WordPress is a wonderful tool but has some out of the box deficiencies.  The creation of meta tags is one but this can be addressed by adding plugins which extend the functionality of the core package.

One plugin I have adopted is the excellent Headspace2 which is modular and gives you the ability to control many aspects of your code as seen by the search engine spiders.

Have just fitted it and am test piloting the plugin for a while … I will report back in a week or so on progress.

Yesterday I came across this post on the Halotis blog which advised on how you could use the imacros add in for your browser to automate a lot of those boring tasks.  The post even goes on to advise how you should consider extending the basic automation to include the scheduler so that you never forget to run those automation tasks.

Looks good – I’m going to try it and will update you on progress later.

This could be a poor strategy as some authors will not want to take the time to do this and others could use false keywords as a form of spam not related to the article content.

Fortunately there is a PHP class that will allow a site owner to create automatic tag clouds or article summaries for their site. Use of software will save time and improve accuracy.

This PHP class, written by Ver Pangonilo from the Philippines analyzes the article text and determines keywords based on the frequency of one or multiple words. You can influence the outcome by providing the parameters you want to filter by:

• minimum word length
• minimum times the word appears
• minimum length and occurances of words for 2, and 3 word phrases
• minimum length and occurances of 2 and 3 word phrases

The area I am thinking of now relates to linux live cds.

The Linux live cd is a very innovative and useful development.  The ability to boot a pc from a cdrom allows recovery from disc crashes/viruses,  the ability to test new operating systems without destroying your current implementation and enables you to surf the web without fear of hackers attacking your pc.  Reboot and you start again with a clean install, switch off the pc and your original operating system is there when you next switch on.

So why make simplicity complex?

A live cd and talk of mastering?.  Sorry, I think of a live rewritable dvd (no worry about space constraints) and burn what you need onto the dvd rather than trying to work out how to master an iso image.

Do not close the burning of the disk image and you can add, amend the Linux image as you wish.

Doesn’t this sound more simple.  The final advantage for you windows addicts is also that you can burn the dvd in windows and add packages.

Keep computing simple.

Tags: live cd, linux, dvd

The answer is yes, as that is what I am using to post this article.  How to do it ….  read on below.

I followed the normal Linux approach of using ndiswrapper to wrap the windows drivers from the installation disk. I knew that the windows drivers worked as they had been tested on a windows 2000 machine. The main difference to the approach adopted by most other commentators related to the path for the windows drivers.

I suspect that the error message often received saying that the driver is invalid relates to the path to the files.  When you advise ndiswrapper that the driver file to use is wusb11v4.inf you should remember that this inf file also points to the other wusb11v4 driver files.  If they are not in the Linux path they will not be found and an error will result.

So I suggest you use this approach ….      

1. Boot with Slax

2. Use a Linux file manager, say Konqueror, to copy the wusb11v4 windows drivers from your hard disk / floppy / cd to a drive in the Linux system say /tmp/drivers

3. Open a terminal window

4. cd /tmp/drivers

5. ndiswrapper -i WUSB11v4.inf

6. ndiswrapper -m

7. modprobe ndiswrapper

8. ifconfig wlan0 up

You should now have wireless network access.  The wusb11v4 is an effective wireless device.  It has a very long range when unobstructed and can deliver a strong connection within the home environment even through several walls. 

There may be better ways to do this but this seems to work and I suspect it overcomes the path issue where the wusb11v4 windows drivers are not found but ndiswrapper and modprobe are.

I often find simple ways to achieve success when installing software or hardware such as this wusb11v4.  They may not be elegant but if they get the job done and a 5 minute task stays a five minute task then I am happy.

Tags: wusb11v4 drivers, wusb11v4, linksys wusb11v4, wusb11v4 installation

If you see these when you have previously established a permalink structure, and you are certain that the pages exist, then you should check your htaccess file.

By default WordPress tries to write to this file to enable the rewrites that will conform to the permalink structure you have defined.

On some hosting accounts WordPress may not have the right permissions to edit the file and the rewrite functionality will fail. The rules will relate to WordPress 1.5 whereas you will be running WordPress 2.0.

In these situations you should edit the htaccess file manually, if you are confident of doing this and not shutting down your blog – take a backup.

WordPress 1.5 seemed to produce a very large set of rewrite rules whereas WordPress 2.0 handles rewrites differently and the rules are fewer. So do not worry if the replacement code is much shorter than the original code.

Good luck and I hope that this helps.

Tags: WordPress, htaccess