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The coupon will be valid for 24 hours, so act quickly.

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WordPress Visual Cheat Sheet

WordPress Visual Cheat Sheet is the new document, of the Visual Cheat Sheet family, that contains a practical reference guide to WordPress 2.8. [Via: WLTC]

WPWorldMap.net

WPWorldMap is a brand new service powered by Google Maps. WPWorldMap allows you to plot your location in the map. You can plot your location and add your details. Click the image above to visit my profile out there.

How to Display Any RSS Feed on Your WordPress Blog

If you are running multiple blogs, an easy way to spread the word about them is by displaying posts from one of your blogs onto your other blogs. You can quickly do this by displaying the recent posts via an RSS feed.

How to Disable RSS Feeds in WordPress

WordPress offers you a complete range of RSS feeds. You may not need all of these, so why not disable them? With a little code added to your themes.php file, you can quickly and easily disable the feeds.

Tools required to Develop a WordPress Plugin

If you are into WordPress plugin development, or planning to take a step into it, you'll need to get yourself setup with some tools. WordPress Arena gives you a big list of tools that you can use to develop WordPress plugins.

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Changes in WordPress 2.8.1 over 2.8:

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced.  Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
• Translation of role names fixed.
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
• Switched back to curl as the default transport.
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
• Stricter inline style sanitization.
• Stricter menu security.
• Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
• RTL layout fixes.

In other news, the annual WordPress plugin competition is on in full force. Check out the new entries already available in the plugin competition blog.

If you're a plugin author, remember to read the rules and regulations before you submit your plugin.

Oh, we've sponsored $100 to the plugin competition prizes. There are already more than $3000 in prizes to be won. If you're interested in sponsoring a prize you can send Mark an email.

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So, if you're trying to find out which of your posts are popular, you're kind of stuck with relying on third party analytics software through which you have to drill through extensively.

Top 10 will count the number of page views on your single posts and store them in the database.

You can then display the page view count on individual pages as well as display a list of most popular posts based on page views.

Features:

• Counts page views on single posts and pages
• Display the count on the single posts and pages
• Customize the text that can be displayed
• Display a list of popular posts by page count. The number can be customized.
• Clean uninstall if you choose to delete the plugin from within WP-Admin
• Works with WP Super Cache

Future Plans:

• Sidebar Widget for Popular Posts
• Popular Posts by Comments
• Ability to reset count
• More customization options

Download Top 10
Read the story behind Top 10

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I currently use the same on this blog so you can purchase an ad spot.

All through January, affiliate could earn 90% commision on all referrals. With just a few days left, if you're interested in purchasing the plugin, you can do so at a discount.

Use the following coupon codes to avail of a discount:

• Jan90-35 entitles the purchaser to buy for just $35
• Jan90-30 entitles the purchaser to buy for just $30
• Jan90-25 entitles the purchaser to buy for just $25

These codes all expire on 1st Feb, so pickup a copy of your plugin now. You won't regret it!

Note: The links to OIOpublisher website contain my affiliate code. If you don't wish to give me some affiliate love, please visit http://www.oiopublisher.com/ directly.

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Here are a few code snippets you can add to your theme files to display recent posts, random posts and recent comments.

Recent Posts

The following code will enclose the latest 10 posts in an unordered list. Change numberposts=10 to display a different number of posts.

This uses the get_posts function to fetch the latest posts. An alternative method is to use wp_get_archives as follows:

Random Posts

The following code will display ten random posts. Change numberposts=10 to display a different number of posts.

Recent Comments

This is a more complex bit of code. The following has been used in the theme Statement which is the base of the theme we are running on Techtites.

Simply copy the code above for use, or read on for a really brief explanation.

We first define the global variable $wpdb which will allow us access to the WordPress database. $sql is the query we will run. The query will fetch the latest ten approved comments. The comment next is converted into an excerpt so that the entire comment is not displayed. The results are stored in the variable $comments.

You may want to change LIMIT 10 to display a different number of comments. You may change 30 in SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) to limit the number of characters in the comment excerpt.

What code do you use to replace plugins? Or, do you simply prefer using a plugin to the work?

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Add to Feed

Add to Feed is a feed enhancement plugin that allows you to easily add a copyright notice and custom text/HTML to your WordPress blog feed. The custom text can be entered before and/or after the content of your blog post.

