Devdevote» Wordpress

7 sins about WordPress

admin — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:06:29 +0000

I’ve been using WordPress almost every day since 2007 and here are my biggest kvetch. You might be a programmer to understand everything.

Everything is a post?

When using WordPress functions we can sometimes call ”post” to get the page. No, this is not a bug. WordPress refer to the ”post type”. There are posts, but it got nothing to do with post types, really. A post type can be a post, page, attachment, revision or even a menu.

It’s called ”post type” because a post was the first thing created in WordPress. Nowdays it can be just confusing to not be sure if it calls an actual post or a post type.

wp-admin got bloated

Custom post types and other new stuff are nice BUT it makes WordPress admin look like a junk yard. Some things have been taken care of in version 3.1 like hide some fields that not everyone use that often.

The left sidebar is still a mess. To solve it, make a top menu (like WordPress 2.3) and split things up in a nice way. We don’t need to see the settings all the time, do we?

Image uploader was better in previous versions of WordPress

Why the heck is a lightbox used for uploading images? There was a time when the image uploading was right there. No need to flip between a lightbox and the content.

File gallery plugin looks a little bit of how WordPress looked before the lightbox time.

I want to create my stuff on the frontpage, not in wp-admin

I want to see my blog when I create a new post and I want to write it right there to se what it gets. Why force me to log in to wp-admin?

I even want the ability to drag and drop my widgets on the front page. It’s not impossible, just check if super admin is logged in and in that case load some fancy jQuery.

In WordPress 3.1 there is a panel on the top at the front page to add post and so on, but that is just a shortcut to wp-admin. A little lame to me.

Impossible to use Ajax WITH WordPress functions (a nice way)

A theme issue.

When ever you include a PHP-file (on Ajax-calls for example) your WordPress functions are not there anymore. Yes, you could include wp-load.php but that is not good if the file structure has changed.

The best way today is way of doing it at Ottos Don’t include wp-load please. I prefer the one called ”The right way second”.

However it’s not a very nice way of doing it.

Multiple languages sucks

I’m not talking about translations of themes or wp-admin. I’m talking of creating sites with multiple languages. There is a plugin called qTranslate that should be one of the best plugin for this. Still it’s far from good enough. It destroys the core tables and don’t work well with new things like custom menus.

I don’t know the best way to solve this but I belive it can be done.

Tables can’t be added with the content editor

Sometimes you need a table to display table data. However TinyMCE editor is not very good at it. There are plugins to create tables but they are not good enough. They don’t really blend in.

Submit your WP site

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:53:54 +0000

Here is a list of resources where you can submit your WordPress site. Are you missing a good site? Write a comment. I will update this post frequently.

WordPress Plugins – All categories

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:49:35 +0000

My personal favourite WordPress plugins. What’s yours?

Admin

Custom Post Types UI
Custom Settings – Add custom admin settings
Display Querys – Shows the number of queries used
Duplicate Post – Make a copy of a post
SubHeading – Extra post title
ServerBuddy – Checks server enviroment
Simple Fields – Better custom fields
Easy post types – Create new post types on the fly
No self pings – Don’t ping your own site
Page Excerpt – Adds excerpt to pages (like posts)
Regenerate Thumbnails – Regenerate thumbnail size to a new size
WP no category base – Remove category from permalinks
WP Super Cache – Speed up your site with caching

Forms

Contact form 7

Images

FancyBox for WordPress – A ”lightbox” layer for images

SEO

SEO Ultimate
Simple Meta Description – Uses the excerpt as a meta description
Simple SEO
SEO Title Tags – Add and manage meta titles

Sidebars

Custom Sidebars

Widgets

Better tag cloud – Settings to tag clouds
Fold category list – List categories and makes them collapse

CMS

CMS Tree Page View – Better overview over pages

Not yet tested

Best WordPress hacks

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:28:52 +0000

A list of WordPress resources and hacks picked from my bookmarks. Enjoy!

