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Yes, that’s right — 1-2 months, 3200+ lines of code, and countless cans of Dr. Pepper later, the new version of Viper’s Video Quicktags has been released!

It’s a complete recode literally from scratch (essentially no old code was used) and is incredibly more powerful and feature filled than before.

The only way to really see all the new features is to try it yourself, but here’s a taste of it:

Please leave all feedback on the plugin’s homepage. Thanks.

Now, that you and your friends are tweeting more these days, it’s not alarming to see someone come up with the plugin.

And that someone is - Richard X Thripp, and the plugin in a simple wordpress one, that adds a cute twitter bird image on top right corner of all of your posts, which when users click takes them to their twitter homepage with a shortened URL for the post.

Essentially, it enables them to tweet the posts on your blog with ..hmmm…well two clicks !

And it has a cute roll over effect, where by, when you mouse over the little birdy takes color. (Just wish if there were some configurations available for changing the picture, it’s a bit smudgy, you know..)

Do you see the image on the top right corner of this post ? It’s already up there, and so far haven’t given me any errors or compatibility issues with other plugins.

Plugin details here and Download here.

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Add a Twitter button on your posts - Wordpress plugin, “Tweet this”

The fine folks who produce the WordPress podcast called WordCast have released episode 26 into the wild. As you might of guessed, I was part of the show, more specifically, the subject of the blame game. I pretty much did an oral presentation of my post on WeblogToolsCollection.com and then added some additional bits of knowledge that I took from the comments. I stuck around to give my plugin pick of the week. Also, near the end of the show, we all chatted about WordPress 2.7. I also had a ton of fun and invite you to download and take a listen to the show.

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One of the many things that Kathy Seirra’s session at WordCamp SF 2008 has me thinking about is what does WordPress say about us using it. And what do WordPress shirts say about the us wearing them.

About half way through her session she talks about “T-Shirt First Development (Guy Kawasaki)”. I have about 7 WordPress shirts. Occasionally, the ones with the WordPress logo will lead to a conversation — even here in quiet Victoria — with a blogger or web developer, but the ones that spark the most conversations are the WordCamp ones.

Here are some photos from Flickr of people rocking each year’s WordCamp SF shirts:

Joshua Wiltshire in WordCamp 2006 Tee

Chris Heuer in WordCamp SF 2007 Tee. Photo by Laughing Squid.

Alan Levine in WordCamp SF 2008 Tee.

Although WordCamps are happening all over the world, understandably, for most, shirts are not in the budget.

Shirt not in the budget for Dane Hurtubise. Photo by Michael Cummings.

I have found only one photo of a WordCamp tee from another WordCamp:

WordCamp South Africa 2008 Tee

When wearing a WordCamp shirt, conversations with strangers often start, “WordCamp, do you do spelling bees?” After I get over my initial little bit of embarrassment, I explain “WordCamps are WordPress conferences. WordPress is the blogging software that I use and contribute to.” It’s a great ice breaker, and lets me pimp the Press.

I haven’t had any particular funny conversations or found myself in any strange situations, but I like to imagine that others have.

Kris Krug captured what looks like master of creating conversations Francine Hardaway giving everyone a flash of WordCamp during her Gnomedex session:

Jokes. Kris’s next photos reveal that Francine was doing an on stage costume change, or maybe transforming from mild mannered Francine (can’t imagine) to part of Generation Y (which her session was about). I can’t wait for the video!

Has a WordCamp shirt taken you to any strange places?

Photos Used (because WordPress captions feature doesn’t yet support links):

1. Joshua Wiltshire self-portrait.
2. Chris Heuer photo by Scott Beale.
3. Alan Levine self-portrait.
4. Dane Hurtubise photo by Michael Cummings.
5. Photo by Flickr member StrategyOnline.
   
6. Francine Hardaway photo by Kris Krug.

There’s something with themes with large headers that others don’t have. Well, large headers have the added advantage of making an impression on the visitors, despite your well written content. They make an impression with the bright images and also provides more real estate for SEO. More than anything else, you have an extra option of adding more copy there on the very top. Good - Is it not?

Here are 16 wordpress themes that have large headers for more space and action. Play them on!

