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I’d like to announce the official release of the updated Custom Post Limits plugin (v3.6) for WordPress.

Independently control the number of posts listed on the front page, author/category/tag archives, search results, etc.

This release features disabled support for individual archive limits by default (configurable) to help sites with lots of authors/categories/tags; noted compatibility through WP 3.3+; updated plugin framework; and more.

The plugin’s official homepage is located at :
coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/custom-post-limits.

Comments welcome on this post for this version of the plugin. Comments will be closed once this release has been superseded by another.

Read more for a detailed ChangeLog of the release.

Detailed ChangeLog

These are the detailed changes, some of which may or may not make sense to you depending on your familiarity with the previous features and internals of the plugin.

• Update plugin framework to version 034
• Fix problem where plugin settings page won’t load for sites with a lot of authors, categories, and/or tags
• Fix correct_paged_offset() to only operate against main query
• By default, disable listing of limits for individual authors, categories, and tags
• Add filter ‘c2c_cpl_enable_all_individual_limits’ to allow enabling limits for all individual authors, categories, and tags (supersedes the specific limits)
• Add filter ‘c2c_cpl_enable_all_individual_author_limits’ to allow enabling limits for individual authors
• Add filter ‘c2c_cpl_enable_all_individual_category_limits’ to allow enabling limits for individual categories
• Add filter ‘c2c_cpl_enable_all_individual_tag_limits’ to allow enabling limits for individual tags
• Remove support for ‘c2c_custom_post_limits’ global
• Note compatibility through WP 3.3+
• Regenerate .pot
• Change plugin description
• Add ‘Domain Path’ directive to top of main plugin file
• Add link to plugin directory page to readme.txt
• Tweak installation instructions in readme.txt
• Update screenshot for WP 3.3
• Add second screenshot
• Update copyright date (2012)

In trying to figure out what to talk about at WordCamp Atlanta, I remembered a question put to me in WordCamp Birmingham. The question was how can a theme developer easily make a plugin-dependency in their theme?

I wrote some code to do this sort of thing, just as an example/test/demonstration, but then after looking over the schedule, I found that Thomas Griffin had beat me to it. After looking over his slides and having him walk me through his code, I realized that his solution was much more fully featured than mine, so I’m glad I didn’t present anything on this topic. (I ended up just doing an answer session where I tried to answer any question put to me, and frankly that was much more fun than having slides, so I’m probably just going to do that from now on.)

However, his solution is highly complex. The class he came up with is well done and fully-featured. He has capabilities for making notifications in the header space on the admin section, lightbox popups, bulk installs, forced activation, custom skinning, etc. It’s a big thing. While that’s great for a lot of people in terms of having code you can just drop-in and use, I thought that it doesn’t do much to teach how one can DIY it.

See, the code I wrote was tiny. It basically just provides some minor functionality to show a theme author how to detect installed plugins, how to detect when they’re active, how to build install and activate links, etc. It doesn’t do any pretty stuff. No custom skinning. No lightbox popups. All these things are possible, but if somebody hands you a hunk of library code to do them, then you know how to use that library, not how it works. I dislike using libraries for this reason.

So here’s the small class I wrote to do the same sort of thing, but in a very bare-bones style.

/* 

Simple class to let themes add dependencies on plugins in ways they might find useful

Example usage:

	$test = new Theme_Plugin_Dependency( 'simple-facebook-connect', 'http://ottopress.com/wordpress-plugins/simple-facebook-connect/' );
	if ( $test->check_active() )
		echo 'SFC is installed and activated!';
	else if ( $test->check() )
		echo 'SFC is installed, but not activated. <a href="'.$test->activate_link().'">Click here to activate the plugin.</a>';
	else if ( $install_link = $test->install_link() )
		echo 'SFC is not installed. <a href="'.$install_link.'">Click here to install the plugin.</a>';
	else
		echo 'SFC is not installed and could not be found in the Plugin Directory. Please install this plugin manually.';

*/
if (!class_exists('Theme_Plugin_Dependency')) {
	class Theme_Plugin_Dependency {
		// input information from the theme
		var $slug;
		var $uri;

		// installed plugins and uris of them
		private $plugins; // holds the list of plugins and their info
		private $uris; // holds just the URIs for quick and easy searching

		// both slug and PluginURI are required for checking things
		function __construct( $slug, $uri ) {
			$this->slug = $slug;
			$this->uri = $uri;
			if ( empty( $this->plugins ) )
				$this->plugins = get_plugins();
			if ( empty( $this->uris ) )
				$this->uris = wp_list_pluck($this->plugins, 'PluginURI');
		}

		// return true if installed, false if not
		function check() {
			return in_array($this->uri, $this->uris);
		}

		// return true if installed and activated, false if not
		function check_active() {
			$plugin_file = $this->get_plugin_file();
			if ($plugin_file) return is_plugin_active($plugin_file);
			return false;
		}

		// gives a link to activate the plugin
		function activate_link() {
			$plugin_file = $this->get_plugin_file();
			if ($plugin_file) return wp_nonce_url(self_admin_url('plugins.php?action=activate&plugin='.$plugin_file), 'activate-plugin_'.$plugin_file);
			return false;
		}

		// return a nonced installation link for the plugin. checks wordpress.org to make sure it's there first.
		function install_link() {
			include_once ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/plugin-install.php';

			$info = plugins_api('plugin_information', array('slug' => $this->slug ));

			if ( is_wp_error( $info ) )
				return false; // plugin not available from wordpress.org

			return wp_nonce_url(self_admin_url('update.php?action=install-plugin&plugin=' . $this->slug), 'install-plugin_' . $this->slug);
		}

		// return array key of plugin if installed, false if not, private because this isn't needed for themes, generally
		private function get_plugin_file() {
			return array_search($this->uri, $this->uris);
		}
	}
}

Obviously, for theme authors wanting to do something, they’re going to want to make much prettier means of displaying things and installing things. Thus, this code is meant as an example, to show the basics of how to detect such things.

