Monthly Archive: July 2010

I guess July is WordPress plugin month here at movingtofreedom.org, because here comes another one. This one was instigated by another Scott.

Scott Rosenberg wrote last week about the “mutability of online content” and the challenges news organizations face in handling changes and corrections to stories, and concluded that versioning made sense in journalism as a way to build trust. Readers can see all of the changes since publication so that there’s no sense of something being swept under the rug. The Drupal CMS has modules for making revisions publicly viewable, and of course this is a key feature of Wikipedia.

Scott noted that WordPress already stores revisions, and suggested a plugin could make old versions accessible to visitors. Looking to demo the idea on his blog, he later asked if any WordPress developers were intrigued. At first I was only intrigued enough to dig up an existing plugin by D’Arcy Norman that did some of what he was looking for: “Post Revision …

The French are a fine people, but you should be aware that this plugin has nothing to do with France or the French.

Month Grid Archive

I wanted to be able to display my monthly archives in a grid:

With post counts for each month, but wasn’t finding a plugin for it. I did find Rob Marsh’s Compact Archives plugin which gave me a good starting place. (Thanks Rob!)

Along the way, it seemed like it would be nice to have post count totals for each year and a grand total. I think this table gives readers a nice snapshot of posting activity over the years.

It’s simple to use: put the_french_archives.php in your plugin dir, activate it, and put <?php month_grid_archive(); ?> in your template file.

You can optionally specify the month header styles. “abbr” is the default, “initial” shows only the first letter of the month, and “numeric” shows the month number. You can also customize the top row. Default is “Monthly” …

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This is a plugin/widget to show random quotes on your blog. Frank van den Brink originally created it and Christian Beer has also contributed. The wordpress.org homepage is here: Yet Another Random Quote.

I like this plugin, even if very few people around here can be bothered to actually click on a link to see my random quotes. Really, it’s okay. It’s just fine if you don’t give a rat’s ass about my collected pearls of wit, wisdom, and pop culture ephemera. (You probably won’t care to read my old YARQ post either.)

It appears that the plugin hasn’t been actively maintained, but through the miracle of free software I’ve been able to make my own fixes and enhancements, and now I can share them with you and the world. (I did get in contact with Christian, so we’ll see what we can do about updating the official plugin page.)

YARQ v3.0 works with WordPress 3.0 (for me, anyway), and I suspect will work with WP 2.5 …

I’ve been helped the past couple of days by this passage from Emerson:

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine.

Belief and love — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the center of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.

The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

Why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a …