1. Multi Header Theme

   

2. Colorise Theme

   

3. Nitrous theme

   

4. Brightness

   

5. Neoclassical Theme

   

6. Dreamplace

   

7. Green Fresh Art

   

8. Elegance Theme
   
   
9. Simple Green
   
   
10. Puzzled

    

11. Collaboration

    

12. Naturescharm
    
    
13. Ambience
    
14. Inbloom

    

15. Infinity

    

16. Skinpress

    

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16 Wordpress themes with beautiful headers and SEO real estate

Just trying out Google’s new browser, Chrome. The admin back end for WordPress (that is, the page I’m working on as I type this) is blazingly fast. Far faster than Firefox, IE or Safari. As in: No Contest.

Google set out with a specific goal: to create a browser that is designed to run mature, full featured web applications; and at first blush, it appears that they have entirely succeeded. I haven’t even tried it on Google’s own applications, such as their online word processor.

The design of this browser is quite different from other browsers, especially under the hood. I’ll probably keep Firefox for general browsing, but I will almost certainly use this for “application” use, from blogging to online banking.

Bravo.

(…and get that Mac version released!)

This article was originally published at Nerdaphernalia. Planet WordPress is authorized to reproduce WordPress-related entries. If you're reading this at any other web site, the site owner is stealing copyrighted work. Please visit the original page:

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The title pretty much says it all. The podcast that I used to produce on a weekly basis (WordPress Weekly) that covered all facets of WordPress will indeed be making a comeback. Ever since I ceased producing the show, I’ve received a number of emails, chat messages, and in overall conversation with individuals about the show, expressing their sadness for no longer producing new episodes. Apparently, the show wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Many of you complimented the show and its format. The feedback also pointed out how helpful the show had been and how much they enjoyed listening to the show either on their trip to work or through their mid day workout. In fact, people who are only now discovering the podcast have told me how sad they were to reach the final episode. Here is an example:

Comment by Michael Torbert on 20 July 2008 I was sorry to hear that this is your final episode. I had just started listening to it, and thoroughly enjoyed hearing the interview with Alex King. I listened to some of your other episodes while working (on WordPress of course) and found them to be excellent podcasts for any WordPress enthusiast. Hopefully you’ll be in a position to restart WordPress Weekly at some point. I’m sure plenty of your listeners will be pleased.

Well, I’ve taken your feedback to heart and I’ve spoken with a few people with regards to the show and I’ve decided that I will bring it back. The details are still sketchy but this is what I have planned. I’ve spoken to Mark Ghosh who is the owner of WeblogToolsCollection.com and he will allow me to publish the show as an addition to the content I produce for his site. This means that there will probably be two WordPress podcast episode announcements showing up in the dashboard between WordPress Weekly and The WordPress Podcast. Also, I’ve decided that if I am going to make WordPress Weekly structurally sound, I will need a co-host, preferably one with a developers point of view. Thankfully, the person who I have contacted with regards to the position has shown interest, but I will not know until mid or late September if the individual will be able to make it happen on a weekly basis.

The show will continue to be produced LIVE on Talkshoe just as it was before. All of the information such as the Show ID will also be the same. However, this is what will be changing.

In the past, the shows format has been a mixed bag. Sometimes, I would do the show alone. At other times, I would have a scheduled interview or I would bring on a few members of the community and open up the floor to those who have called in and discuss stories of the week. The new show format will consist of a host (myself) and a co-host leading the charge on every show. We will discuss the WordPress news of the week, mention recently released plugins as well as themes. The show will also be an hour long instead of three hours or more. However, you are still encouraged to call into the show to discuss a story we are talking about or give us a lead on a different story.

One thing that is not yet set in stone is the day and time each episode will be recorded. This is still up in the air and I won’t know this information until I can guarantee myself a co-host.

Are you excited that the show is coming back?

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WordPress MU version 2.6.1 has just been released. This is a sync of the WordPress maintenance release that saw the light of day a few weeks ago.

This is a required upgrade as it fixes a number of critical bugs, particularly in deleting users and blogs. Upgrading is as easy as copying over the files of your current install.

For a more comprehensive list of changes, check the timeline, but in short, yes you do need to upgrade!

WordPress MU is a multi blog version of WordPress that runs many sites such as Linux.ie Blogs and WordPress.com. If you run the single blog version of WordPress you can probably ignore this message.

Related Posts

• What’s this WordPress.com thing anyway?
• WordPress MU 1.3.2
• WordPress MU 1.3.3

Guest article by Sandip Dedhia from BlogsDNA
I always wanted to contribute to the wordpress community by building a Wordpress theme and releasing it to public. After efforts of 20 days I just managed to finish my first Wordpress theme. It was a great learning experience for me. During this process I ran into several issues, and it took considerable time to get it solved.

