Portable Learner» Tech Notes

The Internet Explorer 6 Dilemma

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:22:07 +0000

The Internet Explorer 6 Dilemma

This morning I surfed the web like it’s August 2001. A couple of weeks before 9/11, and years before the mobile web, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6, a web browser that was derided for its security issues and lack of support for web standards, and remained unimproved for years while Microsoft enjoyed a near monopoly.

It has been the bane of existence for web designers ever since, who are tasked with creating a design for the modern web, and then figuring out alternative designs for IE6, on which nothing works properly. It makes frequent appearances in “worst tech products of all time” lists. It inspires campaigns to bring down IE and for an IE6 death march. Still, on a recent web project, I insisted the web designers design alternatives to handle IE6 bugs. You must design the web for your visitors. The recent news that Google will phase out support of IE6 in 2010, that the security-conscious governments of Germany and France have asked their citizens to switch browsers to avoid security breaches, and that Mozilla and Opera have seen a surge in the number of people downloading their alternative browsers did not sway me. IE6 is still stuck on the computers of almost thirty percent of the the visitors to the site, whose companies that use the antiquated browser to run some of their intranet applications. Experts more qualified than I make security decisions. IE6 is a forced choice for those who do not have privileges to install applications.

This morning I also wanted to add an RSS feed to my aggregator. Unfortunately, IE6 does not have built-in support for RSS feeds. If you click on a feed icon or link in IE6, you may see an inappropriate security warning or you may see “code,” which means you are viewing the raw contents of the RSS file. You need know that you must install an external feed reader, or upgrade to at least IE7 (the current version is IE8) before viewing and subscribing to feeds. This means nothing to typical users who have lead a sheltered life on the intranet.

This does sway me. In my view, RSS feed support is not in the same class of IE6 deficiencies as PNG transparent support or minimum/maximum width constraints. It is more significant than layout consistency and pixel-perfect rendering; RSS is the gateway to Web2.0. RSS feeds are the foundation technology for aggregating, filtering and personalizing the world wide web of resources. Without RSS you are a bystander, not a participant in today’s internet. So, what can we do to inform the other subset of IE 6 users not trapped by their organization’s IT policies that their web experience is seriously degraded?

Even Facebook, which has done more to naturalize news feeds in the browsers of the uninitiated, encourages visitors to upgrade their browsers. Andy Clarke’s solution is to serve a universal, basic, IE6-only style sheet is especially elegant. The key idea is to hide fancy layouts from IE6 by concentrating on the content and its typography. It visually informs without penalizing visitors that their experience could be improved. This may not be an appropriate solution for professional websites, but it is a good solution for personal web sites like mine.

Andy Clark does not advise how to implement the universal IE6 CSS; here is how I have done it on this site. First I add a conditional snippet of code at the top of the page in the site’s (X)HTML markup that targets IE6 browsers with a special message:
[sniplet ie6-body-notice]
Other browsers will simply ignore its contents. Then, I include browser specific stylesheets in the head section of the web pages:
[sniplet ie6-head-stylesheets]
Browsers that are not IE6 (or older) will be served the regular, full-experience stylesheet. In addition, IE7 will have extra IE7-specific styles because it still has a few issues. However, IE6 and older will be served the Universal Stylesheet for Internet Explorer 6 hosted on Google Code.

To save you from launching any antiquated browsers, here is a screenshot of the home page for a visitor using IE6. Click on image for a larger view.

The Internet Explorer 6 Dilemma originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 15th, 2010

Customizing Individual Blog Posts, Part 1

Shanta Rohse — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:01:39 +0000

Customizing Individual Blog Posts, Part 1

Most of my posts have a design like this post: a picture near the top, some text, both at a fixed width column against a white backdrop, same typography and colour scheme throughout. For all the convenience WordPress offers to organize and publish web content, the cost is a certain degree of monotony in presentation. Most of the time this trade off is acceptable. But sometimes you want to accommodate an oversize picture, or write a caption in the left margin, or use a different coloured canvas. Sometimes you want a blog entry to have its own style. To that end, I created the Weekend Food Blogging series to let me experiment with alternative layouts, colour, typography and, (why not) recipes. Recipes already have a great deal of inherent structure — a list of ingredients, preparation instructions, possible variations — and so leave you room to focus fully on their presentation. Plus, if the custom design doesn’t pan out, then there’s good food to be had.
This approach is not for the timid. But if you get as much satisfaction out of designing at the post level as I do, then there are ways to minimize the tedious bits through stylesheets, custom fields and user-defined functions file. The rest of this post explains just how to do that.