Widgets

Digging into WordPress – Declare Multiple Widgetized Areas

Rewrite rules

WordPress.org – Flush rules on activate plugin

Theme functions

Custom post types

Voosh themes – Custom post types

Custom taxonomies

Net Tuts – Custom taxonomies

Meta boxes

Deluxe blog tips – Create a better meta box

Admin

WP Comment Pages

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:50:59 +0000

In short

Requires at least: 2.9
Tested up to: 2.9
Download from: Devdevote

Description

What is page comments?

Let’s say you have 200 comments on your site. Imagine if every comment was an unique page, complete with title, meta description, header and content. It’s good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well as users. Your users can link directly to an interesting comment, instead of the whole article.

This plugin will add comment pages dynamically without screwing up your database. The plugin will only create ONE page called ”comment” which works like a template for ALL your comment pages.

Just activate the plugin and it works instantly. If you are an advanced user you can change the look of the comment pages.

Screenshots

This is how it looks like on my Swedish blog with the default theme. You can change how the content i displayed if you like.

The author comment link (”Mr WordPress” in this case) is replaced with a link to the comment page.

What does the page called ”comment” do?

It works like a template for ALL your comment pages. If you go to a comment page this happeneds automatically:

Title tag is replaced. Example: ”Mr WordPress @ Hello world » MyBlogName”.
Meta description is added from the comment content with maximum 160 characters.
Canonical meta is added.
The title for the content is replaced. Example: ”Mr WordPress @ Hello world”.
The content is added from the page ”comment” and the shortcodes are replaced with the comment content.

Shortcodes for the ”comment” page

Edit the page ”comment”. It works like a template for all the comment pages. The shortcodes will be replaced with real comment content. If you need more shortcodes than default, here you go:

[single_comment type="comment_author"]
[single_comment type="comment_author_url"]
[single_comment type="comment_author_link"]
[single_comment type="comment_avatar"]
[single_comment type="comment_avatar_link"]
[single_comment type="comment_date"]
[single_comment type="comment_content"]
[single_comment type="post_date"]
[single_comment type="post_link"]
[single_comment type="post_title"]
[single_comment type="post_url"]

You can even add classes to the shortcodes named ”_link”, like this:

[single_comment type="comment_avatar_link"]

Installation

Make sure that you don’t already have a page called ”comment”
Upload ‘wp-comment-pages’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Done! Click on a comment author link in your theme to try it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is changed when activating the plugin?

It adds a rewrite rule to allow the comment pages to work.
It adds a page called ”comment” that works like a template for all the comment pages.

Does the plugin add new pages to the post table?

The comment pages are created dynamically and are not stored in the database. The only page that is created is the ”comment” page. It works like a template for ALL the comment pages.

Does the plugin change the database structure?

No.

Changelog

1.0

Initial release

Upgrade Notice

1.0: Initial release

WP Sitemap

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:44:23 +0000

A HTML sitemap with both post and pages. Easy to implement, just add a shortcode tag in a page.

Tags: sitemap, html sitemap, table of contents, seo.
Requires at least: 2.9
Tested up to: 2.9
Stable tag: 1.0

Download from: Devdevote
Download from: WordPress.org

Demo

Description

Place a shortcode into a post or a page (page recommended) and your HTML sitemap will apear as a list, complete with page numbers.

Shortcode simple example

[wp_sitemap]

Features

Support for both posts and pages
Support for page numbers and option to place it on top or bottom
Support for include and exclude pages / posts
Support for disable posts / pages
Support for order by and sort order
No data added to the database
No settings page added into admin
Sitemap settings are added through a shortcode added in a page
WordPress built in functions are used to make a very small code

Shortcode advanced example

[wp_sitemap pages="false" exclude="9,21,34"]

Parameters

exclude

(string) Define a comma-separated list of Page IDs to be excluded from the list (example: ‘exclude=3,7,31′). There is no default value.

