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WordPress Hooks, Actions and Filters – Modifying the Publish function

I’m writing a child theme to twentyeleven and want to modify the administrative post "Publish" function to do some additional processing during the saving of a new post. Does anyone know if there is a hook, action or filter that will allow me to extend the Publish function?

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RIP No Silence Here

I cannot seem to get a comment to post on the Knoxnews blog No Silence Here.

"I’m told it will cease to exist." That’s a terrible shame. Blogs, content, are history. Like newspapers of old were archived on microfiche, so should blogs such as No Silence Here be forever archived.

Good luck to you Michael! Thank you for the years of inspiration, links, and ideas.

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Why do we blog?

I’m a stream-of-consciousness blogger. That is, I journal at Reality Me. I make political commentary. And inappropriate jokes. And document my family’s escapades, adventures, trills and tribulations. But to believe my site statistics (the traffic search engines send this way), I blog at Reality Me to answer "Who is Chuck Testa?," to explain "The Realtek 8201CL does not require a driver!," to debate the safety of putting family stickers on cars, and to explore the fetish of naked women yielding chain saws.

So, why does my wife, Cathy, blog at Domestic Psychology? To believe the search engines, specifically Google, Cathy is the authority on "Why is Caillou bald? Well, at least until yesterday when the publisher generously answered the question in a comment. As a web developer, I recognize the effort by the publisher to regain control of the number one search engine result for the question "Why is Caillou bald?" Whoever was hired to do Chouette Publishing’s SEO did their job very well. As of yesterday, Cathy dropped from number one to number two in Google’s results.

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Tune in tomorrow 9-10am

Radio tower detailTomorrow, April 6, 2011 from 9am to 10am, I’ll be discussing blogging with Brian Hornback (Twitter: @brianhornback), Ed Brantley and Bob Thomas on WNOX‘s 100.3 The Ed & Bob Show (listen live online). You can interact with Ed and Bob on Facebook and Twitter. I suspect you can call in with questions or feel free to use twitter to send messages to @djuggler or post in comments here. This will be a blast!

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WordPress 2.8.3 broken! Upgrade to 2.8.4 immediately!

In case you missed it, WordPress 2.8.3 has a programming error which allows anyone to reset your administrative password and takeover your WordPress blog. With administrative access, the hacker could destroy your content, lock you out, and repurpose your website for wrong doing, spamming, pornography, slander, or whatever they want. Upgrade to WordPress 2.8.4 immediately! Learn more at darknet.org.uk.

This vulnerability could be prevented by securing the /wp-admin directory.

BlogSecurity has recommended before that the /wp-admin/* directory should be password protected or restricted to IP address. This would mitigate this problem. See our advisory here for details. [Source, BlogSecurity, WordPress <= 2.8.3 Reset Admin Password Vulnerability]

See details of the exploit at milw0rm.

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Dave Winer Hits One Home

From the beginning I’ve described social media (mostly under the guise of Twitter) as a large party. You enter the scene. You hear a lot of noise. You focus on some conversations and it gets exciting. You still hear a lot of noise. You make some friends. You bond. You make some people angry with flippant remarks. You lose some friends. You shout at the crowd. Everyone talks about you. You step off your soapbox and rejoin the conversation. Everyone forgets you. You step out of the room to go to the bathroom. When you return, you find the conversation continued without you. You try to get people to tell you what you missed. Eventually you figure out you just have to pickup where you left off. You learn that you cannot follow everyone in the room. You realize that even though you aren’t following everyone in the room some of those people are still listening to you. Some people get to stand on the stage and everyone follows them. You think it is unfair that you aren’t on the stage. You meet some of the right people but still aren’t lucky enough to get on the stage. You don’t understand. You resent the people on the stage. You decide to ignore them. The conversation goes on. Eventually you follow the people on the stage again because everyone else is talking about what they said. The conversation goes on. Eventually we all return home.

Dave Winer, you know, the guy who brought us RSS, explains here.

