One of the things I like to do — but don’t get a chance to do very often these days — is talk to podcasters and other media people about the projects I’ve worked on.

Earlier this month, I got a chance to do just that with Chuck Joiner, the host of the MacVoices podcast. For the first time ever, Chuck did a double interview, killing two birds with one stone as he spoke to author Scott McNulty and I about WordPress. During the Interview, we talked about our separate WordPress-related projects and how they might be used together to help someone learn the ins and outs of using WordPress.

Here’s the blurb on the MacVoices Web site:

Thinking of starting a blog with WordPress? Maria Langer, the author of Self-Hosting a WordPress Site and WordPress.Com 2.7 Essential Training on Lynda.com and Scott McNulty, the author of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, share some tips from their respective projects to help you make the right choices. Maria and Scott talk about deciding on using WordPress.com or selecting your own host, one-click vs. user installs, why permalink structure is one of the first things you should think about, and finding and customizing a theme for your blog and more. Backup options, favorite plug-ins and why their video and book compliment each other are discussed.

If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can download it directly from its page on the MacVoices Web site.

WordPress 2.7.1 has been released. This is a maintenance release and is recommended for all self-hosted WordPress users.

WordPress 2.7 users can use the automatic upgrade feature by visiting the Upgrade WordPress administration panel for their blog (Tools > Upgrade). As usual, you should back up your WordPress database before upgrading.

You can learn more on the WordPress 2.7.1 page on WordPress.org.

Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

• TUAW Macworld 2009 Keynote Predictions - What the folks at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) think might happen at next week's Macworld Expo keynote.
• Apple market share tops 10%, Windows share lowest since tracking began - Interesting stats about computer platform distribution among users. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• 10 Resources for When You Need Help with CSS - A list of resources, with screenshots and links, for CSS information. Great for beginners. On Vandelay Website Design.
• 10 Killer WordPress Hacks - Excellent list with instructions and reference links to WordPress hacks for self-hosted WordPress users. On Smashing Magazine.
• FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter - If you follow me in Twitter but I don't follow you back, it could be for one of these reasons. On Mashable.com.
• How not to build a website - finding a website developer - Extremely good advice here. Thanks to @Jen4Web on Twitter for sharing the link. On WomenEntrepreneur.com.
• Macworld 2009 keynote liveblog - Mike T. Rose treats us to a live blog of the Keynote. Here's the final list of updates. Thanks tons, @MikeTRose! On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• The Twitter Applications Database - ANOTHER compilation of Twitter applications.
• Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard - Even some Mac users have to admit that this is pretty funny. On The Onion.
• Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs - The rumors of his impending death are greatly exaggerated. Again. On Apple.com.
• Twitter Yourself a Job - Tips from the Wall Street Journal for using Twitter as part of a job hunt strategy.
• Twitter be Nimble, Twitter be Quick, if you don’t know Jack, try these Twitter Tricks - A great introduction to Twitter for new users and power user wannbes. On TwiTip.com.
• WordPress Discussion Management: Enable or Disable Comments and Pingbacks via SQL - Great post that explains how to use MySQL commands to enable or disable comments and pingbacks. Also explains how you can periodically turn off comments and pingbacks on all posts based on date.
• Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7 - Great tutorial for WordPress 2.7 users, explaining how to separate pingbacks/trackbacks and comments in the comments area of a blog post. On Sivel.net.
• Introducing Tweetbacks Plugin for Wordpress - Excellent! A Tweetback plugin for WordPress users. This post includes a link to the plugin with complete instructions for WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions. On Smashing Magazine.
• CSS tips that every beginning developer should know - Great beginning CSS tutorial. On Arbenting.
• Tweetbacks, Copyright and Scraping - Another way of looking at Tweetbacks — one I never thought of. By Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, in the Blog Herald.
• Apple IQ Test - My score was dismal. I knew everything about Macs before 1995, but failed miserable on most questions dealing with facts after that. Could that indicate that I actually DO have a life? If you think you know Macs, try this test. On Infoworld.com. Thanks to @shepherdfx on Twitter for sharing the link.
• U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work - Incredible photos of today's crash taken moments afterward. So glad this one had a happy ending. On AlleyInsider.com.
• Hate the Player It’s Not a Game - Jeremy Tanner tells it like it is Re: Twitter spammers who call themselves gurus, mavens, etc.
• Twitter Support - Twitter help is now centralized in one place. Thanks to @mdy on Twitter for pointing this out.
• 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter - I really wish everyone who used Twitter would read this article and follow its advice. There would be a lot less noise online. On Twitip.com.
• Mac Automation: Creating Watch Me Do workflows - Good how-to piece for Automator users. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• How Not to be a Key Online Influencer - An example of how a self-labeled “key online influencer” can easily get cut down by the same social networking services he’s trying to promote — by the company he’s trying to promote them to. A lesson for anyone who blogs or tweets: when you say something publicly, ANYONE can read it. By David Henderson. Thanks to @SonoranDragon on Twitter for retweeting this link.
• Macintosh 25th Anniversary Reunion: Where Did Time Go? - Guy Kawasaki's tribute to the Mac's 25th birthday. Includes the complete introduction of the Mac, as well as the famous 1984 commercial. (Did you know that only appeared on TV as a commercial twice?) Thanks to @LeVitus for tweeting this one.
• I am popular on Twitter. Here’s why this means nothing. - And I thought I was the only one laughing at people bragging about their Twitter popularity stats. On ZDNet.com.
• The 100 Most Popular Twitter applications - The title says it all. On blending the mix.
• The Unforeseen Consequences of the Social Web - Sound advice for people who use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking services: what you put online might stay there for a very, very long time. On ReadWriteWeb. Thanks to @jodene on Twitter (where else?) for tweeting this link. Good reading.