So, use it directly if you like (it works), but more importantly, if you want to put plugin dependancies in your theme, then I suggest reading it and figuring out how it works instead. Then you can see how plugins can be detected and how to build simple install and activation links.

(BTW, note that I used the slug and the PluginURI for a reason. Plugins should be using a unique URL for the plugin in their code, and that URL is very likely to be the most unique thing about the plugin, and therefore the best way to check for a plugin already being there or not. Slugs can be duplicated by accident or design, but URLs are generally going to be unique and specific to a particular plugin.)

For a recent project, I needed a way to add custom post and body classes on a per-post basis. Sure, I could have used a category or tag to style each post, but I hate creating custom categories and tags for the purposes of styling a post. So, I created a small plugin to let me add custom classes for individual posts.

How the plugin works

The plugin adds a custom meta box on the edit post screen for any public post type called “Classes” as shown in the following screenshot.

The meta box allows you to enter a custom class for a post (used by the post_class() function) or a custom body class (used by the body_class() function).

The following screenshot shows what your <body> class will look like in the source code on a single post.

All you have to do is style your posts via CSS using the custom classes you’ve addded.

Download the plugin

You can download the latest version from the WordPress plugin repository: Custom Classes Plugin. I hope you enjoy it and find some use for it in your projects.

Please do not ask support questions in the comments below. If you’re in need of plugin support, head over to the Theme Hybrid support forums, which is where I handle support for all my plugins and themes.

In my previous post I explained how I used the Types plugin to create a new custom post type. That custom post type will be used to display a table of supported themes for my WordPress SEO plugin, and is therefor called wpseo-theme. Now the trick here is that I want users to be able to submit themes through a form.

Gravity Forms + Custom Post Type addon

By default, Gravity Forms allows you to create posts through a form. It doesn't have support for custom post types at the moment though, in part because a wonderful plugin was already created that allows for this. This plugin, aptly named Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types can be downloaded from WordPress.org.

Once you have both Gravity Forms and this plugin activated, you can start creating a form. The first step is to make the form fill our custom post type. We start with creating a form and dragging in a title field:

The title field can be found in the posts field section of Gravity Forms field, below the advanced fields:

Once you've added this input field and given it a name, go to the advanced section of its edit block, you'll see an option to save as post type, this has been added by the afore mentioned plugin:

You check the box and select the custom post type you want to use, in my case, WPSEO Themes. Now we start adding the form. We need a couple of different types of values:

• The title: done.
• The "description", which will just be the body text, so you can easily drag in the Body input field.
• An image, which should be saved as the featured image too, more on that below.
• Several custom fields, more below too.

Adding a featured image trough the form

This is actually pretty easy: drag in an image field and click edit, you'll see something like the screen below:

As you can see, setting the image as featured image is as easy as ticking the box. It's wise to also ask for a description if you don't know what's going to be on the image. In my case, it's a screenshot of the theme, so I won't bother and just set the alt tag automatically.

Adding custom fields through Gravity Forms

The next step is to add the several custom fields we need. In my case I had 5, but you can have as much as you want. You start by dragging a Custom Field input into your form. Once you have that, you click edit and you select the appropriate custom field type:

In this case, I'm asking for the theme URL, so I select website, but there are all sorts of options you can choose from, as you can see. Now here comes the tricky part, you need to set the name of your custom field. You should go into your Types -> Custom Fields page and check the second value below the custom field title:

That's the name of your custom field, but you should prefix it with "wpcf-", because that's the Types plugin naming convention, which prevents its custom fields from clashing with other ones.

Of course, if you created a custom field group from already existing custom fields you don't need to prefix the custom field name.

True / false or "boolean" input fields

Some of your custom values might be checkboxes, they're either on or off, true or false. That's called a boolean value in math / developers language, but for you, it's really simple. Just create a custom field type "checkboxes", and go into it's settings:

Be sure to check the "enable values" box and set the value to just "1". That way, if checked, Gravity Forms will save it as value "1" and the Types plugin will "get it".

Deciding on workflow

Now, once you've used the above info to finish your form, you need to decide on a workflow. On the post title field, the one whose advanced settings we used to save this input as a custom post type, we now go to the "normal" properties:

As you can see, you can set a default post author and a post status. Now in my case the author will be me in most cases, as nobody will be logged in. However, if you have enabled registration on your site, you can force people to be logged in before even being able to use this form, by going into your forms advanced settings and checking the "require user to be logged in" checkbox:

This allows for all sorts of workflows, find one that suits your site!

Conclusion

We still haven't written a single line of code, yet we've already created a custom post type and created a form that allows people to submit custom post types to us.

So, one more thing to check of off the to-do list:

1. Creating a custom post type + custom fields.
2. Creating a form through which people can submit themes that fills this post type.
3. Creating a browsable interface for this post type.

In my next post, I'll explain how to use the Views plugin to create "views" for this post type and unveil the finished product!

Use Gravity Forms to submit custom post types is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

More than five years ago, I was bit by the Autoblog bug. I don’t build them anymore, but I still build WordPress blogs in large numbers. One of my pet peeves when I was working with 100+ different blogs was that if I wanted to interlink them, or have the exact same links on the sidebar of each blog, I would have to add these links manually to each and every blog every time I built a new blog. For example, if I have 98 blogs, and I want every one of them to have a link to blog #99 that I just created, I would have to add that link to all 98 blogs manually. That is very time-consuming, so I knew there had to be a better way.

Of course, PHP can do just about anything if you know how to tell it to. I thought it would be awesome if I could have a shared links box on the sidebar of each WordPress blog, and have a form online that I could enter in the name and URL to each new blog as I built them, and then have PHP add that link to all 98 blogs instantly. Thankfully, I was able to set this up exactly how I needed it. This is what I am going to show you today, and you can use it however you see fit. One thing I want to remind you of is that even though I am using the shared content box for links, it technically can be used for anything, your imagination is the limit. Let’s get started.

