Will Anderson

[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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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

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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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!

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.

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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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

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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Today I’m releasing a new plugin: Short Comment Filter

It automatically spams or deletes comments that are too short.

You can view more information about the plugin and download it here.

My design was selected among the top 10 Retro and Vintage designs submitted to the Best WordPress Design Award sponsored by WP Webhost. Now the polls are open, and the voting can begin.

If you like my blog design, I’d love your vote! You can see the a list of the designs that were submitted, and vote on your favorite here.