In a previous post, I wrote about 10 creative ways to use Drop.io. Drop.io is a free online file sharing/collaboration service.

One of the ideas was using Drop.io’s voicemail as a way to let visitors leave audio comments.

Audio Blog Comments—A New Idea?

Short answer, no.

The idea of audio comments isn’t new.

Paul Boag, of the excellent Boagworld, allows (or allowed–can’t seem to find it now) visitors to post audio comments. Paul also has posted audio responses to text comments on some of his posts (via AudioBoo).

This is logical because of the podcasts they publish. Audio comments could be used in future podcasts.

People could record a message to MP3 and then save it to their computer. Boagworld gave visitors an option to upload the saved MP3 file to their site right from the comments section.

This is a nice idea, but unless you’re really motivated, you’re probably not going to go through the hassle of doing all this just to leave a comment.

Easier Audio Comments By Phone With Drop.io

So far, I haven’t really found any sites implementing audio comments on their site besides Boagworld (though I’m almost certain to be proved wrong ;) ).

How could you make it easier for visitors to leave audio comments on your blog?

Every drop you create with Drop.io has its own phone number and extension.

The simplest idea would be to create a drop, then place the phone number and extension at the end of the post or right in the Leave a Comment section.

Visitors will find this to be fairly easy:

1. Simply dial the drop’s phone number from any phone
2. Type in the extension at the prompt
3. Start talking and hang up when finished

Since all comments are automatically converted to MP3 by Drop.io, a lot of comments could be left on a 100MB drop.

Site Admins

For site/blog admins, email alerts can be setup in Drop.io. When new audio comments are left, the admin knows within seconds.

1. The site admin can listen to the message
2. Copy the embed code for the MP3 from Drop.io
3. Create a new comment on the blog post
4. Paste the embed code into the comment

Using the embed code allows a player to be added right in the comment itself so others can listen to the comment right on your blog without the need to download the file or go to Drop.io to listen to it.

Another option could be to set Drop.io to tweet links to the audio comments to your Twitter account. Though this is automatic, so you wouldn’t have any control over the comments and couldn’t really moderate them.

See It in Action

How does it work? You can see hear it in action, by going down to the end of this post to the comments section and listening to my sample audio comment.

You can also try it out for yourself—Leave us an audio comment—call this blog post: (646) 495-9246 ex: 62621

Pros

• Setting up a new Drop.io account is a piece of cake and takes practically no time
• Simple to implement on your existing blog
• Dead-simple for visitors, which means they’re more likely to leave audio comments
• Most people have mobile phones with free long distance, so the call would cost nothing

Cons

• Only useful if most of your visitors are from the United States. The drop’s phone number is a New York number
• If the phone number or extension is mis-dialed, the comment will either be lost
• No option for the commenter to redo or delete an audio comment once they start
• More work for site admins since they will have to listen to each message and manually add the link to a comment
• No easy way for people to add a link to their site or email address in their audio comments

Actually, Drop.io has an API that could be used to automate a lot of these things. Maybe set up a button similar to a Google Voice call widget?

It would require more work for the site/blog owner to initially set this up. But it would also make it easier for people and easier for themselves in the long run.

Other Ways To Add Audio Comments to Your Blog

The Drop.io option is an easy way for people to record their audio comments even if they don’t have a mic handy.

Here are some other options for adding audio comments to your blog.

• Riffly–Free online service for adding audio comments to your blog. There’s also a Riffly WordPress plugin to make adding it to your blog even easier. There’s a Drupal plugin too.
• Wagwire–Paid voicemail service that can be used for audio comments and feedback. There’s a dialing widget available as well.

Pros

• Specifically designed for audio comments
• More automated that the Drop.io option
• Both of the above services offer either plugins or widgets, so adding them to your site is pretty hassle-free

Cons

• Visitors must have a microphone
• What if the service goes belly-up? Do you have the option to download the MP3s to your computer like you do with Drop.io.

Suggestions?

Have you implemented audio comments on your site, or do you know of sites that do?

Have a better solution for audio comments?

Tell us about it in the comments.

Better yet, leave us an audio comment—call this blog post: (646) 495-9246 ex: 62621

Note: This is a New York number. Long distance fees may apply.

Have fun!

Photo credits: Silver Microphone Near Laptop by Yevgen Timashov. Sound Waves Oscillating by clearviewstock. Stock photos from Shutterstock.