First, create the unique blog post styles.
So far, I’ve kept navigational elements such as tags, categories and menus consistent among the design variations so that visitors would not have to re-learn the interface. For the Chocolate Chip cookie recipe I changed the title, the excerpt, the links and added a big cookie to the background. Here is a snippet of the CSS that shows the background cookie:
[sniplet code-custom-css]
I use a Thematic, a WordPress theme framework that adds unique post and body classes you can use to easily modify any post through CSS. If you do not, you will likely have to make use of !important declarations to control the presentation.
Associate the new styles to the blog post.
You can simply add these styles to the existing stylesheet. However, that approach for each custom design is a little tedious compared to the alternative that makes use of WordPress custom fields. Custom fields let you set up just about any design variation within the administration panel that you can turn on with a name/value switch. Here I’ve specified custom_css as the name and added the corresponding styles as the value. The custom field name/value pair looks like this:

The styles are now part of the post’s metadata and are available to use in WordPress theme files. In this case you will retrieve the custom styles in the header.php.
Link to the styles in the header.
While I could have added this function directly to the header.php, I’ve chosen to define a separate function called custom_stylesheet_head and add it to the functions.php:
[sniplet code-custom-stylesheet-head]
First, the code makes sure we’re on an actual post’s page by using the WordPress conditional tag is_single(). Then it looks for a custom field custom_css. If one is found, its value is displayed between tags.
The add_action function with the wp_head hook, to call the custom_css function. This tells WordPress to run the function whenever the wp_head function is called by the header.php). This approach leaves my theme files in tact, while I tweak without risk of overwriting the file when I change or upgrade my theme, and without risk of breaking my theme.

The reward for all this effort is the relative convenience of custom designing your next blog post. When you write a post that will receive custom CSS styling, create the custom field named custom_css and paste your custom CSS styles as a value.

Customizing Individual Blog Posts, Part 1 originally appeared on Portable Learner on May 24th, 2009

Dress Up Your Blog for Darwin Day

Shanta Rohse — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:20:48 +0000

Dress Up Your Blog for Darwin Day

It is no exaggeration to say that Charles Darwin revolutionized our understanding of nature and our place in it; I’ve cited a few articles that recognize his contributions in Linking Thinking. So, I’d like my personal blog to join the February 12 celebrations that will mark the 200th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his book, On the Origins of Species. In the geeky tradition of Google and Yahoo!, I’d like to dress my blog for Darwin Day with a custom logo.

My inspiration for the custom logo comes from a good-natured caricature of Darwin as an ape published in 1871, a time of growing acceptance of the theory of evolution. If an ape, why not a chihuahua? Afterall, Darwin believed there was a continuity among humans and all other species.

With logo in hand, I want it posted automatically. Since I’ll be kicking up my heals on Darwin Day, I won’t have time for any manual logo fiddling. Because I am learning PHP and have been mercilessly hacking the WordPress templates that run this site, my first thought was to use conditional tags, specifically the is_day function. Conditional tags let you display content based on the conditions you set. In this case, I want to display a special Darwin logo if the day is February 12. On all other days, I want to display the usual chihuahua logo. I was right about using conditional statements, but wrong about the function. The is_day function lets you control when a daily archive is being displayed; I want to control what content is displayed on a given day. Back to Google search for new tactics.

As is often the case in the World of WordPress, someone had already had the same brilliant idea, followed the same misguided path and someone else had already offered a better solution. On the WP-Hackers mailing list, Samuel Wood aka Otto of ottodestruct.com points out that the correct function to use is getdate, and he prescribes a concise bit of code that gets the job done. Here is how I adapted it for my needs:

[sniplet logos]

This code displays special Darwin and Christmas logos on the home page on February 12 and December 25, respectively, and the regular chihuahua logo on all other days. Each time I want to recognize another significant day, I only need to add another elseif statement. Very nice, Otto.

