I know some Wordpress bloggers have had an issue with getting the Wordpress Spellchecker to work.I first encountered this gem when I upgraded to Wordpress 2.0 The only thing about it, it only worked in Firefox, not IE6. It would show the misspells, and show the list, but it wouldn’t replace the text. So I would write my posts and then close and go to FF and spell-check and publish.
I know you are saying why not just work in FF. Go figure. But that’s not the point.
When I upgraded this blog to 2.2 I got a full preview not a cramped pinched version that wasn’t wysiwyg. But the spellchecker stopped working all together. All I got was an error message about ajax.
You can see that on the Wordpress 2.2 upgrade post . I finally found a post by a young man with way too much time on his hands that posted on Wordpress that if you took the spell-check directory from an older version and replaced it with the current directory it would work.
I went back to my 2.1.3 version of wordpress and drilled down to this directory. Copied it and now the spellchecker works with IE and FF. It is great. When I upgraded to version 2.2.1 I intentionally overwrote the directory to see if this had been corrected. It wasn’t.
I copied the directory again, and once again I’m in business.
Here is the path to the directory to replace if you are having this issue.
- wp-include
- js
- tinymce
- plugins
- spellchecker
Replace the entire spellchecker directory and your spellchecker should work.
The Rich Text Editor
I know a lot of bloggers that hate the wordpress text/post editor and use other software to create their posts. I’ve struggled with it since I started blogging and have learned to live with its little land mines.
When version 2.2 came along and I had the preview turn into a full size screen with a link at the top of the editor I really fell in love with the wysiwyg editing of my posts. I can move text to just where I want it around images and format for readability.
Now that I have the spellchecker working, it is a lot more fun to create posts and get them ready for publication. I run the spellchecker then I hit the preview button and read it as it will appear on the page. There I catch the phrases and typos that are words but wrong.
Once I like the look of it. I publish.
It still cracks me up that it identifies blog, blogger, etc. as a misspelled word. Someone should fix this.
Any body feeling the effects of the Google Dance on the last update a few days ago? I’ve read about an update taking place on a couple of forums. Many seem to have noticed some big changes in their rankings for key search terms. Most were not happy with the new results.
I’ve noticed some brand new sites coming to the first page and to be honest after looking at their sites and doing some quick checking on pages indexed, keywords saturation, fresh content, I’m wondering where did they came from and how long will they be staying.
Has anyone noticed a change in their positions on Google in the last week, since, let’s say the 24th of June?
I would be interested in knowing if your position improved or degraded in the last week or so.
Today I took the plunge once again and upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress 2.2.1 here at the lab. I don’t know about you but these things make me nervous every time I do them. As you can see I’m giving roses for this mini upgrade, for all except the spellchecker.
There were a series of small fixes to behind the scenes issues as well as a couple of security upgrade issues in this release. You can read about those at Wordpress 2.2.1 Upgrade
This one was smooth and easy and I still found I had a bug with the spellchecker.
I’ll do a separate post on the Wordpress Spellchecker issue. There is a workaround. I really like it when it works.
I’ve got the other two main blogs I run which I need to upgrade. I’ve been putting that off but really need to do it. The full preview window makes it well worth the time and effort to upgrade.
For a complete look at the process read Wordpress 2.2 Upgrade for The Real Estate Blog Lab.
PS. I received the roses from my wonderful wife for the annual rite of passage on the 23rd. The roses don’t look this good now that’s why I take pictures. After the post on photo envy I figured what the heck, give Wordpress some roses.
I’ll admit it. I have a bad case of Photo envy. I try not to give into it, but even at night while I sleep, it is in my dreams, haunting me, taunting me with it colors, prospective, and composition. I don’t even need a computer to see it, This image is etched in my mind. I just can’t seem to help it. I haven’t sought professional help, yet.
I already know the what is causing it. More precisely I should say the who is causing it. She is T without the “h”. I’m drawn daily to see what new time and place has been captured; frozen by lens and chip. Composed by this phototog that is as snap happy a person I have ever encountered.
Back to the Image
Look at it. It should be on a calendar or the cover of an architectural digest.
