I’d like to give a shout out to a “paesan,” Enrico Batocchi, for his great “Duplicate Post” plugin.

Please note that the word “duplicate” is used here as a verb, not a noun. You are not trying to delete duplicate posts (something that happens frequently if you update you blog with XML feeds).  You are trying to duplicate a post. More correctly, in tech terminology, I would call this “cloning” a post.

Downloading the Plugin

Although it only claims to be compatible up to WordPress 3.1.4, a quick compatibility check (and 59 5-star ratings) appeared to speak for the solidity of the code.

You can go here, to Enrico’s own site to read more about the plugin, or see the official WordPress page and download the plugin here.

Using the Plugin

Once you’ve installed it, all you need to do is mouse over an existing post, and a new contextual item pops up – “Duplicate” -

Just click on that link, and the existing post is copied in it’s entirety to a brand new post. You only need to change whatever details you’d like for the new version, and publish.

Couldn’t be simpler, and works like a charm.

Highly recommended.

My only recommendation – rename this plugin as “Clone Post,” and you’ve got a real winner on your hands.

Bravo, Enrico!

Above All, a Faith in People

In part to commemorate Steve Jobs’ latest health-related sabbatical from Apple, Rolling Stone re-posted an old interview they had done with the Apple founder back in 1994. At that point, he had been out of Apple for about 9 years (since 1985), and was focusing on being a cheerleader for both object-oriented programming, and his NeXT computer platform. He felt that both would form the foundation for the next big thing(s) in computing. Turns out, he was more right than he could possibly know…

As NeXT provided the foundation for what eventually became both OS X and iOS, that revolution would be significant enough, but you’ll see even more stunning impacts of his influence towards the bottom of this piece.

This interview is an absolutely amazing read from start to finish, and gives you an idea of why Apple has surpassed Microsoft to currently be the second most valuable US company behind Exxon.

The entire piece is worth reading and re-reading, but it’s really the general mindset that I find the most striking:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/steve-jobs-in-1994-the-rolling-stone-interview-20110117

These are my favorite quotes, among many:

You can’t open the paper these days without reading about the Internet and the information superhighway. Where is this all going?
The Internet is nothing new. It has been happening for 10 years. Finally, now, the wave is cresting on the general computer user. And I love it. I think the den is far more interesting than the living room. Putting the Internet into people’s houses is going to be really what the information superhighway is all about, not digital convergence in the set-top box. All that’s going to do is put the video rental stores out of business and save me a trip to rent my movie. I’m not very excited about that. I’m not excited about home shopping. I’m very excited about having the Internet in my den.

So even while Blockbuster is building video rental stores by the thousands, and 6 years before the Internet bubble, he saw where things were going – for him, the “den” means that he wants to sit at his computer and interact with the world, long before the creation of Facebook or blogging…

And note the line down below that I find most striking, having been uttered by one of the most important technology people of the past 50 years: “Technology is nothing.” Note the context and implications of that, and you’ll get a closer glimpse of the Apple Way, and why its achievements over the years are so revolutionary.

Let’s talk more about the Internet. Every month, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. How is this new communications web going to affect the way we live in the future?
I don’t think it’s too good to talk about these kinds of things. You can open up any book and hear all about this kind of garbage.

I’m interested in bearing your ideas.
I don’t think of the world that way. I’m a tool builder. That’s how I think of myself. I want to build really good tools that I know in my gut and my heart will be valuable. And then whatever happens is… you can’t really predict exactly what will happen, but you can feel the direction that we’re going. And that’s about as close as you can get. Then you just stand back and get out of the way, and these things take on a life of their own.

Nevertheless, you’ve often talked about how technology can empower people, how it can change their lives. Do you still have as much faith in technology today as you did when you started out 20 years ago?
Oh, sure. It’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people.

Explain that.
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. It’s not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

One point that Jobs makes during the interview is how bad software development had become at that time, with Microsoft, due to its legacy-ridden operating system, requiring gigantic teams of people and many hours to even develop bad, buggy software. He envisioned his object-oriented operating system as being a catalyst for putting great tools in the hands of even home hobbyists of any age to write great software.