Requirements

WordPress Blog(s)
Hosting with PHP and MySQL Database (this is a common setup, so your host should have it)
PHPMyAdmin Access

Step 1

Download the Samsarin PHP Widget to your WP blog;  install and activate it. This plugin lets you create a widget that can execute any PHP code right in the widget. This is crucial for you because it allows you to connect to your PHP database and display the content right there on your blog.

Step 2

Open up your PHPMyAdmin dashboard, and create a new database called links_database. You do this by clicking on the “databases” tab from the PHPMyAdmin home page, then you can specify the name of the database you want to create. If you don’t have enough admin rights to create a database from PHPMyAdmin, then you have to create it from within your hosting panel (CPanel, etc.).

Step 3

Once you have the database created, you need to execute the following SQL code to create the table that will house the links. Do this by clicking on the SQL tab up top and pasting in and running the following SQL code:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `links` (
`site_name` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`url` varchar(100) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

That SQL code will create a table named links inside the links_database database. Notice that it has two columns/fields:  site_name is the anchor text, and url is the URL of the site that the anchor text will point to.

Step 4

Next we are going to create a PHP file named connect.php which will contain the login and password for the specific database that we want to hook up to in our other scripts. Go ahead and create connect.php with your text editor and insert the following code into it (be sure to change the username and password to your own):

<?php
# Type="MYSQL"
# HTTP="true"
$hostname_links = "localhost";
$database_links = "links_database";
$username_links = "DB_USERNAME";
$password_links = "DB_PASSWORD";
$conn = mysql_pconnect($hostname_links, $username_links, $password_links) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
?>

Step 5

Now we create another simple PHP script called update.php, which will actually update the database every time we create and add a new link. Fill the update.php with the following code:

<?php require_once('connect.php'); ?>
<?php
$site_name = $_POST['site_name'];
$url = $_POST['url'];
mysql_select_db("links_database", $jim);
$query = "INSERT INTO links (site_name,url ) VALUES ('$_POST[site_name]','$_POST[url]')";
if (!mysql_query($query,$conn))
{
die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo "1 record added";
?>

Step 6

Next we are going to create another PHP script called enterblog.php which will serve as the online web form that you will go to every time you want to add a new link to the list. Create enterblog.php with the following code in it:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Enter New Blog</title>
</head>
<body>
<div align="center"><form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="update.php">
<table width="500" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4">
<tr>
<td width="190">Enter name of new site:</td>
<td width="294">
<input name="site_name" type="text" id="site_name" size="50" maxlength="50" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Enter the url of the site:</td>
<td><input name="url" type="text" id="url" value="http://www." size="50" maxlength="100" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td align="center"><input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Add Site to Database" /></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Step 7

We now will create another PHP script called displayurls.php which will be the script we call from the widget in WordPress. This script simply pulls all of the rows from the links table in the links_database. Put the following code inside displayurls.php:

<?php
// Connects to your Database
mysql_connect("localhost", "DB_USERNAME", "DB_PASSWORD") or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("links_database") or die(mysql_error());
$data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM links") or die(mysql_error());
$rt=mysql_query($data);
while($nt=mysql_fetch_array($data)){
Print "<table border=0 cellpadding=3>";
echo "<tr><td><a href=\"";
echo $nt['url'];
echo "\">";
echo $nt['site_name'];
echo "</a>";
echo "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
Print "</table>";
}
?>

Step 8

Okay almost done! Upload all of the PHP files we created here to the root directory of your site. Then change the file permissions on them to 755. Once you are done with that, it is time to bring up the web form and enter in a few links to the database. To do that, just type in the URL to your enterblog.php script, which should be something like http://www.yourblog.com/enterblog.php and you will see a two field web form. Enter in a few sites and URL’s, and hit enter after you type each one. It should tell you that 1 row was added if it went through successfully. Once that is done we can move on to the final step.

Step 9

Go into your WordPress admin and click on the Widgets option under the Appearance menu. In the widget selections you should see a widget titled something like “Samsarin PHP 1″, make sure you drag that widget somewhere onto your visible sidebar. When the widget pops up, enter in the title of the widget which might be something like “Links” and then in the body field type in the following PHP code:

<?php include("displayurls.php"); ?>

Then hit Save. If you should run into an issue where you cannot see the links, try typing in your Absolute Server Path inside the above PHP include code (so instead of “displayurls.php” you might put something like “/var/www/displayurls.php” but the exact path is different for everyone’s server). You can get the absolute server path from your hosting company. When you bring up your blog, you should see the links box on any site you put that widget on. If you have this widget installed on every blog on your server, you can add a link to them all instantly just by entering the link info once into the web form and hitting enter! Pretty cool huh?!

Just a side note, I am not a PHP programmer. I know enough to modify some things and write simple scripts, but if you are a PHP guru and you see something that can be improved in these scripts, or see something wrong, feel free to voice your opinion in the comments and I will listen to all of your ideas. Good Luck!

Ipstenu once again has a great article that covers some situations in which MultiSite is not the best tool for the job. If you’re thinking that you need to use MultiSite to accomplish a certain task, make sure that task is not on her list.   ∞

No related posts.

If you have ever spoken in front of an audience, then you probably know what slideshare is. If you haven’t, then slideshare is a place where people upload their presentation slides, so others can see it. Very often these speakers also embed their slides in their blogs. You can either use the slideshare embed code which works fine, or you can make it much easier for yourself by simply adding it to WordPress oEmbed. This would allow you to simply paste a URL of your slideshare presentation, and it will auto-embed just like the Youtube videos. In this article, we will show you how to add slideshare to WordPress oEmbed without a plugin.

Open your theme’s functions.php file or a site plugin and simply paste this code:

// Add Slideshare oEmbed
function add_oembed_slideshare(){
wp_oembed_add_provider( 'http://www.slideshare.net/*', 'http://api.embed.ly/v1/api/oembed');
}
add_action('init','add_oembed_slideshare');

Thanks to @tammyhart for sharing the snippet with us.