If you’ve changed the default WordPress admin user name from ‘admin’ to something else, great. However, if you write a post as the admin, your new admin username will be displayed on your blog. Not good.

In order to help you keep your admin username a secret from would-be hackers, I’m releasing a new WordPress security plugin: Admin Post Reminder.

How Does It Help?

The Admin Post Reminder plugin is useful if you’ve got a separate editor account just for posting.

Sometimes you’ll still need to log into WordPress as an admin to change settings, use certain plugins, etc. It can be easy to forget that you’re still logged in as an admin when you go to write a post.

What Does It Do?

What Admin Post Reminder does is simple–it checks to see if the user that’s logged in is an admin. If they are, an alert is displayed at the top of the page, reminding the user not to publish any posts while logged into this account.

Regular logged in users won’t see the message.

Download the Plugin

You can view the plugin page for more details or

Download Admin Post Reminder at the WordPress Plugin Repository

Buy Me a Coffee

If you enjoy this plugin, consider making a small donation–any amount is appreciated. Thanks!

Updated: 12/04/2009–Note: This information applies also to pages as well as posts.

Anytime you see suggestions for making your WordPress install more secure, you’re gonna see the regular suspects:

• Change your database table prefixes
• Update WordPress and WordPress plugins regularly
• Change the default WordPress admin username

These are all good suggestions that you should certainly be doing to make your WordPress install more secure.

But I want to address the last one–changing the default WordPress admin account–and a practice that will render this pointless.

The following may be common sense, but the reason I’m gonna mention it is that I have never seen this cautioned on any other WordPress security tips post.

Why Change Your Admin UserName In the First Place?

WordPress automatically generates an account named admin when you first install.

This means every single WordPress install on the planet has an account named admin. If you don’t change it, any would-be hacker/cracker only has to figure out your password–making it much easier to get into your site and muck about.

Don’t Use Your Admin Account to Post

Is there a flaw in your WordPress security?

So you’ve changed your default admin username to something totally unguessable. Then you write a post and publish it from your renamed admin account.

Oops!

The whole point in renaming your account is so pranksters have no idea what username you’re using for your admin account.

True, you can change the display name for your account so it doesn’t show your actual admin username on your site.

However, if your theme displays the post author’s name and a link to sort by author or author feed.

The actual username will be right there in the link address (usually something like: ‘http://blog.com/author/admin-username‘). Oops!

Posting from your admin account completely negates the whole point of changing your admin username in the first place.

Don’t Publish Pages From Your Admin Account Either (Updated 12/04/2009)

Beyond the author link in posts, there are other places the author’s username can show up.

Body Classes on Post and Pages

Even if you remove the link to the post author from showing in your theme, the username of the author also can be seen in classes on the body tag when you view source.

WordPress by default inserts various classes to the body tag. This is so you can target pages and posts via CSS.

One of the classes WordPress creates and inserts into the body tag is the author’s username (not the nickname).

Most of the time it will look like this: author-yourusername (for posts) or page-author-yourusername (for pages)

Most (all?) current WordPress themes do not remove the author class. This means, on both posts AND pages, the author’s username can be easily discovered by simply viewing the source code.

Depending on your theme, a class containing the author’s username may be displayed in other places as well.

Fix It Now

If you’ve changed your admin username and yet have been publishing posts (or creating pages – updated 12/04/2009) using that same account, fix it now.

Don’t worry, it’s easy enough.

Here’s the quickest way:

1. Add a new user who has an Editor or Contributor role
2. Add another user with Admin privileges
3. Log out and back into WordPress as the new Admin
4. Delete the old Admin user (the one you used to publish posts from)
5. WordPress 2.8+ will ask what to do with the posts you previously wrote…
6. Assign the posts to your newly created Editor/Contributor account
7. Only use that Editor account to write posts from now on

That’s it. It only should take 2-5 minutes, and your WordPress install will be more resistant to hacks and general tom-foolery.

More WordPress Security Tips

Here are some other WordPress security tips:

• How To Keep WordPress Secure (WordPress Blog)
• Hardening WordPress (WordPress Codex)
• WordPress Security Tips and Hacks (Noupe – Beware step #9 though)
• 12 Essential Security Tips and Hacks (Six Revisions)
• 11 Best Ways to Improve WordPress Security (Pro Blog Design)
• 20+ Powerful WordPress Security Plugins and Some Tips and Tricks

WP Plugin

(Updated: 10/19/2009) Based in part on the response to this article, I’ve created a new WordPress plugin called Admin Post Reminder.