Where does this bit of code go? Because I use the Thematic WordPress theme, I slipped this code between a pair of

 tags in the widget-ready area called index-top asides. I also use a plugin that allows me to use PHP code in widgets, such as Sören Weber's Exec-PHP plugin. 
If you aren’t using such a flexible theme, or do not want to use Sören’s plugin, then save this code as a PHP file, say logos.php. Then, call this file into the header.php:
[sniplet templatepath-logos]
While my example focus on WordPress, this code can be used in any other PHP-driven content management systems such as Drupal and Moveabletype. Now, you can always have your blog celebrate with you.
Dress Up Your Blog for Darwin Day originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 10th, 2009



Transfusion Reading List
Shanta Rohse — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:05:00 +0000
Transfusion Reading List
	
	
Databases like PubMed and Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP), and even the occasional transfusion-related website are beginning to offer RSS feeds. RSS feeds present online information in ways that help you monitor new publications and upcoming events. This demo of exceptional feeds shows you how you can make best use of these tools. It will be of special interest to individuals who want to monitor the literature, educators who want to create reading lists for their students and organizations who would like to syndicate their resources. The demo will get better over time as more websites make feeds available to their visitors.
What’s here?

The demo
Downloads
FAQs
Contributors

Transfusion Reading List Demo
Need help? See How to use this demo. 

[sniplet post-tmreadinglist]
Downloads
Here are two resources to help you design your own reading list. The first is an XML file of the current list, which you can then modify to suite your own needs. The second is a poster abstract I presented at the CSTM 2009 conference that describes how one goes about designing a reading list.

Download: Transfusion Reading List XML

Updated: October 21st, 2009

Instructions: 1) Click and save file to your hard drive; 2) Import into your own feed reader; 3) Modify, add and delete feeds; 4) Share your feeds with your transfusion community. 

Download: Create a Transfusion Reading List With Web Feeds poster abstract

Size: 13.09 MB
Frequently Asked Questions
If your answer is not here, post a comment or contact me at shanta.rohse@gmail.com

How do I use the demo? Try the Demo Help.
Will RSS feeds let me get articles for free? Only if they are free to begin with.
I already use email alerts. Why would I use RSS feeds?. If they serve you well, email alerts are useful (Dr. Jennifer Fesser recommends PubCrawler). If you find they are buried under a deluge of other emails or you want to be able to refine, filter or otherwise filter information, consider trying feeds. They are also more easily exchanged with your colleagues.
Are there disadvantages to using RSS feeds? Not all web sites offer them (fortunately, this is changing), you need to use a feed reader to view the feeds (much like you need an email client to view your emails), and you need to remember to look at your feed reader.
How do I subscribe to feed? To follow an RSS feed, you need a feed reader. I prefer Google Reader, a web-based feed reader, but there are many other good choices.
How do I find RSS feeds? Look for the image icons  or  or  on your favourite transfusion-related web pages. Look for RSS options within article databases like PubMed or TRIP. Or use a directory like Google’s Blogsearch or this demo.
May I copy your feeds into my feed reader/organizational web site/learning management system? Yes.
My organization wants to syndicate our resources using RSS feeds. What should we do? Excellent decision! Contact your web designer. Good web designers have many tools at their disposal for adding RSS feeds to your site.
How do I know when you’ve added a new feed to your demo? Subscribe to the feed for this post:    RSS feed for this post. Well, of course you expected me to provide a feed. See how this works?

Contributors
The Transfusion Reading List began during a workshop called Cool Tools: Web-based learning for Transfusion Specialists, originally held for the Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network (ORBCoN). The workshop has been held a number of times, and individuals have contributed their finely crafted search queries, including these participants who wanted to share their expertise and make this reading list an outstanding resource for the transfusion information maven: Dr. Jennifer Fesser, Dr. Heather Hume, The CBS TRALI Working Group, Pat Letendre, Dr. Jeanne Callum, Ray Berger, Dr. Ben Saxon, Wendy Owens,  Diana Boye.
Transfusion Reading List originally appeared on Portable Learner on September 9th, 2007