P.S. want to check out all the presentations that we have given? Then visit WPBeginner’s Slideshare

How to Add SlideShare to WordPress oEmbed without a Plugin is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Would you like to post videos to your blog while you’re on the go? Are you interested in a photography theme that’s also video-friendly? Well, look no further, because we have some news for you.

The VideoPress upgrade, which allows you to upload and embed your own videos on your blog, now comfortably handles videos from iPhones and iPads. You can shoot vertically or horizontally, and we’ll take care of rotating it for you so that your video looks great when it’s published on your site.

If you don’t already have VideoPress on your WordPress.com account, head on over to VideoPress.com, we’ll get you up and running in no time. And don’t forget to install the free WordPress App on your iPhone or iPad!

Duotone: Now Video-Friendly

If you’re a photoblogger, you’re probably familiar with the cool Duotone theme, which changes color to match the first image in every post and page. The big news is that Duotone now seamlessly supports VideoPress videos, so now you can engage visitors with photographs and videos!

Learn More about VideoPress

If you use VideoPress on your self-hosted WordPress site, keep an eye on the VideoPress Blog – we have some exciting annoucements coming out soon, just for you!

You can find more details about VideoPress by checking out the following resources:

• VideoPress.com
• WordPress Support: VideoPress

Today, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our collection of premium themes.

Designed by Andy Rutledge, Currents, is a responsive, minimal yet attractive premium theme from WooThemes.

Currents is perfect for news driven sites. The phrase, “less is more” couldn’t be more true. This clean and minimal design maximises your reader’s focus on the content. Having said that, the theme is packed with many customization options — a wide featured post slider, custom news areas, six alternative color styles, and more. Together, all of these features help you to control how to present current events you want to share with your readers.

Think your readers might check your site on a mobile device? No problem! Currents makes your site look great on an iPad, iPhone or any other mobile device.

This is not all about this great theme, Currents — so be sure to read about it on the Theme Showcase.

Next up is Debut – a beautifully designed theme by Luke McDonald of Press75.

Debut is a mobile-ready theme custom tailored to present your content in a professional and eye-catching manner. Five beautifully designed post formats provide you the flexibility needed to display media of all types. Musicians may be specially interested in the audio post format which expands into a multi-track playlist. Highlighting specific content couldn’t be easier with Debut’s Home page template which includes an innovative, customizable content slider as well as a featured area that can display in both grid and list styles.

Read about its features in detail in the Theme Showcase!

nRelate is yet another related posts plugin for WordPress, however unlike other related posts plugins the nRelate option allows for easier and more robust customization of output settings. From choosing relevancy types (low, medium, high) to deciding output placement (top or bottom of post) and image sizes the program is simple to use and highly effective.

You can start by downloading the nRelate plugin directly from your Admin plugin section with a simple “nRelate” search. The program is in active development and currently supported databases up to WordPress 3.3.1.

Once installed you will go to the nRelate tab on the left side of your administration screen and click on the “Dashboard” option which revealed this screen:

As you will notice you have the option to set a default image (in case all your posts don’t have images). However I would actually suggest uploading images to all your posts and then placing the image URL in a custom field. This was you can use the “Custom Field for Images” to display an image thumb using nRelate without displaying images on posts when they are not needed.

You will also need to setup an account with nRelate if you would like to earn money through their program. You will receive an ad ID number which is inputting to earn cash.

Below those options is the ability to exclude WordPress categories, simply click on each checkbox you see if there are certain sections in which you don’t want nRelate to appear.

After the dashboard options have been set you simple go back to the admin NRelate area and choose “Related Content.” The first section you will see contained the image size for your nRelate platform output:

After you have chosen your image size and your default image below those options you’ll then move on to fill out some other important information, for example you can choose the relate content box output. In the screenshot below the box reads “Related Articles” but this could be anything you choose. Next you’ll choose the number of related articles to show from your website. If for example you want to show 2 advertiser ads and three ads from your website you’ll choose the “3″ option.

One of the most important options is choosing the strength of relevancy for the post. The more relevant you can make your content the higher CTR (Click Through Rate) you will receive. Keep in mind that Low relevancy should be used with sites that may only contain a few dozen posts, otherwise there might not be enough relevant content to display any posts.

I like that you can also choose how far back in our archive to go. For example if you write evergreen content that won’t go out of relevancy to your readers you can literally go back 10 years.

Finally choose to display the post title (recommended) and then limit the number of characters if you chose. I wouldn’t make this number too high since it could leave an undesired look in the widget if you tend to use really long titles which you shouldn’t be doing anyways.

In the next set of options more settings are available including the ability to show an excerpt for each post, the ability to set content from your blogroll and even the option to choose which sections on your website (posts, pages, archives, etc) receive the NRelated Post.

After those settings have been chosen you can finally setup the actual placement of the nRelate platform. This section is pretty straightforward, you can check “top of post” or “bottom of post” to have the widget show directly below or before your content. You can also leave those unchecked and use the manual method by adding the programs php call directly into your template where you want it to display.

This is also the section where you can choose if you want to display advertising through the nRelate program.

You’ve likely noticed that there is a style gallery option, this gallery allows you to choose the CSS output for the type of nRelate image overlays you would like to choose. Here’s a quick peak at a few of the options:

With gallery options you can make nRelate content match your site which in turn means better click through rates and more earnings plus a better bounce rate as users peruse other articles on your website through the program.

Overall nRelate has become my favorite WordPress based plugin. I love that it works with any wordpress theme and that it’s easy to install with plenty of customization options.

We’ve recently noticed that a fair number of you have been bringing your tumblelogs over from Tumblr to WordPress.com using one of the variety of Tumblr to WXR conversion tools which exist on the web. We thought you would appreciate an easier way to import your content, so we bring you 3 easy steps to import your content.

