If anyone else reading this post has all of them and wants to get rid of all of them or some of them but you don’t see them in your sidebar on the widget page…

Take a breath, they aren’t hiding. You aren’t crazy. They’re just the defaults.

If you don’t want SOME of them:  Go into your dashboard and ADD the widgets you DO want…. it will make the rest all magically disappear!

 If you don’t want ANY widgets whatsoever: Go to your dashboard and add a text widget and leave it blank. Save. Done.

**If this still doesn’t get rid of them, then they are probably hard-coded into your theme’s sidebar.php and you need to delete them from that as well.

If you want to keep the Meta Widget but remove some of the links to it, here is how (note that post is in relation to Wordpress 2.8.1 but will also work for 2.8)**:

Files to Edit: wp-includes/default_widgets.php

1. Open default_widgets.php and find this section (~ line 273):

/**
 * Meta widget class
 *
 * Displays log in/out, RSS feed links, etc.
 *
 * @since 2.8.0
 */

2. Now scroll down and find this:

<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
	<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>

	<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('Syndicate this site using RSS 2.0')); ?>"><?php _e('Entries <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>

	<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('The latest comments to all posts in RSS')); ?>"><?php _e('Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>

	<li><a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="<?php echo esc_attr(__('Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.')); ?>">WordPress.org</a></li>

<? php wp_meta(); ?>
</ul>

3. Delete the links you don’t want!

 
And, guess what, when you upgrade your Wordpress installation, you’ll have to do this all over again. Yay!

**If you’re using a version of Wordpress prior to 2.8, you’ll find similar code in the wp-includes/widget.php file and these instructions are the same.

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar
2. Find network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris (just start typing it in the “filter” space)
3. Doubleclick and type localhost
4. Click OK – Voila! Done.

All I did was created a generic admin user whose user number is 10000 so it wouldn’t conflict with any pre-existing users.

Username: backupadmin
Password: password
User number (just fyi): 10000

Login to phpmyadmin however you normally would, typically through your host management site.

1. Choose your database.

2. Open the query window.

 
3. Delete everything in the window (if anything) & paste the following:

INSERT INTO wp_users (ID, user_login, user_pass, user_nicename, user_email, user_url, user_registered, user_activation_key, user_status, display_name) VALUES
(10000, ‘backupadmin’, ‘$P$BmPLDEzDsIndBYN1IQqpQ2scT0HYWu/’, ‘backupadmin’, ‘backupadmin@backup.com’, ”, ‘2009-07-14 02:18:29′, ”, 0, ‘backupadmin’);

Then hit “go”

Once it’s successfully inserted that into your table, go to your WP login and login as that user.

Go to the User page and give your original account admin privileges again.

Log out & go back to your original account so you can delete the backupadmin user.

Slows down your browser, locks it up, crashes, and adds a bunch of blank lines whenever and wherever it feels like it until your CSS file or PHP file becomes twice the size of the original.

So go kill it already and wait for them to put out something better.

Disable Syntax Highlighting in Wordpress 2.8

Absolutely LOVE this.  If you want to have users register themselves & be emailed their password — you pretty much can’t do that if you host Wordpress on GoDaddy’s Windows server because the php mail() function is disabled.

This plugin kicks it’s ass. I just made a donotreply[at]candicimo.com email address and it works beautifully.

More Wordpress work arounds coming soon, I just had to share this link before it got lost to the ether.

But first…

• Read: What the hell is HDR photography?
• Read: Hack Your Canon PowerShot to Add Superpowers

Okay, now…

1. Do: CHDK Installation for Dummies to set up your SD card
2. Set up camera (quick how-to)
   • Put in SD card with CHDK installation on it
   • Set up CHDK Settings
     1. Turn on <ALT> mode (usually by pressing the “Print” button on camera)
     2. Then press “Menu” button
     3. Go to: Extra Photo Operations > Bracketing in Continuous Mode > Tv Bracketing value > 2 Ev
     4. Press “Menu” button again to close menu
   • Set up Canon Settings
     1. Put in “Record Mode” (e.g. in “take picture” mode instead of “play” mode where you view your pictures)
     2. Turn camera knob so that you are in Program mode
     3. Press Func/Set button
     4. Navigate to Drive Mode > C (Custom)
     5. Hit the “Menu” button to edit the “Custom” settings
     6. Choose Delay: 1
     7. Coose Shots: 3
     8. Press Func/Set to exit
3. Set up your tripod, take some pictures
4. Use one of these freeware HDR imaging programs:
   • The stupidly named Qtpfsgui
   • FDRTools basic
   • EasyHDR Basic (limited features compared to pro)
   • Photomatix Basic (limited to combining only 2 images)

I haven’t even really started to do any of this seriously yet because my tripod isn’t in Hawaii yet. When it is, I’ll come back and work on this some more. I’ve downloaded all four programs and I’m going to mess around with them and see which is my favorite.

NOTES:

If you’d rather take 5+ shots, go back and set Tv (or Av, depending on your preference) Bracketing value to 1 and set drive mode to 5 or more shots.

If you want to use RAW images, set this up via the CHDK settings (<ALT> Mode, then press +/- button)

Turn off <ALT> mode before taking shots or else it won’t take the picture but will instead say (and then indefinitely repeat) this:

“This is the default script. Scripts run when shutter is pressed in ALT mode. Press shutter to exit.“

The fixes I found for this either required axing a lot of extra code or ended up axing features such as the javascript shadows, which I rather like… so here’s the easy way to make clicking on an image thumbnail go directly to the details/comments page.

