Checking Out Twenty Ten

March 1st, 2010

[Obligatory comment about my lack of posts and my intentions to be better in the future]

I’ve been following the development of WordPress 3.0 more closely than previous versions, and one of the features that has intrigued me the most is the new theme being developed. Twenty Ten is shaping up to be an elegant and innovative theme and I’m excited to see what it becomes before the final release of WordPress 3.0.

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New Plugin: Minimum Password Length

August 21st, 2009

David Peralty sent out a tweet recently, asking if there was a plugin that enforced a minimum password length. I looked around and didn’t find anything, so I decided to write one. As with most of my plugins, it’s pretty simple. Just install it and go. If you want to change the minimum password length (default is 7 characters) simply edit the plugin file and change the value of $min_length.

Plugin page (basically the same instructions as this post).

Direct Download

Add Some Emotion To Your Gravatar

August 20th, 2009

Gravatar is amazing, isn’t it? I don’t usually think about it, but it’s really cool to be able to read a blog post, look at the comments, recognize someone that you know by their unique picture, then post your own comment and be recognized in return. All without uploading any files to the site you’re visiting. Pretty cool huh? Let’s take it to the next level!

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WeblogToolsCollection Plugin Competition

August 10th, 2009

Have you voted on the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin competition? There are is a host of new plugins available for download. They range from the very simple to the very complex. My personal favorite is the Pixopoint Menu Plugin, but there are some other great ones there as well. Check it out!

Plugin Updates for WordPress 2.8.1

July 15th, 2009

A few hours ago, a post was released detailing issues plugins might be having with the latest WordPress release, and how to address them. I checked my plugins, and their options pages were indeed broken. Fortunately the fix was easy enough, and the two plugins I’ve released here on my blog are up to date.

Go ahead and grab the new versions of Code Snippets and Short Comment Filter.

JSON and ASP.NET

June 26th, 2009

This is a bit different from my normal PHP and MySQL related posts, but I found this interesting so I though I’d pass it along.

If you’re familiar with ASP.NET you probably know that every page has a presentation layer (a lax form of XML) and a business layer (C# or Visual Basic). This is a brilliant way of organizing a website because it separates your data (the presentation layer) from your complex logic (the business layer). This gives you several advantages (not by any means an exhaustive list):

  1. Complicated logic is easier to understand when it isn’t cluttered with HTML tags
  2. Because the presentation and the business layers are loosely linked, changes in one often don’t require a change in the other
  3. Object oriented principles can be used in both the presentation, and the business layer, promoting code reuse

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Back On Track

June 18th, 2009

Nearly a month has transpired since my last post, but I finally have a chance to write something. This post will be more personal than technical., so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Multiple WP Blogs On One WP Core

May 21st, 2009

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to listen to Mike Krotscheck talk about techniques for advanced WordPress installations. One of the most interesting things I took away from his talk was a way to install multiple WordPress blogs on one WordPress core. Note we’re not talking about WordPress MU. When you only need 2 or 3 blogs, WordPress MU can be a bit overkill, but installing these blogs on the same WordPress core can save space and make updates easier. Here’s how you do it.

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Short Comment Filter Update

May 19th, 2009

After releasing the Short Comment Filter Plugin, I’ve gotten feedback from people at WP Tavern and I’ve finally gotten a chance to implement their suggestions. I’ve added enough features that I’m bumping the version number to 2.0. Get the new version here

New Features

  • Filtered Comment Count – Look at the settings page to see how many comments have been filtered
  • Customizable Filter Message – Specify a custom message to be displayed if a comment is too short. Use %type% and %length% for a dynamic message

Fixes

  • Email Notification – Notification emails are no longer sent out for filtered comments
  • Filtering Trackbacks – Trackbacks are no longer filtered. Only comments are required to meet the minimum length requirement

Again, here’s the download link

WordPress Tip: Obscure get_option Parameter

May 4th, 2009

Any WordPress Plugin developer worth their salt knows about the get_option function, which allows options to be retrieved from the database. What I recently discovered is that this function accepts a second parameter, indicating a default value to be returned if the option doesn’t exist in the database.

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