Authenticate with Tumblr

To bring your tumblelog’s content to WordPress.com, head to Tools → Import in your WordPress.com dashboard and look for the Tumblr importer. If you don’t already have an account here on WordPress.com then head over and sign up first.

Click the link to get started and then enter the email address you used to sign up to Tumblr, your Tumblr password and click Connect to Tumblr.

Start the Import

The importer will then fetch a list of your blogs and let you pick which one to import. Click Import this blog to get going.

Once you have started, the import progress will be shown on the import page and you will be sent an email when the import is finished. We try super hard to make sure that all your Tumblr content, including your Videos, are imported into your WordPress.com blog. Videos you had uploaded to Tumblr are imported into VideoPress and other embeds are converted to use shortcodes. Sometimes the importer finds an embed it can’t convert and a list of these is included in the import completion email for you to check.

If your Tumblr site has a custom domain (like you.com instead of you.tumblr.com), then you’ll need to disable the custom domain temporarily while the import is processed. You can do this by going to your Tumblr Dashboard, clicking on the Settings button and then un-ticking the “Use a Custom Domain” checkbox:

Then you’ll want to set up Domain Mapping on your WordPress.com blog so that your readers can use the same domain to reach your site as before.

Style Your New Site

WordPress.com supports Post Formats which allow you to distinguish between the different types of content you post on your site. While you wait for your content to be imported why not customize the design of your site by picking one of our post-format-enabled, Tumblelog-ready themes.

If you have any trouble importing your blog  you’re welcome to contact support where one of our Happiness Engineers will be glad to help out. To learn all about WordPress.com’s features, we encourage you to check out our handy tutorial. We also provide comprehensive feature documentation at our support site.

Have you ever been to a site where you notice that media elements such as youtube videos override other content? This can happen if you have drop down menus, floating bars, lightbox popup etc. Well as designers, this get really frustrating for us. In the past, you would have to add ?wmode=transparent to each video embed code, but with WordPress 2.9, embedding videos have gotten much easier. All you have to do is paste the URL of a video, and it will auto-embed. However, this makes it harder for us to add the ?wmode=transparent tag to each video. Well, you don’t have to worry. In this article, we will share with you a snippet that prevents Youtube and any other media files that are embedded via oEmbed from overriding your WordPress content.

Example:

All you have to do is open your theme’s functions.php file or better yet your site’s plugin file and paste the following code:

function add_video_wmode_transparent($html, $url, $attr) {

if ( strpos( $html, "<embed src=" ) !== false )
   { return str_replace('</param><embed', '</param><param name="wmode" value="opaque"></param><embed wmode="opaque" ', $html); }
elseif ( strpos ( $html, 'feature=oembed' ) !== false )
   { return str_replace( 'feature=oembed', 'feature=oembed&wmode=opaque', $html ); }
else
   { return $html; }
}
add_filter( 'embed_oembed_html', 'add_video_wmode_transparent', 10, 3);

Source

How to Prevent Youtube oEmbed from Overriding your WordPress Content is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

I've long wanted to create a database of themes that support my SEO plugin and never came up with a manageable way of doing that. When my buddy Amir from WPML emailed me about their two new plugins, Types and Views, it took me a while to grasp what they did. Turns out I'm daft and it's actually quite easy when you install it and they're perfect for that job. So I thought I'd let you all enjoy what I'd done with it. I'll review both of them, in a 3 post series in which I'll also create my desired database.

Database of Themes that support my WordPress SEO plugin

I've also got a project I'll use this for: I want a database of themes that support my WordPress SEO plugin, with some specific settings info, a screenshot, etc. I want to store these as a custom post type. So the first step is to determine which info I would need to store:

• Basic stuff:
  • Title of the theme
  • Short description
  • Screenshot
  • URL
  • Is this a paid theme or not?
  • Price (if applicable)
• And some more advanced stuff:
  • Does this theme have its own SEO options that "yield" to WordPress SEO?
  • Does this theme support breadcrumbs?
  • Does this theme require force rewrite titles to be on or not?

Creating a Custom Post Type

Having determined what I wanted to store, the next step was to create a Custom Post Type. That's as easy as using this interface:

I could add Taxonomies to it as well, but I'll leave that for now, although creating a taxonomy is just as easy through the Types interface. I end up with my WordPress SEO theme CPT:

Adding Custom Fields

You'll think "huh, that hasn't got any of the specific data yet": that's right. It doesn't. That's where the true power of Types comes in, you can create "Custom Field Groups" and add these to post types. So I did:

As you can see you can choose from a lot of different types of fields, and all these types have their own content checks. For instance for a URL, it'll allow you to "force" a correct URL. I've added the custom field group to my WPSEO Themes post type, and now, when I go into edit or create a new WPSEO Theme "post", I get this interface below the title and content area:

So far, no coding was required, thanks to the wonderful Types plugin! You can get that, for free, on wp-types.com or on WordPress.org.

So, what we needed to do:

1. Creating a custom post type + custom fields.
2. Creating a form through which people can submit themes that fills this post type.
3. Creating a browsable interface for this post type.

Subscribe below to make sure you won't miss the next two steps!

Types WordPress plugin – Easy Custom Post Types is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Open-sourcing the Code Comments Trac plugin by Nikolay Bachiyski, from the WordPress.com VIP team. I haven’t had a chance to use the plugin myself, but I really love Trac (I don’t have much choice now either) and I really love code commenting on Github. This little plugin brings one to the other. Awesome, and well done!

Source: Open-sourcing the Code Comments Trac plugin by Nikolay Bachiyski, from the WordPress.com VIP team. I haven’t ... by Konstantin Kovshenin

New version of Digging into WordPress now available! The DiW v3.3 update covers WordPress 3.3 & 3.2, with fresh new sections and updated content throughout the book. Similar to the latest versions of WordPress, DiW 3.3 refreshes the look and feel of the book, with updated graphics and screenshots, streamlined content, and new bonus versions of the PDF. As the 9th Edition of the book, Digging into WordPress 3.3 is more fluid, focused and current than ever. This is a free update to everyone who owns either version of the book.