Just take a look at these pieces to see that this vision is a reality, and two 14-year olds (!) are making successful apps:

“Bubble Ball” by 14-year old iPhone app developer tops Apple’s free games list

14 Year Old iPhone App Developer Makes Typing on the iPhone Easier

Final Note:

In looking around for more info on NeXT, I found this little gem on TechCrunch:

Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer in 1991 to create the first web browser and web server, and John Carmack used a NeXTcube to build Wolfenstein 3D and the original Doom.

Jobs’ legacy seems even more staggering now, if such a thing was possible… Note that NeXT computers were used to write BOTH of the very foundations of the Internet (both web browser, AND server), AND what we know as modern gaming.

Say Hello to Flash

Perhaps the most important and earth-shattering use of Flash on the Web – aside from terrible animated site intros – is the revolution Flash video caused on YouTube. Thanks to Flash, video on the Web finally went from from tiny, postage-stamp-sized jittery slideshows which never quite worked, to becoming a real part of the Web experience.

Goodbye, Flash

But fortunately, standards move forward, and now, there’s no more need for Flash to watch video on YouTube.

Thanks to Apple’s latest Safari 5 browser, and a handy free extension, you can not only view any video quickly and seamlessly, you can download whatever size is available, drag it into iTunes, and have it playing on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS device in minutes.

No conversion required. Yes, it’s really that simple.

Say Hello to h.264

Everything changed when YouTube adopted h.264 as a parallel standard for YouTube.

You don’t really need to know all that – you just need to know that when Apple released the iPhone in 2007, Flash was not a part of it, but a fancy YouTube app was. At first, only a selection of YouTube videos was available in the new format for viewing on the iPhone. But gradually, the standard took over, and now every video is available simultaneously in h.264 format on iOS devices, and through the Flash player on personal computers.

Changing of the Platform

Connor McKay, on his great site “Vertical Forest,” has just released a phenomenal extension for Safari called YouTube5. Basically, you can load it into the Safari 5 browser, go to YouTube, and see every video without Flash.

And, more importantly, if you own an iOS device, you can copy whichever size of the video you want, drag it into iTunes, and then onto your device for watching on the go.

Let’s Extend Your Safari

Ready to watch your videos on the go, without having to worry whether you have an unreliable AT&T connection, or WiFi?

Follow these steps to take control of your YouTube video watching: (These steps are basically the same, regardless whether you’re on a Mac or PC computer.)

If you’re not already there, fire up Safari (if you don’t already have it, you can download Safari from the Apple site here), and then head over to the YouTube5 Extension page on Connor McKay’s Vertical Forest site.

Scroll down until you see this:

Click on the link labeled “download YouTube5 here,” and you’ll see this:

Click on “Save,” and then the YouTube5 extension will download quickly.

Once it’s downloaded, go to the “Downloads” window if it’s not already visible by clicking “Control-Alt-L” on a PC, or “Command-Option-L” on a Mac.

Now, double-click the downloaded extension in the downloads window, and you’ll see this:

Of course, choose “Install.”

A New YouTube Experience

Now, when you head back to YouTube, you’ll see a new player – focus on the bottom of the video window – see how the player looks different?

Notice how the player looks different, with blue marking video already played...

Grabbing the Video

Notice the small “i” in the upper right hand corner of the video now? Just click that, and you’ll see a selection of the sizes in which the video is now available for download.

Right click the one you want to save, and select “Download linked file as,” as shown here:

All videos are called “videoplayback.mp4″ by default – you’ll probably want to change that name to something more meaningful.

(Make sure you don’t change the .mp4 extension!)

Save the file to your desktop, and then wait for it to download. Depending on the quality/size you’ve chosen, it could take a while to download the complete video.

Because I download these videos myself to view on my iPhone, I usually choose 360p, which is fine for iOS device use.

Once the file has downloaded, I drag the video file into iTunes. The key is that there’s no need to convert it, as it’s already in the proper format for viewing on your computer, and on all iOS devices.

By default, it will appear in the “Movies” area of your iTunes library. Right-click to “Get Info” on the file, and then change the title to something more understandable for yourself.

Now just connect your iOS device, and drag the file over and sync it.

That’s it – a pretty simple set of steps, and you can gain control over when to watch the video you want to see!

Please let me know if you have any questions or problems in the comments below..

Update

Just finished up a brief video stepping you through the above steps, for those who prefer to watch & listen…

As I’ve written about Alex Rabe’s great NextGen Gallery plugin (here on the WordPress plugins site) several times before, both here, and here, I continue to use it and promote it as often as possible.

However, in a recent client situation, a major layout problem surfaced.

In moving a site from a development environment to a live server, the galleries stopped appearing properly.

Here's how the gallery should appear when showing up correctly

And here’s what happened when moving the site to the live server:

Slides appearing incorrectly on live server after migration

Galleries that previously looked great, and had a clean, well-proportioned layout suddenly looked completely bland and messed up. This was a real issue, and I started to wonder if I needed to rewrite some code on the site. However, a bit of analytical thinking quickly helped to track down and solve the issue.

Tracking down the problem

Obviously, the NextGen Gallery was no longer showing up properly because there was no stylesheet attached to it. Evidently, moving the site caused the connection of the stylesheet for the plugin to break.

Fixing this involved no coding whatsoever – just a quick trip to the lower left side of the Admin page, under “Gallery >> Style”:

Quick trip to NextGen Gallery's Style area

This is what it looked like on the site where it wasn’t coming up correctly; clearly, it couldn’t find a stylesheet:

NextGen Gallery Unable to find a Stylesheet to Use

The fix is simple – just select “Default Styles” from the dropdown, click the checkbox, and then click the “Activate>>” button:

Reconnecting NextGen Gallery to its stylesheet

Once that’s done, you should see this:

NextGen now has a style sheet to use

And “Presto” – the gallery now appears correctly:

And now the slideshow appears correctly...

My favorite fixes – no coding, once again, showing how great WordPress and NextGen Gallery are, even in recovering from errors.

Was recently upgrading one of the 20+ WordPress sites that I manage, and for the first time ever, I encountered a new and unusual error.

The Automatic Upgrade Derailed

The automatic upgrade, which has been absolutely smooth and trouble-free in every instance threw this error:

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.0.1.zip.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 26214400) (tried to allocate 2966269 bytes) in /home/XXXXX/public_html/XXXXX/wp-includes/http.php on line 1363

The Solution

Doing a few quick searches uncovered this solution:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-on-upgrade-allowed-memory-size-exhausted

and this:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-allowed-memory-size-6?replies=13

Basically, you need to add a line to the wp-config.php file, at the very top, right after the opening

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );

However, when this didn’t solve the issue, it was clear that something else needed to be done.

I also manage a number of Drupal sites, more in the capacity of technical project management, and I can say from considerable experience that upgrades of this nature in Drupal are quite a different story.

Basically, every time a security patch, core system upgrade, or module upgrade is issued, the upgrade process involves many hours of line-by-line debugging with each module, with a healthy measure of hand-wringing, angst, and soul-searching.

Spoiled as we are by WordPress, where even the most custom site from 5-6 versions ago can easily be upgraded at the press of a button, best practices can easily be ignored.

Back when we were dealing with WordPress 2.2-2.6, before every upgrade, you had to carefully back up the database and site files, disable all plugins, and then run the installer.

Well, taking a cue from that, I simply disabled all plugins, and tried the auto-updater again.

Presto – WordPress automatically updated itself.

Then it was just a matter of updating and re-enabling the recently-active plugins.

Ultimately, this just shows how truly user-friendly WordPress has become – even extremely technically-challenged users can manage the software, and attempt to do very sophisticated actions like base CMS system upgrades, mostly without a hitch.

