I started filling in the Publications page. I structured it so that posts that I categorize as “Publications” are shown on that page rather than the main blog page. I managed to do that but forgot about the RSS feed. For this reason, yesterday some publication posts appeared in the RSS feed. Tonight, I searched for a way to exclude a category from the RSS and came across a solution in the Wordpress support pages. If you ever need to exclude a category from the RSS feed of your Wordpress blog, you can add the following code into your wp-rss2.php file:

1 if (empty($wp)) {
2    $cat = -11;
3    require_once('wp-config.php');
4    wp('feed=rss2');
5 }

The only part of the code that I had to add was the $cat = -11 part since the other part of the code was already there.

I also noticed that even the publication posts were not appearing on the main blog page, they were appearing on the sidebar where I use get_archives tag of Wordpress. Turns out that tag does not have an argument to exclude a certain category. I used the following code to exclude a category in sidebar recent posts section:

1 php $temp_query = $wp_query; query_posts('showposts=9&cat=-11'); ?>
2 php while (have_posts()) { the_post(); ?>
3 <li><a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to ??">php the_title(); ?>a>li>
4 php } $wp_query = $temp_query; ?>

As I said, I changed the blog into a website and let Wordpress manage it with its blogging and static pages capabilities. I was hunting for a design which would make the site uniform and I guess I settled on Nautica 05 template from Studio7Designs since there was a Wordpress theme based on that template. At the moment, I like how the site looks and I will concentrate on the content rather than the looks.

An important modification that had to be done to use Wordpress as a content management system was to be able to show a home page other than the main blog page. For this purpose, first, I set the blog url to be the root of my domain and kept the wordpress installation on the separate directory from the options page. Then, I found the Filosofo Home-Page Control plugin which enables setting any page to show as the home page. However, more important than that it let’s the user to set a virtual sub-directory for the blog entries. This way, I am able to separate static pages from the blog entries and I am able to keep my search engine rank since I can keep the same permalink structure.

Well, that is about it. Feel free to wander around the site as I am filling in more content.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, cms, filosofo home page control plugin, open source template, Studio7designs, nautica 05

[tags] housekeeping, wordpress, design[/tags]

I am going to be moving the website within my host. For this reason, the blog may not be accessible starting sometime tonight. I am hoping to be back up on Monday or Tuesday if all goes well. You won’t need to be changing anything when it comes back up. Wish me luck!

[tags]housekeeping [/tags]

My ultimate goal is to redesign the site and have a complete site with different sections and the blog. As soon as I am done with my area paper defense, I will start working on a design which will make my online presence more complete.

[tags]housekeeping[/tags]

EDIT: It is fixed now.

[tags] blog related, feedburner [/tags]

As I had to fix stuff, I went ahead and upgraded Wordpress to the recent stable release and changed the theme. The theme may not be the ultimate you will see for some time but it gave me a chance to play with the Sidebar Widgets plugin. I will keep changing the theme or the K2 styles I use frequently. So, don’t be surprised to see different layouts in your visits. That is, if anyone is frequently stopping at the site

[tags]maintanence, wordpress[/tags]

This is a temporary change actually. I have more ideas about the site design. I wanted to have a more professional website besides my blog which will feature my research projects, publications, etc. for some time now. I don’t think I will have the time to do that myself. I am on the look out for a website design that I could use. I honestly don’t know when this will happen though.

I have now moved my domain and blog to Dreamhost. I had signed up with them couple months back when there was a good deal and felt confident to move my domain there. The move was perfectly smooth and my blog was up and running in no time. So far, I am very happy with Dreamhost. Their panel is not the best looking but is usable and fast responding. I feel like the blog’s loading time is much faster now.

I recently discovered SimpleTags which is a WordPress plugin for generating Technorati Tags. All I have to do is to enclose the words with tag and that’s it.

technorati, tag