Web coding & design at Dyason Hat

On December 31st, 2008

Popularity Contest Plugin Wordpress 2.7 Working version

In Wordpress Plugins, By DyasonHat

There no doubt that Alex King’s Popularity Contest plugin is, excuse the pun, one WordPress’s most popular plugin ever. But Alex seems to be a bit to busy to maintain the plugin (?2007 being the last update) and there is a plethora of users out there asking about patches, fixes, new version etc.

I’m not sure when exactly the plugin stopped working and which ‘branch’ versions are the best, but last week I came across this version and it’s working great on one of my WP 2.7 installs so I’m including it here for those that are struggling to find a version that works.

Download Popularity Contest for WP 2.7 Version 1.3b

Popularity Contest for WP 2.7 (2255) - 12.92 KB

On December 15th, 2008

WP Smart Sort Premium NOW SELLING!

In Projects, By DyasonHat

It’s a week earlier than expected but things came together really well in the end, I’ve really enjoyed writing this plugin and hope that users really benefit from it. View all the bumf over the plugin’s official page.

On December 13th, 2008

WP Smart Sort v2 Released

In Projects, By DyasonHat

It is official the long awaited v2 of this great plugin is now available at the Wordpress.org repository for download.

OFFICIAL Plugin Page on Dyasonhat

It was previously planned that this plugin might not feature sorting posts by custom fields but I’m glad to say that this functionality has been retained in this version and is better than ever.

Thank you to all those who offered words of encouragement during the process and the patience for it’s LONG arrival.

Enjoy sorting your posts by ANY field you like!!!

Tagged with: plugins • smart sort • wordpress

On December 3rd, 2008

Smart Sort Premium Development Update

In Wordpress Plugins, By DyasonHat

Progress on our smart sort plugin is currently on target for release in next couple of weeks.

A decision has been made to release 2 versions of the plugin

1. Free Version
Will enable sorting of posts only
Sorting will only be available on fields from the wp_posts table
This essentially mean that sorting by: title, date added, date modified and comment count will be available.
Premium version
- Full set of features including sort/filter/search
- Once off price of $35
- …full feature list available soon.

A Demo of the plugin in action can now be seen over at http://wpsmartsort.dyasonhat.com/

Remaining Development

User customization of forms
Search form
Plugin API functions for advanced implementation.

Tagged with: plugins • smart sort • wordpress

On December 2nd, 2008

Wordpress: Get current context url

In code, By DyasonHat

Edit: 10 Dec 2008. Changed select term_taxonomy_id to term_id.

There are many times when developing a plugin that I’ve wanted to easily get the url of the current context eg. if I’m in a category page I want the url of that page, and the same for tags archives etc.

The following function does this quite nicely.

</code>

function get_current_context_url(){
global $wp_query;
global $wpdb;

$url = '';
if (is_category()) {
$cat_id = $wp_query->query_vars['cat'];
$url = get_category_link($cat_id);
}
elseif (is_tag()) {
$tag_name = $wp_query->query_vars['tag'];
$tag_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ".$wpdb->terms.".term_id FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy
LEFT JOIN $wpdb->terms
ON (".$wpdb->term_taxonomy.".term_id = ".$wpdb->terms.".term_id)
WHERE ".$wpdb->terms.".slug = '$tag_name'
AND ".$wpdb->term_taxonomy.".taxonomy = 'post_tag'
LIMIT 1");
$url = get_tag_link($tag_id);
}
elseif (is_author()) {
$author_id = $wp_query->query_vars['author'];
$url = get_author_posts_url($author_id);
}
elseif (is_date()) {
$year = $wp_query->query_vars['year'];
$month = $wp_query->query_vars['monthnum'];
$day = $wp_query->query_vars['day'];

if ($wp_query->query_vars['day']) {
$url = get_day_link( $year,  $month,  $day);
}
elseif ($wp_query->query_vars['monthnum']) {
$url = get_month_link( $year,  $month,  $day);
}
elseif ($wp_query->query_vars['year']) {
$url = get_year_link( $year,  $month,  $day);
}
}
else {
$url = get_bloginfo('url');
}

//ensure trailing slash
if ("/" != substr($url, -1)) {
$url = $url . "/";
}
return $url;
}

<code>

Tagged with: context url • wordpress

On November 25th, 2008

Smart Sort Filter Search Plugin v2… screenshots of the Beast

In Wordpress Plugins, By DyasonHat

Hi all,

A Lot of people have been asking if there really is going to be a smart sort V2 the short answer is, YES!

I’m current putting in close to 16 hours a day on the new version of the plugin and it’s coming along nicely. I thought I’d release a few screen shots to show some of what we’re doing.

Once complete the plugin will feature 3 functions:

Sorting posts on Category, Tag, Archive and Search pages
Filtering posts based on user criteria on the above pages
Allow for creation of advanced search form

Why all 3? Why not just sort. The reason is that in order for the sort to work how I wanted I have to create an index table for WordPress and this means more possibilities that I really want to make the most of. I’ve considered releasing separate plugins for this, but since it seems I’m not going to release this as open source ;-( but rather for a small fee I figure the complete package will be quite a draw card for many WP developers.