Updates

(Updated 12/04/2009) Pages and posts also contain classes in the body tag that disclose the author’s real username.

Lately, I’ve been using Thematic–a framework for building WordPress themes faster.

Thematic gives you a solid, bare-bones theme with reset CSS styles, a very basic layout, no color and limited typography. A clean slate.

Don’t Touch That Theme!

To create your theme, you don’t actually edit any of Thematic’s theme files. Instead, you make changes using a separate child theme.

It’s really powerful since you’re not actually touching any part of Thematic. You just get a nice starting place, without worries about future Thematic updates overwriting your code edits.

You don’t have to rewrite a bunch of code all over again–you’re just adding the bits that you want to be different. This works very much like the custom styles on WordPress.com hosted blogs.

I’ve collected together 40+ Thematic resources, tutorials and links to help you get up and running faster.

Thematic and WordPress Child Theme Basics

• Official Thematic Website
• WordPress Child Theme Basics
• Modular CSS
• Theme Template Directory Structure

Theme Hooks

• Thematic 0.9.6.1 Is Live (Updated 2/10/2010)
  Details about newest version. Contains new hooks and filters for even more control.
• Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
• Theme Hooks
• Adding Custom WordPress Hooks
• Using Filter Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
• Theme Filters
• Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters and Hooks?
• Overriding Parent Theme Functions in Child Themes

Thematic Tutorials

• 10 Design Tips For Your Custom WordPress Theme Built With Thematic
• Edit Your Theme With Functions.php
  Tons of fun by adding functions to edit your theme.
• How I Used a Custom Page Template to Redesign My Blog the Smart Way
  Step-by-step creating a new child theme.
• Replacing WordPress Content With an Excerpt in a Thematic Child Theme
  How to replace the_content() with the_excerpt()–without touching your theme files.
• Add “Featured Posts” to Your Thematic Child Theme
• Use WordPress as a CMS With Thematic: Part 1
• Add a Header Image to Thematic the Easy Way
• Add a Search Box to the Thematic Menu
• Adding Theme Options to WordPress Themes
  Creating theme option pages to your WordPress theme.
• ThemeShaper Forums
  If you get stuck, the Thematic Forums is the place to go for help.

Editing Parts of Your Theme With Thematic

There is a whole series of tutorials on the Thematic website for edit particular parts of your WordPress theme:

• Thematic 0.9.6.1 Is Live (Updated 2/10/2010)
  Details about newest Thematic version. Contains new hooks and filters for even more control.
• WordPress Themes Template Tutorial Series
• Working With the Index Template
• Editing Your Thematic CSS
• Editing the Header Template
• Editing the Sidebar Template
• Editing the Single Post, Post Attachment and 404 Templates

Thematic Cheat Sheets

• Thematic Structure Cheat Sheet
  A visual look at all of Thematic’s main elements–div’s, theme actions, hooks and widget areas. Very, very useful.
• Widget-Ready Areas
  Images of widget-ready areas for each major template and section of Thematic.

Thematic Child Themes

There are already some nicely-designed Thematic child themes.

Acamas

SimpleCart (js) – E-commerce theme

Audry

Gallery

Aether

Sugar Cane

Update: 3HoursTheme (by Matteo Stagi. Also includes tutorials to help you to use the theme)

Cosmos Labs

I can’t include Thematic themes without mentioning Cosmos Labs. They have released several nice child themes. Here are a few.

Byty

Street

Early Morning

Commune

Crystalline

Element Templates

These are not full child themes, but themes for specific parts of a WordPress site that can be used along with another child theme.

• Login and User Registration Page Templates For Thematic
• Replacing the Thematic Menu With a DropDown List of Categories

Hopefully these links will give you a good place to start using Thematic.

What Do You Use?

Do you use Thematic? Do you use some other WordPress framework? Tell us in the comments.

The only problem I have is that it’s only viewable to registered WordPress users with an admin role. Editors, Authors and Contributors can access the WordPress backend, but can’t view the stats.

You could always install a bloated role manager plugin just so you can allow others to view CyStats. But this is overkill unless you need to adjust roles for some other reason.