include

(string) Only include certain Pages or Posts in the sitemap. Like exclude, this parameter takes a comma-separated list of Page IDs. There is no default value.

posts

(string) Include Posts. Valid values:
- true – Posts are included. (Default)
- false – Posts are not included.

pages

(string) Include Pages. Valid values:
- true – Pages are included. (Default)
- false – Pages are not included.

sort_column

(string) Sorts the list of Posts and Pages in a number of different ways. The default setting is sort newest first by Post / Page date.
- ‘post_date’ – Published Post / Page date. (Default)
- ‘post_title’ – The Post or Page title.
- ‘post_modified’ – The updated Post or Page date.
- ‘comment_count’ – The number of comments on a Post or Page.

sort_order

(string) Change the sort order of the list of Pages (either ascending or descending). The default is ascending. Valid values:
- ‘ASC’ – Sort from lowest to highest.
- ‘DESC’ – Sort from highest to lowest. (Default)

paging_position

(string) The position of the page numbers. Valid values:
- ‘top’ – Add page numbers above the sitemap list
- ‘bottom’ – Add the page numbers below the sitemap list (Default)
- ‘both’ – Add page numbers above and below the sitemap list

post_count

(string) Sets the number of Pages and Posts to display. The default is 50.

Shortcode default settings

If you don’t know what this means, just ignore this section.

exclude => 0
include => 0
posts => ”true”
pages => ”true”
sort_column => ”post_date”
sort_order => ”DESC”
paging_position => ”bottom”
post_count => 50

Installation

This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working.

Upload the folder ‘wp-sitemap’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Add the shortcode [wp_sitemap] to a post or a page (page rekommended)
Look at the post / page. Done!

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the settings page?

There are none. You can add settings into the shortcode.

Screenshots

Maybe soon. It’s just a list of posts and pages with page numbers.

Changelog

1.0

Initial release

Upgrade Notice

1.0: This is not an upgrade, it’s an initial release.

Support this plugin

Report bugs. Be detailed about the problem.
Spread the word.

WordPress cheat sheet

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:57:20 +0000

It was written for WordPress 2.8.2 but will probably work with future versions as well. Still under construction but so far so good right…

Comments

Post

Search

Bookmarks

Userdata

Filter

Feed

Pings / Pingbacks / Trackbacks

Theme / Template

Header

Date / Time

Convert, sanitize, filter & formatting

Cron / Schedule

Localization / Translation

Options

Sidebar

Querys

Action

Taxonomy / Term

Admin

Content

Email

Attachments

Plugin

Uncategorized conditional tags

Uncategorized

API

Classes

delete_post_link()

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:55:58 +0000

In most WordPress themes, if you are logged in, there is an ”Edit Post” link. That way you can go directly into edit the current post.

I have created a function called ”Delete Post Link”. If you are logged in you will see a link which allows you to delete the current page or post, even without visiting admin.

Warning! You should be very careful using this function!

function wp_delete_post_link($link = 'Delete This', $before = '', $after = '')
{
	global $post;
	if ( $post->post_type == 'page' ) {
		if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_page', $post->ID ) )
			return;
	} else {
		if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_post', $post->ID ) )
			return;
	}
	$link = "ID, 'delete-post_' . $post->ID) . "'>".$link."";
	echo $before . $link . $after;
}

I recommend you to put the function into your functions.php file in your theme folder. When done just put the function into your theme like this:

wp_delete_post_link('Delete this post / page', '', '
')

get_content() WITH formatting

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:55:14 +0000

The problem

Normally the get_the_content() tag returns the content WITHOUT formatting. Only the_content() will print the content WITH formatting.

The solution

I found out a solution in WordPress core to make get_the_content() tag return the same content as the_content(). Put this code into your functions.php in your theme folder.

function get_content($more_link_text = '(more...)', $stripteaser = 0, $more_file = '')
{
	$content = get_the_content($more_link_text, $stripteaser, $more_file);
	$content = apply_filters('the_content', $content);
	$content = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $content);
	return $content;
}

The function call

Call the function inside the loop somewhere in your theme.