I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training.

From the official course description:

The blogging revolution has led to new levels of communication on the information superhighway. WordPress 2.7 Essential Training is the onramp for anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly and easily. Maria Langer, author and veteran blogger, shows how to set up a free WordPress account, create posts, and maintain a blog. She goes on to explore the possibilities WordPress offers for creating blogs that are unique in style and voice. Exercise files accompany the course.

Topics Include:
• Understanding the functionality of WordPress
• Composing and previewing pages
• Including images and multimedia files in posts
• Moderating comments and pingbacks
• Adding and managing user accounts
• Customizing with widgets

I want to add here that this material is also great basic instruction for self-hosted WordPress 2.7 users interested in learning the basics of blogging with WordPress. This course could be considered a “prerequisite” for my Self-Hosting a WordPress Site course, also on Lynda.com.

Remember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

I’m extremely pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: Self-Hosting a WordPress Site.

From the official course description:

In Self-Hosting a WordPress Site, author and avid blogger Maria Langer shows how a blog can be customized to make it stand out in the digital crowd. Maria walks WordPress users—from casual bloggers to seasoned pros—through the steps to making a blog truly unique. This course goes beyond the basics, like setting a standard theme, and demonstrates such advanced techniques as incorporating CSS, PHP, and HTML.

Topics Include:
• Installing WordPress on any ISP
• Touring a WordPress CMS site
• Understanding all the content creation options
• Creating a customized look with PHP and CSS changes
• Using plug-ins to add features
• Setting options for user accounts

Remember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

One of the cool features of the Dashboard and administration panels in the current version of WordPress is its reminders of comments awaiting modification and plugins requiring update. You’ll see the reminders as numbers inside red circles. The one shown here, for example, is telling me that one of my installed plugins has an update available.

Clicking the Plugins button on the administration panel’s navigation bar displays the details. In this case, it’s a list of plugins, with a yellow bar indicating the available update:

If you’ve been following the posts about WordPress on this site, you might recall that I had a problem with this particular plugin, Landing Sites. In fact, I’d already updated it on my blog and discovered that the update didn’t work. So I’d reinstalled the older version. As a result, WordPress is no nagging me to update to a version I don’t want to use.

A stronger person would simply ignore the update flag. But why do that if you can turn the flag off for this plugin?

Here’s the trick.

1. Use WordPress’s built-in plugin editor to open the plugin file you don’t want to update for the current version.
2. Locate the line near the beginning that begins with the word Version: and includes the current version number. Here’s what it looks like for the plugin I’m hacking:
   
3. Replace the version number with the current version number. So, in this example, I’d replace 1.3 with 1.4.1.
4. You can then get a bit fancy and modify the Description area to note the real version number, just in case you forget. This information will appear on the Manage Plugins administration panel as a reminder. Here’s what my fully edited Description and Version look like:
   
5. Click the Update File button to save your changes.

If you did all of this right and didn’t edit something you shouldn’t have, WordPress will think you have the current version of the plugin installed and the reminder icon will go away. As shown here, the version number and description in the Manage Plugins administration panel will reflect your changes.