Here’s a quick way to allow non-admin users to view your CyStats stats:

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Editor
2. Select CyStats from the upper right dropdown list
3. Choose cystats/includes/admin.php from the list of plugin files on the right.
   Alternatively, FTP to the wp-content/plugins/cystats/includes/ dir and edit the admin.php file.
4. Notice there are several ‘8’s (or possibly ‘9’s or ‘10’s). These are the numbers for the WordPress user levels/roles. 8-10 are admins, 7-5 are editors, etc.:

   /**
    * Builds admin panem menu for Plugin
    */
   if(!function_exists('cystats_create_admin_menu')){
   	function cystats_create_admin_menu() {
   		if (function_exists('add_options_page')) {
   			add_options_page('CyStats Options Page', 'CyStats ', 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');
   		}
   		if (function_exists('add_menu_page')) {
   			add_menu_page('CyStats Statistics Plugin', 'CyStats', 8, __FILE__, 'cystats_admin_index');
   		}
   		if (function_exists('add_submenu_page')) {
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Index','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Index','cystats')), 8, __FILE__, 'cystats_admin_index');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Blog','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Blog','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-blog', 'cystats_admin_blog');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Clients','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Clients','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-clients', 'cystats_admin_clients');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Referer','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Referer','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-referer', 'cystats_admin_referer');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Robots & Tools','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Robots/Tools','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-robots', 'cystats_admin_robots');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Pages','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Pages','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-pages', 'cystats_admin_pages');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Time','cystats')), htmlspecialchars(__('Time','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-time', 'cystats_admin_time');
   			add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Options','cystats')),htmlspecialchars(__('Options','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');
   		}
   	}
   }

5. If you want editors (as well as admins) to be able to view the stats, change the 8, 9 or 10 throughout the includes/admin.php file to the number of the user level your want (ie 7, 6 or 5 for editors).
6. If you only want the admin to be able to edit the CyStats options/settings (recommended), don’t change the final 8 (or 9 or 10). It looks like this:

   add_submenu_page(__FILE__, htmlspecialchars(__('CyStats: Options','cystats')),htmlspecialchars(__('Options','cystats')), 8, 'cystats-options', 'cystats_admin_options');

That’s it! No editing the database.

Note: You’ll probably need to make these changes again when you update the CyStats plugin, so this isn’t a perfect solution, but the CyStats plugin isn’t updated too often.

Enjoy.

Not to let grass grow under the feet, I’d like your thoughts and opinions on how the graphic design posts on the Blog can be improved.

To help get all your responses organized, I’ve put together a quick 4-question survey:

Graphic Design Posts In Review

Every Friday a new graphic design-related post is published here. Sometimes it’s an icon set, other times it’s showcasing fonts, a new graphic design service or tool. Other times, it’s a tutorial or an artist showcase.

Here’s just a few of our most popular graphic design posts:

1. Vintage, Retro and Art Deco Fonts
2. 10 Free Tshirt and Clothing Templates
3. Vintage, Retro and Art Deco Inspiration on Deviant Art
   
4. Retro Resources at Tack-O-Rama
5. Custom Packaging - Free Vector Templates
6. 12 + Mega Icon Sets For Designers
7. Install and Run Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux
8. Art Deco Inspiration: Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Help Us Improve–Take the Survey

Take a couple minutes and help us improve the Blog by taking the survey.

Also, if you’re interested in the web design posts here on the Blog, go ahead and take the web design survey as well.

Stay Informed–Subscribe and Follow Us

RSS Feed

First off, I want to thank all those who subscribe to the feed.

If you’ve found a blog post that you really enjoyed or found useful, and you aren’t already, you should subscribe to the Es Developed RSS feed.

You Should Follow Us on Twitter

I post more graphic design links and resources on my Twitter account than what makes it onto the Blog.

You should follow us on Twitter.

It’s hard to believe that the Es Developed Blog has been alive and breathing for nearly a year now. This week will see the 100th blog post published, and we’d like your feedback on how we can improve.

The Blog focuses on topics that are of interest to web and graphic designers.

To keep things balanced, each week I publish 2 articles: Monday–web design, and Friday–graphic design.

Over the last year, I’ve seen the number of subscribers to the RSS feed steadily grow. I want to thank all those who subscribe–you’re part of what keeps me motivated to post each week.

I want to continue providing information that you find interesting and useful, so I need your input.

What Topics Interests You?

Please take a minute and tell me what type of posts you’d like to see here on the Es Developed Blog.

Note: The survey will close at the end of Monday, Sept 13, 2009.

Are You Interested in Graphic Design?

If you’re here mostly for the graphic design articles, check back this Friday for the graphic design survey.

We all know how blogs and blog posts are “supposed” to look. However, here are 2 examples of blogs that have an identity crisis (in a good way), and look more like magazines.

