Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

MiniCard 1.1.7 Update

March 11, 2010 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , 0

I have just uploaded 1.1.7 of MiniCard here and to the WordPress theme directory. This updates includes:

  • New networks; xing, gowalla, yelp, foursquare, mobileme, google buzz
  • A way to change link text and define multiple links of the same network
  • A way to define your own custom links + icons
  • Improved admin panel

Hope you like it, and don’t forget you can show your support by purchasing the premium pack from here.

Download Monitor 3.3 Beta Available for testing & feedback

December 30, 2009 | Published in: Wordpress & plugins | Tags: , , , , , 136

Wordpress Download Monitor Plugin

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.

Continue reading Download Monitor 3.3 Beta Available for testing & feedback»

MiniCard Theme for Wordpress – a cool free business card/social network theme

November 10, 2009 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: , , , , , , 81

minicard

I am releasing my MiniCard theme for wordpress which supports hCard/vCard microformats, tonnes of social networks, showing some portfolio items (optional), and more – all controllable from its own Theme Config page. This theme is free and licensed under GPL – there is also a premium pack available with many theme variations, and the footer feed functionality.

Read more for more information and the download links. I hope you find this theme useful and spread the word :)

Continue reading MiniCard Theme for Wordpress – a cool free business card/social network theme»

Download Monitor 3.2.2 Maintenance Release

October 3, 2009 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , , 18

Download Monitor has received some more love and has been updated. Here’s the change log from the new version:

  • Small bugfix in uploader.php – cat ID
  • Changed stats graph calculation – thanks lggemini
  • Changes to headers in download.php to avoid caching
  • File Browser fixes – $root was clashing with something….
  • exclude_cat works in all sections of download_page now
  • Removed hardcoding of /uploads/
  • Added action to download.php – should be able to use it to stop a download if you want – maybe limiting downloads per day or something? Whatever you want…
  • Made it so if you post new file on ‘edit’ screen, the post date is updated.
  • Fixed the ‘blank meta’ section which blanks out custom field values when nothing is set.
  • Moved ‘allow_url_fopen’ check.
  • Someone said downloads don’t work with spaces in the name. They do! Wasting my time sonny…
  • All work and no play make jolley a dull boy
  • Had to rename capabilities so they work. Apologies if you have to set this up again! Cheers to Mark Dingemanse.
  • {category_ID} custom format tag added. Useful if you want to send someone to its category on the DL page I guess. Also added {category_other} so when no category is set “other” is shown – this is because the download page can show an ‘other’ section if you want it to.
  • You can now manually edit the post date on the edit download screen.

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.

Wordpress Snippet #2: Style the login page

September 10, 2009 | Published in: Wordpress & plugins | Tags: , , , , 17

snippet

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.

Continue reading Wordpress Snippet #2: Style the login page»

Mahousive update to Download Monitor (3.2)

September 4, 2009 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , , , , 4

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:

  • {user} tag added for custom formats
  • ‘autop’ option fix
  • Download page buttons applied with CSS so they are easier to customise/translate.
  • Fix for pagination bug after editing a download
  • Category output fix on edit downloads screen
  • Category urls on download page use ID rather than name to prevent errors when cats have the same names.
  • exclude_cat added to download_page shortcode
  • Localised ‘hits’ ‘date’ ‘title’ on download page
  • Option to disable the download logging
  • Read file ‘chunked’ some people found large files were corrupted so this should help (fingers crossed)
  • Added show_tags option to download page – displays x amount of tags on the download page.
  • File Browser root setting and download.php logic/mime types modified thanks to Jim Isaacs (jidd.jimisaacs.com)
  • Interface Improvements
  • Bulk edit categories, custom fields, tags, member only downloads
  • Added roles for download monitor admin – should be able to use with a role manager plugin if you want anyone other than admin to access the admin section e.g. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/capsman/
  • Change redirect after add
  • Edit Cat names/parents
  • Dedicated tags and thumbnails fields (they still use meta table though)

And yes, those category link bugs are fixed at long last, and you can edit category names finally. Phew!

Wordpress Snippet #1: “nofollow” your blogroll

August 28, 2009 | Published in: Wordpress & plugins | Tags: , , , , 3

snippet

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.

Continue reading Wordpress Snippet #1: “nofollow” your blogroll»

Wordpress Spam Stopper Plugin Updated

August 12, 2009 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , , , 1

Spam stopper has been updated to v3.1 – and most of it has been recoded. Here’s the full list of changes:

  • Added changelog to readme.
  • Email validation bug squashed
  • Cached comments now work; if user forgets to fill in antispam or makes a mistake (and the JS does not catch it) the users comment will not be lost.
  • Redone entire code to make it more efficient
  • Admin section added for changing the antispam question
  • Form ID and honeypot trap added to form
  • Fully localized

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!