Best of all, if another update comes out, WordPress will still notify you about it.

In the first part of this series, I explained what comments and pingbacks are and how they can benefit your blog. If you don’t know this stuff, go back and read that first. In this part of the series, I’ll explain how and why the comments feature can go wrong and list three tools for WordPress that can fight it.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

While your blog’s readers like the comments feature because it enables them to participate in your blog, spammers like it, too. It gives them the ability to share their spammy comments and links on your blog.

Comment spam is a terrible problem for bloggers. If left uncontrolled, it can quickly take over your blog by filling post comments with a lot of garbage — some of of obscene — including links to Web sites you probably don’t want to advertise for. Your blog visitors will have to wade through all this junk to find real comments. If the problem is bad enough, the probably won’t bother looking. If the comment spam is offensive enough, they might not visit your blog again.

Comment spam’s close cousin is pingback spam, which is relatively new to blogging. In pingback spam, someone else’s blog links back to yours, placing a pingback link to that blog in your blog. The purpose may be to get your site visitors to come to that blog, or, if you have nofollow disabled, to improve the site’s Google page rank.

Both comment spam and pingback spam can be automatically generated. For comment spam, spambot programs can automatically find comment forms on a blog, fill in the fields, and submit the spam comments. Pingback spam can be created through the use of feed “scraping” tools that pull parts of posts from your blog and posts them to the spammer’s blog, along with a link to yours. Because of automation, so there’s no limit to how much spam can be sent to your blog.

Spam Stopping Tools

Fortunately, there’s help. Many WordPress programmers are out there, fighting the same war against spam that you are. They have the skills to write plugins that can identify spam and quarantine or delete it so it doesn’t appear on your blog.

While there are numerous spam prevention tools out there for WordPress users, I have personal experience with three of them:

• Aksimet, which is part of WordPress.com and comes as a plugin with self-hosted WordPress blogs, is created and maintained by the folks at Automattic, makers of WordPress. It’s fully integrated into WordPress and is extremely effective. I tell you more about how to set up and use Akismet in Part III of this series.

Spam Karma, by Dr. Dave, is another powerful spam prevention tool. I used this exclusively for a while and it caught all the spam that appeared on my site. The only reason I stopped using it is because I switched to Akismet.

• Bad Behavior is a plugin by Michael Hampton. It attempts to head off spam by determining whether a hit to a blog post is by a human or a spambot. Spambots are automatically denied access. One side benefit of this approach is a reduction in MySQL activity due to spambot access — that’s why I initially began using it. I used Bad Behavior in conjunction with one of the other spam prevention tools listed here for some time before trusting Akismet to do the whole job. The reason: Bad Behavior sometimes records false positives, making it impossible for certain real people to post comments. This problem occurs rarely, but since Akismet seems to be doing the job on its own, I prefer not to take the chance. (Note to Michael if you stop by to read this: if I got this wrong, please do comment to set me straight.)

I should note here that both Akismet and Spam Karma can “learn” about spam based on how you resolve comments you manually moderate. That’s why it’s important to properly identify any false positives or missed spam.

In the next post of this series, I’ll explain how you can configure Akismet on your WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress 2.7 blog.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

Related Posts:

The following posts on this site are related. This list is not machine-generated.

• CommentLuv = SpammerLuv?
• Fighting Spam — All Kinds
• More Bad Behavior
• Reducing Database Queries
• Spam Attacks Prompt PHP Update

Way back in 2006, I wrote an article titled “Reader Engagement Site Improvements.” In it, I detailed a number of plugins I’d installed to help keep visitors around a while longer, looking at new content on my site.

One of these plugins is called Landing Sites. Its job is to check to see if a visitor has arrived (or “landed”) on your blog from a search engine it knows. If it has, it displays a custom message with links to possibly related posts. The idea is that if a visitor has come to your site because he was searching for something, maybe one of your other related posts might meet his needs. Here’s what it looks like on my blog, with some customization.

I used the plugin on both my main blog, An Eclectic Mind, and this Maria’s Guides site. It worked like a charm. My blog was even commended by another blogger for the use of this feature. (Wish I could find the link, but I can’t. Sorry.)

Then, I made a fatal error. When WordPress notified me that the Landing Sites plugin had been updated from version 1.3 to 1.4.1, I allowed it to automatically install the update. I didn’t realize until I updated my blog to WordPress 2.7 and changed the theme that Landing Sites had stopped working. Instead of showing a list of related posts, it was show some raw and ugly PHP code.

