This is a great Christian internet filter. It works very well, and as far as I can tell there is just no way to disable it. Whatever it installs, it’s not something you can find and delete or put in a password and override it.

Bible verses are brought to your attention when you try to enter a restricted area, along with photos of a wide variety of stop signs. It’s a good reminder for someone who is slipping up, and makes you feel very secure if you just accidentally stumbled on something you didn’t want to see anyway.

The support is very personal. Paul will unblock sites you need unblocked, and will even set up YOUR filter so that your kids’ computer is blocked from the whole entire internet — except a set list of URLs that you choose to allow. He is flexible, and helpful.

I think this is a GREAT service for most Christian families who need essential blocking to protect young children or teenagers. It’s a perfect internet filter for Christian men who are trying to keep themselves pure. If you have more than one computer, the price might become prohibitive, but overall you’re paying for personalized service, which is a nice touch. When I was with Bsafe, which purports to be a Christian internet filter, or at least a Christian company, I couldn’t get tech support to save my life. From that perspective, the price difference is negligible.

Unfortunately, my personal needs and preferences for an internet filter are more technical than this filter would permit. Any basic Christian internet filter will probably not be my thing. First of all, as a web developer, I need instant access to override blocked sites. My business depends on being able to do my work quickly, and I can’t wait for tech support to respond. I also do perinatal counseling, which sometimes leads to websites which could be considered “adult” in nature, although they are medical information sites. Again, time is of the essence because it’s business related. For my children, I am looking for parental controls and for all unblocking options to be at my discretion. This is NOT the best situation for most people — since my desired solution requires a password, which allows me full access to the controls, it could possibly be disabled by a savvy teen or kid!

But I have four young children, who don’t try to get past my blockades — they have been told that the internet is just as dangerous as the whole big world, and just like we don’t let them walk or ride their bikes to the store alone, we also don’t let them surf the internet alone. It’s that simple, and they accept it. For now.

I commend this Christian internet filter to those who need a simple, clean solution to protect themselves and their teens on the internet.

I went hunting for a plugin I’d seen that allowed custom buttons, and discovered that the standard installation of WordPress actually has a keyboard command that toggles some extra goodies off and on. Obviously, mine have all been off!

Turns out, you can Show/Hide the Advanced Editor Toolbar in the standard Wordpress installation and unlock a dozen or so extra buttons, including “Paste as Plain Text” and “Paste from Word”. When the Advanced Editor Toolbar is enabled, there is a toggle button available to turn it off. However, when it is off, you must use Alt-V (IE) or Shift-Alt-V (Firefox) to toggle the advanced buttons back “on”.

Adding Buttons is something I haven’t delved into yet. I need to play with this new toy first. But I learned from the Codex that under “Rich Editor Filters” in the Plugin_API/Hooks page, you can see a simple means of adding your own buttons to TinyMCE in WordPress.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference#Rich_Text_Editor_Filters

Advanced Editing Plugins

If the Advanced Editing Toolbar buttons are not sufficient, perhaps you’re looking for a plugin to extend the functionality of the TinyMCE editor, or to add custom code snippets. Here are two you can try:

Custom TinyMCE Buttons (for WordPress 2.1)

Advanced TinyMCE Editor (for Wordpress 2.2)

It was the former that I recalled having seen, which started me on this quest, and the latter which I discovered in the process, and informed me of the advanced toggle option. Surprised that I had never heard of it in two years of hanging out on the WordPress forums, I personally added the information to the Codex. I also added links to these two amazing plugins, which I’m sure will come in handy for others.

1. Boil a pound of butter with a pound of sugar (about 2 1/4 cups) until the mixture turns a rich dark carmel color.
2. Mix in 1/2 cup of toasted almonds (I usually use chopped almonds that I toast about 10 minutes at 300F).
3. Pour mixture into a 13×9″ baking dish or pan.
4. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top to cover about 80% of the surface. These will melt within a few minutes, although they keep their shape. As soon as they are soft, spread with a spatula to cover the whole surface evenly.
5. Sprinkle with toasted chopped almonds.
6. Cool completely (you can put it in the fridge) and break into pieces.

You might want to make two batches. This is addicting and yummy!

This manifests itself in an unexpected (and probably unwanted) bullet before your list title (or a lone bullet alongside your first Page link, if you used the title_li=0 argument), and often by making the “bullet” for all subsequent Page links appear as something other than a bullet (in mine, it looks like this: >> ) because it’s reading them as sub-nested list items. What a mess!

Maybe this is convenient if you only use wp_list_pages inside of an existing ordered or unordered list, but I generally don’t….so I have been fighting this strange bullet problem for quite some time.

It may be possible for you to style away this problem by adding CSS classes for .pagenav and .page_item, but if that’s not working for you, then you might want to edit the function itself. Editing the core of WordPress isn’t generally recommended, but sometimes it becomes necessary.

Here are instructions for WordPress 2.1.3. Other versions are probably similar. Don’t forget to make a back up before you do this!!!

You’ll be changing this file:

/wp-includes/post_functions.php.

Locate “function wp_list_pages” (line 265 in my 2.1.3)

Look for the “if” statement and remove the opening and closing LI tags in the two lines that begin with ?output= (one of them includes class=pagenav), so it reads as follows:


if ( !empty($pages) ) {
    if ( $r['title_li'] )
      $output .= '' . $r['title_li'] . '<ul>';
 
    global $wp_query;
    if ( is_page() )
      $current_page = $wp_query->get_queried_object_id();
    $output .= walk_page_tree($pages, $r['depth'], $current_page, $r);
 
    if ( $r['title_li'] )
      $output .= '</ul>';
  }


When looking at the whole function, you’ll see you can also remove the page_item class for the inner nested LIs if you want, but you can also just not define that class in CSS and it won’t do anything.

The US and Canada are listed at the beginning, as well as in their respective alphabetical positions. You can easily modify this if you prefer it another way. Enjoy.

United States, Canada, Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua & Deps, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verdi, Central African Rep, Chad, Chile, China, Columbia, Comoros, Congo, Congo {Democratic Rep}, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Greneda, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland {Republic}, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea North, Korea South, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, {Burma}, Namibia, Narau, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent & Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome & Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikstan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Samoa, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Alabama, Alaska, Alberta, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Labrador, Louisiana, Maine, Manitoba, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Marianas Islands, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Rhode Island, Saskatchewan, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Virgin Islands, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Yukon

Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Marianas Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Virgin Islands, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon

Comma Separated List of US States and Territories

Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Marianas Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Virgin Islands, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

The following instructions explain what to do, provided you are working with an Author Template file (author.php) per the instructions in the WordPress codex. (more…)