Ryanware

Looking at my statistics I notice quite a few people find me looking for “Wordpress down down categories” or “Wordpress order categories”. Since the page they find is for creating a drop down box for your Wordpress categories I figured I might as well post how to sort your categories alphabetically in ascending or descending order.

Update: I’m such a dork. I should think through these things more before I go posting. If you really want to read my original solution, go ahead and click the link at the end of this to go to the next page. However, it’s much easier to just edit one little line in index.php:

Line #71 in the default template:

<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>

Change that to:

<?php wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name’); ?>

If you want the list sorted descending:
<?php wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name&sort_order=desc’); ?>

That’s it! Read more about the wp_list_cats function on the Wordpress Wiki and what arguments you can pass to it.
Related: list_cats function on the Wordpress Wiki.

I just made a MSN Search Beta search plugin for the Mozilla browsers. I just barely submitted it to Mycroft so it’s not on there yet, but you can get it here!

Download it here if you know what to do with it and wish to do it this way.

Or click this link to install the search plugin: MSN Search (beta).

What’s a Search plugin? (quoted from Mycroft)

A search plug-in allows you to access a search engine right from your browser, without having to go to the engine’s page first. On Mozilla 1.x, you can access plugins via the Sidebar or the Location Bar. On Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird), you use the search box on the toolbar.

Technically, a search plug-in is a text file that tells your computer what information to send to a search engine and how to retrieve the results. A small icon completes the plug-in so that search plug-ins are easily recognized.

Note: Mozilla adds “%0A” to search strings which other search engines apparently ignore, but MSN Search (beta) does not, and asks “Were you looking for <search string here>” even if you spelled the word right. (Update 12-01-04: I’m not getting this on another computer running the same version of Firefox. So either it’s been fixed or the computer I use most of the time has a problem all its own.)

I’ll update this when it’s on the Mycroft site. Enjoy!

Update: Matt Cox has made a search plugin for the MSN UK Search (beta). Get it here!

I just posted this as a comment over on “Jeff’s Junk“. I thought it was interesting enough to post here so all 3 of you out there could read it too.

On programmers as designers
Ever notice how most sites run by programmers have the worst designs ever?

I’m lucky to have good help with my blog. Not that it’s the best, but it’s not ugly at least.

My comment:

This happened to me just today:

I work for a web development company. I write PHP, MySQL, CSS, and XHTML. The graphics are done by a really good graphics guy… as it should be. When I first layout a site in CSS I don’t know what colors the designer wants so I make some up. I try using those online color picker tools, but the end product still isn’t that great.

So today my boss was talking to the graphics guy on the phone and pointed him to one of the styles I created. The guy’s response was “is that header SUPPOSED to be that color?” My boss responded “Ryan’s a good programmer, but is about as colorblind as they come” or something like that. I don’t remember exactly. Seriously, I’m not colorblind, but making things look pretty is not what I do best.

I have yet to meet a good designer who is also really good at programming. I would love to see the work of someone who claims to be good at both. If they are excellent at both congrats!