GreyBox Integrator

GreyBox is a script can be used to display websites, images and other content in a beautiful way.

GreyBox Integrator provides a one-click installation of GreyBox on your WordPress blog.

WP-Niceforms

Niceforms is a script that will replace the most commonly used form elements with custom designed ones. You can either use the default theme that is provided or you can even develop your own look with minimal effort.

WP-Niceforms provides a one-click installation of Niceforms on your WordPress blog. The default theme has been optimized for usage with WordPress.

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Short for Peter's Flexible RenAmiNg Kit, PFrank is a bulk file/folder renaming program that lets you can easily organize your music, picture, video, or any other types of files.

With the latest release, PFrank now supports bulk comment editing of JPEG and MP3 files. You can also change properties of your files. (The normal Right Click > Properties in Windows)

The power of PFrank can be extended via plugins. The plugins are written in Python and can be plugged in to PFrank enabling them to be used like any of the other pre-defined commands.

Download PFrank

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WordPress being an open source platform has seen tremendous growth in its usage. Along with WordPress the number of plugins being released daily has also seen a phenomenal increase. Which plugins should you use? Do you really need them?

The more the number of plugins you install, the greater is the load on the server hosting your blog and consequently slower will your website be.

Way back on January 1, 2007 when I first began to blog at WLTC, I wrote an article to address these questions. Titled Check your Plugins this New Year, the article covered what plugins you should first install.

You should also search for alternatives to heavier plugins, remove files of deactivated plugins and remembering to check for regular updates.

Read Check your Plugins this New Year

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Whenever I install a new blog using WordPress, I make sure I have a few basic plugins installed as well. The following are ten of my favorite plugins.

Akismet

This is one necessary plugin that all blogs require to battle the spam crisis that we face. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.

Google XML Sitemaps

A must have when most of the traffic that gets to your site is via search engines. This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

IImage Browser

While WordPress has done a good job of improving it's multimedia manager. I still resort to the very old IImage Browser for managing my images. It allows me to create subdirectories to sort my images, create thumbnails for them and generate the necessary code to insert the image into your posts.

Open Picture Window

This is a plugin that works as an addon to IImage Browser above for thumbnailed images. Clicking on the thumbnail opens up a new window with the full size of the image. Can function totally independent of IImage Browser.

Related Posts

You can greatly increase the time a visitor spends on your blog by linking to your other posts. This plugin returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches.

Simple Tags

While WordPress comes inbuilt with tags now, working with them is still not ideal. Simple Tags greatly enhances the inbuilt WordPress tags with related tags, tag suggestions from your existing tags, Yahoo Term Extractions API and Tag The Net.

WP Contact Form III

If you want your visitor's to contact you, then you'll need a plugin that enables them to do so. After a lot of searching I finally settled down to using this plugin. It provides basic spam protection in the form a question-answer.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter

This provides a anti-spam defence before Akismet kicks in. It greatly reduces the amount of spam that finally lands up in the spam bin by deleting obvious spam comments, pingbacks and trackbacks directly.

Subscribe To Comments

Keep them coming back. This plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

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Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on your post automatically at intervals set by you

TwitterCounter

Integrate TwitterCounter.com badges on your blog to display the number of followers you have on Twitter

Digg Integrate

Add a "Digg This" button to your post.

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• Adminimize
• AnyVar
• Attachment Extender
• Automatic Timezone
• Broken links Remover
• Click
• ComicPress Manager
• Dk Obama Gallery
• DoDo
• Editor Extender
• Flaresmith
• Flickr Gallery
• Fun with in-context comments
• Great Real Estate
• Idealien Category Enhancements
• Image Browser Extender
• Invite friends
• Live Blogroll
• MailPress
• Manageable
• Maxref Widgets
• Media in response
• MultiSiteManager
• Nonce! Please
• PhotoJAR: Base
• Picture Increment Cron System
• Post Groups
• Post Tabs
• Repost
• Role Scoper
• SEO Smart Links
• Sermon Management
• Show Me Options
• Sidebars
• Simple Flash Video
• SlideShare Presentation List
• Snazzy Archives
• Paypal API Subscriptions
• Tabbed Widgets
• tWPtter
• Vent
• Vote2Publish
• WP125
• WP Comment Remix
• WP Easy Uploader
• WP Sentry
• WP Wall
• Yank Widget
• ZdMultiLang

Do be judicious when giving your votes. Test the plugins well before giving it your vote.

