First non-Lib Dem WordPress widget…

February 21, 2008: Version 1.2. Bug-fix to ensure that it works with the new datastructure in the latest versions of WordPress. A huge thank you to Will Howells for fixing this.

September 16, 2006: Version 1.1. Bug-fix to ensure that it ‘remembers’ your root page when the Widget page is updated.

Here’s the first of two new WordPress Widgets, and, for the first time, it’s not Lib Dem specific.

It lets you show a subsection of the pages of your WordPress blog. The options page for the widget shows a drop-down box of all the pages in your blog. Select one of them and only pages below that will be displayed by the widget on the menu.

I’m using it on Make IT Policy to have a menu section that only shows the pages of the Make IT Policy policy paper.

You can find the Widget here on the WordPress website.

If you already have widgets installed as part of your WordPress installation, you can try this widget out yourself. All you need to do to use it:

  1. Download the ldpagehierarchy.zip file, extract the ldpagehierarchy.php file and save it or upload it into your widget plug-ins directory.
  2. Go into the ‘Plugins’ area of your WordPress installation and activate the ‘Sub page hierarchy’ widget.
  3. Go into the ‘Sidebar Widgets’ section of the ‘Presentation’ area of WordPress, and drag your new ‘Sub page hierarchy’ widget to the desired location.
  4. Hit the configure icon, select the page that is the parent of the pages you want to show in your page hierarchy and then close the configuration box.
  5. Hit ‘Save Changes’

er, that’s it.

If you don’t have widgets installed, head off to Automaticc’s Widgets project page and follow their extremely helpful instructions on how to install widgets and add them to your blog template.

You can find lots of useful widgets via the WordPress Widgets blog.

perbandingan smartphone

Green Tax Switch – a straight line from Dorking to Hazel Grove

Bizarrely, the map of all the Green Tax Switch meetings on Flock Together suggests that all the meetings to date are in a straight line between Dorking and Hazel Grove.

You can see for yourself here.

Update: The link in the earlier edit of this post has now been corrected. Mike Bell in Weston-super-Mare has opened up a new ley-line. All other entries (including a new one in Wellingborough) remain on the previous one!

Th.. th.. that’s impossible…!

I’ve already been hugely impressed by YouTube and Google Video as means of sharing video, but thanks to the TechCrunch blog, I’ve now visited a couple of sites that are truly astonishing.

all of which actually let you edit your video online and remix other people’s videos!

Is this the beginning of the end for the written word?

And what do points mean?

This year, for the first time, there’s going to be a competition for the ‘Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year‘ at conference.

There’s an online entry form on the federal party site.

The party has declared an interesting criterion:

the blog that has done the most to promote liberalism in the last year

Not necessarily the same as ‘the most entertaining’ or ‘the blog you go to first’.

The competition, combined with the various bloggers’ parties planned for conference, suggest an encouraging increase in the party’s engagement with the blogosphere.

I probably will post here when I’ve decided how to vote, but first I am going to go and reread the archive of Lib Dem blogs and see which posts, if any, made it into my del.icio.us tags.

Putting video on your own website

I’ve posted a few times about how to use Google Video or YouTube to post your videos on your website or blog.

Michael Pollock has written an excellent article on how to use the free Riva Flash video encoder to create your own videos and put them on your blog using the FLV video player without needing to rely on a third party service.

Here’s an example:

While on the subject of video, a good example of what can be achieved cheaply and cost effectively is at Rocketboom.

For the small minority interested in video codecs, there’s quite an interesting demo of the differences at the Flash Video FAQ website.