Improvements

Do you have any ideas, bugs, features or anything else to improve the code? Write a comment and I’ll look into it

get_depth()

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:54:34 +0000

The problem

As far as I know there is no function in WordPress that return the page or category depth.

The solution

I created a function that returns the depth of a page or category. The depth is how many levels from the root the page or category in its hierarchy. The root level number is 0.

function get_depth($id = '', $depth = '', $i = 0)
{
	global $wpdb;

	if($depth == '')
	{
		if(is_page())
		{
			if($id == '')
			{
				global $post;
				$id = $post->ID;
			}
			$depth = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT post_parent FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE ID = '".$id."'");
			return get_depth($id, $depth, $i);
		}
		elseif(is_category())
		{

			if($id == '')
			{
				global $cat;
				$id = $cat;
			}
			$depth = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT parent FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE term_id = '".$id."'");
			return get_depth($id, $depth, $i);
		}
		elseif(is_single())
		{
			if($id == '')
			{
				$category = get_the_category();
				$id = $category[0]->cat_ID;
			}
			$depth = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT parent FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE term_id = '".$id."'");
			return get_depth($id, $depth, $i);
		}
	}
	elseif($depth == '0')
	{
		return $i;
	}
	elseif(is_single() || is_category())
	{
		$depth = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT parent FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE term_id = '".$depth."'");
		$i++;
		return get_depth($id, $depth, $i);
	}
	elseif(is_page())
	{
		$depth = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT post_parent FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE ID = '".$depth."'");
		$i++;
		return get_depth($id, $depth, $i);
	}
}

Function call

Send an ID with the function or it will use current ID to get the depth. Call the function somewhere in your theme.

In a category – It will return the depth of the current category, if no ID is sent.
In a page – It will return the depth of the current page, if no ID is sent.
In a post – It will return the depth of the first category assigned to the post, if no ID is sent.

Alternative (for page depth only)

Here comes a much shorter alternative if you only need to get the depth of pages. This works on page.php. If you are using it in other places, make sure the $post variable are correct.

ancestors); ?>

Alternative (for category depth only)

This code works with archive.php or category.php. If you are using another template file, you need to insert the category ID into the $cat variable.

Contributors

Improvements

Do you have any ideas, bugs, features or anything else to improve the code? Write a comment and I’ll look into it.

Devdevote» Wordpress

7 sins about WordPress

Everything is a post?

wp-admin got bloated

Image uploader was better in previous versions of WordPress

I want to create my stuff on the frontpage, not in wp-admin

Impossible to use Ajax WITH WordPress functions (a nice way)

Multiple languages sucks

Tables can’t be added with the content editor

Submit your WP site

WordPress Plugins – All categories

Admin

Forms

Images

SEO

Sidebars

Widgets

CMS

Not yet tested

Best WordPress hacks

Widgets

Rewrite rules

Theme functions

Custom post types

Custom taxonomies

Meta boxes

Admin

WP Comment Pages

In short

Description

What is page comments?

Screenshots

What does the page called ”comment” do?

Shortcodes for the ”comment” page

Installation

Frequently Asked Questions

What is changed when activating the plugin?

Does the plugin add new pages to the post table?

Does the plugin change the database structure?

Changelog

1.0

Upgrade Notice

WP Sitemap

Demo

Description

Shortcode simple example

Features

Shortcode advanced example

Parameters

Shortcode default settings

Installation

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the settings page?

Screenshots

Changelog

1.0

Upgrade Notice

Support this plugin

WordPress cheat sheet

Comments

Post

Page

Category

Search

Bookmarks

Tags

Userdata

Filter

Feed

Pings / Pingbacks / Trackbacks

Theme / Template

Header

Date / Time

Convert, sanitize, filter & formatting

Cron / Schedule

Localization / Translation

Options

Sidebar

Querys

Action