Asian Tiger

I received an email from a reader named Susan. This is how it goes:

Dear Amos,
I have recently upgraded my personal blog from WordPress 1.2 to 2.0 instead of taking it to version 1.5. Kind of daring if I may add. Anyway, I realised that when I use the upload function in WordPress2, I noticed that the images were not published in full but rather in the form of thumbnails (sic). What can I do?

Thanks,
Susan.

Well Susan, WordPress2′s image upload function’s limitation has been brought up in forums around the world particularly by members who have been using WordPress for a long time such as yourself. However, there exists a popular image plugin called the IImage Browser that is partly compatible with WordPress2. The plugin is able to work in WP2, however, you will need to turn off your WYSIWYG function. Maybe it’s a small price to pay for a great plugin such as IImage Browser.

And finally, nope, I did not spell IImage wrongly.

To all my dear readers: Happy New Year!! May the year 2006 bring you good fortune and success.

In conjuction with the new year, I have added a favicon to my blog. If you do not know what a favicon is; it is the little picture beside the URL of this blog. Here’s a screenshot of AmosWong.com’s favicon (in red circle):

Some say that having a favicon is like putting on cosmetics. This is only partly true. More importantly, having a favicon on your blog allows the visitors to quickly identify your site in their Favorite folder among the other bookmarked site. Take a look at the example below:

If you do not have a favicon currently and you are interested to, here’s how to can do it.

1. First, you will need an image. Any image will do provided that it is royalty-free and not copyrighted (meaning, you cannot use Coca-Cola’s corporate logo as you favicon).
2. Go to Chami.com’s Favicon Tool page.
3. Upload you image by clicking the “Browse” button and click “Generate Favicon”
4. After Chami’s tool completed the generation, you will be presented with the link to download you favicon. Click the download link and save the favicon on your computer. (You can also test your favicon by clicking on the “Test in Browser”
5. Unzip the contents you have just downloaded and upload the favicon to your webhost (“public_html” folder, for most of you).
6. You will now need to edit your header.php of your wordpress blog. Depending on the theme you use, locate the header.php folder and edit the file by adding the following code:
   

   

7. Save your header.php file
8. Hard refresh your browser by pressing the Ctrl+F5 keys. You should now be able to see your favicon next to your URL.

Note: If you wish to change your favicon, simply replace the .ico file with another. Enjoy.

Boy, am I sick of testing wordpress plugins one by one (Don’t mind my facial expression). During my 12-hours of testing, some worked and some did not. It’s particularly frustrating that some of my favorite plugins do not work; e.g. the famous Automatic Meta & Technorati Tags plugin. My WordPress is now littered with numerous plugins in both activated and deactivated form.

I hear some hysterical laughs behind my back right now because everyone knows that the Internet is your best friend as well as a source of wealthy information. A search and filter on Google revealed a list of compatible WordPress plugins for the highly anticipated Version 2. I would like to share this list with all WordPress 2 users to spare them from tedious testing. Here it is:
http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Matt/2.0_Plugin_Compatibility

If you have other known lists of plugins compatible with WordPress2, do post it here.