I just installed the release (as opposed to the beta) of WordPress 2.3 for this blog. WordPress.com, and hence my main blog, is running much the same code.

I previously posted that 2.3 is, among other things, the tags release of WordPress. I remarked that themes need to become tag-aware. Apparently all that takes is insertion of a new template tag, the_tags, at the appropriate point(s).

For Skimmed Milk, that’s the function skimmed_milk_post_meta, which is in functions.php. I’ve just realized that the_tags also needs to be in single.php. Or maybe single.php just needs to call skimmed_milk_post_meta, rather than doing its own post_meta stuff.

I now have a Habari blog. Thanks to Owen for identifying my .htaccess files as the source of the problem I was having.

Talking of beta, I recently tried to get Habari going. One of the reasons it didn’t work was: Habari requires PHP 5; PHP 5 here at A Small Orange means 5.2; and 5.2 breaks WordPress.

I’ve just updated WordPress to the first beta of 2.3. I had some trouble with cPanel, which still seems rather unintuitive to me, but seem to have arrived in 2.3 territory. The main attraction of 2.3 for me is tags, so I’ll apply some of them to this post.

Update: the post is tagged with beta and tag, but how do the tags show up? I guess that a tag-aware theme would help, and that I’m not using one.

My route to a theme for this blog was as follows:

• Scott’s post on minimalist WordPress themes.
• Azeem’s White as Milk, which I use on my WPMU blog (which I have neglected of late).
• Thortz’ Skimmed Milk, which is based on WaM.

I downloaded the freshly-skimmed V1.1 of the theme, followed the Codex instructions for adding a theme using cPanel, and voila. I’ll think I’ll tinker with the theme a little; for example, I’d like the sidebar to be a little wider.

One of the purposes of this blog is to try out things that aren’t possible at WordPress.com. The first example, and the subject of this post, is SmartLinks from AdaptiveBlue. I think that SmartLinks are best illustrated by example, so here goes.

1. The World is Flat, Release 3.0 is a link to my review of Thomas Friedman’s best-seller. What makes it a SmartLink is the blue icon that follows the regular link. If you click on the icon, you’ll see that it shows you various web services you might want to apply to that page (e.g., Digg).
2. The world is flat : a brief history of the twenty-first century is a link to the appropriate Library Thing page. Clicking on the icon will show the smartness. The SmartLink recognizes that this is a book, and provides other relevant links. One of the links is to Amazon; that link includes my affiliate information.
3. The link is smart is what I’d really like to do. The link itself goes to my review of the book, but the SmartLink recognizes that this is book-related, and gives Amazon, etc. Actually SmartLink doesn’t generate this for me; I pasted together the link from example 1 with the SmartLink from example 2.

I emailed AdaptiveBlue support about this last night, and Alex replied impressively quickly. Reading his reply, I realized that the support request I sent at midnight or so might as well have been written by a pumpkin for all the clarity it provided.

Sorry, Alex. I hope this is clearer. I think that SmartLinks are very cool, and would love to see them available at WordPress.com.

I’m here because I want to:

• Run a blog that’ll keep me in touch with old-school WordPress, even though my main blog is hosted by WordPress.com.
• Try Habari.
• Try a hosting service without spending too much money: A Small Orange seems to fit the bill, especially if you sign up for it using the affiliate link I just provided.