This is a test post to WordPress using Microsoft Word.

Here’s a picture of me boat surfing in Casco Bay this weekend. I wonder how Word will handle compression

Let’s see how it handles an Embedded slide show from Picasa …

src=”http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf” width=”288″ height=”192″ flashvars=”host=picasaweb.google.com&noautoplay=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0×000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fsbaier%2Falbumid%2F5497937001118154401%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”>

Hmmm, not so hot

And what about links?

In case the embedded slide show didn’t work, let’s try a simple hyperlink to Picasa

The following was added directly from WordPress .. after publishing from Word

Here are a few direct edits

And if you actually want to embed something, here’s what it looks like when you go directly into the WordPress editor:

Conclusion

Publishing from MS Word to WordPress is fast and easy for simple posts – not a bad solution for less technical users who don’t attempt anything too fancy. Anything more advanced than text, images, and simple hyperlinks … learn to use the WordPress editor.

Recently I was working on a blog post which, for some reason, failed to save. Instead, it generated the following error:
Nothing found for Wp-admin Post Php

The post was longer than average, so my first thoughts went to a PHP memory issue… but that rabbit hole did not bear fruit. After much searching, I narrowed the error to an Apache security module called mod_security. At first it did not make sense to me that a failure to post could be related to a security issue as shorter posts, and long test posts saved just fine. What I found out was that my problem post contained enough SQL keywords (such as SELECT, FROM, WHERE, JOIN, etc) to cause concern to a SQL injection detection algorithm. (as it was explained to me by my Liquidweb guy)

The problem was quickly fixed by adding my web site domain to a mod_security white list using the following syntax:

SecRule SERVER_NAME “baier.com” phase:1,nolog,allow,ctl:ruleEngine=off

By the way, if you are looking for a great hosting company, I can’t say enough good things about Liquidweb. Their pricing is very reasonable with shared hosting starting at around $15/month, and dedicated at around $200. What really differentiates Liquidweb is their service. For me it’s like having a part time employee looking after my web server. I have always received an answer from their 24/7 telephone tech support, and have found them to be very knowledgeable, and eager to solve my problems.

• Liquidweb (affiliate link; genuine recommendation)
• mod_security web site (including full documentation)

Lovin’ that Google Calendar

If you haven’t already, check out the Google Calendar. I use it every day within my organization for scheduling, but it is also very useful for quick public calendars such as this local Farmers’ Market Summer 2009 schedule.

The calendar below was, created, posted and published in less than an hour. It can easily be imported into your iCalendar compliant calendar software. It’s easily shared with viewers and designated editors.

Google Calendar is FREEEEEE … but requires you to have a Google Account (which is also freeeee, and will take you only a minute or two to create).

Questions?

If you have questions about an event, please contact the individual referenced in the event notes.

If you are the person responsible for updating event data, and would like editing access to this calendar, please contact me directly.

• Information sourced from the State of Maine web site.

Today’s tip is for the true geek who enjoys spending time in the command window. A few tips ago, we discussed the virtues of "pathping" to analyze the path between two IP addresses. But what if you want to make sure a block of IPs are responding? You could ping them all manually, or you could use the following little beauty:

echo off & for /l %n IN (1,1,254) do ping 192.168.1.%n

Let’s dissect the command. The first three elements (echo off &) are actually the first of two commands and are optional. It simply makes the output a little neater. The for loop has the following structure: FOR %variable IN (set) DO command The/l parameter specifies the type of number set used by the loop (in this case, a series of numbers defined by the contents of the parenthesis (1,1,254)). What this tells the for loop is to number a series from 1, incremented by 1 and through number 254. The ping command is the action taken by the for loop. The for loop substitutes a series of number variables as the last part of the IP address through each loop.

So that’s all there is to it. If you find this tip useful, you are hopefully considering making a batch file out of it. If so, remember to use double percent signs on the variables.