Category Archive for ‘Plugin’

Fluency Admin 1.2 • 6

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Fluency Admin 1.2

Ok, before you go and get all excited I should say that this is a pretty basic update, mainly just compatibility. As most of you probably know WordPress released version 2.6 a few days ago, and those who follow me on Twitter (and you better be using Hahlo …or there shall be trouble :p) would be aware that I have been working on making sure Fluency remains compatible.

The latest version of Ozh’s Admin Drop Downs works with this release (if you use Ozh’s plugin with Fluency 1.1 you probably noticed it went all crazypants after you updated…yeah you did didn’t you). I’ve also taken a little bit of time to fix a few little things that had been bugging me for a while, most are so minute you won’t even notice them.

And that’s about it, nothing much else except to tell you that the download link can be found at the top right of the page after the jump, and you can find out more details here.

UPDATE: I’ve just received an email tletting me know that the Press This bookmarklet doesn’t work so well with 1.2, I’ll take the blame for that, for reasons unknown I’d crossed it off my to-do list, but its definitely a bit wonky. I will try and get it fixed ASAP. Apologies.

Filed under: Plugin 6 Comments

Plugin Status Update • 3

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Over the last year or so I’ve released several plugins for WordPress. Some of the were adaptations of existing plugins, some were built from the ground up, some have been updated and some…well…haven’t. The release of WP2.5 gives me a good opportunity to take a look at what plugins (other than Fluency as I think I’ve covered it enough on here in the last month or so) I have released, and what their future holds.

Ultimate Category Cloud

Current Version: 3.0
Development Status: 4.0 is in progress.
Next Release: Before the end of April.

While this is relatively simple plugin, it took me a while to get the basics working as I had originally intended them too. The first release was quite buggy to say the least, which was the main reason that v2 follow fairly soon after. I was happy enough with v2 not to update it any further, until WP2.3 came out and changed the way that categories were handled. I updated UCC to v3, bringing WP2.3 compatibility, along with some much need “cleansing” of my code, the removal of unneeded cruft, basically it was an overall refinement.

I’ve recently started work on v4.0 which will add (much needed) widget support which will make it even easier for users to add to their blogs, I’ve also sorted out a few oddities in the code which have been there since v2.

Twitt-Twoo

Current Version: 1.1
Development Status: Next version will be rebuilt from the ground up.
Next Release: TBA.

Originally built to ‘scratch an itch’ because while there were plenty of Twitter plugins out there I couldn’t find a nice simple one to do what I wanted, which was display my status in the sidebar, and allow me to update it from there as well. One of the biggest flaws with this plugin is that I built it to work with Redoable, but didn’t really bother checking it with any other theme (very bad I know). From what I’ve seen it still works relatively ok with some themes, but in some cases its just totally broken.

The plan is to rebuild it from the ground up using some of the knowledge that I gained from building Hahlo. I’m considering a ‘rebranding’ of this plugin to ‘Hahlo Widget’ or something along those lines. The basic functionality will most likely remain the same, but with better support for a sidebar widget, and an updated options page.

modMunch

Current Version: 1.0.r1
Development Status: None at the moment.
Next Release: TBA.

This was knocked together very quickly, with minimal testing, and as a result it works…sometimes. It could do with a lot of cleaning up, and I would like to make it easier to install and set up, so I will try and update it in the next couple of months.

Rechucked Buttons

Current Version: 1.0
Development Status: Current version is totally busted…..
Next Release: TBA…if ever.

Like Twitt-Twoo this only really worked properly with Redoable. When it broke (I can’t recall which WordPress version that was) I pretty much decided to abandon it altogether, however now that WordPress has switched to TinyMCE (which they say is pluggable) I might take another look at this in the future. Of course high on the list would be making sure it works no matter what theme you are using, beyond that who knows.

Redo-Recent-Links

Current Version: 1.0-beta
Development Status: Umm…
Next Release: Never, sorry.

I haven’t touched this since I released it, I only actually used it myself for a bout a month before I got annoyed with how badly it worked. This was based on another plugin that I found, but I modified it to work with Redoable (bit of trend appearing…). I’m sure there are plenty of much better alternatives out there now, so I’m going to official declare this one dead. DNR.

CaptainPlanet

Current Version: unreleased
Development Status: 1.0-very-very-very-alpha
Next Release: When the powers combine…

Without going into great detail (I’ll save that for when its released), CaptainPlanet is basically a ‘lifestream’ manager for your WordPress blog. Plans are to support a number of popular feeds, which are aggregated (and archived…) for display on you site. Will have an awesome ‘manage’ screen (one of the few bits thats actually working correctly at the moment), and also makes use of the new ‘shortcode’ API in WP2.5. Will also have several built in function that will do away with the need for some of the JS callbacks I currently use for things like Twitter and Flickr.

Filed under: Plugin 3 Comments

Fluency Admin v1.1 Available Now • 26

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Happy April Fool’s Day everyone! I had planned to play a prank on my visitors (I even had the post all written up) but I thought this would be better.

This is no joke, as promised Fluency v1.1 is now fully compatible with the stable release of WordPress 2.5. Thank you to all those who provided feedback and bug reports which helped iron out most things, and huge thank you to the 5,100+ people who download v1.0 (in just 20 days). Remember if you have any issues, jump over to the forum or the bug tracker and let me know. If I don’t know about a problem I can’t fix it.

Theres no new features as such, but a lot of “fixes” for things that changed between WP2.5-RC1 and the final release of 2.5. From big things like the “Add Media” modal dialogs now being styled correctly, to the smallest detail like adding 2 extra pixels of padding to an element. I won’t list all the changes, but if you’re interested you can get an idea of the main changes by checking out the bug tracker.

I’ve now got full and proper support for several popular plugins, including Ozh’s Admin Drop Down Menus and NextGen Gallery. For full details about which plugins are supported head over to the plugin compatibility page, and if you’ve got a plugin you would like to supported just let me know. A big thanks to Ozh for his help and suggestions in streamlining the method used to apply the styles on a per-plugin basis.

Ok, thats enough talk, what are you waiting for. Download v1.1 now and give it a whirl. And you can find out more details here.

Filed under: Plugin 26 Comments

Internet Explorer and Fluency Admin • 7

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Ok, since so many people keep asking why Fluency Admin “does nothing when activated in Internet Explorer”, I thought I should post a nice graphic example of why I have it set up this way. I can guarantee that I would have had dozens more complaints if I had released it with broken IE support from the beginning…

On the left is a screen shot taken of Fluency running (or trying to) in Internet Explorer 6, quite clearly something is VERY wrong. And I have absolutely no idea how long (if its even worth it) it would take to fix. On the right is a screen shot taken of Fluency running in Internet Explorer 7. I was extremely surprised at how close it is to working correctly (since it was never tested in IE7), only really seems to be a few things out of alignment, which should be fixable.

Fluency in Internet Explorer 6... Fluency in Internet Explorer 7

What does this mean? Well, since IE7 is so close, I’ll see what I can do to get it working for the next release. All I need to do is find a different method of ‘hiding’ Fluency so that IE7 can see it, but IE6 can NOT.

Filed under: Plugin 7 Comments

Fluency Admin 1.0 released • 26

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Fluency Admin 1.0 released

Ok, so it’s a tiny bit later than I originally promised, but I was hoping that WP2.5 would actually be out on the 10th so that I could give Fluency the once over when running on the final product. But so I don’t keep you all waiting, I’ve run some checks against the latest build (11-03-2008 nightly) and it all looks good. So those of you who are already running the WP2.5 can start using Fluency straight away. No doubt there will probably be more changes between now and the final release of WP2.5 but I work them in as they come.

Features

  • Super easy installation.
  • Smooth grey color scheme (no more blue)
  • Menus rearranged, main menus down left, sub menus across the top
  • WordPress 2.5+ only
  • Have a look at the screen shots here for more detail. Screenshots are now online!

Download and Installation

It really doesn’t get much easier than this, just download the zip file (the link is at the top right of this page, after the jump for my feed readers), extract the contents and upload the whole ‘wp-admin-fluency’ folder to your web server plugins directory which you can find here:

[wordpress directory]/wp-content/plugins/[put fluency here]

Then go into your WordPress admin and go to the ‘plugins’ page, activate ‘Fluency Admin’ and you will instantly be using the theme. Easy as that.

The future

I will do my best to keep Fluency up-to-date with the latest stable version of WordPress. I’ve also got a couple of things in mind to make Fluency even better, and more customisable. But for the moment the main ‘updates’ will be support for additional plugins, to make sure that the plugin admin pages remain completely usable and inline with the rest of Fluency.

Note about plugins

In this initial release I’ve added support for WP-PostRatings to ensure that its options page displays correctly. Over time I’ll continue to add more plugin support so keep an eye out for the updates. And if you have a plugin you would like to see supported then please let me know via the support forum or bug tracker.