Note to users – it does help to follow the protocols:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress

1. Back up your database
2. Back up your files
3. Disable plugins
4. Update!

Just be thankful you’re working with WordPress as opposed to Drupal; just check out the process for Drupal upgrades:

http://drupal.org/upgrade

I have great respect for my Drupal friends, in particular my buddy Aaron Wolfe – cheers, mate!

UPDATE – Keep in mind, this isn’t just for WordPress 3.0.1 – it’s important for ANY WordPress upgrade…

NextGen Gallery is definitely among the best plugins ever written for WordPress. I wrote about it in my earlier post here.

With the base install of NextGen Gallery, however, you can only do two effects – either the “Thickbox,” or “Shutter” effects.

However, it’s the Lightbox effect that most people look for, and want to use.

Unintuitively, in order to enable the Lightbox effect for NextGen Gallery in WordPress, you will need to use a different plugin entirely.

My compatriot Giuseppe Argento comes to the rescue with a light weight rewrite of the Lightbox plugin, now known as the Slimbox Plugin.

http://www.4mj.it/slimbox-wordpress-plugin/

The official WordPress page for the plugin is here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/slimbox-plugin/

Just install the plugin, then, in the Gallery options, go to:

Gallery >> Options >> Effects

You can now choose “Lightbox,” and it will work perfectly.

And, for the record, it works 100% with 3.0.1, as well.

Just make sure that your images are not too big, as Lightbox/Slimbox does not resize images that come up in the modal layer above your Web page.

I usually shoot for a maximum size of 800 x 600.

A quick tip of the hat to WordPress contributor extraordinaire lkoudal, who’s “Delete Duplicate Posts” plugin proved a true lifesaver.

I had been moving a Zen Cart ecomerce site to WordPress, using Sarah Neuber’s great “Jewelry Shop” ecommerce WordPress theme.

I got a great deal of help from Jamie Clarke of Click Business Solutions in the U.K., who did a great deal of the initial setup and configuration.

However, we had ended up with a great deal of duplicated posts, particularly due to Zen Cart’s nasty habit of duplicating products that appear in multiple categories.

Delete Duplicate Posts came to the rescue, and came through big time – it was dead simple to track down the duplicate entries, and delete them.

Highly recommended for anyone who is migrating a large site with many posts.

One great feature is the ability to either automatically, or manually delete duplicates.

Check it out!

WordPress plugins can create some of the most incredible functionality imaginable.

You can see my previous post about some great WordPress plugins for SEO, social media bookmarking, and image galleries.

In this brief tutorial, I show you a quick and easy way to see what plugins need to be upgraded, and how to quickly handle it yourself.

Enjoy!

Video blogging has become a hot topic recently, with both blogs and social media actively following this trend. I’ll take you through the five simple steps of setting up your own video blog with a clear blueprint that will get you up and running fast. While you may not know anything about video blogging yet, by the end of this article, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to start your video blog.

1. Figure Out What You’re Going to Video Blog About – This might seem pretty obvious, but you’ve got to focus on your area of knowledge, interest, expertise, or passion, and focus on something that is visually compelling. Will it be a guitar instruction site? A gaming tips site? Fly fishing secrets? All of these would be great ideas. You have two choices – either shoot for what’s hot right now, or go for something for which you truly have a passion. Either way, make a decision, and let’s move on to Step 2.
2. Track Down and Create Quality Content – You now need to choose your content, and you’ll have to decide between creating your own videos, grabbing and posting other people’s videos from YouTube, or a combination of both. Other great video sources include Google Video, Daily Motion, Vimeo, and Blip.tv. If you’re focusing on business topics, you can also use SlideShare, which has an amazing collection of interactive PowerPoint presentations. I would recommend doing a blend of content. Film some video yourself, and supplement this with carefully chosen videos that you’ve tracked down that add value to the conversation.
3. Collect Your First 10 Videos – In the beginning, I’d recommend that you have at least one original video for every two that you put up. Otherwise, you won’t be able to make your personality an important part of the video blog. Aside from your great taste and brilliant editorial skill, why should people come to your video blog when they can go straight to YouTube and search for videos on their topic of interest? You need to be both the editor and moderator, tracking down the “hidden jewels” of the Web, as well as creating your first video blog post (which I’ll cover in a later post).
4. Set up a YouTube Channel – This step is important, both as a source of content, and as a link back to your video blog. Setting up a channel on YouTube is super-simple – you just need to sign up at YouTube.com, and create your channel. Don’t worry about adding any content yet, as we’ll get to that soon enough.
5. Begin Posting Video – Line up a few choice videos from around the Web. My favorite content providers are YouTube, Vimeo, and Blip.tv. Post your first few videos, add your own commentary, and you’re off! Make sure to keep coming back and adding content regularly, and do make an effort to get your own first video in the works as soon as possible.