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You can either manually code the .htaccess file or get hold of the AskApache Password Protect Plugin to automate the process.

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OneClick makes it a lot easy to install any plugin or theme. It has an admin page where you can browse to the ZIP file of the theme or the plugin and choose whether its a plugin or a theme and then click the button. It will upload the file, then extract it and will also set it up for you. Then all you have to do is just go and activate that specific plugin or theme.

It is very easy to install OneClick, just CHMOD 777 the Plugins folder, Themes folder and the OneClick folder.

This plugin is really helpful and I recommend everyone to use it who is new to FTPs and internet. As to the author, the upcoming release is gonna be very cool and loaded with new features!

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Rules and Details

• All code must be GPL
• Running time for competition = 2 months starting the 1st of June till the 31st of July.
• True WordPress plugins only. No manual modifications can be required of users.
• You cannot submit plugins that have been released already.
• All plugins require documentation as in the WordPress Extend pages.
• Preliminary support for the plugin has to be provided to the public.

I will be joining Mark this time as a judge of the competition. Well, that means I won't be able to submit any new plugins that I plan on releasing.

Well, but being a judge is really cool

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The purpose is to highlight some of the outstanding (for various reasons) plugins available today as well as provide a means for the WordPress community to tell the authors what they actually want.

The series began on Monday and you can expect six posts a week (Sunday is the weekly off).

If you are interested in getting your plugin featured then you need to send an email with details as listed on this post at WLTC.

The WordPress Blog announced the release of the official Plugin Directory.

Currently the primary place I use to look for plugins is WP-Plugins.net. It is updated several times a day as plugin authors use it as the first place to announce their plugins. They also have a feed which you can subscribe to.

The new plugins directory is actually an interface to WP-Plugins.org which for years has served as a hosting place for several plugins. I too have few of my plugins hosted out there, but stopped maintaining them because I couldn't track their downloads and it also meant another place to upload.

Another problem was that I had to maintain a separate folder that I would use for development so that I could SVN to wp-plugins.org.

The new plugin directory however gives an impetus to plugin authors to once again start hosting out there. Users can rate and comment on your plugins, you can let WordPress take care of your hosting and not bother with hosting them yourself. It will also serve as a good place to get your plugin out.

However, on the downside, it could also result in a totally mismanaged unit like the Themes Directory.

My very best to the WordPress team on the launch. It will definitely go a long way to centralize WordPress development.

As for me, I'm going to continue hosting my plugins on my own blog, atleast until I see fit.

Are you fed up off dull boring feeds in your feed reader? If you've styled your blog with CSS (and you should), you will notice that none of these styles show up in any feed reader.

Most feed readers default to same color text with minor styling. If you would like to make your feed stand out in these readers and more importantly, if you would like to present a neat clean feed for viewing by your readers, then you've got to give Feed Styler a shot.

Feed Styler is a WordPress plugin for WordPress users who are comfortable with CSS and would like to be able to style their feeds. Feed Styler enables you to keep your existing class and ID style declarations in your content, but allows a different style to be applied to the feed of that same content. No longer do feeds have to be stripped of style and color.

I've helped Ronald test feed styler right from its early days, when it was still a beta and was impressed by what I saw. With the final release, all bugs have been cleaned out and you now have a plugin that does what it claims.

However, note that you need to know your CSS before you use the plugin. It will not help you correct your CSS, and will just strip out incorrect CSS. However, CSS is not very difficult to learn.

What you can do is use the same styles as available in your style.css of your theme file, so that users see the same effect in both the reader and your site.

Do you plan on using this plugin? Are you already using it? Point me to your feed so I can take a look at it.

WordPress 2.1 released about ten days back. Many hesitated to upgrade and others still haven't.
I did upgrade two days back and ran into problems. I'm reluctant to upgrade my personal blog even now.

I had originally intended to review WordPress 2.1 in this weeks column, but since I haven't had much time to explore it well, I'll keep that for next week.

So, while pondering about the same I remembered the article I wrote when I joined the Editorial team at Weblog Tools Collection.

The article was titled "Check Your Plugins This New Year".

It made me remember how important plugins are to all WordPress users.
In the article I provided tips on how to go about managing plugins responsibly and how to keep trying your plugin list short and precise.

If you haven't yet taken a look, please do so. I'll love to hear what you have to say about the plugins you use.