Dustin Curtis

Dustin Curtis spends his days crafting UI’s and UX’s.

His site makes fantastic use of type and magazine-style layouts. Each post is carefully laid out and makes you think twice about what a webpage is supposed to look.

The homepage is a table of contents for the site’s blog and the entire site looks like you should be able to pick it up and flip to the next page. Each blog posts includes an ‘issue’ number.

As far as I can tell, the site is simply coded in XHTML; giving it limitless possibilities (layout-wise).

Example Posts:

Your Should Follow Me on Twitter

How to Hack Your Brains Part 1: Sleep

How Niko Tinbergen Reverse Engineered the Seagull

Create the Filter

Jason Santa Maria

Jason is a graphic designer whose site and blog he’s decribed as a bit of an experiment.

Each blog post has its own unique layout, typography style and color scheme. Even the site brand and navigation changes color and style on some posts. Yet each post is built on a grid and still feels like it belongs on the site.

Typography is obvious a focus on this site and yet isn’t in your face. It’s balanced with images and the layout of the page.

What’s impressive is that Jason’s site is actually running on a CMS–ExpressionEngine. Each post has its own template that allows it to have a different layout than other posts.

Example Posts:

The Death Throes of Print?

Hello, My Name Is

What the World Needs

Pretty Sketchy

The Sum-Up

While these 2 sites are certainly pretty, we can learn more than that from them.

These blogs show us what’s possible, both with static XHTML and a CMS like ExpressionEngine.

We see that we’re not limited to the boring header-content-sidebar-footer layouts that we often associate with weblogs.

As my Dad always said, “let that be a lesson to you,” that you can teach an old blog new tricks.

A couple months ago, I signed up for the UPrinting.com Blog Sponsorship Program. So far, it’s been a great experience and I’ve seen a noticeable increase in visitors to my blog.

What I like the most is that those who come back to the blog are able to be offered great discounts on UPrinting.com services and products.

Blog Sponsorship Program Benefits

If you run your own blog, there are several benefits to joining the UPrinting Blog Sponsorship Program:

1. Product Giveaways
   Receive products to giveaway on your blog–increase visitors to your site. Offer prizes, sweepstakes and even cash.
2. Get Discounts
   When UPrinting has specials and discounts, you’re the 1st to know.
3. Free Stuff
   Get free printed items to help you promote your blog and business.
4. Make Money
   Have the opportunity to display ads and links for UPrinting.com.

Why UPrinting.com isn’t your average printing company:

Blog Sponsorships:
If you are looking to find a sponsor for your blog, UPrinting.com is definitely interested. We offer giveaways, advertising and more for qualified bloggers.

Non-Profit Sponsorships:
The U-Community Program sponsors hundreds of non-profits and education to improve our local communities.

Social Justice Projects:
The UPrinting Kiva account promotes small business growth in developing countries.

Green Printing:
UPrinting supports a sustainable future by recycling, using non-toxic inks, and offering eco-friendly recycled paper stocks for business cards and postcard printing.

UPrinting.com’s services and products are great for any graphic designer who does even occasional print work. And if you run your own blog, the Blog Sponsorship program is a great way to drive visitors and traffic to your blog.

Stay Tuned For Discounts and Giveaways

In the coming weeks, we’ll be offering more UPrinting discounts and giveaways here at the Es Developed blog, so be sure to stop back in. Better yet, subscribe to our RSS feed.

A month or so ago, I stumbled across a post that led me to Posterous—a free online service that lets you post to your blogs and other sites by email.

Posterous also lets you autopost—posting to multiple sites/blogs with a single email.

Last month, I wrote a step-by-step tutorial about using Posterous and its autopost feature to post to WordPress (hosted and self-hosted), Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc.

This is extremely useful because WordPress’ built-in email posting system is very limited. Posterous makes it easy for people with a web-enabled cellphone or BlackBerry to post on the go. The autopost is great for anyone who wants to make posting the same information/photos to several sites a 1 step process.

More Tutorials and Features

Posterous also has a few more features and capabilities that’s been released since I wrote my original tutorial in January. These features make it even easier to control which sites you autopost to and control the information you can post to your blogs.

Official Posterous Tutorials and Features

The Official Posterous blog shows a simple way to select which blogs and sites to autopost to on the fly using the #url@posterous.com syntax.

