This is not something new but for those of you out there, who like to customise and personalise just about everything you have – especially when it comes to blogs and especially if yours happens to be a wordpress platform. Then you are going to love this little plugin. This plugin allows you to personalise your own wordpress login page. 

This is a before and after shot of my own login page.

Not too shabby, eh? The image before is what your wordpress login page would look like with WordPress 2.6 and above. The one after it is the one I have made base on the template given with the plugin download. The plugin is called  Binary Moon Custom Login Plugin.

What you need to do to get this effect going on for ya. Is to first download the plugin above. 

Designing your new layout. 

You need to create two images. One is the login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif  or save them as jpegs. Whatever suits your fancy. These two images will make up the look of the wordpress login. You’ll find what you need in the template folder. 

Once you have designed your new layout, save them into the folder wp-content/plugins/bm-custom-login/images. Make sure you save them exactly as these two names login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif. 

Activate the wordpress plugin and wa la! You’re done and you have a brand new WordPress Login to stare at hehe. Honestly no one else will see it unless you are sharing your blog or you have multiple writers. But it’s great to have it for some kicks.

If you don’t really have an idea for your design, you can also head on to the bm-custom-login flickr group.

You can read the original post here at Binarymoon or just go on straight and download the plugin.

Earlier this month I was busy helping two friends out with shifting their blogspot blogs into their new wordpress home. Which I’m quite proud to say I’m sponsoring them with the hosting while they got their own domain for themselves. The two bloggers are Mr Ming Han and Mr “Soh Han Sem” Soon Wei.Mr Ming Han who is on threeminutenights.blogspot.com will be shifting soon. Where as Mr Soon Wei has already moved from interconnections.blogspot.com to new home www.soonwei.com.

So proud of my proteges  Both of them were originally on blogger (which i still say sucks!).  

Anyway before i go into biasness, I had to help them set up and transfer all their past and present posts into their new home. This was the tough part because about a year back, WordPress could import posts from blogger. But recently – and i think understandably – Blogger has created some sort of block so that WordPress can’t import posts from your old blogspot blogs. Rightly so. Everytime you wanted to get your posts it’ll just remain stuck.

This is what it will look like once you grant blogger access on your wordpress. Keep your eyes on thestagecalls. The second last row. Once i hit import…it’s suppose to move.

But see here it gets stuck. Leaving it at one like forever and ever.

I found this a huge pain, and it wasn’t doing to well with me telling my pals how great wordpress is when I can’t even import the most important thing. The content! Ming Han was a little easier since he was starting his blog a fresh and had a few posts in. So i told him to copy paste his posts first into the new blog. 

Soon Wei’s however was a bit of a prob cause he had like 400 + posts. So i spent a good couple of hours searching on how to get all his posts into his new blog. Great progress I have to say, showed the dude what wordpress was made of and Ta-da instant convert

Hence this is another way for you to get your posts from blogspot in , if you are having difficulty. Let me list it to you step by step. 

Importing Blogger RSS Posts into WordPress

1. What we are going to do is save your blog post into an .XML file. First type in this into your address bar. Say your blogger add is “test.blogspot.com”. So you should have something like this. You’re basically getting your feed. “test.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?start-index=1&max-results=999&alt=rss”  

   Now you see the number “999″ there, reason I put 999 is so that when you enter in that entire add it will actually collect all the posts you have in your blog. Not unless of course you written 1000 blog posts. If you have that many posts, I suggest, you split up your file. So that it is not too big. 

 

2. Once you key in that link of your blog, you’ll end up with a page that looks like this. So you’re on the right track if u see this jumbled mess. 



 

3. From there right click and “save as” the page as a .xml file. You can name it to whatever you want. In this case, let’s just say the file you save is called test.xml. Save it to your desktop.  

 
 

4. Then head on into your wordpress dashboard and go to manage> Import. Once in that page click on the one that says “RSS”.   

 

5. You will see this. Go find that test.xml file and upload it. Even thought it states max 10MB. It’s fine, cause if say you have tons of posts just upload them in batches. Like test.xml, test2.xml…etc. 

 

 

6. Right so now upload and just watch the magic. Then TA-DA! All your post are in.  

 

 

7. Nope that’s it now enjoy all your post in your new blog on wordpress. 

About a week or two ago, there was a competition going on in the web. Not many people I think were aware of it, but I happened to chance upon it while surfing for some wordpress tutorials. I then stumbled upon DevWP.

In short they write about everything regarding WordPress: articles and tutorials about WordPress themes, plugins, hacks, updates.. whatever. A site which is all about how one can develop WordPress into something more than just a blog platform.

There isn’t a lot of content going on yet on the blog as you can see on their main home site. But they are slowly getting enough things started which I’m really looking forward too. Back to the competition, the mini competition was open to the public. Whereby you were suppose to just leave a comment of what kind of tutorials you would like to see placed on the blog. Whoever that left a comment, 5 fortunate people stood a chance to win $10.

Guess what I’m one of the few!

So to get an email from Gilles saying that he will send me $10 into my paypal account just made me go woooppeedoo. I’m all for winning free cash (yeah I’m desperate sue me ) But more than that, i get to help out fellow bloggers out there, who want to have an even better WordPress thought. Give the site a check out for those of you who are new to WordPress or even those who just want some other ideas on how to use it.