Sample page views from DiW 3.3

DiW 3.3 Features

Here are some of the highlights for the DiW 3.3 update:

• WordPress 3.2 & 3.3 – new chapter content covering the latest versions
• Refreshed graphics updated graphics and screenshots throughout the book–
• Restructured & streamlined – updated content for better flow & readability
• Hyperlinked chapters – all references to chapters & sections now hyperlinked
• Meta information – added to PDF versions (full, wide, & lite)
• Print & PDF – available in PDF and print editions (soon!)
• Updated widescreen version – new widescreen bonus version for large screens
• New Lite version – BONUS “lite” version of the PDF that’s more portable (for mobile/tablet devices)

Plus updated links, new popouts, plus tons of little tweaks and edits that synergize to improve overall quality and accuracy. The book reads, looks, and flows better than ever, giving you a richer, more rewarding WordPress experience.

For more details, visit the Errata & Changelog page. Current members can log in to the Members Area immediately to update the new version (for FREE). New to the book? Learn more and check out a demo.

Get the PDF

The PDF version is available now. For $27, you get over 400 pages of full-color WordPress action, plus free lifetime updates, exclusive themes, and everything else.

Already bought the book? Awesome. To get the new version, log into your account at our new Members Area and download at your convenience.

Early-Bird Special

This week you save $5 off the PDF using this discount code: WordPress2012

Just use that coupon during checkout to get Digging into WordPress v3.3 + all the trimmings for only $22. Discount good thru until the end of this week.

Printed Books

The print version is on the way! Here’s what we know so far:

• Spiral-bound, full-color printing (416 pages + cover)
• Each book includes a FREE copy of the PDF version
• Each book includes our exclusive themes, free lifetime updates, and all extras
• International shipping will be available for this edition

We don’t have any specific numbers or dates at this point, but we’ll post an announcement here at DigWP.com once specifics are available. We also have a notification list to receive an email once the new printed books are available.

New Korean Translation!

After much hard work, the team over at Webactually released a beautiful translated version of Digging into WordPress in the Korean language. They really did an excellent job putting everything together and customizing the experience for Korean readers. Here are some unofficial behind-the-scenes photos:

Click images for full-size views

Huge thanks to everyone at Webactually for making it happen. If you speak Korean, you can Learn more here!

Bonus Surprise!

Leave a comment for a chance to win a free printed copy of Digging into WordPress! As soon as the new books are in, we’ll pick a winner and send an all-expense-paid 9th Edition (including all the extraz). Good luck! :)

Digging into WordPress v3.3 is now available, and more printed books are on the way. It can take some time for the books to be printed and delivered, so we’re setting up a notification list for people who want to know when the new books are back in stock.

To get on the list, just leave a comment on this post and we’ll send you an email when the new v3.3 printed books are available for purchase.

For more info on the latest version, check out the announcement post.

Recently, one of our users asked us how they can add the Google+ “Add to Circles” Badge in their WordPress site. In the past, we have shown you how to add the Google +1 Button your WordPress Posts. In this article, we will show you how to add the Google+ “Add to Circles” Badge in your WordPress site.

Preview of how a Google+ Badge looks like:

Before we begin, you should note that this is only for Google+ Pages not profiles. Example of Google+ Page. Example of Google+ Profile.

First thing you need to do is put the following code in your <head> section of your site which you can modify by editing the header.php file of your theme.

<link href="https://plus.google.com/{plusPageID}" rel="publisher" /><script type="text/javascript">
(function()
{var po = document.createElement("script");
po.type = "text/javascript"; po.async = true;po.src = "https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js";
var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();</script>

Don’t forget to replace the {plusPageID} with your Google+ Page ID. Your Page ID is a 21-digit string at the end of the URL. For example if your page URL is: https://plus.google.com/101634180904808003404/ then the numbers in bold is your Page ID.

Once you have added the header code, then all you have to do is place the following code wherever you want the Google+ Add to Circles widget to show. Most users like to display this in their sidebar, so you can either modify your sidebar.php file, or simply add it in a text widget area.

<g:plus href="https://plus.google.com/{plusPageID}" size="badge"></g:plus>

For the Small badge, simply use this code:

<g:plus href="https://plus.google.com/101634180904808003404" size="smallbadge"></g:plus>

We hope that this article has helped you. If it did, then please consider adding WPBeginner in your Circle.

How to Add Google+ “Add to Circles” Badge in your WordPress Site is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

DBS Interactive which is an interactive agency has released their version of a WordPress 3.0+ theme reference guide. The guide is a reworked version of the information you would find in the Codex around template tags. So if the Codex presentation of this data is not your cup of tea, perhaps this reference guide will be easier to follow.

Related posts:

1. Simple Guide To Adding Theme Options
2. Good Guide On Avoiding Theme/Plugin Lock-In
3. Idiot’s Guide To WordPress

Themefuse has a generally good checklist on things to do when a WordPress powered website crashes. While the article doesn’t contain any drastically new information, it’s still a good list of things to do to get your site back up and running as soon as possible if a crash were to occur.    ∞

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips To Create A Great Site About WordPress
2. Four Common Sense Ways To Improve Security On Your WordPress Powered Site
3. 14 Things To Consider When Choosing A Webhost For Your WordPress Powered Site

One of the things I find myself doing a lot when developing WordPress is debugging things and so I spend a lot of time thinking of ways I can make this easier for me and easier for everyone else. Overtime this had led to a number of significant improvements to the debug ability of WordPress core including things like WP_DEBUG and the Deprecated Notices as well as the development of great tools like the Debug Bar plugin.