Sidebar Login 2.2.6 Update

August 11, 2009 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , , , , 5

Sidebar Login for wordpress has just been updated and contains many fixes and improvements. The main changes being:

  • Added changelog to readme.
  • OpenID Plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/openid/) Integration.
  • %username% can be used in your custom links shown when logged in (gets replaced with username)
  • WP-FacebookConnect (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-facebookconnect/) integration (untested!)
  • Minor fixes (worked through a big list of em!)

You can get the plugin from wordpress.org: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sidebar-login/

For support, please keep my comments clean and post on either the wordpress forums or my forum.

To help support sidebar login you can make a donation (buy me a coffee, or several) or rate it on wordpress.org. Thanks!

Wordpress 2.8 Memory Usage

June 15, 2009 | Published in: Out of the Blue | Tags: , , , 9

With the release of wordpress 2.8 some people are experiencing out of memory php errors along the lines of:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 228968 bytes)

You may also be seeing pages fail to load fully (for example the wordpress admin dashboard) if php error messages are hidden. I’ve already had one case where we thought certain plugins were to blame but in fact it was just out of memory. A possible fix (which worked in the previously mentioned case) is to add:

@ini_set('memory_limit','64M');

to your wp-config file. Has anyone else encoutered this error?

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Blue Anvil is the online web design journal & portfolio of , a web designer from Norfolk, England. Read More »
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    • @AzN102 If you mean the social link, you need to create a page called 'social' and give it the template called 'home'.
  • Out of the blue - More

    • MiniCard 1.1.7 Update

      I have just uploaded 1.1.7 of MiniCard here and to the WordPress theme directory. This updates includes:

      • New networks; xing, gowalla, yelp, foursquare, mobileme, google buzz
      • A way to change link text and define multiple links of the same network
      • A way to define your own custom links + icons
      • Improved admin panel

      Hope you like it, and don’t forget you can show your support by purchasing the premium pack from here.

    • Switched: From Shared to VPS

      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 3.2.2 Maintenance Release

      Download Monitor has received some more love and has been updated. Here’s the change log from the new version:

      • Small bugfix in uploader.php – cat ID
      • Changed stats graph calculation – thanks lggemini
      • Changes to headers in download.php to avoid caching
      • File Browser fixes – $root was clashing with something….
      • exclude_cat works in all sections of download_page now
      • Removed hardcoding of /uploads/
      • Added action to download.php – should be able to use it to stop a download if you want – maybe limiting downloads per day or something? Whatever you want…
      • Made it so if you post new file on ‘edit’ screen, the post date is updated.
      • Fixed the ‘blank meta’ section which blanks out custom field values when nothing is set.
      • Moved ‘allow_url_fopen’ check.
      • Someone said downloads don’t work with spaces in the name. They do! Wasting my time sonny…
      • All work and no play make jolley a dull boy
      • Had to rename capabilities so they work. Apologies if you have to set this up again! Cheers to Mark Dingemanse.
      • {category_ID} custom format tag added. Useful if you want to send someone to its category on the DL page I guess. Also added {category_other} so when no category is set “other” is shown – this is because the download page can show an ‘other’ section if you want it to.
      • You can now manually edit the post date on the edit download screen.

      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.

    • Mahousive update to Download Monitor (3.2)

      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:

      • {user} tag added for custom formats
      • ‘autop’ option fix
      • Download page buttons applied with CSS so they are easier to customise/translate.
      • Fix for pagination bug after editing a download
      • Category output fix on edit downloads screen
      • Category urls on download page use ID rather than name to prevent errors when cats have the same names.
      • exclude_cat added to download_page shortcode
      • Localised ‘hits’ ‘date’ ‘title’ on download page
      • Option to disable the download logging
      • Read file ‘chunked’ some people found large files were corrupted so this should help (fingers crossed)
      • Added show_tags option to download page – displays x amount of tags on the download page.
      • File Browser root setting and download.php logic/mime types modified thanks to Jim Isaacs (jidd.jimisaacs.com)
      • Interface Improvements
      • Bulk edit categories, custom fields, tags, member only downloads
      • Added roles for download monitor admin – should be able to use with a role manager plugin if you want anyone other than admin to access the admin section e.g. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/capsman/
      • Change redirect after add
      • Edit Cat names/parents
      • Dedicated tags and thumbnails fields (they still use meta table though)

      And yes, those category link bugs are fixed at long last, and you can edit category names finally. Phew!