Site Update – WordPress 2.7, new theme, widgets support

So, it’s taken a while to get around to it, but I’m back on the blog again! There’s been a couple of updates, including upgrading to WordPress 2.7, changing my theme, and adding widgets support to the sidebar. There’s still a few things that need tidying up such as the colour scheme for the Google Ads, and I’m not sure if I’ll keep the link colours 🙂

One of the changes brought about by the addition of widget support is the RSS feeds in the sidebar. These are originally sourced from Google Reader which can republish them as Atom feeds. However the MagpieRSS feed reading code built into WordPress can’t deal with the fact that the news item source data in the feed also includes title and link elements, so it ends up combining these with the title and link elements for the actual entry, messing up the feed entries in the sidebar. I came across a workaround in the WordPress support forum – pass the feeds through Feedburner and use the Convert Format Burner option to turn it into an RSS 2.0 feed. The RSS parser in WordPress deals with those feeds fine, and I’m using the KB Advanced RSS Widget to take a little more control over how the feed is displayed compared to the standard RSS widget.

As for WordPress 2.7, I really like the new Dashboard, and especially the features for installing plugins directly instead of having to upload them manually. I think I’ll have to look at upgrading My Halo News.com and Our Adventures too now 🙂

I’m hoping that this might mark the start of more regular blogging, as there’s lots to say – just maybe not enough time to say it. Let’s see how long it takes till the next post!