Unfortunately when you install a new piece of website software you are faced with the decision of either theming it to match the layout of your main WordPress site or making it look different so users know they are on a different section of your site.

It is a difficult choice and you are likely to endup losing access to some of the features in WordPress that you want to include.

The work around is to load a connection between WordPress and your external ap by including your wp-blog-header.php file at the top of your other applications main file or header file.

Once loaded in your external ap you will have access to all the functions available in WordPress.

This means if you include a menu or a sidebar showing your recent posts and then make changes or additions in your WordPress site the changes will show in your external Ap.

HOWEVER you will need to make sure your CSS is being used correctly and this could be a problem if you are using images that depend on /relative/directory/structures… replace them with http:// calls where necessary.

Now as to not be confused this is different then loading your header.php file that is found in your theme folder. The wp-blog-header.php file can be thought of a startup command for WordPress to begin executing and your theme file header.php is the portion of your theme that generates the top section of html such as your title and menu area.

Loading The Header

The wp-blog-header.php file should be located in your root directory if you are using WordPress 3.0 or higher or it may be in a subdirectory where your wp-config.php file is.

To load the file use a basic PHP require or include call

[/php]

<?php require('/dir/wp-blog-header.php'); ?>

[php]

If you decide to use an include statement instead of a require statement your external ap will continue executing after a failure of loading the WordPress header file. This can be a good or bad thing depending on your hosting environment and is something you should investigate as a basic PHP code writer it won’t have effect on the connection between the two aps.

Making Use Of The Connection

Once you have connected both of your applications you will need to do some trouble shooting just incase some of the functions in WordPress are duplicated in your outside ap. This should not really be a problem but if necessary you may need to use a file based text string replace to rename functions and their calls in your outside ap. I suggest Active State Komodo Edit that can find and replace inside files in a directory and all its subdirectories.

Now you can include any WordPress feature the same way you would in your Theme file.

You can call dynamic sidebars or display a loop full of posts or titles of posts.

You will also have access for checking if a user is logged in as a member of your WordPress Site by using conditional statements.

Basically any feature that you are useto using within your main WordPress site will be available to you.

Real World Examples

Integrating WordPress in this way is best when your external application can not be fed into WordPress by the use of a Custom Page Theme file.  If you don’t know what I mean you should take a look at designing a custom page template and the ability to include php inside the page template.

Larger applications such as a form where users can add content phpBB is one or a shopping cart application require dedicated management and many of the features just can not be duplicated with a plugin.

For instance if you run a clothing consignment store your inventory may be scanned into either your shopping cart or a spreadsheet file that you import into your shopping cart.

Managing hundreds or thousands of items from within a WordPress shopping cart plugin is not reasonable because you can not quickly manage your online purchases and inventory. You will also be limited in other ways such as the ability to quickly generate checkout links to paypal that bounce back to a specific url for file downloads or the ability to manage coupons and dozens of other features that a full shopping cart can offer.

This is not to say the WordPress shopping cart plugins are bad its to say if you have a large store and you have to depend on it for your main business and you have to integrate your shop with your tax preparation software it can get rather complex.

Additionally when you are managing thousands of form posts a day and you need to keep that content separate from your main site adding a phpbb install vs letting visitors join your site as Authors will reduce your headaches. Not to mention some banner advertisers restrict placement on content that is not managed.

The one drawback of using external aps is that your visitor will most likely need to login twice if they are also a member of your WordPress site when they want to process an order from your store or access your Form area.

But what is interesting about Lilly or Ulrich’s quest to recover as much money as they can… their recordings were released by them or their representatives on a variety of media sites such as YouTube for anyone to access for free.

There is no need to Pirate anyone’s songs when you can build a huge playlist and play it back on your iPhone or home computer… its all right there .. tens of thousands of songs that labels not only want you to hear they compete for you to hear their artists.

However in this latest round of Video content lawsuits we are not talking about risque language that might get you a detention if you were listening in school or could get you fired if thats all you do all day at work … the group that has filed the latest round of copyright infringement suits is the porn industry.

Lets face it the internet was built because porn was on it and people wanted to see it.. but most people will never talk about it.

The stars of the films in question have to eat and pay their bills and because internet porn is so widely available now you don’t see a lot of shops selling it anymore.

Where we might go to the movies to see Terminator or Resident Evil instead of downloading someones hand held camera version because we want to take our kids or have a night out with someone special… Porn is usually viewed in the privacy of your home and purchasing it online with your credit card can leave a trail.