I figured the problem was with WordPress 2.7, so I just disabled it on my blog. I posted a comment in a WordPress.org support thread and waited for a response. The author of the plugin subsequently posted instructions for a fix, but it didn’t work for me or for others.

Today, Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress fame) e-mailed me to point out that the plugin wasn’t working on this site. (I admit it: I’m lazy and still have this site set up on WordPress 2.6.5.) That surprised me. I went into action, beginning the troubleshooting process.

No fix worked. But I was able to track down the old version of the plugin. I disabled the current version and deleted it. Then I reinstalled the old version (1.3) and activated it. The result: problem solved.

I then went to my blog, which is running WordPress 2.7, and installed the old version there. As you can see from the screenshot above, it works.

What does this mean to self-hosted WordPress users? Unfortunately, it means that plugin updates don’t always make things work better — or even right. In this instance, the plugin author “broke” the plugin by trying to fix it and releasing an update. I don’t know if the new version works for everyone else, but I know it doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m just glad that reinstalling the old version fixed the problem.

I like the plugin and am glad to have it fully functional on my blogs.

A big thanks to Lorelle for contacting me when she found the problem. Since I never reach my blogs via a search engine, I probably never would have found the problem on my own.

One of the main things that differentiate a blog from a Web site is the ability of readers to interact with what you post. This is done primarily through the use of comments.

Comment Basics

Most blogging software supports reader commenting. Typically, a comment form appears at the bottom of a post. Readers can enter their comments about the post, along with their name, e-mail address, and Web or blog URL. When the form is submitted, the comment is added to the post.

The screenshot here shows what a post on my blog, An Eclectic Mind, looks like with a few comments added, as well as a comment form.

Most blogging software packages offer the blogger options for handling comments. WordPress, for example offers several options:

• Comments can be enabled or disabled by default or set on a post-by-post basis.
• Commenter e-mail address can be required for a comment to be submitted.
• Blog registration can be required for a comment to be submitted.
• Comments can be held for moderation or automatically moderated based on a handful of options, including moderation and blacklist words or phrases.

Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Pingbacks (or trackbacks) are part of the commenting arena. A pingback happens when another blogger writes a post in which he links directly back to your post. He may have quoted your post in his and is linking back to the source. Or maybe he just wants to tell his readers how good your post was and send them over to your blog to read it. If his blogging software supports pingbacks or he has manually entered the link as a trackback, a special comment is sent to your blog with a link back to his blog.

Technically, a trackback is different from a pingback. A pingback is automated. The other blogger’s blogging platform must be capable of creating the pingback comment. Before automated pingbacks were widely supported, blogging platforms included a trackback feature that required the blogger to manually enter a linked post’s URL in a field when creating his post. Nowadays, these two terms are often used interchangeably.

In WordPress, you must have pingbacks enabled for your blog posts in order for WordPress to receive them. Pingbacks can appear with comments or, if the blog’s theme separates comments from pingbacks, they can appear separately. For example, my blog’s theme separates comments and pingbacks under different “tabs.”

Pingbacks look different, too. Instead of including a blogger’s name and comment, they include the name of the post that links to your post and a short excerpt surrounded by [...] characters. Here’s what a pingback looks like on a post in this blog:

Comments, Pingbacks, and Reader Participation

It’s pretty easy to see how comments encourage reader participation. Comments give readers an opportunity to add or respond to your post. If enough readers comment and you respond, a conversation gets started. Sometimes that conversation can have more value than your original post.

For example, one of the most popular posts on this site is about a change in iTunes that affected how podcasts play back on an iPod. I identified the problem and created a workaround. A bunch of readers commented. One of the readers commented by sharing an AppleScript he’d written to automate my workaround. Another reader fine-tuned that script so it ran more efficiently. To this day, I use that script as my workaround. You can see the post and read the comments here.

Pingbacks also encourage reader participation, but in a less direct way. Suppose you read this post and think that your readers might benefit from it. You write a post on your blog that refers to it and adds your own comments. When you link to this post from your blog, a link to your post appears on this post. So readers reading comments here can go to your post to see what you’ve written about this topic.

Unfortunately, not everyone uses comments and pingbacks as they’re intended. The result is comment and pingback spam. I’ll discuss those in the next post of this series.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

Related Posts:

The following posts on this site are related. This list is not machine-generated.