Style Author Comments with WordPress Sandbox Theme
Shanta Rohse — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 04:15:00 +0000
Style Author Comments with WordPress Sandbox Theme
	
	
There are lots of advantages to designing websites with Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is relatively easy to learn and certainly easy to rework once a basic site framework has been established. Individual webpages or sections can easily be changed into something different just by swapping a single CSS file, or a line within a CSS file. The genius behind the Sandbox theme for WordPress is that it leverages CSS to let you change complex WordPress functions–functions that used to require changing the code or installing a plugin. In this post, I’ll show how you can use Sandbox’s comment classes to highlight authors’ comments with just a few lines of CSS.
Sandbox’s Semantic Classes
Sandbox is unique among WordPress themes because of its rich semantic markup and its elegant, dynamic class-generating functions. One opportunity this affords is the ability to add special styling to comments made by the author or other registered users, all without the use of plugins or theme modifications. Unique styling for comments helps reassure visitors that they can trust a comment was in fact made by you, and not by someone pretending to be you. In fact, Sandbox lets you distinguish comments made by the post’s author from other authors, and registered from unregistered users and from each other. This bit of magic comes via the use of comments class-generating functions that adds the following semantic classes to each comment li tag: “bypostauthor”, “postbyuser”, and “comment-author-[name].”
Now, just add styling:

[sniplet sandbox-author-styling]
In this example, I’ve use the :after pseudo-class, which displays “The Author” after the comment li element, but only if you are using a modern browser like Mozilla/Firefox and Opera 7+, and IE7+. If you are still using Internet Explorer 6, then you’ll just have to trust me :-)
The Sandbox Designs Competition is an excellent place to learn how to make good use of Sandbox’s markup, and learn some advanced CSS techniques. For example, in her Sandbox theme Diurnal, Carolyn Smith cleverly exploits the class that displays the current hour when you are viewing a page. (See the demo). The page changes with the daylight.  
If You Don’t Use Sandbox
Few, if any, WordPress themes come with such rich semantic markup and profusion of classes that Sandbox does. But in the huge community that is WordPress, you would expect alternatives. And there are. K2, which is technically not a theme but an advanced WordPress template, also offers a way to distinguish multiple users, as Paul Stamatiou explains. Or, you can use Jonathan Leightonâ€™s Author Highlight plugin to add the required class attributes, which then need styling. Alternatively, you can modify the WordPress comment loop yourself to assign unique classes. Derek Punsalan offers a particularly thorough tutorial that shows you how to add classes based on the author’s email address. Or give your comments.php a complete makeover à la Chris Montoya that adds author highlighting and much more. But, really, Sandbox makes it easy.
While the instructions in this post are still valid, you no longer need to use a theme like Sandbox to give a special style to author comments. WordPress 2.7 automatically adds a CSS class to author and registered users comments. To make use of them, add your styles to your style.css:
[sniplet wordpress2.7-author-styling]
Style Author Comments with WordPress Sandbox Theme originally appeared on Portable Learner on February 4th, 2007



Smart Keyword Searches for Learners
Shanta Rohse — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 00:55:34 +0000
Smart Keyword Searches for Learners
	
	
A finely crafted search query is a beautiful, sometimes painfully beautiful, thing. The official Google Advanced Search Operators offers the promise of unearthing riches from the deep recesses of the Internet as long as you can edit (and remember) the search string to meet your specific needs. Services like G2P and Find Music offer a convenient interface with finely tuned Google search strings for searching for mp3 and e-book files. But you must visit their site first, and cannot refine the query. Mozilla and Firefox offer another solution: the smart keyword search solution, which lets you personalize and pass search queries directly in your browser’s location bar. This article explains how to use them to save and reuse complex search queries.

