I have started a new project, called Abandoned Plugins.  I will be supporting plugins that I have found no longer have support, and taking new unsupported plugins under my wing.

The plugins that I am supporting from the site currently are:

D13 Gallery Plugin

RC_CustomFields_GUI Plugin

If you have comments, suggestions, or a plugin that needs updating, please leave a comment on http://abandonedplugins.com

Bookmark to:

This might only apply to 2.2.2 but hopefully not.

at the very first line of your very first piece of code in your template do this:

$wpdb->hide_errors();

If you want to, you can do it in your header file with:

global $wpdb;

$wpdb->hide_errors();

Oh god, Im so glad it’s finally over…

Bookmark to:

If you have the desire to customize your WordPress blog, and have attempted it, you surely know that it is a pain sometimes.

I was trying to cutomize my category pages to show the most recent post for that category, and only posts for that category.

• Create a file called category.php in your theme’s directory.
  • This will default WordPress to use this page for categories from now on.
• For showing only the most recent post with this category: Use this code:

<?php
get_header();
//the following gets an array of the categories for this post

$get_cat = get_the_category();

//the following will get the first category for your post and create a WordPress query that uses “The Loop” to show the most

// recent post from that category

$q = ‘cat=’.$get_cat[0]->cat_ID.’&showposts=1′;
$my_query = new WP_Query($q);
//the rest is just like everywhere else that you show posts on your blog

if($my_query->have_posts()){
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
?>
<h2>
<?php the_title(); ?>
</h2>
<?php
the_content(’Read the rest of this entry »’); ?>
<?php
endwhile;
}else{
?>
<h2 class=”center”>Not Found</h2>
<p class=”center”>Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.</p>
<?php
}

get_footer();
?>

• For showing the only post with this category or showing the titles only if there are multiple posts: Use this code:

<?php
get_header();
$get_cat = get_the_category();
$q = ‘cat=’.$get_cat[0]->cat_ID.’&showposts=1′;
$my_query = new WP_Query($q);
if($my_query->have_posts()){
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
?>
<h2>
<?php the_title(); ?>
</h2>
<?php
//this is all I added to the previous one, it checks to see how many posts there are
if(count($posts) > 1){
the_content(’Read the rest of this entry »’);
}
?>

<?php
endwhile;
}else{
?>
<h2 class=”center”>Not Found</h2>
<p class=”center”>Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.</p>
<?php
}

get_footer();
?>

Now you can add the other normal wordpress template tags in these, just place them and try it out.

Note: The best Codex page I found for templating is here: The WordPress Loop

Bookmark to:

How to Use This Plugin

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

I wanted to show you how to set up your conf.ini file so that you can have the fields you need for your wordpress blog’s write page.

Note: Titles should not have spaces in them.

Radio/Checkbox/Select:

[ItemTitle]

type: {either use “radio”, “select”, or “checkbox”}

value: Yes#No#Maybe#Sometimes#Jumping Dolphins <–separate multiple items with the # sign

default: Jumping Dolphins <–This must be spelled the same as the one above that you want defaulted

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

Textfield:

[ItemTitle]

type: textfield

value: Thanks for all the fish

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

TextArea:

[ItemTitle]

type: textarea

value: text text text, more text

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

Updates

I have talked previously about the rc_custom_field_gui plugin and how I modified it to fit the WordPress write page styles, and I added a few other features to it. I posted on the original author’s plugin page about the changes that I made to his plugin, and at last check he had not responded.

I have now updated it again.

Previously, if you made an element that had a value or default of “Yes” or “No” it would not work, because PHP’s parse_ini_file function will parse those as 1&0, respectively. This is good when you are using this as an actual ini file, but this is a sort of hack, so we need to figure something out.

Now, just enter your yes/no values as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with the quotes. The parse_ini_file function will ignore them as yes/no and the plugin will strip the quotes out, and use the text.

Note: You can use any capitalization of the letters in the words ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it will take care of any of them.

Other updates:

I standardized where the descriptions show, which is under the field element for which they are defined.

I made the checkbox a loop like the radio elements, so now you enter them exactly the same as radio and select elements.

Compatible with WordPress 2.2.3!!

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

Bookmark to:

While I was doing the post on firefox plugins I started to think about wordpress and the plugins I use on a few different blogs. So I figured I would post about them here too.

1. Akismet

   1. The best spam control plugin for wordpress. I love akismet, they have saved me hours of work, and stopped thousands of spam messages from getting onto my sites.

2. Alinks

   1. This is the newest plugin I have added to my wordpress collection. It allows me to link to specific places for specific keywords. In other words, every time I type specific words it will link to the site of my choice. Also, you can choose certain key phrases to link to amazon using your amazon affiliate id, allowing you to make money if someone buys something when they click your link.

3. d13 Gallery

   1. This is a plugin that I was using on sentletters. When I updated Wordpress it stopped working, so I went looking for the original author. His site has changed hands, and he seems to no longer support the plugin. I have since taken over support of it, and will continue to do updates upon request.

4. Feed Statistics

   1. Ever want to know who is pulling information down via RSS feeds and RSS readers. This plugin will help you figure it out. It will start to record the information as soon as you install it.

5. FireStats

   1. This is the coolest site statistics plugin I have found yet. It keeps tracks of referrers, browsers, operating systems, and tons of other information. You can even manage multiple sites through the same firestats install if you want.

6. Google Sitemap Generator

   1. This plugin will automatically create a Google sitemap for your entire blog. You can also have it include pages from your domain that are not necessarily linked to from your blog. This is a really nice feature for helping google find all the pages on your site. If you do the work for google they will reward you in time.

7. intouch

   1. You can create a custom built contact form into your blog, to make it easier for your readers to contact you. This is an essential feature of a business based blog.

8. RC Custom Fields Gui

   1. This is another plugin that I started working on because it wasn’t up to snuff for a client, and the support for it was seriously lacking. The original version was nice, but it didnt match the wordpress interface, and didnt have a couple other features that I wanted. So I improved it and have posted a new Wordpress2.2 version of the plugin on this blog.

9. Smart Update Pinger

   1. This plugin will override the default Wordpress pinger functionality for telling other sites about your blog posts. It will make it so that wordpress will only ping those sites when the post is published, and not on every change. This is important, because some of the sites that you can ping will block you for pinging them too much, or too frequently. Note: This may not be necessary with wordpress 2.1 and newer. And the original author no longer supports it.

10. Social Bookmarks

    1. This is the plugin that creates all the social bookmarks links at the bottom of every post on this blog. It is amazing for quick linking people to their favorite social bookmarking site, and allowing them to post articles from a blog as well.

11. Sphere Related Content Widget

    1. This is the plugin that allows me to have the sphere link at the bottom of every post on this site. It will actually allow users to see other blogs that have similar content. This is especially helpful when someone is trying to do research on a specific topic. It will also help you get users to your blog when they are looking for a topic similar to what you are posting about.

12. WhoLinked

    1. This plugin will help you record who is linking to your site. Its nice to have this information on your site, or at least to be recording it.

13. Wordpress Database Backup

    1. This is an amazing little plugin that letsyou do a complete backup of your site’s database either to your computer or to an email address. This is a very important thing to have happen, especially if you have a lot of work in a blog and you don’t want it to disappear.

Also, I have heard that this is a good plugin, but I am not using it anywhere currently:

Wordpress Adsense 

It should help you add google adsense code to your blog with minimal effort.  I have not used it or even looked at it yet.

Bookmark to: