursor at that point where you want to embed it, let’s say somewhere in the middle of the post. Now, switch to the HTML mode of your editor (I made a printscreen of my view now so you can spot it faster).

Ok … next step is to find your youtube video. That’s pretty easy. Open a new browser window, go to youtube.com, find it and then you’ll notice it has an embed “code” somewhere on the right hand side of the page, like in the image below:

Click on that, copy it, come back to your original browser window with the post editing and paste it. Hit update/publish and you have it.

Few days ago I was into creating a membership website on a wordpress platform. To be honest, I didn’t find anything to make me happy (I was looking for a (free) plugin, ovbiously :) ). All you can find is only crappy software that doesn’t do anything really special. The idea behind a membership website is not just to protect your content from the public and show it only to your registered users (while logged in), but it’s more about offering them options (I’m not going to name any, it depends mostly on your website profile).

However, I got the most from memberwing (google for it and you’ll find it, it’s the first result). This plugin is very easy to use, it has no options and that’s why it got my vote :) To use it, simply insert {+} or {++} or {+++} in your post, depending on the user level you want the content to be accessible for. For free, you go with {+}, for the premium you go with {+++} (for more info on that, read their website). Everything before that sign is free and available for the public, what’s after that sign is only viewable by the registered users. I didn’t test what will happen if you put the {+++} sign 3 times in a post :) I invite you to do that maybe you discover bugs and report them to the plugin owners.

That’s about it right now, if I’ll decide to build my own cool membership plugin in the future, I’ll let you know. If you want to be noticed when an update is out, simply read my blog and subscribe to my rss feed.

Cheers,
- Peter

Back with more howtos. Current lesson: how to mess with plugins.

It’s a pretty easy job to do, you don’t need too many skills for it, you don’t need to mess with code or anything… and it’s even easier with wordpress 2.7.

For older versions: let’s say you found a plugin on the net and you want to use it. Simply download it to your desktop, unzip it there and then upload it to your /wp-content/plugins folder on your server. After it’s done uploading, login to wp-admin, navigate to the plugins page, spot your newest plugin and hit the “activate” button next to it. That’s about it. Of course, assuming you know what FTP is and your plugin doesn’t have settings you have to mess with. If it does, you can find them (or at least for most plugins) in the settings menu (it’ll add a submenu with its name, it’s pretty intuitive). To upgrade your plugin, repeat the steps above: download, unzip, upload to wordpress plugins folder and it will upgrade the database, there’s nothing more for you to do.

For the current version (2.7), they’ve made it even easier. They’ve embeded it in the interface, so you don’t have to use FTP anymore. Simply go to your plugins page and search for the button named “add” or “add new” or “add plugin” (or whatever :) ). Hit browse, search for the plugin on your local harddrive, upload it and you’re good to go. After it’s finished uploading it will prompt you to activate it, I suggest you do so :). Same for the options, if your plugin has options/settings the chances to find them in the settings menu are over 90%. To upgrade, do the same as when you installed it.

One thing you should consider, there’s a plugin called “one click upgrade” (google it). It’ll make your live easier when speaking of upgrading your plugins. It will search automatically for newer versions and let you know if you have to upgrade any of your installed plugins (with a click of a button). You may want to give it a try.

That’s all folks :)

Happy blogging,

Peter

In a previous post I named few reasons for keeping your wordpress blog upgraded all the time. This is very important because you’re avoiding the latest exploits and probably lots of hours of tears and work :). Another thing you should do is to hide your wordpress version from the public. In case you aren’t up to date with your blog, they won’t know that. Now .. depending on your theme, that may be already hidden, but take a closer look just in case and remove it.

Ok … back to the topic. In this post I want to teach you how to upgrade your wordpress blog. That’s a pretty easy task. If you created your blog using fantastico, then you should go back there and find the appropriate button. It’ll do the job, there’s nothing else for you to do. If you followed my guide on how to install wordpress (or not :) ) and installed it with your own hands, you probably know what to do already. Simply go to wordpress.org/download, save the latest release on your PC, unzip it and finally upload it to your blog folder on your server (maybe site root, maybe not). After you’re done, go to your admin panel. It’ll say your database has to be upgraded if it’s the case (and it is when you upgrade from older versions to 2.7, it happened for all my blogs), just hit that button and you’re good to go.

That’s it :)

The good news is that from now on, wordpress has its own auto-upgrade feature embeded. For older versions, you should’ve had a plugin installed to do that, but from now on, you can simply go to the “Tools” menu and hit “Upgrade”. It’s pretty easy and intuitive so go ahead and try it.