Those are the first five simple steps – it’s all about laying the groundwork, researching (and creating) your first set of videos, and setting up your YouTube channel.

To keep this going beyond your initial launch, you’ll want to continue to keep researching great videos from the Web, and creating your own videos to add to your collection. This will keep your site fresh and new, and interested viewers coming back.

Choosing the best blog software will make the difference in making your blog successful. What separates the greatest blogs on the Web from your blog? Once you have WordPress, you’re already starting with the industry’s best blog software available. These three little-known plugins can take your blog to the next level, by accomplishing three critical things:

1. Help it to get found in the search engines (SEO)
2. Get people to share your posts through social media sites
3. Easily add a great photo gallery

And if you’re not yet blogging with WordPress, once you read about these three insider plugins, you just may be convinced that your best blog software choice will be WordPress.

1. All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Given the number of sites on the Web, any new site that gets posted may as well be hidden on an island somewhere in the Pacific. (You’ve seen “Cast Away,” right?) By choosing WordPress you have a platform that is SEO-friendly out of the box. In addition, you can use All-in-One SEO Pack to make your site get seen even more easily by the search engines. It can help quickly and easily improve your pages, adding just the right tags and keywords for the best search engine optimization. (Important side note: If you buy this plugin, and contribute to the author, you’ll be supporting a former member of the U.S. Military.) Click here to read more and download the All-in-One SEO Pack SEO WordPress plugin
   1. Bonus SEO Plugin Goodness! Google XML Sitemaps – A sophisticated technique that sites use to feed their top pages to Google, Bing, and Yahoo! is through an XML sitemap. The only tihing you need to know is that you should install and enable this plugin. It will help your site get found by the major search engines. And it’s pretty cool-looking, also; check it out here:http://www.insiderwebtips.com/sitemap.xmlThis plugin not only automatically creates the sitemap, it submits it to all the search engines, as well, and automatically updates it and send out a notification to Google, Bing, and Yahoo! every time you add a post. Sweet! High-level SEO without any work. Just the way we like it! Click here to read more and download the Google XML Sitemap Generator WordPress plugin
2. Sociable WordPress Plugin for Social Sharing and Bookmarking – As you’ve seen by the exploding popularity of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, these are starting to replace other methods of communication as the preferred way for people to share interests, for the most part by passing links to interesting links that they might have seen, and want to recommend to their friends. Your goal will be to write the best blog posts possible, and then invite users to share them by providing a convenient set of links they can click to broadcast your post out to their entire network of friends. Write a good enough post, and it could go “viral,” meaning it could spread from friendship circle to circle, and soon, you could be racking up some real traffic. Sociable takes just a few minutes to install and configure, and your posts and pages will automatically feature links to up to 99 of the top social media sites. Click here to read more and download the Sociable social media WordPress plugin
3. NextGen Gallery WordPress Plugin for Photo Galleries – This plugin was amazing when it first came out. Now, a couple of years later, it has grown to have even more incredible features and functionality for managing slideshows. You have several ways to upload images, and then the plugin takes care of pretty much everything else, including cropping thumbnails, creating links to larger pop-up images, and even creating a full-screen Flash driven slide show. You can see an example of it at the bottom of the page here. Click here to read more and download the NextGen Gallery WordPress plugin

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