• CommentLuv = SpammerLuv?
• Stop Pinging Your Own WordPress Blog!
• Trackback and Pingback Works!

Contrary to popular belief, most blogs are copyrighted. As a result, most blog themes include a copyright notice in the footer.

How the copyright notice is entered into the theme determines how it appears:

• If entered as plain text, it appears as a static date or range of dates — whatever you entered. This means that each new year — right about now — you need to change the static text to include the current year.
• If entered using tags that pull the most recent date’s year from your WordPress blog — or just use the current year — a range of dates may not appear at all. Instead, there will be just one date. That’s better, but not exactly accurate.
• If entered using PHP tags that get the first and last years of blog posts and put them in a range — you never have to modify the footer to change the dates and they always include the entire range of post years. This is the best solution and it isn’t difficult to do.

To automatically display a range of dates from the year of your first post to your most recent post in a copyright notice, just edit the code in the footer to remove your current copyright notice code and replace it with this:

<?php
     global $wpdb;
     $post_datetimes = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT YEAR(post_date_gmt) AS year FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date_gmt > 1970 ORDER BY post_date_gmt ASC");
     $firstpost_year = $post_datetimes[0]->year;
     $lastpost_year = $post_datetimes[count($post_datetimes)-1]->year;

     $copyright = __('Copyright &copy; ') . $firstpost_year;
     if($firstpost_year != $lastpost_year) {
          $copyright .= '-'. $lastpost_year;
     }

     echo $copyright;
?>
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>

The result, on this blog, would be something like:

Copyright © 2004-2009 Maria's Guides

If you prefer to have your name appear instead of the name of your blog, replace the last line with your name. That’s what I do.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

• Final Cut sequences to DVDs: The high-quality way - Excellent tutorial explaining how to export high-quality digital video from Final Cut for use in DVD. Requires Final Cut Studio (not Express). Hat tip to @izzyvideo on Twitter for the link. On GeniusDV.com.
• W(h)ither social networks? On the end of Pownce - Some thoughts on social networking and microblogging. On The lost outpost.
• 2.7 Gets Here in Two Days! - Thank heaven for this post, sent to me via tweet by @andypiper. I was just starting to worry about whether WordPress.com would be updated before I was scheduled to work on my training video.
• The Simpsons mocks (m)Apple - Article with embedded YouTube clips about the recent Simpsons episode that mocks Apple, Inc. On Engadget.
• 60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages - This will make you laugh. On Hongkiat.com/blog.
• The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos - Rounding out tonight's trilogy of trivia, courtesy of Neatorama, is this excellent piece about the evolution of tech company logos.
• Woof! An iPhone-controlled dog treat dispenser - THIS is what makes technology cool. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). Don't forget to watch the video to see how it works.
• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content - Excellent advice I need to start taking. On ChrisBrogan.com
• Serious security flaw found in IE - Why doesn't this surprise me? On BBC News.
• Getting Started With WordPress - Excellent post with links to other content of interest to new (or relatively new) self-hosted WordPress users. On Themetation.com.
• GovTwit Directory - A directory of government agencies and individuals on Twitter. Hat tip to @elloyd74 on Twitter (where else?) for the link.
• iPhone thief thwarted by MobileMe sync - Apple technology makes it easier to recover stolen Apple products. Again. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• RandomMaccess | It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) - Chuck LaTournous, long-time Apple user, writes about what he thinks of the Apple Macworld announcements. On Random Access.
• MacJury » Blog Archive » MacJury #831: Analysis of Apple’s Announcements and the Future of Macworld Expo - No Steve Jobs keynote and Apple's qutting Macworld Expo after this year. The Mac Jurists discuss in this podcast episode of The Mac Jury.
• HTML-Ipsum - Need to check Web design with sample text? Here's a good source of Ipsum text in HTML format.
• 45 Beautiful Free Fonts for Modern Design Trends - What can be more fun (and completely frivolous) than free fonts? On Six Revisions.
• 50 websites you’ll wonder how you lived without - A list of 50 interesting Web sites, with descriptions. On Curious? Read.
• Apple Announces Last Year of Christmas - I wonder if Apple will allow this to stay online. If you click this link and get a 404, blame Apple.
• Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld - The end of an era. On Apple.com.
• My CSS Menu - Menu Generator - An online code-generation tool for creating horizontal or vertical menus with CSS. Might be useful to Web designers interested in creating customized menus for their blogs or sites.
• Make A GIF - An online tool for creating animated GIF files. Just upload images in order and Make A GIF does the rest.
• 30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials - List of 30 WordPress video tutorials covering a variety of topics. On SixRevisions.com
• Apple shocks world, reveals it is a huge corporation - Reality check by Scott McNulty. Thanks, Scott! We obviously needed this. On Macworld.com.
• Steve Jobs didn’t make the first Macworld, either - An account by David Burnell of Steve Jobs and the first Macworld Expo. Hat tip to @LeVitus on Twitter for the link. On the San Francisco Chronicle Web site.
• 25 Photoshop Tutorials for Web Designers - The title says it all. On Six Revisions.

