Written by Mark in Photographs | 1 Comment »
I know that a few of you have been trying to find my wedding photographs on this site. Well it seems as though something has gone wrong in that the flash player embed that they were in is no longer working.
Therefore here is a section of the photos below as well as a link to the slideshow of all the photos on Flickr.
Written by Mark in Wordpress | 4 Comments »
As you will undoubtedly know WordPress is a great web publishing tool but one of the things that really excites people is that fact that you can extend WordPress’s capabilities with a multitude of ‘plugins’ that give your WordPress site extra capability. In fact there are so many plugins out there that they is probably one for what you want WordPress to do. So here are my favourite plugins anyway.
This comes with your WordPress download but is really essential in stopping SPAM appearing on your site through your comments. On the old version of Penny4Them I think that Akismet had stopped about 14,000 comments in about 6 months!
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is important if you want to get your blog appearing in the search engine ranking near the top. This plugin handles a lot of the behind the scenes stuff for you. For example it adds the meta tags at the top of the page and makes your post/page titles and little more search engine friendly.
Linked to the above really. This produces an XML sitemap of your website and the Google can quickly see all the pages and posts on your site in one file. Really easy to use and setup to.
This is a really simple plugin that allows you put a very simple but effective contact form on your site. There are lots of contact form plugins out there but this is by far the easiest to use if you just want a simple form for people to get in touch.
This plugin allows readers of comments to subscribe through email to a particular posts comments. That way when someone else comments on the post the reader is informed that there has been another response so they can keep up to date with the conversation.
Fewer and fewer sites these days are choosing to use a breadcrumb to aid navigation but I have to say that I am a fan of them and included one on this site. This plugin takes care of it all for you. Really easy to use and very effective.
There have been many times when I have been designing that I want an area of the site that displays posts but I don’t want them to get to long. Therefore instead of having to insert the more tag (which I found myself forgetting to do) this plugin automatically cuts your posts at a length you specify and that way keeps your design looking good. I use it on Equal Design and Education Themes.
This plugins uses the RSS Feed of your photos on Flickr in order to show your latest photos on your blog. You have control of which user account the photos come from as well as the size and number of photos to display.
As I have said there are hundreds of plugins for WordPress and there is a good probability that there is a plugin for the function that you want to add to your blog. Take a look at the plugins available on the Wordpress Website or do a Google search for what you are looking for.
Written by Mark in Wordpress | 4 Comments »
Penny4Them started out in the summer of 2006 as a small site where I stored some photographs of friends and family so others could see what was up to. Since then it developed into a proper blog, using WordPress as the platform for publishing. Today I am launching Penny4Them version 2.
I have had the previous design (which is still available in Old Penny4Them Archives) since January of 2007 and therefore I thought that it was about time that it took on a new look. The original design was based on the Fasttrack theme by Sadish, and having learnt so much about Wordpress and CSS in the last few years I thought that I should have a custom design. I have created many sites over the last 6 months working with Matt Shepherd as Equal Design, however I wanted something that was a little different from what we had created before. I wanted something a little more ‘Grungy’.
After about 4 weeks of research and testing different designs in Fireworks and Photoshop, I give you Penny4Them version 2. This will include all the usual stuff that I have been posting about over the last 18 months or so, however there is going to be more. I am adding a specific WordPress section (available as a link at the top of the blog) where I intend to share some of the things that I have learnt about this great publishing platform over the years. I often look at the Wordpress Forums in order to try and help others out and I find myself helping the same problems over and over again. Therefore this should tackle some of those issues.
So there it is - Penny4Them version 2. I am sure that it will evolve little bits and bobs over time, adding this and that and taking bits away to get it just right. However I am pleased with it. What do you think? Your feedback and comments as always are welcome.
P.S. the old posts and comments are all still available and working on the old site in the Old Penny4Them archives, just in case you are wondering what has happened to them all!
Written by Mark in Sport | No Comments »
The Olympics are now over for another 4 years, but what a fantastic Olympic Games it has been in terms of Team GB. 19 golds, 13 silver and 15 bronze medals. Our best performance for 100 years. Not only that but we are 4th in the medal table, only behind the huge countries of China, USA and Russia. A fantastic acheivement.
It all started with cycling Nicole Cooke winning gold in the womens road race. In fact cycling was one of the sports that Team GB completely dominated. A total of seven gold medals in the Laoshan velodrome which was 6 better than any other country. We have complained for a long time now about how poor we can be at times in the Olympics (perhaps not recently) but I think that our cycling success is no fluke. You invest money in building quality facilities, such as the Manchester Velodrome and you reap the rewards in terms of sporting (or in this case Olympic) success.