This is where the twist comes in … along with producers of videos like Debbie Does Dallas one of the primary litigants is suing because hundreds of Torrent users are downloading and distributing Transexual Pornography…

To each your own… whether someone looks at transexual porn for gratification or for sheer amazement is up to them but it seems if you are grabbing it off a torrent your name may be published in some international news when the IP Addresses of the offenders are released.

However what some have already said is just like the recording industry approached offenders and then arm twisted them to pay sums of money directly to the industry association they are expecting that the same will occur when people are approached about downloading porn …. HOWEVER with the stigma attached any out of court settlement will be more closer to extortion then protection of the artists property rights.

We will see how this will play out in the next few months but i think instead of going after average people maybe the video associations should look at how government employees were found in possessions of huge amounts of porn so much that one person in the NSA had filled their office and then started stacking spindles and drives through out other offices… I mean really where is the public interest here where is the offense….

Its difficult to say how this will play out but you can probably bet the same people that are saying they are victims because a few hundred or maybe thousand people downloaded  a video will be out marching for the right to distribute their products … or for other rights… .

And much like Lily is now happy being a mommy and doing the occasional song for right now.. she probably wishes every minute of every day she could have not even thought about a few people downloading her songs… and just got on with doing more events because thats where the money is today in music….

Anyway …  we will see.

I personally never use the site because its more of a yardsale atmosphere where on sites like Amazon or Ebay you have some if only a little buyer protection. This doesn’t mean the site isn’t a valued resource.

Since its introduction Craigslist has been one of the most active sites on the net and you can find something there to satisfy just about anyone.

When earlier attacks by State Attorney Generals on the Adult Services section lead to high priced legal battles over first amendment rights there seemed to be a work around for craigslist to continue listing this small but probably very popular part of its site.

Its not like everyone that visits the site is hiring an escort but you can bet most people even the most prurient have taken a look.

So what does this mean for Craigslist and the Adult Services industry? Not a lot. Craigslist will continue and most likely instead of seeing ads placed directly for paid services you will see massage or someone selling a big chest with french polish … the crap you see in every newspaper … but then again most telephone books have escort services  so what is this really stopping? nothing.

This is just a notch in someones election barrel….

If America is really interested in stopping human trafficing they should look at the 20 million illegal aliens in our country… are they all living on the streets? heck no .. 20 million people living on our streets would be pretty noticeable … so where are they?

They go to work right next to you and live down the street from you and no one even cares.

There is a HUGE underground selling everything from heroin to fake medications, Sex and weapons and that is the real problem… not some 20yo girl posting a notice on craigslist to earn $150 an hour for giving release…

People see a great application and are willing to spend good money on what seems dedicated hardware to be able to use it.

The thing is this influence is not limited to game systems. In the late 80’s early 90’s it seemed if you were connected to the publishing industry the use of a Macintosh computer was a requirement. Even though Windows eventually provided the same or better solution with price points thousands of dollars less you can still see shops that rely on Macs.

The interesting thing about that is the current Mac OS is based on Unix so you would think that there would be a cross platform solution. If you can run BSD on an Intel Box you should definitely be able to run Mac OS on it and there are a few virtual environments that will allow some systems to be built.

You also have game boxes from a handful of manufacturers that should be able to have the games ported to a desktop system and with the addition of a high end video card the experience should be exactly the same but you would still have your primary system for other tasks.

And then we have mobile devices like the iPad or the Gentouch which is going through lawsuits to keep it off the market because it uses android / java and you can guess that friends of Jobs have come to his rescue to kill something that could costs 25% of the price of the iPad just to secure the market.

Now some people would say this is why we need open source software. So the applications can be ported and people will have a choice. The problem with that is hardware developers also need to be pushed into developing solutions that provide the same experience.This is easier said then done and probably the reason that many open source games have not displaced much of the dedicated systems.

I don’t know if there is a solution for this or if forcing one would reduce development but it can be very frustrating for those of us that have neither the money or desk space to buy every new device because there is a great new ap we need to use.

Anyway back to the gameboy and tetras … it seems that after decades not a lot has changed. Even with many of the players in the market moving out on their own or falling to the wayside we are still seeing systems like the Kindle, iPad and XBox offering closed systems dedicated to a handful of tasks.

For some reason it just doesn’t seem reasonable.