If you use WordPress widgets on your self-hosted WordPress blog, you may not be fully satisfied with the way the Tag Cloud widget looks and works on your site. I know I wasn’t. The maximum font size was too large for the most commonly used tag (helicopters, on my blog) to fit into the column in which I’d put it. Since I wanted my tag cloud in the narrow column in which it resided, I had to make a change.

The answer is to modify the wp_tag_cloud function in the category-template.php file. It’s remarkably easy to do. Here’s how.

1. Open the file /wp-includes/category-template.php.
2. Scroll down to the line that begins function wp_tag_cloud. If you’re using WordPress 2.7 and haven’t made any other changes to this file, you should find it at line 552. (You can always do a search for it; I found the general area by searching for “tag cloud.”)
3. Make changes in the array as follows:
   
   • To specify the smallest font size, set the value after ’smallest’. The default is 8 points.
   • To specify the largest font size, set the value after ‘largest’. The default size is 22 points.
   • To specify the maximum number of tags included in the cloud, set the value after ‘number’. The default number of tags is 45.

   I changed my settings to 6, 16, and 75 respectively. You can see the results in the screenshot here, as well as in the sidebar for my blog, An Eclectic Mind.

4. Overwrite the existing file with the changed file.

When you reload a page that uses the Tag Cloud widget, your changes should appear immediately.

Keep in mind that if WordPress is updated and the file you changed is replaced, you may have to repeat these steps to reset your defaults.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

Last night, the folks at Automattic updated WordPress.com to version 2.7. The self-hosted version of WordPress is still in beta, although Release Candidate 1 (RC1) was released two days ago.

I’ve been working with WordPress 2.7 for about two weeks now (since Beta 2) and am absolutely thrilled with it. The Dashboard and administrator interface has been completely reworked to make it not only more useful, but easier to navigate. Sure, a lot of folks will be grumbling about the change from horizontal-on-top to vertical-on-left navigation, but when you look beyond the obvious, you see a true user interface improvement.

There are plenty of other new features, too. But rather than write my own article about them, here are links to five other articles written by folks who clearly love WordPress as much as I do. Read up, upgrade, and enjoy!

2.7 Gets Here in 2 Days! by Jane Wells on the WordPress.com blog was the first official announcement of 2.7’s upcoming appearance on WordPress.com. Jane helps fuel the excitement with a great description of the new features.

10 Things You Need to Know about WordPress 2.7 by Aaron Brazell on Technosailor states, “This is not your grandma’s WordPress!” (Not sure if I should be offended by this; there’s a chance I might be old enough to be his mother.) He then goes on to describe and state his opinions of the new features.

WordPress 2.7 - 20 Must See Features by Sean P. Aune on Mashable lists the 20 features he finds most notable with a few screen shots.

WordPress 2.7 arrives Thursday night is a shorter and more to-the-point piece by Joshn Lowensohn on cnet news. It links back to the first article here (which I also think is the best) for a full discussion of features.

I’ll be writing a bit about WordPress for Maria’s Guides as I find new tricks and tips to share. I’ll also be revising my Lynda.com training material to cover the new features available on WordPress.com.

If you have specific topics you’d like to see me cover, please use the Comments link or form for this post to list them. Please — no tech support questions for a weird problem you might be having; that’s what WordPress’s support forum are for. I’m interested in addressing “how to” questions, although I can’t promise to answer every one I receive.