Creating Your First Wordpress Theme

Here I am listing some important points which you need to keep in mind before starting to build your own Wordpress theme, which might save you from such issues.

1) If you are not an experienced PHP developer, then don’t start from scratch, instead take default or classic theme to start building your own Wordpress theme.

2) Get your index.php file perfect as this is the most essential file you require in your Wordpress theme, rest of the files are optional. Also you need little code change in your index.php file to get the rest (category.php, archive.php, single.php etc.) of Wordpress theme files.

3) Always start with the new and latest installation of Wordpress while building your theme. It happened that I used my old existing Wordpress blog which had several edited core Wordpress files and as soon as I tried to use the developed theme on the newly created Wordpress blog, I ran into unexpected behavior and it took me several days to find out what went wrong.

4) Keep modular code as this will save your lots of time and effort while integrating your style code with PHP code.

5) Generically use PHP echo statements to find out which code is responsible for a particular output. But don’t forget to remove those echo statements at the end.

6) Don’t ever hardcode any URL, Variables values, Image path inside your Wordpress theme if you are planning to release this theme for the public.

7) Wordpress Template Tags are great time savers to theme developers as they always experiment with various tags to get the desired behavior.

8 ) There are several sites which provide big lists of Wordpress Loops. Do check out those lists and try to reuse available code as much as possible as this will save lots of development time.

9) If you have reused any code from any other theme or website, do check whether that code includes any deprecated functions/Template tags. Try to avoid using them and replace with alternate Functions/Template Tags.

10) Don’t include unnecessary PHP code, white spaces and blank lines in your Wordpress theme. This makes your theme heavy and leads to slower loading of pages. Take extreme care of white space before the start and end of php code tag, since it will result in those “Header already sent” nasty php warnings.

11) At the end if things go out of control, don’t fear to ask your question at Wordpress codex community

12) “Lesser the php code, fewer the database calls, faster the response time” keep this mantra in your mind.

Trust me you don’t need to be expert in PHP to build a Wordpress theme. We have great resources available at Wordpress official website. Do read the Theme Development guidelines on Wordpress.org before proceeding to theme development. I hope above points will be helpful to all the bloggers and developer who are planning to build their own Wordpress theme first time.

This guest article is written by Sandip Dedhia from BlogsDNA. where he blogs about Technology, Web 2.0, Linux, Gadgets and Blogging Tips. Got some tips to share, you can also write a guest article on QOT.

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I have been trying to install Laconi.ca so I can break free from Twitter, but haven’t really got around to it. Then here comes the thoughts for today — why there isn’t a Open Micro Blogging plugin for WordPress, so I can just

• Write a short 140-character micro-blog-post, and then assign it to a special category.
• It then pings all microblogging servers with my followers on it to update their message queue.
• WordPress can also take incoming requests and then populate my message queue with those whom I follow.

I guess things like Twitter-API emulation, XMPP integration, etc can all come later, so I just need one single WordPress installation to do both my regular blogging and my micro-blogging. Or maybe such plugin already exists?

I might actually sit down and look at how easy it is to implement something like this — if I have the time (i.e. no I don’t have time to do it). Going to Microsoft Tech.Ed 2008 for the next 3 days to be brain-washed by the evil empire because somehow work signed me up for it. Really excited… Not! That means I’ll also miss out CityBibleForum tomorrow :(

To all kind enough to write - yes, I’m aware that WordPress version 2.6 - if not 2.5 as well - has managed to break a few of the (more minor) theme functions round here. I’m on the case, just as soon as time permits, to give everything a thorough overhaul and back in shape.
(more…)

Alex King has recently updated the Twitter Tools from 1.5b1 to 1.5b2, yes still a beta version but there are new important fixes and 2 new features.  You can check it out right here.  Twitter tools is a well known bridge between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.  If you are into both, well you know the advantages that this tool gives you.  If not, here it is:

1. You can pull-in your Tweets into your WordPress blog
2. Create new Tweets from within WordPress

Recently, I have been getting a lot of requests for multiple-loop configurations in WordPress. It seems that multiple-column, multiple-loop configurations are in high demand these days, especially ones that display posts like this:

• First column, first loop: display posts #1-5
• Second column, second loop: display posts #6-10
• Third column, third loop: display posts #11-15

Using WordPress and a little CSS, this configuration is relatively easy to accomplish. Let’s cut right to the chase..