Recently I’ve found that the more context you can get to an issue the easier it is to understand and debug and I also noticed that while we recorded a simple backtrace for queries in core when SAVEQUERIES was defined we didn’t do a good job of presenting the data. Some function calls need more context that just the function name to be most useful – such as when running an action/filter it is useful to know the name and when requiring or including a file is useful to know the file name and some path context. This lead to the idea of refactoring the backtrace capture functionality out of WPDB and into a function that was improved to give proper calling syntax for functions in classes when called statically and was more obviously re-usable by plugins like the Debug Bar.

So today I have introduced wp_debug_backtrace_summary( $ignore_class = null, $skip_frames = 0, $pretty = true ) for #19589. If you provide no arguments you will get back string containing the full trace of the code run up to the place where you call wp_debug_backtrace_summary() – you won’t see the call to it in the trace as it always hides itself.

The best way to see the difference and improvements is to look at how this improves the information in the development version of the Debug Bar (new release coming soon) so after the break I have included some before and after screenshots.

Debug Bar query list before the change showing the previous limited infomation

Development version of the Debug Bar showing the enhanced details

An example of how the Debug Bar currently displays warnings, notices and deprecated function calls.

The development version of the Debug Bar showing how it can use this new function to display much more useful information

One of the things I suspect I will be doing a lot with this new function is dropping calls to error_log( wp_debug_backtrace_summary() ); into code that I am trying to debug and work out how often and from where it is being called.  In the past I’ve done this by using print_r( debug_backtrace() ); which prints out a lot of information (some of which is pretty useful) and more recently I’ve been using print_r( debug_backtrace( false ) ); so as to only fetch and print the stack traces.

Using this new function does mean I lose by using  the access to line numbers and file names I had from the raw PHP functions but I find that with the file names in the require/include calls and the function name being called I can get to the code just as fast as before.

I hope you all put this new function to good use!

Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com?

Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser:

Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications:

Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com

The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed.

Clicking the Follow button will add new posts from the website to your reader, and send you an email each time an update is published. (You can change your default email settings if you like.)

When you visit a WordPress.com site, you’ll notice that the extension icon will turn blue, but keep in mind that you can follow blogs on Blogger, Tumblr, and other services, too.

Quickly post cool stuff you find while browsing the web

Press This is a lightning-fast way to publish content on your blog without ever visiting WordPress.com. Click the WordPress.com extension, then select Press This whenever you find something on the web that you’d like to share on your blog, and a pop-up editor will appear:

Select the blog you’d like to post to, then hit publish to share a link to the site. Your blog will be updated, and you can continue browsing the web from wherever you left off.

If you’d like to publish an excerpt of text along with the link to the site, simply highlight the material with your cursor before clicking Press This:

And it will appear in the editor for you to publish along with the link:

We hope this makes it easier for you to share cool stuff on your blog quickly! If there’s anything you’d like to see in future versions of the extension, be sure to let us know.

Recently while monitoring our blog stats, a new traffic source was popping up enough for us to notice. This traffic source was Pinterest. We started using the platform and saw great potential in it therefore we have added it on List25. In this article, we will show you how to add the Pinterest “Pin It” button to your WordPress blog.

First thing you need to do is paste the following script in your footer.php file right before the body close tag.

<script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
    window.PinIt = window.PinIt || { loaded:false };
    if (window.PinIt.loaded) return;
    window.PinIt.loaded = true;
    function async_load(){
        var s = document.createElement("script");
        s.type = "text/javascript";
        s.async = true;
        s.src = "http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js";
        var x = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
        x.parentNode.insertBefore(s, x);
    }
    if (window.attachEvent)
        window.attachEvent("onload", async_load);
    else
        window.addEventListener("load", async_load, false);
})();
</script>

Once you have done that, you can add the following code in your single.php file at a location of your choice:

<?php $pinterestimage = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'full' ); ?>
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&media=<?php echo $pinterestimage[0]; ?>&description=<?php the_title(); ?>" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="vertical">Pin It</a>

The code above is basically pulling your Featured Image, the title of your post as description, and the URL of the post. It is designed for the vertical share button. If you want to put the horizontal share button, simply change count-layout parameter to horizontal.

We hope that this will help. P.S. if you are on Pinterest then please follow Syed Balkhi

Pinterest Shortcode

Update: one of our user wanted to create a shortcode for the Pinterest “Pin It” button. You can easily do so by pasting the following code either in your theme’s functions.php file or your site plugin’s file:

<?php
function get_pin($atts) {
$pinterestimage = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'full' );
return '<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url' . urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)) . '&media=' . $pinterestimage[0] . '&description=' . get_the_title() .'" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="vertical">Pin It</a>'; }

add_shortcode('pin', 'get_pin');
?>

How to Add Pinterest “Pin It” button in your WordPress Blog is a post from: WPBeginner which is not allowed to be copied on other sites.

Broken Links are bad for SEO. What is the best way to find broken links on your WordPress blog? There are many broken link checkers which will let you find broken links, and many paid SEO reports also which will help you identify broken links, but in WordPress it is easier.

I have been using the amazing Broken Links Checker plugin for quite some time since Panda updates became famous and it has helped us find and fix all broken links on our website.

Check Broken Links

Few months back, the first time we used the plugin it took several hours as it scanned across our entire site and you could continue to refresh and see how many links were broken and how many were redirects. Since over last 7 years, this was the first time we checked broken links in such a comprehensive way, nearly 10% of outbound links were broken!

This was a huge exercise to fix all links in thousands of posts, but the interface integrates very well in the WordPress admin and easily allows you to Edit url, unlink text or mark the url not broken.

There are many options about to optimize as per your schedule, with many other custom options. But as I continued to fix these urls, I realized it would take many weeks to fix up the entire site. The plugin meanwhile also offered a quick and powerful way to nofollow all such links and even add a CSS strikethrough on all broken links so visitors would not click through these broken 404 links.

This is a highly recommended plugin for all WordPress bloggers. Broken links are very bad for SEO and this is a very powerful tool to fix all broken urls in few clicks. Try it out and tell us how many broken urls did you find on your WordPress blog?