Download: smart keyword search bookmarks

Updated: February 22nd, 2008

Size: 10.02 KB
This version has ten smart keyword searches:

TeachMe Google Search: Search for syllabi and courses offered by edu sites with Google by typing “teachme ” in the location bar.
Article Archives Google Search: Search for articles in the New York Times, Scientific American and The Globe & Mail with Google by typing “nyt ”, “econ ”, or “gm ”, respectively, in the location bar. Search query source: Google Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools
Information Collections Google Search: Search directories, encyclopedias and subject indices with Google by typing “dir ”, “enc ”, or “sub ”, respectively in the location bar. Search query source: Google Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools
Media Google Search: Search for books, music and videos with Google using “book ”, “music ”, and “video ”, respectively, in the location bar. Search query source: Marc and Angel

Using Keyword Searches 101
In Firefox and Mozilla Suite you can specify keywords for bookmarks by filling in the keywords field in the Bookmarks Properties. When you type the keyword into the Location Bar and hit [Enter], the keyword will be replaced with the bookmarked URL. Try this: Press Ctrl+L to key up to the location bar, type “dict pied-a-terre” (without the quotation marks) and hit [Enter], which brings you to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pied-a-terre. By default, Firefox comes with several bookmarks with keywords defined, including dict.
Even better, if you add a %s at some place in your bookmarks URL, it will be replaced by the words you type in after the keyword. Known quicksearches or “smart keyword searches,” they offer a way to search the web with the fewest keystrokes possible. I recommend Lifehackers Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches for more pre-packaged search convenience. Now, finally, let’s takes this one step further by incorporating Google’s advanced search operators into your own customized smart keyword searches.
You can set up smart keyword searches manually, or simply import my smart keyword search bookmarks.
Manual Set-Up

Do an advanced search on Google. Experiment and refine until you have finely honed results! E.g. If you want to learn the French language, you might try this, which will retrieve French course and syllabi from *.edu sites:
-intitle:(~tutorial|~syllabus|~guide|~course) site:.edu "French"

Bookmark the results page. E.g.,
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=-intitle%3A%28%7Etutorial%7C%7Esyllabus%7C%7Eguide%7C%7Ecourse%29+site%3A.edu+%22French%22&btnG=Search

In your bookmarks URL (the Location field), find and replace your search term with %s. I also like to trim the URL to just the essential search parameters, deleting for example the number of search results (num=100). E.g.,
http://www.google.com/search?q=-intitle%3A(%7Etutorial%7C%7Esyllabus%7C%7Eguide%7C%7Ecourse)+site%3A.edu+%22%s%22

Open the Properties dialog for your new bookmark. Add a keyword, e.g., teachme
Press OK.


You now have a smart keyword search that can be invoked with teachme. Alternatively, steps 3–5 can alternately be done in the Bookmarks Manager, the Bookmarks Sidebar, or using the Firefox Open Book add-on. To use, type “teachme 
” in your Firefox location bar to search for syllabi and courses offered by edu sites in your area of interest with Google.
The finesse in keyword searches lies in desiging the search query, of course. All search engines require different syntax, so it is best to concentrate on two or three, and learn them well. If you choose Google, then the superb Google Guide explains and gives examples of all advanced search operators and the Google Cheat Sheet comes in handy.
Import Smart Keyword Search Bookmarks
I’ve made my smart keyword search bookmarks available to download. Even though I exclusively use Google search queries, any search engine can be used. To import the bookmarks:

Right-click on the quick search bookmarks file and choose “Save Link As…” Place the file somewhere on your computer.
In Firefox, from the Bookmarks menu, choose “Organize Bookmarks.”
From the Bookmarks Manager File menu, choose Import. Choose “Import Bookmarks from File.” Browse to and open the file you just saved.

The smart keyword searches now should be imported and ready to use. 
Incidentally, the original documentation for Firefox Smart Keywords seems to be offline, but is still available via the Internet Archive: Bookmark Keywords.
Smart Keyword Searches for Learners originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 4th, 2006



Create A Glossary for Your WordPress Site
Shanta Rohse — Sun, 21 May 2006 04:39:22 +0000
Create A Glossary for Your WordPress Site
	
	
I’ve been looking for a way to create a glossary for this site that would:

allow alphabetical navigation, of course. And take full advantage of a WordPress post’s title, excerpt and body for its display.
automatically insert an indicator next to the glossary term in any post or page that links directly to the glossary.
use WordPress’s categories to create hierarchical structures. The idea here is that you can create hierarchies to show relationships like synonyms or antonyms. I am only guessing that this is possible.