Files you have to edit:
Album.tpl

Make a copy of album.tpl and place it in your template/local folder (if this doesn’t exist yet because you obviously haven’t been slicing and dicing gallery2 code, go ahead and make a folder called “local” and place it in your template directory like so:: yourgallerypath/themes/ebony/templates/local).

Open album.tpl and find this, it’ll get you in the neighborhood: <!– Start PhotoThumb –>

Now, find this section of code:

{else}

<a href=”{g->url arg1=”view=core.DownloadItem” arg2=”itemId=`$child.resizedId`”}”

title=”{$child.title|markup} &lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;{g->url arg1=”view=core.ShowItem” arg2=”itemId=`$child.id`”}&quot;&gt;Details/Comments&lt;/a&gt;”

pageLink=”{g->url arg1=”view=core.ShowItem” arg2=”itemId=`$child.id`”}”

rel=”lightbox[photos]” >{g->image id=”%ID%” item=$child image=$child.thumbnail class=”%CLASS% giThumbnail reflect”}</a>

 {/if}

Now delete everything I’ve highlighted with red text. This same section of code is repeated a few lines farther down in the album.tpl, you should easily see it. Delete the exact same section of code there.

The final product should look like this (in both places):

{else}

<a href=”{g->url arg1=”view=core.ShowItem” arg2=”itemId=`$child.id`”}”

rel=”" >{g->image id=”%ID%” item=$child image=$child.thumbnail class=”%CLASS% giThumbnail reflect”}</a>

 {/if}

Save, upload to your “local” folder, done….. No more lightbox. (If you have never customized your album.tpl before or you’re just lazy, you can also just download my changed file here.)

I am using the Ebony 1.0 theme and wanted to be able to use the “Newest Photos” (Updates) and “Most Viewed photos” (Popular) links in my sidebar without having to mess with ISAPI_Rewrite because I am currently using a GoDaddy Window’s server and can’t figure the ISAPI stuff out…. so in the meantime, I just replaced the links in the Sidebar.tpl to bypass the rewrite process altogther. The links look ugly & long, but at least the links work.

Files to edit:
Sidebar.tpl

Plugins you need:
Dynamic Albums

Plugins you don’t need:
URL_Rewrite (since we’re bypassing it…)

Shorthand that you must replace:
yoursite = Your www.____.com

yourgallerydirectory = Name of the folder or path to your Gallery installation
if different than the root

YOURTHEME = Folder name of the theme you’re using. I am using ebony, so the
folder name is just “ebony”

First let’s go look at the links we’re going to use and copy them into a text file for later use. Go to your Gallery2 website and login in as the administrator.

Go to the Site Admin portion of your gallery and ensure that you have the Dynamic Albums plugin installed. If it is, it should appear on your left sidebar as “Dynamic Albums” under the “Display” category. If you don’t see that, it’s not installed, so click “Plugins” on the sidebar. Then click “Get More Plugins,” find it, and download it.

Once you get that in place, click on it and it will take you to the page where you can adjust the settings for it. This page also gives you the two dynamic URLS for the updates/popular albums. They look like this:

http://yoursite/yourgallerydirectory/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.UpdatesAlbum
http://yoursite/yourgallerydirectory/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.PopularAlbum

These are the two links you will be putting in your sidebar.tpl file, so copy them to a text file so you don’t have to re-type them later.

Now you have to edit your Sidebar.tpl file.

If you’ve never edited this file before, you’re probably just using the default file in your main theme/YOURTHEME/templates directory… So before you edit it, what you should do is go to your /theme/YOURTHEME/template directory via FTP or your file manager, whatever, and create a new directory called “local.”

(This is what the full path should look like in your browser where “YOURTHEME” is whatever theme you’re using: http://yoursite/yourgallerydirectory/themes/YOURTHEME/templates/local)

Now, copy the Sidebar.tpl file from the main template directory to the “local” directory that you made. By doing this you ensure that any new updates to the theme by the owner that you install won’t over-write your newly edited/customized file.

Okay, so go to your theme/YOURTHEME/template/local directory and open your Sidebar.tpl so you can edit it. If it’s easier, you can download this file to your local computer, edit it (as below), and then re-upload it and overwrite the
old file.

Find this code within the file:

<li><a href=”/updates”><strong>Newest Photos</strong></a></li> <li><a href=”/popular”><strong>Most Viewed Photos</strong></a></li>
 

Replace /updates and /popular with the links you previously copied for each.

Save the file to your theme/YOURTHEME/template/local directory, overwriting the previous file. Voila, done.

Just remember that you’ll probably have to to do a hard refresh on your browser (eg. CTRL F5) to make sure it downloads the new sidebar.tpl file.

For my site, the finished code snippet would look like this:
<li><a href=”http://candicimo.com/foto/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.UpdatesAlbum”><strong>Newest Photos</strong></a></li> <li><a href=”http://candicimo.com/foto/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.PopularAlbum”><strong>Most Viewed Photos</strong></a></li>

For your’s, it should look like this:
<li><a href=”http://yoursite/yourgallerydirectory/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.UpdatesAlbum”><strong>Newest Photos</strong></a></li> <li><a href=”http://yoursite/yourgallerydirectory/main.php?g2_view=dynamicalbum.PopularAlbum”><strong>Most Viewed Photos</strong></a></li>

I used the full path of my site and your’s above (e.g. by including the http://blah blah blah.com/blah/etc). Could you shorten it? Maybe, but I fiddled with it for about 2 minutes and couldn’t get it to work, so my instructions are to just use the full path because I know it works.