What is interesting about the loss of what many in the US would consider First Amendment rights the rulings are being placed on the back of child protection.

Now most people are in favor of rules that would eliminate spam to some extent and others would go as far to say businesses need to be held accountable for all advertising whether paid or not the ASA is looking also at links within search engines and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The new rulings will have effect on which ads people are allowed to see… for instance they say

“New stricter rules provide further protections for children, for example a new scheduling restriction will prevent ads for age-restricted computer and console games from appearing around programmes made for, or likely to appeal particularly to them.”

And they also go on to say…

“While a new section on environmental claims will provide greater clarity for the public on what ‘green’ terms are likely to be acceptable.”

It seems more then overboard to not promote products to minors that they would enjoy. It is up to the parent to tell the child to either save their allowance if they get one or maybe buy them a book..

But how do environmentalists play into this protection scheme? Why do they need protection from anyone?

Maybe the animals they hope to save or trees do but … it is very far reaching to get to the level where one group is protected over another.

After all we just found out that the 100 Billion dollars the Obama administration promised to Europe for green projects was based on faulty science.

The rules in the US are not as harsh as the ones in the UK but that is because US law makers are going through another round of introducing regulations.

It seems that as long as people are in power that want to remove our freedom of speech along with other rights we have.. they will come back over and over again in the dead of night and push through things that steal our rights…

http://asa.org.uk/

This seems to be a very hot topic on Twitter among the PR community. When twitter first became almost necessary for every business there were dozens of mostly unknown sites that skyrocketed to fame. We all know their names so there is no reason to go into pointing fingers but what has been lost or gained and how has that effected the content we read on a daily basis…

It is not as if content is developed purely for social networking but when you look at some of the articles that continue to be pumped out rather then information that can actually be helpful you have to wonder who is getting hurt.

It is almost impressive to watch how social networking sites can change people and by people it is not only stars like Miley Cyrus who decided to walk away from twitter… its technical writers even politicians and news agencies..

People of all trades seem to take that ride of insanity when they find something they said generated interest.

What is worse is they try to duplicate the experience by sticking to what they thought worked instead of understanding that their primary success is not related to bumps in social interest.

This ends up poorly with the loss of their base or primary support.

I will give you an example….

There was a tech writer who had been very popular on the web for a decade maybe more and one day he received a bill in the mail (im not going to say what company) that was generated by mistake. The calculation of the amount due was maybe 5000 times higher then he actually owed and instead of chalking it up to a glitch and getting on with his day he decided to rant about it on a social network.

Because the company is very large and generates tens of millions of bills there were a few thousand people that were in the same boat as he was… some of them were in his social network group and word started to get out and he became the master of the bad bill….

From that point on the guy continues to write about similar problems with bills and businesses and this became more of a primary concern then his technical reviews and previous content…

Sure the guy was getting a lot of immediate attention and that was a good use of Social Networking because it introduced a variety of other people to him.. but the people that he attracted were interested in Bad Bills not Technical Information … eventually the guy became lost in the madness of trying to please people that he had no business BUSINESS dealing with in the first place.

So I think you probably get where I’m going here… popularity on social networks can be very misleading and misguiding. In High School you can get very popular if you cut a loud fart in the middle of assembly but do you really want to live the next three years as Fartman having to chow down a can of chili before every play or concert just to maintain that persona?

yea.. didn’t think so..

So, my advice is to use social networking as a tool and don’t give into the hype.

If you find you are spending more time then you previously did managing your social networks start to examine how you are using them. If you see that much of your content is off topic then evaluate whether that is really a direction that you should be taking.

There is nothing wrong with finding a new direction in life.

The average person will change their careers between 5 and 7 times during  their life and the reason for that may be fulfillment or just to make money.

Neither is a wrong reason…

However when you make changes in your life you want to do so with open eyes… and you also need to get a grip on reality some times.

While editing your pages in the WordPress visual editor you can look to the bottom left of the editor window to view your approximate word count for the page you are currently writing. This is important for writers but if you are an editor reviewing your site you may want to do it from the front end and not open every page for editing.

In this case you can add a word count to your WordPress posts and quickly check if your writers are keeping to your standard of content generation.

To include a word count on your Posts you need to edit your single.php file and for pages you edit your page.php file. This may change depending on the theme you are using but the area that you need to place the php code to count the words on your page is within the WordPress Loop.