Well, two of three ain’t bad. (I’m still wondering if there is a way to show relationships between glossary terms.) To see the results in action, consider the term, microformats. The pencil icon small caps font indicates it is a glossary term. Clicking it the term brings you to the Notebook Glossary and a brief description. Clicking on the title brings up the complete post.
In version 0.7 of his WP-SNAP! plugin, Nathan has restored the ability to pass a category number directly to the plugin, making it once again compatible with WordPress Pages. This is great news, but I’ve opted not to introduce a glossary until all three of my glossary criteria can be met.
Step-by-Step

Install and configure WP-SNAP! Nathan’s clever plugin (v0.5.1) offers a way to navigate through a category of posts using alphabetized pagination. Install and activate the plugin as per his directions. In the configuration options, I elected to display both title and excerpt, and accepted the default for the rest.
Create a Glossary Page and a unique glossary category. All glossary posts will be assigned to this category. Add this line, which will display content for a glossary category only, to the Page
Include the conditional function, which checks to see if the plugin is enabled, and without which the page borks when the plugin is disabled. Replace catID with your category ID:
[sniplet wpsnap]
Install and configure Ubernyms. Jaykul’s remarkable plugin (v2.5) lets you configure words that you always want linked. In fact, it does far more than this, in particular can be used to configure a set of frequently used abbreviations. But for this project, simply add each new term to the configuration panel, assigning each one as Just Link and a Make Link to the glossary (e.g. for microformats it’s …/glossary/?snap=M)
Add CSS styling. Surprisingly, this step requires most of the effort. WP-SNAP! does not include any styling, so you must pull out the style sheet and go to town. Ubernyms does include styling, to which I added these lines to insert a small book icon next to the link to indicate it is a glossary item:
[sniplet ubernymscss]

Limitations
I am quite happy to have my Notebook Glossary up and running almost effortlessly. Still, nothing is perfect:

There are just too many auto links. I mean, if you are prone to repetitive term syndrome like I am, and find occasion to microformats this and microformats that, you find yourself asking how many time do you really need to auto link microformats to the glossary in a single post? One microformats link really ought to do.
There are conflicts with other link styling plugins such as Denis de Bernardy’s External Links plugin.
By CSS styling the Ubernyms uttJustLink class, I’ve effectively eliminated the possibility of using non-glossary auto links because they too would be styled with the glossary book icon. It would be great to be able to add unique styling for glossary terms, or use some other technique all together. This is possible, but requires modifying the plugin. Jaykul has put this on his to-do list for future plugin developments.
This is less a problem than a missed opportunity: The Ubernyms plugin makes use of DomTT tool-tips (a javascript library that lets you add custom tool-tips to web pages) that lets you add, say, definitions to the tool-tip. This lets you read the definition of the term simply by hovering your mouse over the term. There is no need to visit the Glossary. Even so, I hesitate to enter the same excerpt twice, in both the glossary and tool-tip. That’s antithetical to nature of a database-driven web site.

Feedback
If you try this approach for creating a glossary, or any suggestions how to better implement this idea, do share it by leaving a comment here.
In the current version of WP-SNAP! (0.61), plugin author Nathan has removed the option to pass a category number directly to the plugin. This means it is no longer compatible with Pages. Furthermore, I find that Jaykul’s Ubernyms does not play well with WordPress 2.1. So, I am taking my glossary offline until I find a better solution.
For those (see comments) who can’t decide if chronological or alphabetical navigation is better, you might want to investigate Owen Kelly’s glossary implementation, which lets you alternate between both views. It’s part of his larger “Memi” project, an attempt to build a personal learning space. See the glossary in action in the development category page.
A glossary WordPress plugin is now available. The Internet Marketing Monitor offers IMM-Glossary, a plugin that has much of the same functionality as I’ve written here. It certainly is much easier to use than setting up two plugins to work together. In addition, it offers an option to link to just one instance of a term in a post or page, rather than all of them. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to take advantage of the WordPress posts structure and all the advantages that implies, or at least doesn’t integrate the terms into posts as well as WP-SNAP! does. For me that’s important, so I am sticking with the method I’ve written here. Yet, all in all, a plugin that definitely deserves your attention if you want a glossary for your WordPress site.
Create A Glossary for Your WordPress Site originally appeared on Portable Learner on May 20th, 2006