I still have fluff pages to create but for all practical purposes, we are open for business! Tonight I’ll add the rest of the content, and tomorrow I’ll sign into live help at 7:00 a.m.

Rose City Gardens is almost done too - same deal, I have to add the fluff. I wish I were rich and could hire content writers, and just stay buried in the code all day (what BLISS that would be) but since most users actually read what’s on a site rather than what’s under it, I must force myself to put on my author’s cap and get busy.

Please feel free to comment on the new designs, both here and at Rose City Gardens.

I am getting closer to the final stretch - right now all that’s left to do is fluff pages and forms.

WordPress 2.5 is awesome so far - but there’s a very annoying bug - it won’t let me upload media through the media library. The nice thing is that Next-Gen gallery does work on 2.5 and the new version is very nice! I can insert images from the gallery into posts.

Still not sure when bbPress will upgrade to work with 2.5, or when 2.5 will be officially released. I’ve installed SimplePress forum (see http://www.bk2k.com/sf-forum/) in the meantime, but haven’t yet decided if I’m going to use it. I need some sort of support ticket application, and while a forum would work, if I find a really nice standalone app that uses clean markup and is easy to skin, I’ll go for it.

Or, bbPress will be awesome and there will be no question as to which road I’ll take!

It will probably be another week to 10 days before I launch - but there’s definitely a visible light at the end of the tunnel!

I’ve finished the templating (although there are always bugs lurking about) and was going to start reinstalling plugins BUT….

I downloaded and installed Wordpress 2.5 RC1 on my dev server, and it’s AWESOME! So far it works like a charm, with a much prettier and well-organized backend. The only downside is the ability to drag and drop widgets into your sidebar(s) is gone, replaced with selection boxes on the interface. I’m sure they had their reasons, and I’m sure I’ll get used to it. But I digress!

At this point I’m not going to add any more plugins until I upgrade this site to 2.5 - most of the old posts in the category “WordPress Plugins” are going bye-bye, as are the way-expired posts in the Jobs category, and various other cleanup. From what I hear, 2.5 is ready for production; they’re just holding out for a little more feedback.

I’m aware that the links at the top lead to pages without content - this will be remedied soon!

In the meantime, If you desperately need a designer, please fill out the quote request form at http://bk2k.com/quote-request-form.html.

NOTE - This plugin was uninstalled - sorry for the inconvenience.

Our latest WordPress plugin is the WP-eCommerce plugin by Instinct Entertainment. The Lite version is free, and is just the ticket if you want to sell products on your blog.

To see the plugin in action, click the ink in the menu bar. It’s very vanilla right now, but you can upgrade the cart and get more features for a nominal fee. I’ll be adding products - gemstones - and if you like precious and semi-precious gems, feel free to purchase them from me at a greatly reduced price!

This is just one example of what you can achieve with WordPress - like they say, WordPress is “infinitely extensible”. Now if someone would come up with an e-card plugin, my life would be complete!

Our newest WordPress plugin is the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form, found at BeastBlog.

I prefer it to WP-Contact or cforms, for aesthetic reasons mainly, but this one has a lot of features! From the plugin site:

• Form overview page available to you to confirm the plugin’s general configuration.
• Extensive security features with 16 individual abuse countermeasures.
• Build to the highest web standards with maximum accessibility and usability in mind.
• Extremely simple drag-‘n’-drop, plug-‘n’-play set-up — even novices can do it.
• Simple 7-step form-based configuration so you never have to look at one line of code.
• Form set-up error management to help ensure you set-up critical parts correctly.
• Style choices at the ready with some pre-made form themes designed for several popular WordPress themes… all pre-tested.
• Ability to use “no themes” offered in case you want to use your own style sheet.
• Built in Style Sheet Editor so you can edit the available themes or create one of your own. A commented “custom.css” file included for you already.
• Extensive on-board documentation library so help is always at the ready.
• Performance monitoring spam counter function.

I still have to tweak the formatting a bit to match the site, but there are quite a few ready-made themes that may fit your site as is.

I used QuickTags to format and align this block of text to the right.

The QuickTags plugin is very convenient! I made two tags called left and right for the purposes of aligning images or text. You have to switch to Code on the editor, highlight the text that you want the tag to apply to, and simply click the QuickTag. This is ideal for formatting blocks of text (asides), images, or for inserting CSS classes in your html. This plugin is a must-have for WordPress users!

The plugin author’s site is German, but there’s not much to installing it - just upload the plugin file to your plugin directory and install it, then go to Options -> Add Quicktags.

NextGen Gallery is a new, full-featured gallery plugin from Alex Rabe. It’s still an alpha release, so there are a few bugs (I can’t get the slideshow to display; it tells me I need flash, and I’ve got flash) but I’m keeping an eye on it. I expect great things from this plugin!

The famous Toby-Tobe demonstrates NextGen:
[Gallery=2]

This is a terrific way to show your photos off to the world, on your blog via your Flickr account. It’s easy to add an album to a post in your control panel with this plugin. Click the moonstone below to look at part of my “rock collection.”

***I have uninstalled the Flickr Photo Albums in favor of NextGen. Sorry for the inconvenience. ***

Download the Flickr Photo Albums plugin at Tan Tan Noodles.

AWSPress puts an Amazon store on your WordPress site. You just change the parameters in the config file and upload, then navigate to http://yoursite/amazon/ - there’s your store! AWSPress is not exactly a plugin, but it uses your WordPress template to build itself.

There’s still some tweaking to be done, but you can get a look at the store at ****EDIT - THIS HAS BEEN REMOVED - SORRY” - that’s just the basic install, it will look nicer later on.

There’s another great plugin for WordPress called WP-Amazon. It puts a very convenient feature in your control panel - product search so you can easily pop Amazon ads into your posts. It saves you the trouble of navigating to your Associates account and finding a product - you can do it all from the comfort of your own site!

A great plugin for WordPress - you can embed YouTube, Google, IFilm, Metacafe, MySpace and Quicktime videos into your posts.

Here’s a happy-making video if I ever saw one:

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6868500436798753797&hl=en[/googlevideo]