Step 1: Multiple-Loop, Multiple Column PHP Configuration

The first thing we want to do is replace the standard WordPress loop with the following code:

// FIRST LOOP: display posts 1 thru 5
<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); ?>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=5&offset=0'); foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
<?php static $count1 = 0; if ($count1 == "5") { break; } else { ?>

<?php the_title(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php $count1++; } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>


// SECOND LOOP: display posts 6 thru 10
<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); ?>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=5&offset=5'); foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
<?php static $count2 = 0; if ($count2 == "5") { break; } else { ?>

<?php the_title(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php $count2++; } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>


// THIRD LOOP: display posts 11 thru 15
<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); ?>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=5&offset=10'); foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
<?php static $count3 = 0; if ($count3 == "5") { break; } else { ?>

<?php the_title(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>

<?php $count3++; } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

That’s the juice right there. We have three loops, each displaying five posts. The first loop displays the first five posts, the second loop displays the next five posts, and the third loop displays the next five posts. Thus, this multiple-loop configuration displays the most recent 15 posts, each of which being unique.

To change the number of posts displayed for any given loop, you will need to edit three different arguments:

• showposts=5
• numberposts=5&offset=0
• $count1 == "5"

Notice the pattern here: for the first loop, we are showing the first five posts. The number of posts is set by the showposts=5, numberposts=5, and $count1 == "5". The first two arguments are self-explanatory, and the third simply stops the loop when the indicated number of posts has been processed.

Thus, to change the number of posts displayed in the first loop, change the number “5” to the desired number of displayed posts. After that, you need only specify the loop offset parameter, which lets WordPress know how many posts to skip before displaying the specified number of posts. For example, an offset value of “0” is used in the first loop so that no posts are skipped and the first five posts are displayed. Then, because the first loop displays the first five loops, we use an offset value of “5” in the second loop so that the loop skips over the first five posts and displays the next five posts in the sequence. Likewise, an offset value of “10” in the third loop ensures that the first 10 posts displayed in the first two loops are not repeated. Thus, if you wanted to display 10 posts in the first loop, the offset value in the second loop would be “10”.

Step 2: Multiple-Loop, Multiple Column (X)HTML Configuration

Now that we have the PHP in place, we are ready to add the (X)HTML markup required for the final three-column configuration. There are many ways to accomplish this, this is merely one of them:

<div id="column_01">

	<!-- FIRST LOOP -->

</div>

<div id="column_wrap">

	<div id="column_02">

		<!-- SECOND LOOP -->

	</div>
	<div id="column_03">

		<!-- SECOND LOOP -->
	
	</div>

</div>

Here, each of the three loops will be placed into its own div, which then will be styled with a little CSS to transform it into one of the three columns. Note that you may want to change the id names of the divisions to better represent the particular semantics of your document. Now let’s move on to the CSS..

Step 3: Multiple-Loop, Multiple Column CSS Configuration

The final step in the tutorial is to style the markup with CSS. Nothing too fancy, really. Creating the columns is merely a matter of floating the individual divs and applying a width to each of them:

/* three column layout */
div#column_01 {
	float: left;
	clear: none;
	width: 30%;
	}
div#column_wrap {
	float: right;
	clear: none;
	width: 60%;
	}
	div#column_02 {
		float: left;
		clear: none;
		width: 45%;
		}
	div#column_03 {
		float: right;
		clear: none;
		width: 45%;
		}

The trick here is to use width values that will create the correct column widths. The values used in the example produce three columns of approximately equal width. A great way to check how your width values are actually affecting layout is to add the following line of code to each selector:

border: thin solid red;

Adding that declaration to each of the four code blocks will create an outline around each of your divisions, enabling you to see easily the amount of space between each column. I use this trick all the time — it’s a real time-saver. Beyond that, you may specify the width in any units that you wish (e.g., em, px); no need to stick with percentages!

Warp Speed..

There is SO much you can do with WordPress, PHP, (X)HTML, and CSS. The possibilities are virtually endless. The multiple-column configuration presented in this article is a great starting point for creating more elaborate and sophisticated page layouts. Experiment and have fun!!

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Wow! This is quite a milestone for us… We’ve just released our 10th theme on WooThemes. Considering that there’s at least 5 / 6 different styles for every theme we’ve released thus far; we’ve now got 50-odd theme alternatives to suit your needs. Pretty impressive, right?

Were they always meant to annoy you? Sometime the yellow error sign, or sometimes the page not found black and white message..so boring, if only you could do something about it.