So what is, what was, FriendFeed? Let’s say FriendFeed was that room at the party were the people who started the party hung out and other party goers would look in the room and see that it was different but couldn’t really grasp if it was different good or different bad and most would never really enter that room. In the words of Eric Rice, "the punk rock indie era is over." Facebook bought FriendFeed today. I won’t comment further but to say I agree with Think Jose that Facebook bought the staff, not the software. But this was about Dave Winer’s post to Robert Scoble.

Btw, you should follow me on Twitter here.

ps. Not great words of assurance:

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?
FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. [Source, FriendFeed Blog, FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request]

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Blog Fading

A favorite Knoxvillian of mine is fading from the social media spotlight. Russ McBee is ending his participating in the blogosphere, twittersphere, and socialsphere in general with the exception of the photosphere.

I’m ending this blog, effective immediately. It’s been fun (mostly), but I’m signing off, for personal reasons. I’m also deleting my accounts at Twitter and Utterli, but I’ll keep my PBase account active.

This site will remain live until either my hosting account expires or I decide to delete it on a whim, whichever comes first.

Goodbye.

[Source, Russ McBee, The end]

I’ll preserve his final message for prosperity. And one day I want to know why PBase over Flickr.

I have enjoyed reading Russ’ blog and Tweets. His contributions shall be missed!

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Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Blogger Night Success!

Last year the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra tried something bold and invited 50 bloggers to come to the symphony for free in exchange for writing about their experiences good or bad. It was the KSO‘s first Blogger Night. Noah and I went and really enjoyed ourselves so when Frank Murphy announced that the KSO was doing it again, I was quick to respond. I was so stressed yesterday that I almost canceled but I am glad we went! Last year 27 bloggers responded. This year 43 r.s.v.p.’d (I don’t think all 43 showed up). The KSO is already planning next year’s blogger event as one of their performers is now also a blogger.

Last year I learned that despite having an affinity for the theater and enjoying performances throughout my entire life in places like the New Orleans Saenger Theatre, The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, The Bijou, The Tennessee Theatre, and The Clarence Brown, to name a few, I have an overwhelming lack of knowledge about orchestra. Last year I found my hands nearly slapping together at the end of a piece but stopped soundlessly when I noticed no one else in the audience clapping. Stephanie Burdette explains:

At the beginning of the concert, the concertmaster will come onstage. The audience claps as a welcome, and as a sign of appreciation to all the musicians. After the orchestra tunes, the conductor and soloist will come onstage. Everyone claps to welcome them, too. The audience doesn’t usually applaud again until the end of the piece, but this can be a little tricky because many pieces seem to end several times — they have several parts, or "movements." These will be listed in your program. Or you can just … wait until people around you begin applauding and then join in…

I was also under the impression that one dressed to the hilt for the symphony and became a little stressed when we discovered all of Noah’s dress clothes were at the grandparent’s house. Stephanie put my mind at ease:

This is usually everyone’s biggest worry, male or female. Here is the thing – there is no dress code. Anything that makes you feel comfortable is fine. Most people will be wearing business clothes or slightly dressy casual clothes, but you’ll see everything from khakis to cocktail dresses. Some people enjoy dressing up and making a special night of it, and you can, too. Still, evening gowns and tuxedos are pretty rare unless you’re attending a fancy gala.

Before the show we ran into some fellow bloggers and chatted in the hall in front of the sponsors poster. In the long list of names for the Diamond Sponsors, I could only read one – ImagePoint. That seemed both sad and ironic. Last year the entrance was crowded, had tables of cheeses and snacks, and drinks flowed from the bar. This year, the corridor seemed oddly vacant. Perhaps I arrived too early and missed the scene, or perhaps the economy has trimmed away at some tradition. The lights flashed, the chimes sounded, and we found our seats.

