When you first install WordPress, the opening page it displays is called the _Dashboard_. Unfortunately, this page is pretty useless. In fact, it’s worse than useless, since it loads a bunch of RSS feeds from some seemingly random WordPress-power blogs (which can take quite a while). My original “fix” for this page was to never use it.

Fortunately, the folks over at the “Simple Thoughts”:1 blog hacked a fix for the Dashboard. The fixed Dashboard is actually useful giving you a list of your draft posts, recent posts, number of post and comments and some other stuff.

You can read all about the Dashboard hack “here”:2. Once again, I’ve updated the “_WordPress Customization_”:3 static page (also linked to in the sidebar) to include notes on this hack.

[1(Simple Thoughts blog homepage)]http://blog.taragana.com/
[3(Zoinger's WordPress Customization static page)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/wordpress-customization/
[2(Dashboard hack page)]http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-15-hack-how-to-trim-the-fat-resource-hogging-dashboard-in-admin/

You can now access a mobile-ready version the Zoinger blog “here”:2! In addition, WordPress now auto-detects various mobile browsers and automajically displays the mobile version for those browsers.

Enabling a mobile edition of WordPress is easy… all you have to do is install a “plugin”:1 called _WordPress Mobile Edition_. After that, the plugin pretty much does the rest.

I did encountering a bug with the plugin when I initially installed it. It worked fine except it was bouncing mobile browsers up one level in the file structure, so I was getting a @file not found@ error. That is, the plugin was sending mobile browsers to @www.zoinger.com/wp-mobile.php@ instead of @www.zoinger.com/words/wp-mobile.php@. To fix this, I hacked this line in the @wp-mobile.plugin.php@ file:

bq.. @$URL = $siteurl.’wp-mobile.php?’;@

changed to

@$URL = $siteurl.’../words/wp-mobile.php?’;@

p. I’ve updated the “_WordPress Customization_”:3 static page (also linked to in the sidebar) to include notes on this plugin.

Mo.bil.icio.us!

[2(Mobile version of Zoinger blog)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/wp-mobile.php
[1(WordPress mobile plugin)]http://www.alexking.org/blog/2005/01/12/wordpress-mobile-edition-17/
[3(Zoinger's WordPress Customization static page)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/wordpress-customization/

I’ve created a couple of new static pages detailing how I’ve customized Firefox and WordPress: “_Firefox Customization_”:1 and “_WordPress Customization_”:2. Static pages, as opposed to post(s), seem like a better place to organize this information. It will be easier to find information related to each software application, and will all be in one place.

The goal is to detail the plugins, themes and extensions I’ve used to customize Firefox and WordPress. I’ve also included a link to the theme that I am using for this site.

These pages are in _alpha_ state, so some of the information is somewhat dated (I grabbed some of it off old posts). I’ll try to make the pages current in the next few days… or so.

Enjoy!

[1(Zoinger static page on Firefox customization)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/firefox-customization/

[2(Zoinger static page on WordPress customization)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/wordpress-customization/

As I’ve ranted about in the “past”:1, the utility of blog categories quickly diminishes as the number of posts increases. That is, categories are designed to help users find post(s) on a particular subject. However, when there are 40 gillion posts in each category, you can’t find anything, but you can find _everything_… not that useful.

“Tagging”:2 would be a great alternative to categories. However, I have looked all over the web for a WordPress plugin that would enable the use of tags. I found lots of hacked-together software that for the most part was in “alpha” — stuff you really didn’t want to use on a production site. I also found lots of cool plugins to display recent del.icio.us additions, and I may end up using one or more of these (but these plugins don’t enable tagging in WordPress).

What I really want is a WordPress plugin that would automagically sync tags for each WordPress post with an account on del.icio.us. This plugin would add some UI elements to the posting interface in WordPress so you could enter the appropriate tags for the post. The syncing part would probably get tricky, but overall it shouldn’t be that hard to hack. Alas, no such plugin exists as far as I can tell.

So, as a poor person’s solution, I created a del.icio.us “account”:3 (@del.icio.us/ZoingerPosts@), and _manually_ tagged all of my posts. This solution is fairly brittle, since it relies on me to make sure everything is synced between my blog and @del.icio.us/ZoingerPosts@.

I also added a link to @del.icio.us/ZoingerPosts@ to the sidebar. Check it out, and let me know what you think. I’ve found it to be useful already (I used it to find my original rant on blogging categories linked to above).

P.S. It’s really hard to type _del.icio.us_ quickly… but I am getting better at it.

_*Update: 2005_04_22*_
Another nice feature of a WordPress Del.icio.us integration plugin would be to have it search your post for any links and have it bookmark those links to Del.icio.us tagged with a unique post ID tag (like the _post slug_ — a unique name that WordPress munges out of the post name) that WordPress automatically generates. It’s be nice to link to a page listing all the bookmarks for a particular post.

[1(Zoinger post on useless blog categories)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/archives/2005/04/14/i-want-tags-not-categories-gimme-some-folksonomy/

[2(Wikipedia entry on tagging)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

[3(Tagged Zoinger post archive on Del.icio.us)]http://del.icio.us/ZoingerPosts

h2. For Immediate Release

_Zoinger Takes on Traditional Broadcast Networks_

Planet Earth — 2005.4.18 — Zoinger, the world’s most obscure blog, today launched the new Zoinger Network.

Located in the newly-redesigned sidebar, Zoinger has placed convenient links to all Zoinger Network affiliated sites. Completely lacking in any content, these network sites will leverage the power of the Zoinger brand to bring RSS links, digital imaging and bookmarks to the zoingerrati.

Zoinger Chief Bigwig in charge of nothing DanoSchmano notes, “By leveraging the power of the globalhypermeganet and remaining focused with laser-like precision on our core competencies, we plan on reintermediating the disintermediation of the late 90’s to re-empower the unempowered wired and wireless masses while doing _just a little evil_ as stated in our recent _State of Our Mission Statement_ statement.”

More disinformation on the reintermediation can be found at http://www.zoinger.com.