Archives for the 'WordPress' Category
Loading WordPress’ Thickbox Only When Needed
I like to use Thickbox on my site to display images and videos in overlay windows. In WordPress, it’s easy enough to use wp_enqueue_script( ) and wp_enqueue_style() to load the built-in version of Thickbox. It automatically takes care of including jQuery, putting the css in the header, and the javascript in the footer.
But there’s no need to have the bloat of Thickbox and jQuery loading on all pages when most of them don’t even use it. That’s why Joost de Valk detailed a nice tip to only load thickbox when needed by checking the page content for references to it. All it takes is a few lines of code in your functions.php file.
Unfortunately, you end up with some broken images because the built-in Thickbox defines their locations in thickbox.js as relative paths: [ Continue reading Loading WordPress’ Thickbox Only When Needed … ]
Detecting When Gravatar Has No Image
[This information in this post is out of date. Please see Gravatar, AppleScript, and the OS X Address Book Revisited for more current information.]
We’re on our way to building an AppleScript to update all of the contacts in your Mac Address Book with pictures from the Gravatar service. This is part 3 of the series.
Part 1, Gravatar, AppleScript, and Address Book Pictures, introduced the topic and ended with a short AppleScript to construct a Gravatar URL given an e-mail address.
Then in part 2, Setting an Address Book Picture with AppleScript, we built a script showing how to successfully set a contact photo in Address Book.
Now we need to detect when the Gravatar service does not have an image on file for a given e-mail address. [ Continue reading Detecting When Gravatar Has No Image … ]
WordPress & My iPhone in the Garden
I just had to try the new WordPress application for the iPhone. So I snapped a couple photos while out in the garden gathering lunch and wrote this post.
It connected to my blog effortlessly and allowed me to easily add categories, tags, and a photo.
Great job WordPress team!
I only have a couple minor gripes that I hope will be addressed later:
1. It would be easier to type if the application supported landscape mode and the wider keyboard that provides.
2. It’s too bad WordPress does not extract and store the GPS information along with the other metadata it grabs from photos.
I would love to hear comments from others who have tried it. How has it worked for you?
WordPress Admin Color Scheme: Fresh Plus Visited
Although I like the new look of WordPress 2.5, I miss having the visited links in the dashboard shown as a different color. I like to keep up on the latest WordPress news and I previously relied on the link color to see what I had not yet read.
Fortunately, WordPress 2.5 has a way for plugins to add additional color schemes. So I whipped up a quick plugin to add the style necessary to mark those visited links in a different color. You can grab a copy from my downloads page for admin color scheme: Fresh Plus Visited.
WordCamp Dallas 2008
I’m looking forward to attending my first WordCamp this weekend in Dallas. I’ll be eager to learn from the great lineup of presenters, and hopefully, personally say thank you to some of you who have contributed so much to the WordPress community. Be sure to say hello if you’re attending too. I’d love to meet you.
I believe they are still taking registrations, so you may not be too late to sign up if you haven’t already.
Nofollow and the Spam War Arms Race
Recent events have caused me to rethink the use of the nofollow attribute on my blog comment links. Much has already been written about whether or not to use the nofollow attribute, so I won’t re-hash those arguments here. Personally, I had come down on the side of believing that nofollow did little to stop spam. Besides, commenters add value to my sites and it’s appropriate to reward them with a link. So I’ve been running one of the DoFollow plugins for WordPress to override the default nofollow behavior.
Then the spam flood came that most of us have seen by now. These spam comments are harder to detect because they seem to be written by a human and customized to somewhat fit the post content. [ Continue reading Nofollow and the Spam War Arms Race … ]
WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin Version 1.1
I just finished a minor update to my WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin. Here are the changes:
- Additional checks for plugins knowing about the new tag system so they don’t get flagged as incompatible. i.e., Sitemap Generator 3.0.
- Internationalization of text. The .po file is included. If you do a translation send the files over and I’ll be happy to post them on the download page.
- Miscellaneous clean up.
- Added GPL license text.
Get it on the Upgrade Preflight Plugin page. (My apologies for this not being on the WordPress Extend plugins directory yet. I’ve applied for access but they apparently have quite a backlog in approving new plugins.)
Upgrade Preflight Check Spanish Translation
A big thank you to Samuel Aguilera who created a Spanish translation of my WordPress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin.
You can download the translated version from his site.
I plan on doing proper internationalization in the next version of the plugin. That should make translation easier for anyone who wants to make one.
WordPress 2.3 Upgrade Compatibility Check Plugin
I have a bunch of WordPress sites to upgrade to the new version 2.3. There have been a few changes in this version that can result in errors with some plugins and themes. To make my upgrades easier, I built a plugin to check other plugins and themes for compatibility.
I decided to release it in case it’s of use to others. More information and a download are on my WordPress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin page.
This is my first plugin that I’ve released publicly. I’m certainly not an expert PHP coder, so please go easy on me. 
Suggestions for improvements are welcome.
Finally Converted My Own Site to WordPress
I’ve helped so many other people set up WordPress but never got around to doing it on my own site. Sure, I’ve been running versions here from time to time to test things, but I hadn’t linked it in for public consumption. Now that version 2.3 is out, it seemed like a good time to fully make the switch.
Hopefully, this will entice me to blog about a few things as I think of them because it’s now so easy to do. Some of my old articles are still getting a decent amount of views so I’ll soon be moving those into posts and redirecting traffic there.
I still haven’t settled on a theme. I’d like to customize one for this site but I just don’t have the time right now. Thanks to Jim Mitchell for his bogart theme. It’s clean and easy on the eye so it will definitely do the job for the time being.
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MacUpdate Promo Deal of the Day
