Whatever

Now you can have all the Bible references on your website point to the Bible Gateway. You don’t have to go back and re-do your site . . . just add a bit of code just above your in your website template and you’re good to go. It’s a free tool, of course. Every reference you have will automatically point to the Bible Gateway (an online Bible) using the version of your choice. Additionally (and optionally), you can add a small icon by each reference. It doesn’t matter if you have abbreviations as your references; this tool will recognize them as well. You can also list references like this: Num. 6:24-26; 11:10; 23; 22:34; 24:17 . . . and it recognizes them (unlike the solution I’m using for this blog - maybe I’ll switch things up). What an amazing tool! I’m going to implement it on truthsaves as soon as I get all the outlines pages updated with proper references. Unfortunately, when formatting the outlines, I just put chapter numbers next to things (and sometimes just verse numbers), and this tool can’t transform single numbers into links (obviously). So it’ll take a while to get everything straight on truthsaves. I tested it tonight, though, and it was absolutely amazing! All my references, all over the site, magically appeared as links to the Bible Gateway online Bible, using the ESV (English Stadard Version). There’s also a cool little plugin for Wordpress blogs. I’m using a different solution for this blog, but the Bible Reference Tagger works in a similar manner and has more options.
Get the Bible Reference Tagger here.

Did you know that if you type certain characters in a WordPress blog, they will appear as little images referred to as smilies? Try typing these symbols into a comment or a post and the blog will output these pretty little pictures (or smilies).

Some are duplicates, as you can see. Why? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Just pick your preferred method and have fun with it.

Check ‘em out.

Code	Image	Code	Image
:smile:		:evil:
:-)		:twisted:
:)		:mad:
:grin:		:-x
:-D		:x
:D		:sad:
:razz:		:-(
:-P		:(
:P		:cry:
:wink:		:neutral:
;-)		:-|
;)		:|
:eek:		:shock:
:-o		8-O
:o		8O
:cool:		:-?
8-)		:???:
8)		:oops:
:lol:		:arrow:
:roll:		:idea
:mrgreen:		:?:
		:!:

Setting up pretty permalinks in WordPress on a Windows-based server poses some difficulties. If you want a very easy solution using 404 redirects, check my previous post on pretty permalinks. The solution can be implemented by anyone, so long as your host allows you to set custom error pages (like my really cool host Parcom does).

But I had some challenges that I hadn’t foreseen. As I continued posting garbage on my blog, I noticed that when I clicked on a category, then clicked on the “Previous Entries” link, an extra word would be inserted into the path, producing a url that didn’t exist. So, I’d be re-directed to the main page of my blog (that’s where my custom error page for truthsaves.org redirects to).

So, I started searching for solutions. If I went back to the default WordPress links the “Previous Entries” link worked fine. It just wouldn’t work when I used my pretty permalinks solution. So, I searched and searched. I posted in forums. I poked around in the different php files . . . to no avail.

Did I find a solution? Well, yes, I did. And here it is.

Download this plugin. Unzip it. Upload it. Activate it. Voila! Done. Everything works. I wish the solution was more complicated and impossible to figure out, but I’m sorry, it’s not. Next time I’ll try to make it harder. And frankly, I don’t know what this plugin does, but now the “Previous Entries” links work correctly.

Check out my contact us page. Do you like the form? I do. It’s there because of a cool new plugin I found for Wordpress called cforms. You can download it here. The plugin is flexible and has tons of features not found in other forms plugins. It’s an amazing bit of work. The author (Oliver) is pretty amazing too. He helped me get the form up and running. IIS and PHP don’t always play together well, and if you’re a “know-nothing” about all these computer acronyms (like me) you’re bound to need help once in a while. Thanks Oliver, for your help and for this high quality plugin.

When I post a comment on someone’s blog, I like it when a message appears saying something like, “Your comment has gone into the moderation cue. It will appear shortly,” or something like that. It frustrates me because I can’t get that to work on this blog. I found out it was because of the way the comments.php file was created with my current theme. With other themes, the moderation message appears as soon as a user submits a comment (e.g., the default theme - Kubrick). But with this theme, once you post a comment, the script returns you to the home page of the blog. You can see the moderation message if you open that particular blog entry, but otherwise, you have no idea where your comment went. As an obvious workaround, I posted a short moderation message at the bottom of the comment form, but that can go unseen.

So, I’m still looking for the perfect theme. It must be similar to what I have, because I really, really like the big picture at the top. I like the simplicity of the theme. But I’d really like it if, after posting a comment, a comment moderation message appeared. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about coding to modify the comments.php file to cause that to happen.

Does anyone else have any ideas on this? Any expert coders care to help me fix my problem?

I’ve tried multiple ways of getting the “pretty” permalinks to work, with little success. My host, Parcom, is a Windows-based host, and uses IIS servers. The “pretty” permalinks in Wordpress need Apache servers to run correctly. There are a few workarounds that I’ve found on the web, but none of them seemed to work. The one that worked for me is the following:

I set my custom error page to the root relative path of my blog. In this case, that was “/whatever/” (without the quotes, obviously). I then went to the Wordpress permalinks management page and created custom rules for my links. I did NOT uses “/index.php” in front of the rules. I then downloaded the following plugin:

Wordpress Remove Index.php from Permalinks in IIS Plugin

I installed the plugin into the “plugins” directory (go figure) then I went to the Wordpress plugins configuration page and activated that plugin.

Voila! The “pretty” links finally work.

I tried many other options, and this was the one that finally worked for me.

If you can’t get this to work, there are other workarounds. Check the links below:

Pretty Links
Pretty Links #1