Then it was the turn of the female swimmers. In particular Rebecca Adlington. The first gold was an extremely close race and she just manage to come home first with Britain also getting the bronze. But her next gold was something special. She smashed a long standing world record to demolish the rest of the field in style. That was special. Watching the race and following her progress with the world record ‘green’ line embedded on our TV screens (great idea that by the way!) constantly about 4 metres behind was great to see. Everyone in the living room was on their feet cheering her on to the victory.
We then turned to the water again, this time not it but on it. Rowing was the sport and we once again proved that team GB has still got what it takes to win gold medals. I think the part I enjoyed most about this was the BBC commentators. They are so enthusiastic and commented like you or I would, cheering on the rowers to the line. Maybe they were sat in their living room back in the UK - who knows, but it created a fantastic atmosphere. With sailing also topping the medal tables team GB did wonderfully well on the waters in and around Beijing.
Then came the athletics in week two. I suppose everyone really feels like it is getting going when the athletics start. The venue was a fantastic looking and rather well named ‘Birds Nest’ stadium, that really built up the adrenalin and exitement just by seeing the stadium, never mind watching the events. There were world records shattered everywhere, unfortunately this time not from Team GB although there were notable successes on the track.
So 4 years down the line and it is the turn of London to host all this. Can we do it any better than the Chinese? Well I am not sure, I think we have the potential but will we pull it off? We have a lot to learn but I am confident that whatever type of games we stage, they will be a success. We need them to be a success and show off Great Britain in all its best colours.
As for team GB their successes in Beijing 2008 were truley remarkable. Every athlete that competed in that team deserves recognition for the part they played. To finish 4th in the medal table (which was for a long time third), ahead of countries like Germany and Australia is a terrific acheivement and one that should be celebrated in whatever way we can. It seems as though it is not often that we get to say things like this, but well done Team GB - you did the nation proud.
Written by Mark in General | No Comments »
Today was the 20 week scan of Baby Wilkinson and it was the time to find out the sex of the baby. Helen has been convinved ever since the start of the pregnancy that it was a girl but I thought it was a boy. In fact I think most said that it was boy. Most, including myself were right - its’s a boy.
At first he was not for showing his sex but after a few prods and pokes from the ultrasound women he soon moved around to show us that he was a boy. The thing is, is that we were fine with girls names, in fact we had about 3 we both liked and would choose from. Boys however is a different matter, we have yet to come up with some solid ideas. We will have to get our thinking caps on!
Written by Mark in General | No Comments »
Today it was painting time again. I was painting the shed while Helen was painting the bedroom. I hate painting and to top it off, I am not very good at it either.
The garden is now very very nearly finished. In fact next week I am going to install the electrics in the shed and do some general tidying including adding some guttering to collect the rainwater in the water butt off the shed roof and then I think that it is. What started in February will be finished in August. Not bad going don’t you think!
Written by Mark in General | 2 Comments »
I want to spend a few minutes on this blog talking about commenting. This is something that this blog has always provided, yet for some reason, people don’t seem to want to comment. You might say that there are no comments because there are not that many viewers. This I know is not true though because this blog has over 350 unique page views per month and over 1000 hits. So why comment?
Blogging is all about communicating and creating networks of people. You may well read this blog and find some posts completely useless. You may read some and have some sort of opinion, or find the information usefull. Well if this is you then why not comment? I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on the things that I write.
Any comments that are posted on this site are always available for every visitor to see. Even if you do not agree with what I am saying then please feel free to comment. I will never delete a comment just because it doesn’t agree with what I am saying. We all have our opinion and it is useually worth knowing about. That said I do have some rules about commenting in order to protect the community (see below).
If you are worried about security then please don’t. All that is required to leave a comment on this blog is your name and your email address. You can also leave your website link to, so that others can take a look at your site, although this is optional. Your email address is never shown to any other user on the site, only your name and comment appears for others to see.
There are some other things on this blog that you may find useful when commenting. The first of these is the “Notify me of followup comments via email address”. What this does, when you tick the box, is that it 
will email you when someone else posts a comment on the same post, so that you can keep up to date with the conversation. The other thing that is really cool is that you can get yourself a Gravatar from gravatar.com. You may have noticed that by the side of some peoples comments there is a little photo of them and signing up for a Gravatarr and uploading a photo with them, will mean that when you post a comment on this (and any other blog were you use the same email address) blog your picture will appear next to it. My Gravatar is the right!
So all you 350 unique visitors to this blog each month, get commenting and lets hear what you have got to say about the topics that are covered.
