Article
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 […]
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.
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.
» Continue reading “Plugin Status Update”
Article
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 […]
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); ?>
Article
No this isn’t a fandangle Web 2.0 thingamy…oh, yeah it is actually. Bring the bloggy goodness of a “coloured and weighted” cloud of your categories. You can add either a ‘weighted’ cloud, ie. the more posts in a category the bigger the text link, or a ‘coloured’ cloud, ie. the more posts the lighter in […]
No this isn’t a fandangle Web 2.0 thingamy…oh, yeah it is actually. Bring the bloggy goodness of a “coloured and weighted” cloud of your categories. You can add either a ‘weighted’ cloud, ie. the more posts in a category the bigger the text link, or a ‘coloured’ cloud, ie. the more posts the lighter in colour the text link becomes. But thats not all, should you want to you can turn both options on for the full Web 2.0 effect of a weighted and coloured cloud.
UCC has been re-written since version 1 and is now compatible witht the recently released Wordpress 2.1. You can see a living example of the ‘coloured’ cloud in action in my sidebar on the right, and an example of the ‘weighted and coloured’ cloud can be found on my Archives page.
For further details and installation instructions visit my Plugins page
Download Ultimate Category Cloud 2.0 Now!
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Sidenote
I’ve just finished setting up some simple support forums for Redoable 1.0 as well as for my two plugins, Rechuked Buttons 1.0 and Ultimate Cloud Category 1.0-beta. So if you have any questions about these be sure to use the new support forums. If you find a bug, let me know. If you want to see an extra feature, let me know. If you’d like you’re favourite plugin to be supported, let me know. I’m open to suggestions, comments, and even constructive criticism.
Goto the Support forums
The Redoable Support Forums are powered by Vanilla 1.0.3, which is a relatively new open source, standards compliant discussion forum. It takes a slightly different approach to the more widely used vBulletin and phpbb forums, but it perfect for a small scale application like my support forums. Well worth a look.
Sponsored Link: Auto Insurance Online
Sidenote
After getting everything up and running yesterday I discovered that there was a problem with my Ultimate Category Cloud. The links were only working correctly from the homepage (not good), and the last link in the ‘cloud’ was completely wrong (also not good).
I took a look at it this morning and made some changes. It now seems to working ok from all pages. So if you are are already using this plugin I recommend that you download the updated version below. If you encounter any problems with it let me know, either leave a comment or add it to my bug tracker.
Download Ultimate Category Cloud 1.0-beta.r1 Now!
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