<?php function count_words($str){
 $words = 0;
 $str = eregi_replace(" +", " ", $str);
 $array = explode(" ", $str);
 for($i=0;$i < count($array);$i++)
 {
 if (eregi("[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ]", $array[$i]))
 $words++;
 }
 return $words;
 }?>

 Word count: <?php echo count_words($post->post_content); ?>

You can place the function above your loop but the line that says Word count: and then code should be placed within your loop.

I like to place it near the meta information that displays categories and tags.

You may also want to place the function into your functions.php file or in another file that you call to build your pages.

The word count code is pretty simple but you may need to adjust it to fit a language other then english.

The BizSpark package is more of a backend package including Windows Server all versions, SQL Server, Visual Studio Enterprise and a number of other tools that businesses would spend thousands of dollars putting together on their own.

Although the package does not from what we can see offer any desktop operating systems … who knows because if small business server is included you are probably getting win7 … but all together this is a very decent set of tools for any company designing microsoft based solutions.

From a quick read you not only get rights to use the products for development which is usually the case when microsoft gives out free software you also get to deploy solutions at least for your own offerings.

Support for the package does include a couple direct calls to microsoft for free but also all of the online support for free.

Who is eligible for BizSpark?

An eligible Startup must have the following characteristics at the time of joining:

* Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business,

* Privately held,

* In business for less than 3 years at the time of enrollment, and

* Less than US $1 million in annual revenue .

There is a 25 member limit for initial user registrations, but if your business needs justify additional licenses your Startup can add additional members with approval from the BizSpark team.

So its Free?

It is a very decent deal and any technology provider that is even slightly interested in using microsoft products should avail themselves of the offer if they qualify.

For more information visit

http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

Well maybe its better then being infected in real life but when you are looking for a hottie to put on your desktop many users aren’t considering they can catch something from it other then some mild chafing or redness.

So, what does this mean?

Don’t download crap from sites that don’t verify the content.

If you want a desktop image go to Google Images and search for an exact size image that fits your desktop or a large one that you can modify in a basic image editor. If you want a screen saver there are a lot of them from reputable sources or use the built in features of your operating system.

Personally I never liked desktop backgrounds because I tend to be messy with my folders and with windows open all the time there isn’t much chance I will be seeing it… add to that the fact that all the added garbage of os themes tend to slow your computer down a lot. Today you might not notice it with a six core processor but back when I was using a 486 and windows 3, 95, nt… you could really feel the difference.

So, why did these fools pick Cameron Diaz to distribute their garbage? Who knows maybe they like her or maybe they don’t like the people that like her… or maybe they had nothing better to do …. the scary thing might be that they were targeting a specific person and to get access to their computer at the Department of Defense they flooded the internet with millions of files…

Could happen… you never know

Although many or most themes will provide an edit link when you are viewing a single page or post this still means heading into your backend to make the delete of the page.

The solution is to add a Delete Post link next to the Edit Post link.

To make use of the Delete Post link you need to be logged into WordPress and with the use of a conditional statement we can display the delete post link only to those users that have the rights to delete posts.

The following code will display a Delete Post link when placed inside your Loop.

<?php if ( current_user_can('delete_post', get_the_id() ) ) : ?>
<a href="<?php echo get_delete_post_link( get_the_id() ); ?>" >DELETE THIS POST</a>
<?php endif; ?>

Because the above code works when it is inside the Loop you can place this link inside your single.php page.php or within your category  pages loop.

This will allow a logged in administrator to browse through their categories and delete pages quickly without the need to view the post or head into the backend.

With the use of other conditional statements you can display the_content to administrators and excerpts on category pages to your visitors.

How creative you get is up to you.

If you do not use the conditional statement as shown above

current_user_can('delete_post'

Then your visitors will be shown a # link to the same location that they are currently at…
meaning if you use this in your single.php they will have a link back to the same page if you use it in a category page they will link back to the same place.

Double check by logging out of your WordPress site and checking the URL generated but it is better just to hide this option for anyone that is not logged in and also able to delete posts.

Options when using get_delete_post_link

By default the link will put the post in your trash which is not a bad idea but you can force a true delete by using the following.

Use this with care because there is no going back as you know.

$force_delete = true

 <?php if ( current_user_can('delete_post', get_the_id() ) ) : ?>
 <a href="<?php echo get_delete_post_link( get_the_id(),$force_delete=true ); ?>" >DELETE THIS POST</a>
 <?php endif; ?>

Now get out there and start cleaning up your sites.