The Scrolls

Posts Tagged ‘plugins’

4 Ways to Protest SOPA on your WordPress Blog

Blackout your blog.

The list of plug-ins that will blackout your blog for the day and automatically return it to normal is none-too-short. I installed the SOPA Blackout Plugin to display a splash page for my visitors on the 18th. The settings allow me to decide if I want visitors to be able to view the site at all — and I do. Simple Stop SOPA will take your site offline between the ours of 8AM and 8PM on the 18th.

Redirect your blog.

If you don’t mind losing hits and possibly confusing or frustrating your visitors, consider the Stop SOPA and PIPA Plugin to redirect your visitors to the official Stop SOPA website where they can cast a vote.

Display a ribbon.

Perhaps the least obtrusive plug-in, the Stop SOPA Ribon simply displays a diagonal banner on the top corner of your blog. If you can’t afford to take your website down because of business/advertisement/financial obligations, this is the one for you. Your readers can click the ribbon to go to the American Censorship site to learn more about why SOPA sucks.

Put up a widget.

Have a little room in your sidebar or widget? Host a widget that helps to increase awareness about SOPA for the day of January 18th.

Did you know?

I just thought I’d make a neighbourhood PSA (that’s public service announcement for those of you not “in the know”) that you no longer need any workarounds to access Hotmail e-mail from the client of your choice. For a long time I’d been using Hotmail Popper (free free version), until Hotmail recently changed how things work and it stopped working. From there, I switched to the Webmail/Hotmail plugins for Thunderbird which worked well for some time – until it stopped working for both of my Hotmail accounts. While trying to find a remedy for that situation, I discovered that you don’t even need a plugin because Hotmail actually does offer POP3 support – even though they keep telling me otherwise via annoying little announcements in my inbox.

Really, though, this is a good thing for a lot of people because Hotmail is such a popular provider. I just wish they hadn’t gone about it so “sneakily” so that people could actually know about it, you know?

Here’s how:

• POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
• POP SSL required? Yes )This means check SSL on Thunderbird)
• User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
• Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
• SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25) {Note: If port 25 has been blocked in your network or by your ISP, you can set SMTP port to 587 with TLS or SSL Encryption depending on the client in use}
• Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
• TLS/SSL required? Yes

How can I disable WP’s fucking autop filter?!

With one catch – only on certain pages. I’ve found two plugins that seem ideal but, WordPress it having none of it. I finally installed TinyMCE Advanced which shows, as suspected, WordPress is adding p tags in places they should not be. Actually, that would be /p tags. All I want to do is add some nice br tags but wordpress keeps switching them (or adding) damned /p tags without even adding the opening p tags.

I would gladly give up my first born to a person who has a plugin which actually disables autop. I honestly didn’t think I could be anymore frustrated than I have been this past day. Fuck you WordPress.

Edited to Add:

I can get my pages to validate if I manually add p tags to balance WP’s /p tags (even though that is not the tag I want there) or if I code a page in Textpad and copy it in as one long line. Unfortunately, after saving, WordPress splits my code so paragraphs and line breaks are on a new line so I have to copy it back into Textpad, change it to one continuous line and then add any changes because I cannot change it on the edit page without it fucking up.

Forms Fixed

For whatever reason, my form plugin had stopped working so I had to reinstall it. Forms on the Error, Contact and Pop3 pages under Site are all working now.

Plugins

So anyway, if someone is going t’use something like shockwave on their site they should say so somewhere. B/c for the longest time this has not been installed on m’comp, for reasons unbeknownst t’me.