I found this cool wordpress plugin last day, it actually does a lot more than replacing your 404 error page with a custom fancy message. In fact, you won’t even know that you’re on a 404 page.

This is what you get while a visitor lands on a 404 page.

- Gets a page with loads of information based on the “query”
- Gets google search results
- Video results
- Google Image results and
- Related posts

That would leave anyone with something to take back home isn’t it?

The plugin is very easy to install, but would require an AJAX Google API Key.

Plugin details here

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Create a custom 404 error page that doesn’t even look like one

As I was doing research into a post regarding WordPress 2.7, I was reading the Codex article which describes the various ways in which people can contribute to WordPress. The last part of the article describes how users can contribute by means of donating money to the project.

This got me thinking. WordPress is backed by Automattic, the privately held company which has millions in venture capital funding. I know Automattic is behind their brainchild, WordPress.com but they also seem to take over the costs involved with the WordPress.org project. I was wondering, since WordPress is backed by a company which receives millions in VC funding, should this part of the article still be published on the Codex? I was thinking about removing it but wanted to see what your thoughts were on the subject.

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There are reports of a few people who are running the latest trunk of WordPress on a live blog and that is a really bad idea. The merge of Crazyhorse is still being stabilized and there are quite a few areas that I’ve tested, on a dev site, that are currently broken.

I believe that the level of stability of the Crazyhorse merge is increasing and I expect I’ll be able to SVN Up to the latest revision. I’ve been keeping a watch on the trouble areas, but haven’t been reporting issues until it is stable.

I think one of the issues is that the new “Inbox” includes test data, that I really don’t want to have on my blog. Yeah, I can delete it, but I don’t know what it is for currently, and I don’t want test data on my live blog. Hopefully, for those who have updated, it will be removed, but I suspect that including that in the upgrade process might not make much sense.

That said, from what I’ve seen, it is looking better. I’m impressed with the features and increased usability of the new version. When everything works and it should before WordPress 2.7 is released, I think many people will be happy. If not a little bit upset with yet another major interface change, since WordPress 2.5. People will eventually find that the new interface is a lot easier and better.

You can already change the Administration Panels, if you don’t like the changes.

Who am I to suggest this? Well, you can do what you want. Just be sure you don’t get mad when it hits the fan and I strongly suggest you test WordPress locally. When I say, “Test” I don’t mean you just write a single post and see if that works. I mean you go through every page, hit every button, input every field (that you want to know working), everything! to see that it works. If it does, then let me know.

Linkshare, a leading performance marketing network, is now offering partnerships with hundreds of top advertisers.  They have recently developed a tool that will allow you to populate WordPress blogs with ad placements.  All through the easy-install LinkShare RSS DealFeed plugin.

LinkShare RSS DealFeed uses RSS feeds from LinkShare Advertisers to automatically populate your Wordpress blog with deals and other promotional content. You can earn a commission on every sale on an Advertiser site that your blog refers. Just set up the plug-in once, and then your Wordpress site will automatically display the latest promotional information provided by the Advertiser.

You need to be part of the LinkShare network to start with and be approved to the Advertisers Affiliate Program.

Here’s a quick peek at how it is implemented in WordPress blogs:

I think this is mighty cool of LinkShare to provide an easy widget.  We all know that it’s next to a single click to get widgets working for you.  I remember I once had to work with direct code edits JUST to accommodate a good affiliate program.  Thank Zeus it’s now less of a hassle.

A lot of inline documentation has gone into WordPress 2.7 today. The file script-loader.php has been completed and is one of the more easy files to complete. The file formatting.php is also completed, but is awaiting commit to the WordPress Trunk. Thanks to Scott Houston for helping with the formatting.php file, documenting over 90% of the file.

Now that post.php, functions.php, and now formatting.php are finished, that remains are only 14 files. There are 5 files that deal with “template tags” that have mostly short function bodies that will really easy and quick to document. There are still three “easy” files that need to be documented. There are at least two files that I’m not even going to touch until the end.

I hope to complete more of the template files, so that theme developers can reference that documentation. Hopefully, the idea for adding phpDocumentor or PHPXref site to wordpress.org subdomain will go through before WordPress 2.7 is out, so that people can reference it. It would be better to reference a wordpress.org site for on the Codex and other sites, because you can be sure that it will be up.

It looks like my personal goal of having the inline documentation finished might just come to pass. There should be enough time to complete the inline documentation by October / November release date (historically, WordPress developers try to release a month early).