It also explains how to assign WordPress categories to your posts with Posterous. For example, add your categories to the end of your Subject like so: ((tag: apple, gadgets))

Thanks to Posterous

I want to thank Posterous for making it simple for non-technical people and those with mobile devices to still post to their sites with as little effort as possible.

I also want to thank the guys at Posterous for linking to my earlier tutorial on their blog and newletters.

I look forward to seeing where Posterous will go in the near future. They seem to be adding new features about every other day lately:

• New Posterous Bookmarklet
• Password Protect Your Posterous Site
• Official Posterous Blog

It’s recommended that you save your work (if you’re in the middle of writing a post/page) a couple hours ahead of the scheduled maintenance time.

I recommend that you save everything you are working on at least two hours before the maintenance down time begins. If you “need” to blog something, write it up in a text editor or (at the very worst) a word processor and save it there until you can copy and paste or paste using the Word quicktag button in the Visual Text Editor.

Source:http://lorelle.wordpress.com

This will not affect self-hosted blogs—only blogs hosted on WordPress.com.

There is no downtime associated with the maintenance. It just involves some work that affects WordPress.com cookies. If you are logged into WordPress.com at the time, it will probably just log you out and you’ll have to log back in again.

According to the WordPress blog, you don’t have to backup your blog. Just make sure if you’re working on a post, back it up because you might get logged out before it can be auto-saved.

Official WordPress Blog Post

Jeff Chandler wrote a post on Web Blog Tools Collection yesterday called Do You Post By Email? In the post, he asked if anyone was actually using the post by email ability that WordPress has had since at least version 1.5.

From the comments on Jeff’s article, most people have not used it because it’s incredibly limited in what can be posted—no images, HTML, video or formatting. So basically, you can only post text.

Also, it’s of limited use since most people who have access to email also have access to a regular computer. Since the blog posts that can posted by email are only text, typing on your cellphone’s keyboard takes forever.

Post by Email With Posterous

However, a free online service called Posterous was also mentioned. This lets you post not only text, but also images, videos, etc by email.

Posterous also allows you to link to your Flickr account, WordPress blogs, Blogger, Movable Type, Typepad, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and more. This means not only can you post via email to those sites, you can post via email to ALL those sites simultaneously. No more making individual posts one by one to every site you have.

Benefits are pretty obvious for those with camera phones and a connection to the internet. Imagine being able to post directly from your phone or BlackBerry.

Posterous also gives you 1GB of space and a free blog on their site.

Posterous Tutorials

I couldn’t find any tutorials for Posterous, so let’s walk through:

• Posting via email with Posterous
• signing up for a Posterous account (optional)
• Linking your Flickr, WordPress, Facebook, etc accounts
• Posting to all account at once

Posting Via Email

This is seriously easy. It could not be simpler. Really.

1. Go to www.posterous.com
2. You don’t have to sign up for an account at this point, so click on Step 2: Email anything to post@posterous.com
   
   
   
3. Your email client will open with post@posterous.com as the recipient. If you use Gmail, Hotmail, etc, just log into your webmail account and create a new email addressed simply to post@posterous.com
   
4. Type your post as you want it. You can use HTML formatting in your posts and drag and drop photos, files or videos into your email. If you add more than 1 image, Posterous will create a simple gallery for you.

2 things to note at this point:

1. If the email address you are sending from attaches a signature, you will want to highlight and remove it or this will be included in your posts.
   
   Edit: If you don’t want to remove your signature by hand each time or are posting from an online service that adds a signature/ad at the end of your emails, type #end where you want your post to end and Posterous will ignore the rest. (Thanks, Alan)
2. Posterous will use the first name in your email address as your name on their site. Make sure the email address you’re sending from contains your name. If you sign up for an account with Posterous, you can change your profile later though, so it’s not really a big deal

After you’ve written your post and attached/added your files, send your email and you’re done!

Editing and Removing Posts

After you send in your post, Posterous will send you a link to your new blog on Posterous.

You also have the option to edit your post or delete it altogether.

You can set a password for your blog as well. This requires signing up for an account though, but it’s free. This also lets you to choose your own username and address for your Posterous account and allows you to link to your blog(s), Flickr, Facebook, etc.

While you don’t have to create a Posterous account to post by email to your Posterous blog, if you want to follow the rest of the tutorial, you will need to sign up for an account.

Signing Up For a Posterous Account

Now, let’s password-protect your new blog and sign up for a Posterous account.

1. In the email that Posterous sent you after your first post, click the link Click here to set a password for this site. This takes you to the Set a Password page.
   
