Wildburro’s Blog

Last Update: Feb 07 (all about moving to WP V2.1 with its added widget fun) 

Wild Burro, eh?What’s with this Wild Burro stuff, you ask. Well, I answer, come with me. Through here. Past the discarded giant seed pods and the spent fuel rods (don’t ask) and come into our kitchen. Pop the kettle on and have a look out of the window at the reason I’m writing this blog.

We have a long, narrow garden that faces the cold, cold north of Preston in Lancashireand for many a long year I’ve gazed out of the kitchen window and dreamt of going back to my hunter-gather roots (sans hunter, like the good little vegetarian I am) and re-growing veg. I say re-growing as the house was my Gran’s and both she and my Granddad grew veg and fruit here years ago. Exactly what I can’t remember, my memories are vague. Many of my memories are vague. I blame cheap beef when I was at University. And sunspots.I blame a lot on sunspots as you’ll find out.

Years have come and gone with no sign of me digging, planting or harvesting anything at all – any flowers, shrubs and other ‘growing things’ have been down to the mistress of the house and I imagined this would always be the case until earlier in 2005 when, after years of talking about it, we decided to finally get around to building an extension that would take up a section of our back garden. This meant that I’d would need to move the huge shed that squatted next to the house and that, in turn, meant that I’d have to do some serious fencing and landscaping to the rear of the garden to accommodate it. Phew. All this led me to suddenly declare to the mistress that I was “thinking of growing some vegetables”. Oh, and “keeping chickens”.

As all of it is now on hold – the builder can’t start until next March (that’s be March 2006 for you future folk), the veggies won’t be sown until next spring and I wouldn’t want to bring any chooks into the garden until all the work was done – I decided that the only route left open to me was to blog the whole affair. Here I am, here you are, here we are together.

(Edit from July 2006: The builder started in January 2006 and finished by mid-April leaving behind so much work for me and the mistress that the veggies have been pushed back to late 2006/early 2007. The chooks are on hold due to bird flu fears- I don’t want to get them only for DEFRA to come in a gas them 3 months later. The whole extension process can be seen in Wild Burro Gallery).

(Edit from Feb 2007: Decorating the inside of the extension is taking up a lot of our time so the veggies have been pushed back again, although I have some limited plans for 2007. The bird flu is still a threatso the chooks are still on hold).

So, look out of that window with the mistress and watch me pop my back creating my own little piece of self-sufficient heaven. Has that kettle boiled yet? Tea, milk no sugar thanks.

Head Burro.
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What? You want more? You want to know about the software I use and the plugins (and now widgets, folks!) I keep bleating about? Jeez! Ok, Ok. Here’s the…

Colophon

Host:I’m currently with Hosting Unlimitedafter a change from Powersoft Hosting (the Great Host Move of 2006 – tremble at its name!). PH were very good but I needed to add more MySQL databases and their charges were a little steep. HU are cheaper (around £20 per year) and offer more databases (5 instead of 1). The setup process was fast and painless and they have always answered my support emails quickly.

Blog software:I use the free, easy and brilliant WordPress. Use it or install it. I did the latter and, as of Jan 07, use V2.1which has great plugin support and great widgets

Photo software: I now use Gallery 2 after upgrading from V1 in the Great Host Move of 2006. It is excellent. As off Jan 07, I also use a Flickr Pro account. This simply because I had all but filled my webspace up and buying my own Flickr Pro account made more financial sense. I’d still rather use Gallery for all my shots

Diary software: In the same Great Host Move of 2006, I also added WebCalendar to act as my online planting diary. Nice easy install and it seems to work fine – let’s see if I use it. As of Feb 2007, I haven’t.

Blog skin: The look of a WordPress powered blog can easily be changed and the theme I’m currently using is called Urban Giraffe 2 and is very nice.