Smart Sort Top level Menu (WP 2.7b3)

Sort Drop down Menu options

Smart Sort Index Table Setup

User Drop Down Menu to select post sort direction

–Dyasonhat–

Tagged with: filter posts • plugins • screenshots • search posts • smart sort • sort posts • wordpress

On October 18th, 2008

iKrumdy Wordpress MU home page theme

In Themes, By DyasonHat

I just recently completed a mu theme project for a customer over at scriptlance. The brief was to utilize the sort of ‘newzy’ feel of le monde blogs but keep the theme extremely clean cut. The result of this highly functional wordpress mu home page theme can be viewed at the iKrumdy demo.

As always I work the project to the exact specification of the customer and this one was particularly happy with the end result. As designers we always want to push the boundaries and even though this theme is entirely written in valid XHTML (gravatar.com however won’t validate at this point in time) and CSS and tested to be compatible with Internet Explorer 7 & 8, Firefox 3, Safari (latest), Opera (latest) there is still a lot I’d like to do with this theme.

The back end needs a lot of work at the moment it’s using a range of different plugins to get it all working and each plugin has it’s own installation procedures, admin menu etc. So if this wordpress mu theme were to really become something I’d have to integrate all of the plugins under the theme function.php and then use php includes. This would also involve tweaking the back end so all of the menus fall under one main menu to edit the theme.

Some ideas I had for it were:

Fancy header menu with sub page menus on mouse over
CSS style choice in admin menu
Optional display of blog avatars instead of links in the new and active blogs section.
Need to beautify the search results a bit.

Wordpress Mu is still in desperate need of some great home page themes that can provide great functionality and news like results but still retain the “sign up now” type feel that is requested by many in this community. I’ll solidify a few more of my ideas and then sit down to see what I can come up with by way of releasing a dyasonhat mu theme.

–Dyasonhat

Note: The ikrumdy theme is not availablele for distribution due to my general consideration towards the privacy of the project ownership by the project owner even though no express agreement was entered into prior to the work. When I do release a mu homepage theme here it may be based on similar concepts but the core code will be unique and solely owned by myself.

Tagged with: ikrumdy • Themes • wordpress • wpmu

On August 30th, 2008

Split large xml sitemaps PHP script

In Wordpress Plugins, By DyasonHat

Many people will be familiar with the popular Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress I use it on all of my wordpress installs and have been very happy with it. Until about a month ago when I was installing it over at accommodationsphere.com and it created a sitemap for me nicely gzipped and weighing in at only 1-2mbs but a whopping 92,000 urls.

Does google accept sitemaps with that many files? Not unless they’re split across multiple sitemaps which contain less than 50,000 urls each and utilize a sitemap index file.

So I organized a nice little php script that I’ve got loaded in a cron job that runs to split that large sitemap.xml.gz file into smaller .xml.gz files and creates an index file.

It’s a little crude but I’m hoping to get this included as a feature in the above mentioned plugin rather than expanding on this little scripts abilities outright.

You’re free to use it, modify it and do what ever, but be nice; if you develop a bit of extra features or usability for it why not send me the code for inclusion in the next version.

Tagged with: php • plugins • sitemaps • wordpress

On August 24th, 2008

Medical Blogging in South Africa

In Uncategorized, By DyasonHat

We’ve just created a site for a client in SA medblogs.co.za. The site as it pretty self evident is an open blogging platform aimed at South African Medical Professionals and Med Students. We’re using the lastest version of Wordpress Mu and signed up with WPMUDEV Premium to make use of their fantastic out of the box solutions. Of course we went the tried and trusted ‘edublogs’ theme which was modded a bit.

Overall the project was quick one but it just goes to show how simple automattic has made out lives.

On August 17th, 2008

SmartSort v2.0 coming soon

In Wordpress Plugins, By DyasonHat

FINAL UPDATE: The official page for WP Smart Sort has moved here.

UPDATE: After eagerly anticipating that this script would have been released by now; I’ve come across issues with the extensiveness of the SQL joins the script has been using, in a similar way to smart sort v1. All along I’ve wanted to avoid ‘adding’ or modifying WP in any way but in order for the script to work as I want I’m forced to utilize an “index” table with fields created during script setup in order for this script to have the type of functionality its meant to.

Final version should be released in December. Thanks to those who have left words of encouragement, smart sort v2 is on it way yet!

Thought I’d wet a few people apetites and annouce that I have an ALL new version of smart sort on its way. ETA should be in around a month but might release beta versions before then for testing and comments.

Some of the new features include:

Display a drop down menu on category & search pages similar to the ’sort by’ box that is used on YouTube.
Additional drop down list allowing the user the option of choosing how many posts per page they want to view.
Utilize WP’s built in sort by hooks. The reason for this is to make it as compatable with other plugins as possible.
Option to sort by any detected fields in the wp_posts table. (this allows for a modified posts table)
Option to sort by any custom fields.
Cacheable friendly

I’d like to keep the plugin free but its costing quite a bit this time to get it right so I might need to make it “donationware” but I’ll see closer to the time.

– Dyasonhat —

Tagged with: plugins • smart sort • sort

Popularity Contest Plugin Wordpress 2.7 Working version

WP Smart Sort Premium NOW SELLING!

WP Smart Sort v2 Released

Smart Sort Premium Development Update

Remaining Development

Wordpress: Get current context url

Smart Sort Filter Search Plugin v2… screenshots of the Beast

iKrumdy Wordpress MU home page theme

Split large xml sitemaps PHP script

Medical Blogging in South Africa

SmartSort v2.0 coming soon

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