First, take a look at my post regarding the addition of aerial golf course maps on my Columbus, Ohio centric blog the270.

At the end of my narrative, you will find a list of golf courses added to the blog. The list is automatic. That is, as I continue to add aerial golf course maps, WordPress automatically includes those maps to the list. I don’t have to go back and manually code the list.

First Create a Parent Page

The first step in how I accomplished this was to create a page called “Golf”. To do, go to the Write Page tab and create a page with the Page Title “Golf”.

Next create Child pages

After I created the Golf page, which appears as  http://the270.com/golf/, I created individual pages with the Golf course as the name of the page. In the right hand sidebar, goto the Page Parent field and select “Golf” as the parent page. Of course, your parent page will differ according to the name of your page.

The PHP code needed to display the “child” pages in alphabetical order

Next I did inserted the following PHP code in the text “code” field of my post.

<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages(’child_of=63&sort_column=post_title&title_li=&depth=1′) ?>
</ul>
The number “63″ of the above code corresponds to the ID code of the “Golf” page that I created. To determine the ID number of your page, goto the Manage > Pages tabs and search for your page title. The ID number will be to the left.

In the example above, the “Golf Club of Dublin” post is a child of the “Golf” post. Hypothetically, I could have created another page with the “Golf Club of Dublin” being the parent. In this hypothetical, that post would be I guess the grandchild of the “Golf” post. I would not want to display the grandchild pages in my list. So to exclude grandchildren, you set the depth as 1 in the PHP code above.

But we are not yet finished.

Plugin to run PHP code within WordPress pages or posts

If I stopped with the above and published the post, the list would not have generated. That’s because WordPress ignores PHP code within posts or pages. That’s where the plugin runPHP comes in handy. After you activate this plugin, you can insert PHP code within your posts or pages, and they will work.

In the right sidebar, all you need to do is make sure there is a check mark in the box next to the words “run PHP code?”

After that, just publish and let WordPress and PHP run its magic.

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Now why would you want to publish those thoughts to the world if you wish it to be your own personal knowledge base.

Well that’s just it. You don’t have to publish it. You can keep it private.

And I do such a thing with a free wordpress.com blog. Here’s the steps on how to create a private blog.

1. Sign in to your wordpress.com account, or create a new one
2. Follow the instructions to create or register a blog
3. Type in your desired name and make sure there there is no check mark in the box marked “Privacy” so your private blog won’t be indexed by Google
4. Once created, go into the blog’s dashboard and go to the Options > Privacy tabs
5. Select “I would like my blog to be visible only to users I choose”
6. When you’re writing a post, expand the “Post Status” tab in the right sidebar and select “Private”
7. After you have completed writing the post, click the “Save” icon, NOT the Publish icon.

You will know that you’ve done it correctly when you view the title of your post. It should start with “Private:” followed by the post title.

That’s three layers of privacy selections that I use to keep my private knowledge base private. The beauty of having a private knowledge base is that you can put any information you feel useful to you in there and categorize and tag as you see fit. Thus, you can look for information by browsing categories or tags. Plus, you can run a word search. I build to my private knowledge base every day. It is now so much easier for me to locate information that I’ve stored in my private blog. And it’s made my work so much more efficient.

One final note, to double check that outsiders can’t view your blog, log out of your wordpress.com account and type in the web address of your private blog. You should get the following message and log in screen.

Has this been helpful? Leave a comment below.

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If you produce videos, you can upload them to YouTube and then embed them into your blog. Even if you don’t embed them into your blog, YouTube is an excellent way to gain exposure for your blog.

However, sometimes when you upload and embed YouTube videos, the YouTube version may not be of the quality you desire. If you are able to produce your video in QuickTime, you can embed them in your posts with the QuickTime Embed plugin by Yaosan Yeo.

To use the plugin, first upload it and activate it in WordPress (more on how to do this in a future post).

Next, upload your QuickTime video to your server. You’ll have to do this via FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

Make note of the name of the file, the path you placed the file in, and the dimensions of the video.

Next, within the Code tab of the Post editor, enter in the following piece of code:

[qt:/wp-content/themes/Forte/images/demo.mov 480 256]

The above example shows the relative path of where the movie demo.mov is located. You could type in the complete address as in:

[qt:/http://yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/Forte/images/demo.mov 480 256]

The “/wp-content/themes/Forte/images/” is just an example of the path in which the file is located. Of course, yours will be different.
Okay, next note the numbers 480 256. Those numbers are variable as well. The 480 is the width of the video. 256 is the height + 16. That is, the actual height of the video is 240 pixels. You add the 16 to accommodate for the height of the QuickTime controller.

So it’s that easy. To see an example of how I did it to embed a QuickTime video found on another site, please see my post in Instantly Iconic.

One side note. Viewing the QuickTime video may be dependent upon your visitor having QuickTime installed and may take time for the video to “transfer” to the post. So use your judgment on whether you wish to use this method.

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Introducing three new categories for Semi Pro Blogging. It’s no secret that WordPress is the de facto choice of blogging software for serious bloggers. That’s not to say that there are serious bloggers using other platforms. So from time to time, SPB will write posts about WordPress and its Nuts & Bolts, the various Theme choices and the multitude of useful Plugins. Where applicable, you’ll see one of the three badges above to serve as a visual cue as to what the post is about. I am really excited about writing these posts, because by writing about WordPress, I will will be able to learn about it more throughly.

I hope you check back often and view “The Man” WordPress series.

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photo credit: Darwin Bell

Well that was simply amazing. Like the photo above. I just downloaded and activated the new Photo Dropper Flickr WordPress plugin. I’m simply in love with it. It’s fast, easy and finds great photos that you can use for free on your blog. So no more need to search Flickr manually, download the photos, then upload to your server (like I did for the post linked above). This little tool does all of this in a matter of clicks.

For a very nice explanation of using Creative Commons photos found on Flickr, check out SkellieWag’s excellent post.

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Photo by (/-\)nniina Loves U

There are a lot of great pictures on Flickr. I am continually amazed by the quality and creativity of people out there. Frequently, while browsing Flickr, I will find photos that would be perfect for one of my blogs. But before I post the photo I check to see if it is licensed under the Creative Commons. For example, the photo above is licensed under the Attribution 2.0 Generic license, which allows me to copy, distribute and transmit the work as long as I give the photographer proper attribution. I do that with the “Photo by” credit under the picture.

So how do you determine whether a photo on Flickr is licensed with a Creative Commons license? In the sidebar to the right of the photo, look under the “Additional Information” section. There you’ll find the copyright notice. If you see “all rights reserved,” then the photographer has NOT licensed the photo with a Creative Commons license. At this point, if you really want to use the picture, then you should e-mail the photographer with a request to use it. I’ve done this with some of my other blogs and have never been turned down.

If you see “some rights reserved,” then it is licensed under a Creative Commons license. The link will take you to the CC page that describes what you can do with the photo.

Further, what’s awesome about Flickr, is that you can narrow your search to only those photos licensed under a Creative Commons license. How do you think I found the photo at the top of the page?

UPDATE: ProBlogger has a post about a WordPress Plugin that searches for Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr all within the WordPress Software. It’s definitely one that I’ll have to check out. Actually, I’m downloading it now.

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