To recap, WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is an open source application which gives home users the ability to quickly and easily create [...]]]> Last week we were looking in to the powerful WordPress editor.  Those that missed my last article can view a copy either at the Herald Express’s website (www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk) or on my own online blog (www.computerarticles.co.uk).

To recap, WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is an open source application which gives home users the ability to quickly and easily create an online blog, a term used to describe a website which provides an ongoing chronicle of information.  After covering the basics last week we’ll now start to uncover the more advanced features that really make WordPress stand out from the crowd.

The term ‘plug-in’ is used to describe a small piece of software written by either the WordPress authors or a third party which provide additional features not found on a standard installation.  If a blogger finds that WordPress doesn’t cater for a particular requirement of his then in many cases a plug-in can be used to extend the functionality of the software quickly and easily.

To give you an idea, I’ve listed a couple of plug-ins that I find particularly useful:

Akismet – You will soon find that your blog gets a lot of spam comments, usually by automated systems trying to advertise male medical products.  Akismet checks comments in your blog against an online database in order to automatically remove any that it deems as looking like spam.

All in One SEO Pack – This provides a number of Search Engine Optimisations in order to make your blog more appealing to search engines such as Google.  Although Search Engine Optimisation is an entire science in itself, this simple plug-in will hopefully help to push you further up the results table.

Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a single file detailing every page on your site.  You can then request that Google download and analyse this file on a regular basis thereby helping them to improve the freshness and visibility of your pages in their search engine.

Sociable – Allows users to automatically add a link to a specific post on their favourite social bookmarking site, for example Facebook, Digg or Twitter.

Statpress – Analyses visitors to your site and allows you to see a number of reports including daily views, pages most visited and search terms used to find your site.  You can even use it to find out more detailed information about your readers such as the Operating Systems they use and their geographic location.

The ability to keep the software up to date it one of the things I admire most about WordPress; once you have performed the initial installation you will be informed whenever you log in to the control panel if a particular plug-in or indeed the entire installation needs updating.  Should you find that any component is out of date then it only takes one click for the appropriate files to be downloaded and installed on your web server automatically.

Such ease of use means that it doesn’t take a lot to ensure that you always have the most up to date version of the software installed as well as providing protection by allowing you to easily install any security patches as and when they are released.

I’m a student doing art studies and also a regular reader of your column ‘Click’ in the Heard Express. To assist me with my course I’m currently [...]]]> This week I’ll once again take the time to answer a question recently sent to me by a Click reader.

I’m a student doing art studies and also a regular reader of your column ‘Click’ in the Heard Express. To assist me with my course I’m currently looking for a good quality colouring program that I can download for free. Whilst I have downloaded programs in the past which were excellent they are all limited by 30 day trials and as a schoolgirl I don’t have enough money to buy to buy the full versions.

I was wondering if you would be able to recommend a good program that is available free of charge?

Lisa Penny, Torquay

When you say ‘colouring program’ I’m assuming that you’re after a drawing package which is capable of handling basic functions such as line, text and fill tools as well as more advanced features such as layering and if this is the case then there are two programs that I can confidently recommend. They are both completely free of charge and are very compact in size which will result in you having to spend little time on the Internet downloading them.

The first application goes under the name of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which I actually reviewed a couple of months back so won’t go into great detail here but to summerise my previous review, GIMP is quite a capable drawing program which is completely free of charge. It can be easily downloaded by heading to http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html and remember that if you do happen to miss any of my Click articles they can always be read online at www.computerarticles.co.uk

An alternative I discovered just recently is Inkscape which again can be downloaded free of charge from www.inkscape.org. The application, like GIMP is open source meaning that members of the public rather than big companies are responsible for its development and for adding new features

The first thing that you notice about Inkscape is the user interface which is very well laid out making the program extremely easy to use. When you first start up the program it looks very much different to the standard Windows application with many icons unique to Inkscape and they are used to great effect to clearly indicate their respective functions and the relation to similar functions present in the application. The user interface also relies a great deal on you learning keyboard and mouse combinations which whilst making the process of using the application faster also results in a fairly steep learning curve.

If we look at the features of the application they include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Whilst these are all fairly basic functions which are standard on most drawing applications, Inkscape sets itself apart from the competition by making them very easy to use and manipulate.

Inkscape is currently running at revision 0.43 and as this version number suggests is very much a work in progress application but nevertheless it is very capable and of course completely free of charge. Both applications I have mentioned here are extremely competent and as I am reluctant to recommend one over the other I would recommend that readers who have an interest in drawing should download them both and then pick the one that suits their particular needs best.

Instant messenger services are more popular than ever and over the past couple of years I’ve been able to get around to reviewing a handful of them. These applications offer a free and convenient way for Internet users to chat one another, usually through simple text dialogue.