• WordPress 2.7 Comments Enhancements - Article with information for WordPress users interested in making existing themes compatible with the WordPress 2.7 comment-threading/linking features.
• Tools & Utilities for filmmakers - Here are a bunch of links to templates of interest to filmmakers. On DependentFilms.net.
• WordPress 2.7: Ten useful new features - A concise summary of what one WordPress users thinks is the ten most useful new features of WordPress 2.7. A beta of this new version was released on November 1; the final release is due before month-end. On op111.net.
• Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter - Although he starts off with an example that simply doesn't apply to normal folks like you and me, Guy Kawaskai shares some good advice about building your Twitter follower base. Hat tip to @LeVitus for the link via Twitter.
• The Power of Writing Things Down | Dumb Little Man - A good article with tips on how writing things down can help improve your life. Really. On DumbLittleMan.com. Thanks to @LeVitus for sharing this in a tweet.
• Secrets of the Annotated World - Interesting article about how you can benefit from micro social networking like Twitter and BrightKite. On ChrisBrogan.com.
• Digital Photography School — Digital Photography Tips for You - An excellent blog with how-to tips for digital photography.
• Pew Internet & American Life Project - Latest Internet quiz. How do you fit in?
• Twitterspeak: 66 Twitter Terms You Don’t Need to Know - On Mashable.com; a list of Twitter terms and definitions. Thanks to @mjvalente for tweeting this link.
• Can you spot Phishing? - Since I've been blogging so much about phishing lately, it seems natural to include a link to this page on the PayPal site. It's a test to help you understand phishing.
• The Book of MacBook: Observations and thoughts on Apple's latest consumer portable - Excellent review of MacBook. (I'm still undecided, though.) By Dan Moren on MacUser.com.
• Don't be Fooled by the Lack of a Copyright Notice - Good basic information about copyright and inclusion of a copyright symbol On the Copyright Law and Copyright Information blog. Thanks to @PattyHankins on Twitter for sharing the link.
• iTunes 101: Deauthorize all computers at once - Great tip for folks who have forgotten to deauthorize a computer before getting rid of it. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography - Very good examples that make the photos look like models. Includes video, too. On SmashingMagazine.com.
• Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial | Miniature Faking - After seeing an example of tilt-shift video photography by Keith Loutit (with thanks to @jebro on Twitter for sharing the link), I got interested in tilt-shift photography. I'm not interested in it enough to buy special equipment, but this tutorial explains how to simulate the effect in Photoshop. On TiltShiftPhotography.net.
• Copyright Infringement - A photographer horror story. Stolen images on a trip to Burma. Protect your work! On Luceo Images.
• A Holiday Gift Guide for the frequent traveler - Some pretty good gift ideas for technically savvy travelers. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.7 | Technosailor.com - An informative article about the features and interface changes in the upcoming WordPress 2.7 release. On the Technosailer.com Web site.
• 19 Photoshop tutorials to design your own business card - Links to 19 different Photoshop tutorials for creating business cards. On DeveloperFox.
• 50 Incredible Fonts for Professional Web & Print Design - Free fonts for outrageous designs. On Noupe.
• Why Start a Blog and 25 Tips to Make it Work - Excellent article for wannabe bloggers who want to succeed. On Conversation Agent.
• Lorem 2: An all-around better Lorem experience. - Sample text to help you design your documents.
• 100 Awesome Ivy League Video Lectures - Links to online lectures of interest to anyone who wants to expand their horizons. On Online Universities.com.

• Logic Puzzle Archives - Holy cow. An archive of logic puzzles, complete with Flash-based solving tools. Who could ask for more? On PuzzlersParadise.
• 18 Wordpress Plugins to add Professionalism to your Blog - Pretty good list of WordPress plugins to add features to your blog. I'll probably be trying a few of these shortly. On SpeckyBoy.com.
• In Defense of Piracy - A discussion of how fair use is often confused with copyright violation in the creation of new material based on existing material. On the Wall Street Journal Web site.
• Getting handsy with the new MacBooks - Great article about hands-on experience with the new MacBooks. On MacUser.com.
• Organization: Form an Attack Plan for a Cluttered, Messy Home - Great article on LifeHacker with tips for getting rid of clutter.
• Lizzer: A Copyright/Hotlinking Disaster - PlagiarismToday exposes the new Lizzer service as encouraging copyright infringement and allowing abuse of resources. Interesting reading for webmasters and bloggers interested in protecting content.
• MediaShift . How 'Follower Spam' Infiltrated Twitter — and How to Stop It | PBS - Excellent article about Twitter "follower spam," including what it is and how to stop it.
• 10 Traits Of A Successful Human Being - Excellent article listing the traits you need to succeed. On PickTheBrain.com.