06.09.05
Getting Started with WordPress.
I finally got around to learning some more about [WordPress](http://wordpress.org/), the publishing platform I and [Sameer](http://dcostanet.net/wordpress/) use for our blogs. It’s open-source, and *unbelievably powerful and friendly*.
* First thing to do is choose a [theme](http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes). There is a lot of information there on how to design your own theme, but I opted for getting one of the numerous themes already available. The [WordPress Theme Viewer](http://themes.wordpress.net/theme-viewer.php) was extremely helpful in that respect. You can choose from among more than 250 themes, and see how each one of them looks like on a sample blog. After downloading a couple and trying them out, I settled for now on a theme called [Ocadia](http://beccary.com/goodies/wordpress-themes/), created by [Becca Wei](http://beccary.com/). It’s a very nice and not too obtrusive theme. Becca has a number of other very nice themes.
* Next on the list was a way to process and display [RSS feeds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol)). Luckily for me, there is a whole list for [plugins](http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins) for WordPress, to do all sorts of wonderful tasks. For instance, one of these plugins, the [WeatherIcon](http://www.sonicpling.net/archives/2005/03/12/weathericon-20/), offers a nice little list with weather information, as you can see in my sidebar. The wonderful thing about it is that it has its very own nice customization tab from within WordPress, under the Options tab. Which means you do not every have to stare at a whole lot of very complicated php code, and you can just enjoy its results! Among the things you can change is the language, measuring units, what information to display etc. It’s extremely easy to use.
* Now, what I wanted to do is create a page that shows the [weather in various parts of the world](http://skiadas.dcostanet.net/afterthought/weather-around-the-world/). To do that, I needed to use the previous plugin, which would require running php code in the post for the page, which is not allowed. Luckily for me, there is *another* plugin, [runphp](http://mark.scottishclimbs.com/archives/2004/07/02/running-php-in-wordpress-posts/), which allows you to do that. There are lots of utilities like that, I just chose to use this one. Then I put a bunch of weather icons together to generate the above page. Only problem is that, the way that the weather plugin is setup right now, it will decide weather it will show a sun or a moon based on the time in one specified part of the world, same for all the versions. So this way India seems to have night exactly when the U.S. does 
. I hope I’ll find a way to bypass this too, or actually that the authors of the plugin will fix it.
I think this completes the customization I have performed up to now.
Later.