2. Choose a name for your site (ex: yourblog.posterous.com) and a password and click Sign Up
   
3. You’re now at the Manage page where you can change your profile, set up more email addresses or mobile phones to post from, and set up your Autopost accounts.
   

Posting to Other Sites and Blogs With Autopost

Now, we can link other sites to your Posterous account and when you post to Posterous, all those other sites and services will be posted to as well.

Linking WordPress to Posterous

Let’s begin by linking our WordPress blog to Posterous

1. Choose Autopost to Everywhere in the sidebar on the right
   
2. You can now add an account to your Posterous account and link it
3. On the Autopost to Everywhere page, click Add a service
   
4. Let’s choose WordPress by clicking the More Blogs link
   
5. Go to your WordPress blog and make sure XML-RPC is enabled in your WordPress settings
6. Back in Posterous, type in your blog’s address and username/password
   
7. Click the Advanced options link. By default, Posterous adds in a blurb at the bottom of every post. If you want to remove it, just highlight and delete.
   
8. Click Save to complete

You will now see your WordPress blog listed in your linked services.

Link to Your Flickr Account

Now, let’s link a Flickr account to Posterous.

1. Click Add a service and choose Flickr from the next screen
2. Click Click here to authorize Posterous to access your Flickr account
   
3. This takes you to Flickr’s site to sign in and confirm giving access to Posterous
   
4. Click OK, I’ll Allow It and you’ll be returned to Posterous where you’ll see that it’s added to the Autopost to Everywhere page
   

Now you can follow the same basic steps to add more services and sites to Posterous if you want. All the sites that are linked to Posterous will be updated when you post to Posterous.

The neat thing is that when you write a post and send it to Posterous, the complete contents of your post get posted to WordPress, but only the photos will be added to your Flickr account. Neat, huh?

Our post is published to both Flickr and our WordPress site with a single email

WordPress note: The thumbnails and galleries Posterous generates are 500 pixels wide, so make sure that your theme has at least 500px in width in the post area. Otherwise, it may throw off your layout.

Hopefully WordPress will improve their posting by email system soon. It would be nice if something like this was included right in WordPress. I guess we’ll just have to wait. Until then, Posterous seems like a great solution for posting by email.

That’s right. The much anticipated update to WordPress-WordPress 2.7 (final release) is making its debut on WordPress.org after months of development, testing and anticipation! Hurray!

Before you go and upgrade, check your themes and plugins to make sure they’re ready for the newest version of WordPress first.

The dust is still settling on the WordPress website (I haven’t heard an official announcement from WP yet), and some links are still pointing to the 2.6 docs, so I thought I’d post the correct links to the 2.7 docs and guides.

Download WordPress 2.7

Is Your Theme Compatible?

There have been some changes to themes for WordPress 2.7-primarily in the code for comments. Do yourself a favor and check out the Migrating Plugins and Themes to 2.7 section if you’ve made your own theme or are heavily customizing an existing theme.

Also, check WP’s list of 2.7-compatible themes.

Are Your Plugins Compatible With WordPress 2.7?

It’s vital before making the jump to 2.7 that you make sure any plugins that you rely on have been updated and work bug-free on WordPress 2.7.

Check WP’s list of plugins that work with WordPress 2.7

Ready To Upgrade To 2.7?

If your theme and plugins all check out and you’re ready to upgrade to 2.7, take a look at WordPress’ Extended Upgrade Instructions.

I’m not making the leap myself for a couple week probably. There are still some plugins that I’m going to wait on be updated before I take on the upgrade.

What are your upgrade experiences? Let us know in the comments.

Previously, I wrote a brief post about BlogDesk, a Windows desktop app that lets you publish to your site without setting foot inside your blog/CMS’s admin section. BlogDesk works for WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, Movable Type and Serendipity.

Over the next 2 weeks, I’ll be showing you how to use BlogDesk to publish to WordPress and ExpressionEngine.

This week, in part 1, we’re going to look at setting up BlogDesk and publishing a post to WordPress 2.7 (beta 3).

BlogDesk Installation & WordPress Blog

1. First, make sure you have a WordPress blog set up and configured. Even though this tutorial uses WordPress 2.7, any version of WordPress 2.3 and up will work the same way.
2. Although not required, it would be good to set up some categories on your blog if you haven’t already
3. Next, download BlogDesk and install it on your computer (Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, Vista)

Set Up a Connection to Your Blog

1. Run BlogDesk and you will see the main application screen—this is where you will write, save and publish your posts. First, though, we have to set up the connection to your WordPress site.
   