A St Paul Treasure is what she called this one. There were others before and I’m sure there will be more to come. It is the nature of the thing I suppose.
I want to take pictures like this. I have 4 working digital cameras, one is even a new Nikon D40. None of my images look this rich. I have image editing software some that will even edit the raw files from the camera.
I found out from Teresa that she uses Photoshop Elements to touch up her photos. That same day I went out and bought Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 bundled with Adobe Premier Elements 3.0. I read the manuals, yes, you heard me I READ THE MANUALS! still my images pale compared to hers.
Then I realized, it isn’t the cameras or the software. It’s the subject matter itself. Here in the Southwest Desert everything is dirt or made to look like dirt.
- The houses are made with stucco painted to look like dirt.
- Slump block are made of dirt
- Adobe and Burnt adobe are made of dirt
- Saltillo tile are made from clay, a form of dirt
- Even the air is often filled with dirt making it hard to get a really good view of the mountains
So it turns out I’m taking pictures of dirt, dirt, and more dirt, things made to look like dirt and all of it fades because of the intense Southwestern Sun.
Sometimes I change the angle to get color of some kind, any kind except the look of pale faded colors and pale faded dirt.
Take this one for example. Nice color in that mesquite tree and the prefect time of year to get the new growth on the cactus with the slight purple tinge to it.
Many subdivisions have HOA color restrictions that make it so the only thing you are free to change is the color of toilet paper on the roll, but don’t let them know they overlooked this or that too could change.
I’m left to taking images of flowers, trees and as much blue sky as I can manage to put in a picture. Close ups with limited viewable dirt.
The other night I was getting the Scoop on Michigan Real Estate when I noticed Maureen had a new IM thingy (technical term) on her blog.
Plugoo isn’t a plug-in. It is a script that I put in a text box in the widgets setup screen once the Plugoo account was setup.
You can see it at the bottom of the navigation on the right side.
Plugoo Getting Started
Go to Plugoo.com and setup a user account. Now I know that usually is a no brainer and maybe I was exceptionally tired last night when I did this. Tired or not one thing I hate about Plugoo is the user interface. It is not intuitive at all.
I’ll try and make this process easier for those older than 7. Anyone younger just keeps clicking at the speed of light till something they recognize pops up.
Here is what I mean look at this screen capture of the right side of the Plugoo screen. If you have an account it is obvious where to register.
Step one says to create and activate an account. Where do you click to create an account?
What they don’t tell you. You have to already have an IM account and you pick one of the six IM logos and click on the arrow at the bottom.
Then you get to the create an account. Perfectly clear RIGHT!
Number 2 it somehow did on its own. I said yes that was it.
Number 3 again was quite the challenge. But I managed after several tries to get it to save, that is once I found the save buried in the details of the page.
The setup screen looks like this but there is no save button. I found out you can’t just get the default setting because you have to make a change to get the save button to even appear.
Since I was testing I didn’t care about fancy setup I just wanted to get the thing and see if it created errors or not; if it did, GOODBYE PLUGOO.
But, it didn’t create a single error; thus this post.
Once you have it setup copy the HTML code at the bottom and copy it where you want the plugoo window to appear. I created a new text box for the widget and copied the script code into it.
Plugoo Cool Stuff
One thing I think is really cool about Plugoo. If someone starts to type in the plugoo IM box and I’m not online, it opens a conversation in my MSN Instant messenger (which is never off on my computer) and I can type in the MSN window and it is sent to the blog Plugoo window.
I can put Plugoo on all the blogs and the websites and if someone starts a conversation I know it immediately. This is a great feature.
The little boxes in the upper right on the Plugoo window will let you detach the Plugoo window from the blog and open in it’s own window. It is possible for a user to detach the Plugoo window, close your blog and continue the conversation.
Plugoo Beta Caveats
Here are some things I wish they would change for the next upgrade.
- I have it set to the widest setting they have, I wish it would go wider for those blogs t hat have wide navigation. I like to be able to read more than just a couple of words per line.
- I don’t like the single line interface for user input when communicating with you.
- Put the save button on the setup screen and don’t be so cute with the programming to make it only visible when you save.
- Make the save button more prominent in a typical location not in the middle of the selection options.
- Explain the home page create account process for those that don’t know you have to have an existing service.
I honestly believe that more people would us Plugoo but they get frustrated trying to set up a user account or the Plugoo screen and they simply leave and move on.
In conclusion:
- It is at the bottom of my navigation because I’m only testing it on here for errors not functionality. I don’t expect anyone to ever find it down there.
- It will be difficult for a blog with a single navigation column to find a place for plugoo above the fold. Much easier on a blog with two column navigation one column for the post.
- No you can’t get your image to appear in the Plugoo window like it shows at the top of this post. I did that because we just had a new set of photos taken and it was a place I could see what a small version of one of them looked like. : )
Meebo have an easier process and setup. I like the look of the interface better. But it creates error and you have to remember to log in. Plugoo requires no log in. It will send messages to your existing IM account if you aren’t online in the blog.
Hopefully Plugoo will improve with the next version incorporating some of the nicer things from Meebo while maintaining code that is W3C compliant.
Overall, it gives you a means to communicate with people on your blog and you don’t have to deal with W3C validation errors.
We are taking a break today from the usual kind of post about technical aspects of real estate blogging to ask this quick question.
What are the most number of counter offers you have ever had to deal with in a single transaction?
Yep, the file folder is buldging at the seams. There will be no counter offer 11. No it didn’t finally become a deal.
I guess the question becomes; What is the most counter offers you every had to get an accepted deal and the most you had on a deal that didn’t go through?
Real Estate is a blast isn’t it.
I’m glad I spend most of my time:
- writing 4 blogs,
- taking photos,
- creating flyers,
- planting signs,
- creating single property sites,
- webmastering a couple of website.
A lot less paperwork.
Realtors sure do make a lot of money at this don’t they?
Have you seen this symbol on blog posts? It is usually located at the bottom of the post, but it can be put anywhere you want to display it, within reason of course.
This is from Alex King’s blog. It was about creating an icon for his share this plug-in.
There have been a lot of posts recommending social bookmarking to increase traffic to your site. Here are a couple of examples:
Mary at RSSpieces wrote a post Using Social Bookmarks to Promote your Blog
Jim Cronin said this about social bookmarking over at the Real Estate Tomato Blog
Social Bookmarking allows readers of you blog to ‘vote’ for your compelling articles to be ‘bookmarked’ on a social platform. In English: If someone submits your article to a social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us then a link to the article (permalink) will be sent to the bookmarking account that they have set up on del.icio.us. The more people that recognize the value of the article, and ‘vote’ for it by saving it to their online bookmarking account, the more popular the article becomes on the bookmarking site itself. The more popular it becomes, the more prevalent the article becomes to the users of the bookmarking site (like del.icio.us) and the greater chance it has to be read, and voted on. If an article that you write makes it to the top of a list on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us, you will have 10’s of 1000’s of readers in less than a day.
I started looking for a social bookmarking plug-in. It didn’t take long. There were a lot of them out there. Some with icons some with clickable links others with dropdowns. I found one I liked and put it up on the Tucson Real Estate blog and on the Lab. I thought I was set. Then I discovered the plug-in created more than 16 W3C Validation Errors.
If you’ve spent anytime reading this blog you know I hate code that won’t validate.
BTW, the new upgrade for Wordpress 2.2 causes a validation error associated with “id = links” I’ll have to look at that later.
I kept searching. I think I’ve tried 5 or 6 different plug-ins and all of them created errors.
I gave up until I read about share this the other day. It has been awhile since I had tried one and Alex King, well that’s a name you remember in the Wordpress community.
- I downloaded the plug-in.
- Uploaded it.
- Activated it.
That was all I had to do, No code to place in the loop, unless I wanted to, and it worked perfectly.
The next step was testing it for validation. It worked perfectly. For one reason, it takes you off site to do the work. Once I’m on that page it references the post you want to bookmark and provides a list of places for you to apply the bookmark.
It is simple, no coding, and no W3C validation errors.
For now this is my social bookmark plug-in of choice.
Please Feel free to share this. The icon should be right below these words and above the guy in the red shirt.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
