Home Files 8 Che Cafe Duong Sua 2 Cafe 005245Thanks for all the well wishes and kind words! It’s great to have interaction back — although when the spammers get started, let’s see how we feel. We also figured out a way to import the sidebars, but it is tedious and time consuming so it will be done ssslllooowwwly. The new method is good for updating old links and adding new ones. However, WordPress’s hierarchy doesn’t seem to allow links to open in a new window which is annoying.

On the plus side, thanks to the miracle of scheduled posting, now you can read The Beat with your morning coffee, preferably Ca Phe Sua, the drink of choice here at SBM.

Anyway a few questions and assumptions keep coming up. So here’s a very small FAQ for you:

1) Old Beat postings.
As it stands right now, we are not going to import the old Comicon.com Beat. I know. For now it’s going to be archived at Comicon. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the major one is that all the images are linked at Comicon, and it’s not fair to steal their bandwidth, and I just don’t have time to re-code 2 years worth of postings. Plus, the import function for MT archives doesn’t seem to work without running all kinds of scripts. I’ve uploaded the last week or so of content, but that’s it.

2) My relationship to Reed Business/PW.
For the record, I am not am employee of Reed or PW, and I still maintain copyright of the content here.

1 COMMENT

  1. However, WordPress’s hierarchy doesn’t seem to allow links to open in a new window which is annoying.

    When you add the link just choose the radio button “_blank” and it will open in a new window.

  2. Yes but that would require me to add every single link (200-300) by hand. So far the sidebar is BY FAR the most annoying thing about WP. I could just copy the old html file and put it in the template, but then I can’t really live update it.

    Also, some sort of batch edit is needed for the next version.

  3. If I say I’m happier if links don’t open new windows, will that make WordPress’ behavior more palatable? I find links that open new windows kind of annoying.

  4. No that’s okay…when I’m surfing a site with a lot of links I prefer a new window so I don’t have to keep hitting back. Different strokes.

  5. There has to be a programmatic way to do that, Heidi. I’ll look into it. I have a WordPress blog. One of those PHP files should be able to add an extra TARGET=”_BLANK” to the code on the sidebar links. . . It’s just a matter of finding it.

  6. Hmmm, it looks like the file ./wp-includes/links.php would be the place to do it. There’s a $target variable in there that controls it.

    I can’t try this on my own blog since I don’t have read/write access to the file remotely, but search for this part of the code:

    $target = $row->link_target;
    if (” != $target) {
    $target = ‘ target=”‘ . $target . ‘”‘;
    }

    Change the first line to $target=”_blank” and that should do it. Or, replace all those lines of code with

    $target = ‘target=”_blank” ‘;

    From then on, ALL links in that sidebar will open to a new page. Now, the computer scientist in my doesn’t like hardcoding stuff like that, but what the heck. It gets the job done.

  7. re: Comment spammers. You HAVE to activate the Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress. It will save your life. Literally. It’s a great, great program that blocks out 99% of comment spam. If you don’t have access to updating your plugins, get your crew to do it. Akismet is a must.