2. Go to File>Manage Blogs
   
3. Click New to start the Blog Wizard. The Wizard will guide you through setting up the connection between BlogDesk and WordPress.
4. Enter the name of your blog on the next screen. Any name will do—it’s just to help you identify your site within BlogDesk.
   
5. On the next screen, you will enter the address of your blog. You don’t have to put http:// or a trailing /—BlogDesk will add them when you click Next if you leave them out.
   
6. Next, choose your blogging platform. In our case, we will choose the 1st WordPress option since the version is above 2.2.
   
7. BlogDesk will try to guess the location of your xmlrpc.php file. The default should be fine unless you’ve specifically changed your WordPress settings.
   
8. WordPress (2.6 and up) does not enable XML-RPC by default, so now is a good time to enable it if you have not already. You will need to log into your WordPress control panel and go to Settings>Writing. Under Remote Publishing, check the box next to Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols and save the settings.
   
9. Back in BlogDesk, click the Next button and enter your WordPress login information
   
10. The next screen is for your Blog-ID. This establishes a connection to your blog. If you’ve enabled XML-RPC in WordPress, click Get Blog-ID. You should get a success message. Click OK and go to the next screen.
    
11. If you have categories set up in WordPress already, the Get Categories button will import the list into BlogDesk. If you have not created any categories yet, you can always import your categories later.
    
12. The next screen tests to make sure you can upload images through WordPress (as opposed to using FTP). Test Upload will upload a small badge image. If this doesn’t work, you may have to set up an FTP connection instead later.
    
13. Click Next and then Finish to finish and exit the wizard.
    

Now BlogDesk is mostly set up. There are a few more things, however, we can check before we write our first post.

Check Blog Properties

1. In the Manage Blogs window, you will see your newly added blog. With the blog selected, click Properties.
2. The Blog tab lets you see your blog’s details. Make sure your Encoding matches what’s used on your site. For us, we’re going to keep it at UTF-8.
3. If you could not upload files directly (step 12 above), the FTP & Upload tab lets you add an FTP account. If you had no issues uploading the test image, don’t worry about this.
4. In the Categories tab, Get Categories From the Server will update the list of categories if you’ve added or deleted any categories in WordPress. If you want new posts to belong to one or more categories by default, tick the appropriate boxes.
5. In the Publish tab, tick the boxes next to the fields that you want to check for content when publishing posts (think required fields in forms)
   
6. If you selected UTF-8 encoding, make sure Encode Special Characters in HTML is unchecked
7. Click OK to save your settings and exit the Properties window
8. Click Close to close the Manage Blogs window

Now you should see your blog’s name and a list of categories in the upper right panel on the main program screen. Now let’s write a post for our blog.

Write a Post

The rest is pretty self-explanatory, but here are some quick tips:

• Use the main window to write your post
  
• To switch to HTML code editing, go to View>Source
• The Extras menu lets you add/edit tags and custom fields, password posts and edit program settings
• The Save button saves a draft of your post to your harddrive for later editing
  
• By default, the Publish button will publish your post automatically. If you want to just upload the post as a draft to WordPress, untick the checkbox next to Publish after Upload, in the right sidebar.
  
• You can see your brand new post if you log into WordPress. You can edit the post from the WordPress control panel after you publish it, just like any other post.
  

Editing WordPress Posts in BlogDesk

In BlogDesk, you can also edit posts that have already been published, whether or not they were written originally in BlogDesk.

1. In BlogDesk, go to File>Edit Posts Already Published (logical enough)
2. In the Edit Posts window, select the blog you want to edit from the drop-down menu at the top
3. Choose how many posts you want displayed, then click Show
4. Select the post you want to edit and click Edit
5. Once you have made your changes, clicking the Publish button will save the edited post back onto your site

Useful Tool

BlogDesk looks like a solid program for Windows users or for those who have clients that use Windows. With BlogDesk, you don’t have to give your clients access to WordPress or any other blog/CMS’s control panel.

This could be great for times when you need to write a post, but don’t have access to an internet connection. It can also be used to keep local backup copies of your posts.

More BlogDesk Tutorials

Read Part 2—BlogDesk: Publishing to ExpressionEngine.

If you’ve enjoyed this post or any other post on this site, stay up-to-date by subscribing to our feed.