Rumblings from Nifty Galoot

I have a number of websites, and many of them are WordPress blog based. There are lots of great plugins for WordPress to use. Here’s a list of some of them I’ve found useful:

• Akismet – Spam blocker
• Bad Behavior – Spam blocker used in addition to Akismet
• CommentLuv – Gives a backlink to a commentor’s last post
• Contact Form 7 – Customizable contact form
• Lightbox 2 Plugin – Used for showing larger views of images in posts
• List Subpages with Descriptions – Just what it says
• NoFollow Free – Remove nofollow from comments, with customizable settings
• Popshops.com – Add products you affiliate to your blog
• ShareThis – Make it easy for folks to share posts they like
• ShowIKRSS – Display Imagekind galleries in your blog and make links affiliate links.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade – A must have for upgrading WordPress
• WP-Ads – Useful for showing ads or content wherever you want in your blog
• WP-Amazon – A way to find Amazon.com products to add to your blog

There are many other great plugins I’m not using because I don’t have a need for them or haven’t heard of them. I did want to share the ones I like and use most often.

Here’s a photo of bright red and yellow flower blossoms I took at last Wednesday’s farmers market. I love how this photo turned out with other blossoms behind the central bloom and the green leaves under the blossom.

Red and Yellow Flowers by Kent Lorentzen — View Larger

I’ve added this to my Flowers gallery at Imagekind, so it is available for sale there, framed or unframed.

Tags: Kent Lorentzen, Red and Yellow Flowers, Imagekind, Floral, Flowers

My friend Jean, from Rotem Gear, recently posted about a new design for farmers… It says ‘That’s How I Roll’ and has a picture of a farm tractor. Perfect for us farm guys, gals, and kids. Don’t you think it’s a great design?

Farm Tractor White T-Shirt

This great design is available on many styles of shirts to fit nearly anyone. What a nice gift for any farmer, or wannabe farmer.

It’s a late spring and all the planting has been delayed. Tuesday I cut potatoes and Thursday I got them planted. Put in about an acre, divided between Gold Rush russets, Yukon Gold, and Red Norlands.

Took some video when I was cutting spuds… And this is my first video posted to the web:

I kept it short on purpose so it wouldn’t take too long to load on dial-up internet. Okay… I have to admit… The clip of cutting is speeded up a tiny bit to shorten the clip.

I went for a walk yesterday morning after having a couple of icky days with rain and snow. What a change from a while ago when it was so nice and warm. It got was cold that morning… 20 degrees when I got up. I enjoy the water and like looking at how it flows in the river and ditches. Guess I’m still a little kid at heart, wading in the water and trying not to overtop the rubber boots, while seeing how close to the top the water can get.

Anyway… I had the camera and took some pics. Here’s one of water flowing from a culvert under the road on it’s way to the river. There was a layer of ice on the rocks and bank with a few green spears waving in the flowing water. The bubbles created by the splashing water created an interesting ebb and flow.

Today is the day of the Township Annual meeting so I was to the town hall this morning and started a fire in the wood stove so it’d be warm and comfy for the meeting. Have the coffee pot out and all ready to go.

Here are a couple of pictures of our little town hall:

The hall was built about 30 years ago by a long time township resident who also served as clerk for 48 years before retiring.

I’ve written a plugin that makes it easy for WordPress bloggers to show Imagekind member galleries in their blogs.

Images can be displayed in a number of sizes and are clickable. Links are converted to affiliate links that can open in a new window.

Custom tracking code can be set for each gallery displayed.

Defaults can be set for site wide display, but can be over ridden in individual posts if desired.

Go to the ShowIKRSS plugin home page to download a copy.

The plugin comes with ‘Purple Crayon Instructions’ for using it, you can read the ‘Purple Crayon Instructions’ online if you wish.

You can see how the plugin shows my IK galleries by clicking one of the gallery pages in the sidebar.

The tractor that was split is back together and looking good!

Here are pictures from before, during, and after. You can click on a picture for a larger view:

It took some time to round up parts and find a day to put the pieces back together. John and I spent about a day putting on the new parts and getting everything ready for putting the two halves back together.

Once everything was ready it only took about 20 minutes to roll the back half of the tractor up to the front half and get the bolts in. I did take video of putting the halves together. Now I’ll have to learn how to edit it and post it sometime.

After getting the halves bolted together it took the rest of the morning to finish putting on more stuff and connecting up all the things that were disconnected. After lunch we got the fuel lines hooked up, connected the battery and got it started. It’s always nice to hear it run again.

There were some adjustments to make plus a few more odds and ends to take care of, like put the hood back on. It was looking a lot better by the time ‘Mom and kids’ got home.

Kyle sits on the tractor and is ready to go while sister and mom look on. He was real happy to see the tractor all together.

Over the next couple of weeks John ordered a new seat and repainted the hood and fenders after cleaning things up and giving it a pressure wash.

Oh Boy! Doesn’t the new seat, new paint, and wash job make the tractor look spiffy?

Found a wonderful artist the other day… An alert for ‘Imagekind’ led to a blog post announcing her art gallery on Imagekind. I was blown away by it!

The cute illustrations made me smile and amazed me with the life and energy in them. The bright colors, expressions, and details are wonderful.

Okay… Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away with the superlatives… But, then again… It’s hard not to praise such beautiful work.

Cuddly Friends by Rachelle Anne Miller — View Larger

One of the great things about the Imagekind affiliate program is that I get to find, promote, and write about great art. This is one of those times when I absolutely love the opportunity!

Today is a double feature for Rachelle… I featured another of her works at my Nifty Piks – Photos and Art blog. ‘Storytime with Grandma’

Rachelle’s blog also has more of her work and some great tutorials on how to do illustrations. Makes me really wish I could draw.

Tags: Rachelle Anne Miller, Cuddly Friends, Illustration, Cute, Drawing, Imagekind,

In the last few days I’ve been exploring the web and learning about comments and plugins for WordPress. What have I learned? I’ve learned that the default for most blogs is to have nofollow set for an author’s website, or links in comments.

There were a quite a bunch of plugins I found to remove nofollow from comments.  The ones mentioned most often were:  LinkLove, DoFollow, and NoFollow Free.

They all looked like good choices, with DoFollow the simplest if someone wants to remove nofollow from all links in comments. Just install it, activate the plugin, and you’re done.

By default, LinkLove leaves the nofollow set until a comment author reaches 10 posts. That could be a good choice for some folks. There are instructions for how to change the number of posts to something other than 10, if a different number is desired.

I decided to use NoFollow Free. It takes a tiny bit more time setting up, since you’ll likely go to the options page and customize the settings, but you have options for whose posts you want to remove nofollow from, and the number of posts before it will do so. It also allows removing nofollow from a author’s website, links in comment contents, or both. Plus… There’s a built in option to put back nofollow if blacklist words are matched.

CommentLuv is a plugin that will go to a comment author’s website (if they fill it in) and posts a link to their last post at the time of the comment. A fun way to share a little luv by making it easy for readers to check out a commenter’s site. It may also encourage folks to comment on your site.

And lastly…  You may have wondered about the… U Comment – I Follow design:

You can find one for your blog in a number of colors or a css version  from Randa Clay Design.