Blogging has never been easier

I am in the process of converting a few websites of mine to other blogging platforms. Of course if you're paying attention, you'll see that Posterous is one of them, while WordPress is another. I sure wish I had these platforms 10 years ago, when I did it the hard way, hand coding my own HTML.

I am moving away from a couple CMS (Content Management System) packages that are not supported very well or just is too hard to keep them updated. I'm moving ArtBell.net away from Drupal and into Posterous. I'm moving ScripturesSay.com from Mireserver into WordPress.

You should see these changes complete by the end of summer. The new ArtBell.net is turned on while I post the content over, while ScripturesSay has to stick with the old CMS until I get all of the content moved.

Additionally I've been narrowing my photography blogging to two platforms. Well, three really. First I use Picasa Web Albums for posting my snapshots as we travel and use it to share with friends and family. Those photos are not edited very much and of low resolution. Next I'm using Flickr to post higher quality, higher resolution and processed images from my collection. I pick the best of my photos to post there. Then I post all this to my Posterous photo blog, krowland.com.

I'm narrowing down the selection of tools to get more proficient with them. I don't need to re-program the net anymore, I let the new kids do all the heavy lifting.

Better HTML Editor for WordPress

I'm converting an old website from one CMS package to WordPress. While WordPress is a wonderful product, its editor has left me with one small problem. The WP editor likes to insert its own HTML paragraph breaks when ever it sees an EOL (End of Line). However, browsers will render all the text between HTML P tags just fine.

When copying and pasting text from other sources, it will be already word-wrapped according to the display window you are viewing it in. So pasting text from another source into the WP editor will cause hard-breaks at the end of each line. There was no amount of switching between HTML and VISUAL mode that would help.

A little searching on the net found a plug-in that hooks up the CKEditor. This is one fine editor that I've used inside of other CMS packages, so this was already familiar to me. Thanks to Dean Lee's plug-in, I can go into SOURCE mode, paste in the HTML from any source, switch back to VISUAL mode and all the formatting is retained.

If you go to your WordPress plug-in page, search for CKEditor, select the latest version 3 from the list. Or go see Dean's website for the plug-in.

http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin/

Better HTML Editor for WordPress

I'm converting an old website from one CMS package to WordPress. While WordPress is a wonderful product, its editor has left me with one small problem. The WP editor likes to insert its own HTML paragraph breaks when ever it sees an EOL (End of Line). However, browsers will render all the text between HTML P tags just fine.

When copying and pasting text from other sources, it will be already word-wrapped according to the display window you are viewing it in. So pasting text from another source into the WP editor will cause hard-breaks at the end of each line. There was no amount of switching between HTML and VISUAL mode that would help.

A little searching on the net found a plug-in that hooks up the new CKEditor. This is one fine editor that I've used inside of other CMS packages, so this was already familiar to me. Thanks to Dean Lee's plug-in, I can go into SOURCE mode, paste in the HTML from any source, switch back to VISUAL mode and all the formatting is retained.

If you go to your WordPress plug-in page, search for CKEditor, select the latest version 3 from the list. Or go see Dean's website for the plug-in.

http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin/