I’ve noticed that when the SMS message widget is activated the footer message does not show. I like having the footer message displaying as it makes my site look professional - more professional than a widget that will hardly get used and in all honesty looks a bit odd. Below is a screen shot of the SMS Widget when in the side bar. The image also shows that the footer message is not displaying as it should:

Therefore I deactivated the widget in favour of having footer message - for the time being anyway. I am going to ask Mez on Friday for some advice on how to get my flash tag cloud and random youtube video plugins activated and working as they should. Once these have been added I think my site will be just about complete, to a standard I am happy with. It’s starting to feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel…

I’ve been busy adding a few new bits and pieces to my site, in order to not only prove my FTP capabilities but I also thought my site needed beefing up as it looked a little bare. 

Firstly I have added an SMS Text message widget to my sidebar which I downloaded from the wordpress.org plugin directory. The SMS Text Message is a plugin for WordPress to allow blog owners to update their readership via SMS.

A user comes to a site and wishes to be updated (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) via SMS Text Messaging. The user enters their 10 digit phone number on a sidebar widget. The number is then added to a database.  Then every so often, the site admin can send an update via text about what is new on the site etc.

 I then thought it would be fun to add a youtube video widget to my sidebar which I could use to show my favourite music videos, goals and other stuff I find interesting. I therefore installed a Youtube video plugin so that I can display a small YouTube video in my sidebar. Once it was installed I went to the configure options in presentation/widgets and just entered the URL of the video (not the embed code), and it’ll show in the sidebar. I have the option to change the width and height, and make it autoplay or not. The video I am currently showing is Fight Music by D12 - an absolute Hip Hop classic!

I also installed another youtube video plugin which apparently shows different random videos that I’ve selected everytime you load a different page, which sounds much better than the one that I am currently using. However this proved rather complicated and I am going to ask Mez how to get this working, along with my cumulus rotating tag cloud, in Friday’s final surgery session. Keep watching this space…

Last night I was searching the wordpress.org site for new plugins and widgets to add to my site. I found and uploaded several new plugins using the FTP file manager in dreamweaver. However, after a good 2 hour session diong this, upon uploading and activating a widget which displays the latest products available on amazon, my whole site crashed and stopped working, which with the deadline fast approaching would have been and absolute nightmare.

Fear not though people, with my vastly/marginally improved multimedia skills I managed to avert a crisis. I firstly tried contacting my server administrators Ridgeon-net as my initial thought was that it was a problem their end. However the next morning I received an email saying their server was running fine, which really panicked me as I thought I really had somehow managed to break my site.

However I had a brainwaive and thought if I had uploaded a plugin which was causing a problem, then it had to be one of the most recent ones I have added. I then thought if my site worked before I uploaded the broken plugin then possibly all I needed to do was remove it from the remote server part of the FTP file manager in dreamweaver, which in effect would put my site back as it was before the plugin was installed.

 I went back into dreamweaver and removed the Amazon plugin, along with the previous weather plugin I installed just before, which also didn’t work properly. I went back online to check if my site was displaying properly again, and to my delight I was working good as new. This goes to show that I am actually starting to learn and understand how the FTP file manager works and how what you install and remove affects your site, which is pleasing. Although the whole ordeal gave me a major headache and a sleepless night, I suppose these sort of problems are all part of the learning curve and probably helps multimedia idiots like me build up and improve my knowledge and skills

I had a brainwave about how to make my flash slide show sidebar widget display the images at the right dimensions and therefore displays without cutting the photograph subjects heads off. I went into photoshop and resized a blank canvas to get the correct dimensions for the slideshow to correctly display the rotating images. I worked out that for the slideshow to fully display the images at the correct dimensions and proportions, it would need to be sized at 170 (width) x 240 (height) pixels.

I then went into the dashboard, then into presentation and widgets. Finally I configured the slidgshow sidebar widget in order for it to display at the above size. This produced the desired result and the slideshow in the flash sidebar widet is now displaying the images at the correct size and proportion.

P.S. I also removed the gallery widget from the sidebar as I found this rather annoying. I didn’t look as good as correctly sized slideshow widget and it did not add anything of use for the viewer, who can not only view the sidebar slideshow but also the full gallery which can be located in the navigation bar at the tom - A gallery widget is totally unnecessary.

Although I have managed to get my flash gallery up and working, I have had a few minor problems with getting the newGEN plugin and side bar widget to display exactly as I would like. Firstly I have been trying for ages to configure my new gallery page to display two albums that display the two galleries I have created - I have made one album for my When I Grow Up project and also another Album for my Defining Thoughts Work. However despite endless fiddling about my gallery only displays the latest work that I have added, under the title of “Gallery”.

Also, the thumbnails and also the flash slide show of When I Grow Up project is displayed in Landscape, therefore decapitating the subjects of portrait photographs. I tried to configure the thumbnail settings but all this achieved was to distort the images. Whilst they display fine at full size this is one thing that is really annoying me so I will have to get this sorted out.

As well as accessing my gallery at the top navigation bar on my website, I have also activated the flash gallery sidebar widget that came with the plugin. This means that you can now view my NewGEN flash gallery on my sidebar. Woop Woop!

I activated my google widget, which is meant to search my site i.e. type in video and it should find my videos I uploaded. However this did not happen. Instead it took you to this screen:

I therefore decided to remove this widget as it is only taking up unnecessary space on my already buldging sidebar.

Do you know what, I might just be getting the hang of the ftp blogging thing malarky. I’ve just downloaded another really useful widget pack from the web page http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets/ once this is added to your site you can upload and activate numerous new widgets including Del.icio.us and google widgets. I am going to check out the google widget in a few minutes.

I love it that I finally know what I’m doing!!!

After over an hour fiddling about I have finally managed to download the flickr widget, then install it onto my wordpress blog using the ftp management in Dreamweaver. This seemed to work ok, but for some reason my blog is not displaying my photos. I don’t know why this is so I will have to try and work this out over the next few days. In the mean time I am going to strike while the iron is hot and start planning the essays that we have to write as part of this module…