The WordPress installation process is already incredibly simple, but because I often find myself setting up fresh installations of WordPress for various reasons, I decided to make it even easier.

The following script takes a folder name as an argument, creates that folder in the website root (specified in a config variable of the script), downloads and extracts the latest version of WordPress into that folder, and runs the WordPress install. Finally, it sets the admin password to the password specified in another config variable and removes the password change nag.

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Hey, so in case you didn’t notice for some reason, my old nasty “parchment” theme is dead and gone. Out with the old, in with the new.

Whatcha think?

[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.

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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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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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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