• Find Your WordPress PHP, MySQL Versions Now
• Add Snow Falling Effect to Your WordPress Blogs
• 5 Plugins to Convert WordPress Blogs to Membership Sites
• New Digg has ‘Broken an Axle’
• How to Use PAD Files to Get Links
• Try Google Related Links [Invite Only]

Some people have been forwarding me this email message that they received from Facebook:

We currently detect that your app is using the old JavaScript SDK (FeatureLoader.js). This library will no longer work for authentication on February 1st, 2012 since it does not support OAuth 2.0. In May, we announced that all apps on Facebook need to support OAuth 2.0 by October 1st, 2011. Please upgrade to the new JavaScript SDK by February 1st, 2012 to avoid any disruption of service to your app.

The Simple Facebook Connect plugin has not used the FeatureLoader.js script since before version 1.0, which was released 5 months ago. Version 1.2 of SFC fully integrated OAuth 2.0 authentication, and it was released 5 weeks ago.

So if you’re getting this email from Facebook, upgrade SFC to the latest version. Problem solved.

ManageWP is a new service that aims to make managing multiple websites as easy as possible. They’ve recently opened their doors to the public and Vladimir Prelovac was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to answer a few questions I had. Enjoy!

Is ManageWP a webhosting company or simply a means of managing websites that are hosted elsewhere?

We are not a webhosting company, as ManageWP provides an efficient way to manage any number of websites that are hosted on your own servers, but we do offer something new and unique to the WordPress community: one dashboard for all their websites no matter where they are hosted. This ensures that our users maintain total control over their websites while also ensuring that they can continue to expand, without restriction, far into the future.

ManageWP Dashboard After I Added The WPTavern Website

What was the idea or inspiration behind creating ManageWP?

As with all plugins I have developed, ManageWP was created out of the pure need to solve a problem. The problem here was having to do repetitive tasks — like updating and maintaining your sites (something computers and Internet services are supposed to be good at).

As you surely know, managing numerous WordPress sites can be somewhat time consuming. Add several WordPress sites into the mix, and you quickly become a slave to your CMS. I wanted to simplify the process, so that was when ManageWP became reality.

What are some of the things going on behind the scenes to make ManageWP function like a well oiled machine?

It requires a tremendous amount of effort by all of our team members. That’s the first thing that springs to mind. It’s not easy to create and maintain a service this complex, one which also remains in sync with the WordPress development cycle, all while having it work with thousands of different WordPress setups and with thousands of different server/hosting configurations.

It’s not an easy job. But we also have no intention of stopping anytime soon!

Options To Schedule A Backup For A Particular Site

What are some of the benefits of using ManageWP versus using WordPress Multisite?

The most notable benefit is ManageWP’s ease of us. While being a good idea on paper, WordPress Multisite demands a certain level of technical knowledge to install, manage, and maintain. It also takes time, time which many people find valuable. And while Multisite might be good enough for some people, we always want to offer our users so much more value and time-saving functionality.

And we differentiate ourselves by providing many awesome features:

• you can set up and monitor fully automated backups for all of your websites from one location, along with being able to specify exactly where you want those backups stored;
• you can use ManageWP to monitor your website’s up-time;
• you can use ManageWP to monitor crucial SEO performance metrics;
• you can take advantage of incredible third-party services like Google Analytics and DropBox;
• you can change passwords for your admin user on all of your WordPress sites from within ManageWP;
• and the list goes on and on.

As for the similarities between ManageWP and WordPress Multisite — it ends with the ability to update plugins. ManageWP goes far beyond that. However, if you’re already setup with WordPress Multisite, that’s no problem. ManageWP fully integrates with that too!

What types of security practices have been put into place to protect customers?

We know that the success of our business depends a lot on security; this has been our focus since day one. To ensure that our user’s data is secure, we dropped the built-in XML RPC protocol — it’s inherently insecure to work with as it exposes sensitive data. We replaced it with OpenSSL encryption. Because of this, the transmission of your data remains completely secure.

We also never ask users to enter their admin passwords for any websites they are managing with us. We do not have access to your site’s credentials and other crucial information. Our technology is innovative in that it allows ManageWP to talk directly to your WordPress sites through our ManageWP Worker plugin. So by utilizing WordPress’ built-in plugin architecture, we are able to do amazing things to help you manage all of your sites.

As for protecting your ManageWP account, we utilize multiple layers of protection: restricting the login by IP address and two-factor authentication (wherein a security code is sent to user’s email or phone via SMS). This is far beyond industry standards, and it’s only a handful of the things we do to ensure that our users’ sites are safe.

We take great pride in this.

All Sorts Of Cool Things You Can Do From One Location

Are there any differences between the self-hosted product of ManageWP and the ManageWP website?

The Enterprise (self-hosted) version of ManageWP is essentially the same as our hosted version. But we offer this to companies and organizations that want all of the benefits of ManageWP in the privacy of their own hosting environment. For example, this can be (and usually is) important for data compliance within larger organizations.

Our Enterprise users also enjoy our full attention and dedicated support. We often work with our Enterprise customers to provide them with the special features that they need. We always make the extra effort to ensure that our customers’ needs are served.

How has your experience in developing plugins and working with sites such as Mashable contribute to what you’ve accomplished with ManageWP?

I started making WordPress plugins almost five years ago, so getting to know WordPress inside-out helped me tremendously in understanding the needs of the average WordPress user — if such user exists at all, as there are so many uses for WordPress today. After that, it was then only a matter of coordinating with our team to develop a high-quality solution that works on almost any number of different WordPress setups.

And now that we have launched ManageWP, I can direct my focus my attention on improving it further and adding new and amazing functionality. That makes me very happy. I hope it will continue to make our incredible customers happy as well.

Related posts:

1. Talking WordPress With Vladimir Prelovac
2. WordPress And How It Changed Content Management