WordPress Download Monitor is my popular plugin for managing files available for download in WordPress – version 3.3 is a major update containing many new features and improvements.
Version 3.3 (beta) is now available for beta testing to ensure this is a hassle free update when released officially. I would appreciate any feedback, praise and bug reports in the comments. Read more about the new features and grab it after the break.
The Wordress Snippets series of posts will give you some useful code snippets for use in your projects – just copy and paste (but try to understand how they work!).
This snippet will add a stylesheet to your login page so that you can style it fully, and also change the default Wordpress logo link (to wordpress.org) and title text to something of your choosing. Add it to functions.php in your template.
The Wordress Snippets series of posts will give you some useful code snippets for use in your projects – just copy and paste (but try to understand how they work!).
This snippet will add rel="nofollow" to the links in your blogroll, or those outputted by wp_list_bookmarks. Add to functions.php or your links template.
I have had some requests asking me to improve the Wordpress Download Monitor documentation, so I decided to write (and maintain) this post explaining the ins-and-outs of configuring and using the plugin. Hopefully it will help you guys use the plugin, and also reveal more of its power and flexibility.
Don’t forget, if you love download monitor please make a small donation and/or rate it on the wordpress plugins directory. I also appreciate your contributions to the development of the plugin, so feel free to email me any code or your suggestions. Your support is very welcome!
Links: Download Monitor Page | Plugin Directory Page
Download Monitor 3 is upon us. Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits, and displaying links. So far it has been downloaded over 45,000 times!
New features in version 3 include shortcodes, better template tags, daily stats, download logs and more! Download monitor 3 requires at least Wordpress version 2.5.
Links: Download Monitor Documenation | Plugin Directory Page
‘Shortcodes’ are a feature of wordpress used for executing custom functions by inserting a small snippit of code into a post. For example, my download monitor plugin now uses shortcodes; by entering [download id="1"] into a post, the plugin will output a download link.
The shortcode syntax varies, here are some examples:
[shortcode][shortcode atribute="value"][shortcode]Text[/shortcode]Shortcodes can be created to perform a handful of useful functions. To use any of the shortcodes in this post I recommend adding the functions to your functions.php theme file (create it if it does not exist!). Ill show shortcodes ranging from showing adsense to speaking pirate! (written for wordpress 2.7)
If you have ever tried to include code in a wordpress post you may have gone through hell trying to get it to output correctly; Wordpress’ built in functions for formatting text (autop and texturize) mangle your code making it non-functional.
I’ve tried many solutions in the past, such as disabling wordpress’ formatting functions, however, this is not ideal -especially if you rely on them to clean up your text and properly encode characters. On top of that its not even valid to include certain things such as CSS in the body of a xHTML document.
The solution? Custom fields. This post will show you how.
At last! My sidebar login widget has evolved into ‘Sidebar Login’ which has both a widget and a template tag to allow you to have a login form in the sidebar of your wordpress powered blog.
It lets users login, and then redirects them back to the page they logged in from rather than the backend, it also shows error messages. Read more for more information and the download link.
This plugin has now been replaced by an updated version which you can find here. This version is good for wordpress versions below 2.5 and can be obtained here.
It’s here! The new improved download monitor plugin for wordpress is ready for use, and ready for wordpress 2.5 which is set to be released soon. This new version, aside form the wordpress 2.5 support, contains many bug fixes and is now much more efficient.
Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits, and displaying links. Version 1 had a total of over 6000 downloads, lets hope this new release proves just as popular. Read more for the download link, the list of fixes, and usage/upgrade instructions.
This plugin has now been replaced by an updated version which you can find here
A number of users were experiencing errors with the sidebar login widget I created, issues such as bugs with cookies and headers sent. In a bid to stop these errors I have created a new version, compatible with wordpress 2.3.
This version is different to the others because rather than redirecting to the normal wordpress login page to log the user in, it has the code for login built into it, thus (in theory) solving the cookie/headers problems. Hoorar. Read more about the widget after the break.
It’s been about two weeks now since I made the transition from a shared reseller hosting account to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) account – impressions so far, excellent performance but fiddly to configure.
The reason I wanted to change from shared hosting was the fact the server was always being hacked (even though ALL my scripts were secure), there was frequent downtime, support blamed me for problems every time, and it was slow as hell.
Those used to a shared hosting environment would probably not know where to start when faced with configuring a VPS. Luckily, a lot of it was pre-configured when I received my account – certainly some of the major security holes were patched. I was not satisfied with those however. As a victim of hacking in the past (previous host swears it was not there fault, something I don’t believe) I took extra care to secure it as a much I could – configuring brute force detection, the firewall, installing mod security (excellent rules for that here: http://www.atomicorp.com/wiki/index.php/Atomic_ModSecurity_Rules) and going though multiple guides (like this one: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=468168) with a fine-tooth comb.
The result? My pages are loading at least 6 times faster, I have had no down time (or at least have not noticed any), and I feel in control and happy. No longer am I at the mercy of shared hosts 
If your interested, I chose ServInt as my provider as they offered a great deal, as well as being a managed service (so I’m not on my own if I screw things up). I was tempted by the bells and whistles of Media Temple, but felt the ServInt service was better value.
Download Monitor has received some more love and has been updated. Here’s the change log from the new version:
If you have edited capabilities for download monitor user permissions, you’ll have to again sorry! This is because I named them too long. Also, you should check your forced downloads still work because there was a logic error meaning they may not have been forced after-all…
Enjoy.
Today I completed the update for the Wordpress Download Monitor Plugin – many tweaks, fixes, and features added. There were no changes to the database structure so people upgrading should be fine. Here is the list from the change log:
And yes, those category link bugs are fixed at long last, and you can edit category names finally. Phew!
Spam stopper has been updated to v3.1 – and most of it has been recoded. Here’s the full list of changes:
You can get the plugin from wordpress.org: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spam-stopper/
For support, please keep my comments clean and post on either the wordpress forums or my forum.
To help support spam-stopper you can make a donation (buy me a coffee, or several) or rate it on wordpress.org. Thanks!
