Moving at the Speed of Creativity is Wesley Fryer’s blog. (That’s me!) I use this site to digitally document my own journey of learning and collaborate with other educators and lifelong learners around the globe. I focus primarily on issues related to engaged learning, web 2.0 technologies, digital storytelling, educational leadership, literacy, blended learning, creativity, appropriate uses of educational technologies, digital citizenship, and educational transformation.
If you’re interested in contacting me about sharing a presentation or workshop for educators in your area in person or over video, please review my list of current presentations on www.wesfryer.com/teaching. A comprehensive list of presentation resource links is available on handouts.wesfryer.com.
More info about me is available on my public Google profile page and my personal bio page. My full digital footprint is on claimid.com/wfryer. See my disclosure policy for additional information about my affiliations and stance on advertising on this blog. Please see the attribution guidance page for information if you are quoting or citing my work.
Some technical stuff about my blog: (updated 1/10/2010)
My blog (this website) is powered by an updated version of the free Wordpress blogging engine. In July 2007 I updated my blog theme, I had previously used a slightly modified version of the “famous Kubrick” theme. Now I am using a modified version of the free Blue Wonder theme. The drop-down menus at the top are a feature of the Blue Wonder theme, each is a Wordpress “page” rather than post and they are organized under “parent” categories within Wordpress.
I’ve used various plug-ins since I started blogging with Wordpress, currently…
There are 23 plugins used: 18 active plugins and 5 inactive plugins.
Active Wordpress Plugins
AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget 1.6.1
» The AddThis Team (url)
Help your visitor promote your site! The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget allows any visitor to bookmark your site easily with many popular services. Sign up for an AddThis.com account to see how your visitors are sharing your content–which services they’re using for sharing, which content is shared the most, and more. It’s all free–even the pretty charts and graphs.
Akismet 2.2.7
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
Code Markup 1.3
» Bennett McElwee (url)
A filter that displays <code> blocks nicely while still allowing formatting.
Comment Timeout 2.1.1
» James McKay (url)
Automatically closes comments on blog entries after a user-configurable period of time. It has options which allow you to keep the discussion open for longer on older posts which have had recent comments accepted, or to place a fixed limit on the total number of comments in the discussion. Activate the plugin and go to Options >> Comment Timeout to configure.
No Revisions 1.1
» John Leavitt (url)
Disables post revisions in WordPress 2.6 and on. Activate the plugin to disable them. Deactivate the plugin to reenable them. Note that this does not delete any existing revisions, just stops wordpress from making any more.
Photo Dropper 1.0.8
» Photodropper (url)
Lets you add Creative commons licensed Photos to Your Posts from Flickr. By activating this plugin you agree to be fully responsbile for adhering to Creative Commons licenses for all photos you post to your blog.
podPress 8.8.4
» Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r) (url)
The podPress pluggin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting. Set it up in ‘podPress’->Feed/iTunes Settings. If you this plugin works for you, send us a comment.
PostRank 1.2
» Trevor Creech (url)
Showcase your Top Posts with the PostRank widget, track social media analytics, and engage with your readers from the WP dashboard. Learn more about PostRank.
reCAPTCHA 2.6
» Ben Maurer & Mike Crawford (url)
Integrates a reCAPTCHA with wordpress
Search Meter 2.6
» Bennett McElwee (url)
Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for. After you have activated this plugin, you can check the Search Meter section in the Dashboard to see what your visitors are searching for on your blog.
Simple Trackback Validation 2.1
» Michael Woehrer (url)
Eliminates spam trackbacks by (1) checking if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to and (2) by retrieving the web page located at the URL used in the trackback and checking if the page contains a link to your blog.
Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess
Twitter Tools 2.2.1
» Alex King (url)
A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
Twitter Tools - Bit.ly URLs 2.2.1
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Use Bit.ly for URL shortening with Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.
WP-DBManager 2.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.
WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.
WP Super Cache 0.9.9
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
WPtouch iPhone Theme 1.9.8.1
» Dale Mugford & Duane Storey (BraveNewCode) (url)
A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android and other touch-based smartphones.
Inactive Wordpress Plugins
Maintenance Mode 4.4
» Michael Wöhrer (url)
Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Settings → Maintenance Mode to get started.
This Day 1.4
» Dagon Design (url)
Lists posts that were created on this day in previous years
Twitter Tools - Exclude Category 2.2.1
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Exclude posts in certain categories from being tweeted by Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.
Twitter Tools - Hashtags 2.2.1
» Crowd Favorite (url)
Set #hashtags for blog post tweets sent by Twitter Tools. This plugin relies on Twitter Tools, configure it on the Twitter Tools settings page.
WordPress Database Backup 2.2.2
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started.
The dynamic lists above were created with WP-PluginsUsed.
I am no longer using the sds_Talkr_Plugin (it appears to be no longer working for some reason) or the WordPress Database Backup. Instead I use my blog host’s pHpMyAdmin to download mySQL backups.
This configuration is presently working well to keep comment spam out, from time to time I’ve also used Spam Karma 2 but currently I’m not using it. I had some problems with PodPress in fall 2007 I couldn’t resolve which messed up my Podcast RSS feed, and I eventually switched to using FeedForAll to create that podcast feed. I continue to use Feedburner for 4 different feeds related to my blog: My primary feed for all posts, my podcast feed / channel, my blog comments, and a feed for educational technology related posts only. This latter feed is still available but I am basically deprecating it as it’s no longer linked from my blog sidebar.
I love the “widgets” feature of the latest Wordpress and have used different text widgets in my left and right sidebars for additional content. I have cut down on the number of external content links included here to improve loading speed for my blog pages, because I realize these are cumbersome for those viewing my blog on slower Internet connections. Currently I use embedded content for the following free services:
- my del.icio.us network badge
- my technorati blog widget
- feedburner generated chicklets and feed subscription links
- email subscription services from FeedBlitz
- live traffic feeds via FEEDJIT
- my Google Reader shared items
- A customized ShowYourself widget
I no longer use:
- my upcoming presentations and workshops (next 30 days) shared with RSS Calendar
- my recent publicly shared pictures in a Flickr badge
- 2 world clocks via clocklink.com
My blog footer includes two important elements:
- my Creative Commons license
- my ClustrMap showing blog visitor statistics and locations (I pay the annual fee for more detailed stats.)
I provide additional attribution guidance for my blog in a static Wordpress page linked at both the top and bottom of every page.
In addition to blogging here regularly, and periodically on other blogs listed on claimid.com/wfryer.
Inspired by a blogger whose thoughts, work and writing style I admire, Dr. Lawrence Lessig, I periodically invite “guest bloggers” to take up the author’s chair here on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” when I am offline. This is a fun way to infuse my blog with new ideas, share the fairly visible author’s chair which is this blog with others whose ideas I respect, and keep the content here dynamic for visitors and subscribers. Those guest blog posts are all archived within the category “guest blogger.”
If you want to contact me directly, my contact information (including my current Skype status) is available on my personal website.
Flickr/wfryer
Facebook/Wesley Fryer
Linkedin/wesfryer
Twitter/wfryer
YouTube/wfryer
Del.icio.us/wfryer
Wikipedia/wfryer
Wishlist/Wesley Fryer
Technorati/wfryer