The symphony’s program opened with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. I was surprised that it was simply 11 strings and that Lucas Richman did not come out to conduct. The piece was beautiful! At the end of that piece, the grand piano was brought onto the stage and the Maestro made his first appearance and didn’t skip a beat even though his microphone was turned off. As truly great performer, the technical faux pas did not fluster Lucas Richman and he continued to address the audience until the sound tech fixed the problem. He even acknowledged the bloggers! He left and returned with piano soloist Navah Perlman and performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 4. After reading Frank Murphy’s review, I realized that she played for 31 minutes without sheet music! And had a cold so the one missed note was easily forgiven. Again, it was a well-executed piece! I was so caught up in the music that time flew by. After a brief intermission we returned to find the grand piano was gone and no longer blocked our view of the energetic conductor Lucas Richman. The KSO performed Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, "Italian" and the Maestro was so into his work that at times he would pop up on his toes as if about to jump into orchestra itself. His full body worked the direction of the score. Several times in the evening I felt as though I had slipped into Fantasia with the two most compelling moments being the first tuning of the evening and the second watching Lucas Richman conduct this Mendelssohn Symphony.

Noah appeared to enjoy the music. I think he may have been uncomfortable about his clothing. At times his finger conducted along with Richman but Noah has a time of evening when he just shuts off. We exceeded that and I wondered if the finger conducting wasn’t an attempt to stay awake. During Mendelssohn, Noah reclined in the seat and closed his eyes. He claims he stayed awake but at one point his head tilted over to me and I had to elbow him before he snored or fell out of his chair. I feared he might be heading toward a migraine. With his interest in percussion, I think Noah would have enjoyed seeing more percussionists. I was surprised that the KSO was so heavily inclined to strings. I only counted two percussionists and I am not really sure about the second. I thought I heard some brass but I had difficulty finding any winds on the stage. My instrument in middle school was the clarinet. I am a very big Pete Fountain fan and would like to see more wind instruments.

Afterwards we met the Maestro, musicians, KSO blogger Katy Gawne, KSO podcaster, and other KSO staff in a reception with wine and cheese and good laughs. I got to talk to both Lucas Richman and Navah Perlman about how much of his gesture and body movements work into conducting and Navah shared just how important the movements are to the musicians and how dramatically different one conductor can be from another. There were so many bloggers and musicians in the reception that I left feeling like I barely got to talk to anyone despite non-stop gabbing.

Stephanie Burdette shared with me information about Family Concerts. Family Concerts is a creation of Lucas Richman’s intended for children 3-8. I laughed at the thought of Evan the Terror sitting still for one hour of classical music in teh Tennessee Theater. "They are not allowed back and someone contact the contractor and see how quickly we can repair that kid’s damage!" After hearing the details, I actually think it would be perfect! After the one hour show, they have an instrument petting zoo for the children to get a closeup experience with the instruments. They also setup a room specifically for the children to do their own performance. This includes a ticket window, costumes for the appropriate jobs, a variety of toy instruments and a conducting opportunity. The children sell tickets to their show and have a blast. For people with transportation issues, I believe she was saying that busing can even be arranged. I think the family has to do this on March 26 at 9:30am!

As we left, I told Noah not to sweat my shoe. During intermission he stepped on my heel and ripped 3/4 of my sole off (I tweeted heal and soul for deeper meaning). To make sure he’d done a good job, he stepped on the same heel again as we entered the Glenn Miller room for the reception. The reception had wine, cheese and water. Noah doesn’t eat cheese and turned down the water and is not old enough for the wine. Lucas Richman’s son did not attend this year. Last year he and Noah played together and I think Noah was looking forward to that. As we left, I inquired, "Did you have a good time?" He responded, "Yes." then paused and added, "And when I threw up, I got it all in the toilet!" After recovering my chin from the floor, I confirmed Noah was okay and that I didn’t have any damage control to do. Don’t worry KSO; that’s just Noah. He was either overtired or stressed out. Nothing contagious. I asked Noah if he would want to go again and he responded yes.

The biggest thing I learned last night is that my iPod is severely in need of some classical music. My special thanks to the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for putting on this event! We really did have a great time!

I’ll update this post later with a roundup of bloggers who attended. For additional information, listen to the Mozart-Mendelssohn podcast, Maestro Richman’s interview with pianist Navah Perlman, Read the Program Notes, Read Navah Perlman’s Biography, read the KSO blog, see pictures from last night, and subscribe to the KSO podcast. And if you like theaters, you’ll enjoy Cinema Treasures. Be sure to schedule an evening with the KSO!