Support

If you’ve got any questions about Fluency, you can leave a comment or better yet jump over to the support forum and I’ll do my best to help you out. I’ve also set up a bug tracker, so if you come across something that isn’t quite right post the bug and I’ll look into it.

Fluency Admin Support Forum

Fluency Admin Bug Tracker

Donations

Plugins don’t design and code themselves, they take precious time to build, test and support. So if you use and like Fluency Admin, or any of my other work, please consider a donation, there is a link at the top left of this page just below the download link. All donations are greatly appreciated.

Filed under: Plugin 26 Comments

Announcing Fluency Admin for Wordpress • 9

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UPDATE - No, I haven’t forgotten about my promised release date, Fluency is about 99% ready, but there a couple of small things left that I want to finish off tomorrow (hopefully I’ll be able to test it with the final release of WP2.5 by then as well) And who knows depending on how things go it might still be released on the 10th…at least for you North American people. It will be worth the wait.

Fluency Admin coming March 10
Click the image above for a larger preview of Fluency.

The good people at WordPress are gearing up for the launch of version 2.5, and one of the biggest changes is that redesigned admin interface. Like many I’ve never been a huge fan of the standard design of previous versions, and while the redesign has improved the overall feel, its still not exactly what I would like.

Currently, and for as long as I’ve been running WordPress I’ve been using Steve Smith’s awesome Tiger Admin plugin. When WordPress 2.3 came out there were a few changes to the structure and styles in parts of the admin interface which weren’t catered for by ‘Tiger’. I liked it so much that I spent some time going through and fixing up the little bits here and there that had been thrown out of wack.

A few days ago when I downloaded one of the nightly builds of WP2.5 I thought I’d test ‘Tiger’ to see how it would hand the new admin. Well, turns out it doesn’t handle to too well. Too much has changed, and this gave me the perfect excuse to put together an admin theme of my own. Fluency was born. I’m surprised how quickly the majority of it came together, and there aren’t too many more things that I need to do before next weekend.

I’ll save the full details until its released (March 10 to coincide with the release of WP2.5), but you can check out a preview screen shot that Ive uploaded to flickr to whet your appetites. Check out the preview here

Filed under: Plugin 9 Comments

Ultimate Category Cloud 3.0 • 10

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Ultimate Category Cloud 3.0

Finally, I found found the time to do some much needed work on some of my plugins. the first to receive an update is Ultimate Category Cloud (UCC) which now moves to version 3 and is fully Wordpress 2.3 compatible among other things.

Changelog

  • Now WP2.3 compatible, thanks to Mephisto, Jason Ellis and Jan Weinschenker for their suggestions.
  • Now displays weight and coloured categories as default behaviour
  • Default ‘largest’ size is now 200% not 250%
  • Removed the get_all_cats function, it is no longer needed
  • New function for better conversion of hex colours to decimal values
  • Font size weight should now more accurately reflect the largest and smallest font sizes that you specify
  • Reworked weighted colouring, now only requires you to specify one colour.

Installation and Usage

To install UCC simply download the zip file below, extract the contents and upload to the wp-content/plugins directory on your server.

The display a ‘cloud’ on your site simply modify your theme to insert one of these snippets of code where you would like the ‘cloud’ to appear.

Default Weighted and Colored

<?php weighted_categories(); ?>

Weighted but not Colored

<?php weighted_categories(1,0); ?>

Colored but not Weighted

<?php weighted_categories(0,1); ?>

Neither Weighted nor Colored

<?php weighted_categories(0,0); ?>

To choose your own color add the third parameter

<?php weighted_categories(1,1,$basecolor="#ff0000"); ?>

Advanced usage

You can also specify how large or how small the weighted text should appear, if needed you can also exclude specific categories from the cloud, and by changing the $method option to ‘0’ you can reverse the coloring of the categories (ie. the lightest becomes the darkest and vice versa
<?php weighted_categories($weighted=1, $colored=1, $basecolor="#CCCCCC", $smallest=70, $largest=200, $unit="%", $exclude='', $method=1); ?>

Filed under: Plugin 10 Comments

modMunch 1.0 Plugin for Wordpress • 7

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modMunch Released

Last night I was working on my redesign, and I noticed a tweet from Matt Brett, he was looking for something that would replace the comment moderation email notification with a feed of some sort.

An idea popped into my head and I thought I’d give it a stab and see if I could come up with something to do the job. This is the end result of a couple of hours work, and I think it should suit nicely.

I’m surprised something like this isn’t already part of the Wordpress core, because I can imagine that some site that have lots and lots of traffic would be receiving dozens of emails each day. A single feed would be much nicer.

Theres not really much to modMunch.

  • Gives you an RSS feed with the comments that are awaiting moderation.
  • Access is restricted through the use of a personalised access code.
  • Privdes all the same information that the standard email notifications provide.
  • Removes the need for you to receive constant emails telling you to moderate comments. Multiple emails replaced by a single feed.

Here is an example of the modMunch feed being viewed in NewsFire.

Comment moderation rss style

For more details, and installation tips visit the modMunch homepage.

Downoad modMunch 1.0 Now!
Downloaded 965 times

modMunch Support Forum

Filed under: Plugin 7 Comments

No more wp-cache • 16

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I’ve had it with wp-cache. Everytime I enable it on this blog bad things happen. When I released Redoable 1.1, it got posted on weblogtoolscollection.com, and on Smashing Magazine and I got mountains of traffic very quickly. I didn’t have wp-cache installed at the time, an despite receiving about 10 times more traffic than a normal day my blog was relatively ok. Despite this I followed a couple of peoples advice and installed wp-cache….you know….just in case.

Over the next week or so my site crashed a couple of times, according to Dreamhost some was my fault ( ? ) and some was due to downtime of their servers. Then things got really bad. The first week of March my site was gone. Nothing I did would bring it back. I disabled every plugin, and then I deleted them, and then I went back to the default theme….nothing, Dreamhost couldn’t help, and I was lost for ideas. After being down for almost a week I had a brain snap, “what if I delete the cache files produced by wp-cache”, and guess what….my site came back. It would appear that something was corrupted and was killing my site. Goodbye wp-cache (attempt 1).

So I de-activated wp-cache, afterall that “should” be all you need to do to stop a plugin, right? Wrong. It was still caching files (and periodically killing my blog, wtf?). Apparently you have to disable it AND then deactivate it. Stupid…oh how stupid.

Skip forward about 6 or so weeks and it was time for me to released Redoable 1.2. I did that on the night of the 25th, and about an hour after I posted the update, I thought I’d give wp-cache another go (afterall, surely my experience last time was random, and wouldn’t be repeated). I went to the wp-cache site and downloaded the lastest version, then I installed it….everythine was ok, or so it seemed.

So last night almost exactly 24 hours after I installed, activated and configured wp-cache, guess what happened. Yes, my blog shat itself again. Thing was I was asleep and didn’t find out about it until this morning, so my site was down for 8 hours, really quite pissed off about that.

Instead of the usual disable plugins one by one routine, I went straight to the cache folder thats used by wp-cache and blew the files away….guess what. My site instantly came back. Damn you wp-cache thats the last chance. I will never be using it again, I don’t care what people say about it, but quite obviously something about my site just doesn’t like it.

Wp-cache is gone, disabled, deactivated, deleted. Good riddance.

Note: Yes I deliberately linked to just about every site that was related EXCEPT the wp-cache site. It just doesn’t deserve the link. Yes I am bitter.

Filed under: Plugin 16 Comments

Twitt-Twoo v1.1 released • 15

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As mentioned a couple of days ago I’ve been working on an update to Twitt-Twoo. Its nothing ground-breaking, but hopefully some of the changes that I’ve made will make it a little more ‘friendly’ to use.

First up there have been a few changes to the code, mainly to incorporate some of the recent changes to the Twitter API, including the deprecation of ‘relative_created_at’ from the feeds. To overcome this I’ve used a modified combination of a couplef of the scripts posted in the Twitter fan wiki. There wasn’t a php version listed, so I adapted the javascript one. Works nicely.

The other big change is the addition of “caching”. Its not like Alex King’s Twitter Tools, in that it doesn’t store a record for all your tweets, all I’m doing it simply storing the latest tweet and its time in the wp options table. For more details about this have a read of my previous post.

The last lot of changes were to remove the need for you to manually enter your twitter id number, and the url for your twitter profile image. Both are now sucked out of the feed the first time that you update. I have also incorporated a request to add and option to allow you to turn your Twitter image on or off.

As always, if you have any troubles, or if you’ve got any suggestions then just leave a comment here, or swing by the support forum and leave a message there.

For more details, and installation tips visit the Twitt-Twoo homepage.

Download Twitt-Twoo 1.1 Now!
Downloaded 3276 times

Twitt-Twoo Support Forum

Filed under: Plugin 15 Comments
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