Plugins & Widgets: One of the wonderful things about WordPress is the ability to extend its functions with little plug-in extras. I like to tinker so I’ve added quite a few so far (to find out which plugins work with WordPress V2, check out the codex ‘A to Z’ list’ ):

• Google Sitemap Generator: I don’t pretend to understand this plugin, but I hear it makes the site easier for Google’s little webbots to find and search (from Arne Brachhold). WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Customizable Comment Listings: This widget (thanks to Scott) allows you display comments and the like in the menu/navbar area. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Customizable Posts Listings: This widget (thanks to Scott) allows you display the last few posts in the menu/navbar area. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Reorder Categories: Thanks to Dave, theis plugin lets you can order your categories as you like. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Did You Pass Math?: A great, simple little plugin that adds a math question box to the comment posting process – this way spambots (bastards!) are stopped whilst human beans can post (provided they can add 10 & 6). Thanks to Steven Herod for the “Did You Pass Math?” plugin. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Spam Garden: A fun use for spam comments. Thanks to Net Lash. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Google AdSense Widget: Can’t remember right now where this came from, but it allows me to display my google ads. Please click them to help me pay for this site.
• Where Did They Go From Here: This plugin displays posts also viewed by readers at the bottom of each post. Cheers to Mark Ghosh. WP V2.1 status: Working.

Ex-Plugins & Widgets: The one’s I liked but don’t use anymore (and why):

• Fetch RSS: Put all your RSS feeds into a dedicated page (check it out here [sorry, it's currently disabled]) thanks (again) to Owen at RedAlt. Stopped as I wasn’t using it as much as I thought – I may restart at any time WP V2.1 status: Unknown.
• Counterize: This is a smart little plugin that produces some nice stats on visitors (from Anders Drengen). Stopped because it seems to prevent DB Manager (above) restoring, and out of the two a working database backup is more important to me. WP V2.1 status: Unknown.
• Twilight Autosave: Saves posts so they won?t be lost if the connection is lost (from Twilight Universe). Stopped because WordPress V2.1 does this automatically now. WP V2 status: Unknown.
• Spelling Checker: No more C&Ping into and out of Word! Thanks ColdForged! Stopped because WordPress V2.1 does this now. WP V2 status: Unknown.
• Mass Delete: This little gem (from Chris J Davis) helps manage, delete and recover ’spammed’ comments. Stopped because my “Did You Pass Math?” plugin stops spam. WP V2.1 status: Unknown.
• DB Manager: From the house of Binslashbash, Joe’s excellent plugin allows easy blog database backup/restore. Stopped because I can do this with the MyPHP web-interface-thingy. WP V2.1 status: Unknown.
• Bread Crumb Trail: If you look above the search box over to the right, you’ll see a clickable breadcrumb trail – it’s from Jixorand it’s pretty easy to set up (but it’s not the lite version). Stopped because I didn’t use it. WP V2.1 status: Unknown.
• Re-Direct Old Slugs: Unfortunately not something to send the little spud-munching buggers of our gardening nightmares to a garden far, far away. Still, this great plugin from Mark at Tempus Fugit keep your post slugs in order if you change a post title. Stopped as it broke in WordPress V2.1. WP V2.1 status: Not Working.
• Bad Behaviour 2: A great, simple-to-use-but-powerful plugin that blocks spam intrusions – it’s stopped over 60 in the first 12 hours of use here! Stopped because my “Did You Pass Math?” plugin stops spam. Thanks to The Office of Homeland Stupidity for the plugin. WP V2.1 status: Working.
• Links Page: Put all your links into a dedicated page (check it out here) thanks to Owen at RedAlt. Stopped as I didn’t use it and it broke in WordPress V2.1. WP V2.1 status: Not working.
• About Me… Widget: This displays a photo and some text and links about moi. It doesn’t seem to like IE much. From Sam Devol. Stopped using it as it was too messy and not really me.

Bert, The Wild Burro Cyber-Paddock Pet Hamster: You can adpot a pet, too (although not Bert – he’s mine!). Just ask the Bunny Hero how. See Bert in action here and feed him a strawberry with the MORE tab.