Unfortunately there are many several different products on the market and the likelihood of everyone you know using the same one is quite remote which tends to result in some people juggling their contacts between two or more different systems. It is precisely this reason that I have chosen today to look at a piece of software which aims to bridge the gap between these different applications.

‘Trillian’ has been around for around many years now when the initial release became available to the public back in mid 2000 although at this time it was a simple IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client. It wasn’t until the end of 2000 that the application took a pretty major change in direction by becoming compatible with existing applications such as MSN Messenger, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger and this is when its popularity started to soar. It is worthwhile noting that throughout the evolution of this program IRC support has been maintained.

Trillian makes life easy because once you’ve downloaded the free software and set-up all your Instant Messaging user names and passwords then you need only ever use one application. From this point whenever you load the Trillian application it will instantly sign you in to all of your IM accounts simultaneously so you can talk to your contacts irrespective of which program they use.

The basic version of the application is around 8.5mb in size and as well as being completely free of charge doesn’t contain any adware or spyware. The company generates income by relying on those users that need some more advanced features upgrading to the professional version at a cost of around £15. The professional version does add many important features such as video calling and the ability to install plug-ins (addition features developed separately from the main application) but I’ll stay focussing on the free version of the software for the purposes of this review.

As well as making life more convenient this application is also popular because it contains some pretty advanced features such as tabbed messaging, changeable skins, emoticons and audio chat. A handy feature is the instant lookup tool which allows you to immediately look up any word present in a conversation window with the online Wikipedia Encyclopaedia or by searching the Internet.

Some users may find that even if they only ever use one instant messaging program that they would rather use Trillian because the user interface is much better than that provided with many of the other IM programs available out there. Whilst all IM programs have features specific to their individual software Trillian has seemed to cover all the important stuff, even in the free version.

If instant messaging is your thing then head to www.ceruleanstudios.com and download the application for free. I would really recommend giving this program a chance as I do see too many people trying to juggle their contacts across several different applications and with quality software like this on the market it really isn’t necessary.

I’m sat here writing this article not on Microsoft Office 2003 as I usually do but instead using a free alternative going by the name of ‘Open Office’ and the mean reason for change is my desire to test and introduce this product to you today.

[...]]]>

I’m sat here writing this article not on Microsoft Office 2003 as I usually do but instead using a free alternative going by the name of ‘Open Office’ and the mean reason for change is my desire to test and introduce this product to you today.

The main advantage of Open Office is that it is completely free of charge and because of this I have always recommended it to non profit organisations or to businesses that need to deploy an office solution on a number of machines and can’t afford spending £300 per machine for Microsoft Office licenses. This solution is available free of charge due to financial sponsorship from Sun Microsystems and because the software is known as ‘Open Source Software’ which means that knowledgeable members of the public can download the entire source code for the program and improve it themselves hence reducing the need to many expensive programmers.

I’m not going to lie to you and claim that this free solution is as good as Microsoft Office because frankly it isn’t and to be fair you can’t really expect a project supported by unpaid contributions and one bankrolled by a multi-billion dollar company to be same. Having said that the software is extremely capable and people still using older versions of Office may find that there are a number of features in Open Office not present in your older software.

When summarising a market for such a product I would say that it is ideal for those of you who don’t want to invest a large amount of money every two years on the latest Office software or for those who don’t require the most advanced features of Office and instead to have a solution to do the staple tasks of Word Processing and designing Presentations or Spreadsheets. I would certainly say that if you are using the standard Windows word processor ‘WordPad’ to type your documents then you certainly shouldn’t hesitate in getting on-line now and downloading this program.

The four core components of the suite include :

–Writer; a tool for creating documents, reports, brochures which can include images and web content.

–Calc; an alternative to Microsoft Excel which can be used to perform complex spreadsheet calculations, create graphs and so forth.

–Impress; creates multimedia Presentations similar to those made in Microsoft Powerpoint with the usual special effects, animation and drawing tools.

–Draw; pretty self explanatory this one. Draw can by used to create simple 3D illustrations and special effects.

The more observant of you will see that an equivalent application to Microsoft Outlook is missing however Sun do recommend using a program based on Mozilla technology (www.mozilla.org) for e-mail composition. A Microsoft Publisher substitute is also missing from the bundle but to be honest this program doesn’t come with all versions of the Office suite anyway so it’s fairly unfair to consider it ‘missing’.

If you have a new version of Microsoft Office then to be honest I wouldn’t bother downloading this software however if your current Office suite is outdated or even worse if you don’t have one then give OpenOffice a go; head to www.openoffice.org and download the latest version now! The entire installation is 45mg which took around 8 minutes for me to download on broadband but those on dial up may wish to look at the preferred resellers section of the site as one of them will sell you a copy on CD for around a tenner.