NSpeaks

Wordpress 3.1 Roadmap Out

Navjot Singh — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:01:38 +0000

Wordpress Devs recently had a meeting about the future and plans for the upcoming Wordpress 3.1. Goals for Wordpress 3.1 include: “to have a very short dev cycle, a decent amount of testing time, and a release in mid-December. Low on new features, heavy on ui and code cleanup, and avoidance of schema changes. Save the big ideas for 3.2 where we’ll have the liberty to implement those ideas in PHP5. No schema changes and no big new APIs.”

So what new features to expect in Wordpress 3.1?

Advanced Taxonomy Queries
Internal Linking – Linking to another post/page/category from the WYSWIG without having to grab the URL from the public site. This is one hell of a feature and would save lot of time.
Ajaxified Admin Screen – Somehow I don’t think its required. Would add to the bloat if you ask me. Well will have to see how it gets implemented.
Wordpress.com Style Admin Bar – Another awesome thing coming. Would save lots of time again to reach a particular admin page especially from the frontend.
Separate Network Dashboard – I think this is totally justifiable. Having settings for both under common dashboard can make things a bit confusing.
New UI For Browsing/Installing Themes
Post Templates/Post Styles – Another must have considering how fast Wordpress is becoming more of CMS oriented rather than being a blog only software.
QuickPress Template Tag – Would allow posting from the frontend. Awesome.

Apart from these new features there would be lots of bug fixes as usual, some bug fixes in Custom Post Types implementation, UX/UI cleanups and possibly few cleanups in Role/Capabilities.

A schedule to Wordpress 3.1 has also been released according to which Wordpress 3.1 final should be out by December 15 max and expect beta to start from November 15. Feature Freeze will be implemented by October 15.

A Special Note: Wordpress 3.1 would be the last version to support PHP 4. Wordpress 3.2 would support PHP 5.2 and above only. Be ready for the switch. You can use Health Check Plugin on your blogs to test whether your blog is 3.2 ready or not.

So What do you think about the new features for Wordpress 3.1? Which ones excite you the most?

Any sense in Hiding Dates on Blog Posts?

Navjot Singh — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:12:53 +0000

Recently WeblogToolsCollection came out with a post asking whether you should hide dates on your blog posts or not. Not only a poll but it also had a complete guide on how to remove post dates from your blog completely. Not only they mentioned on how to remove dates from posts but from comments as well. Atleast don’t hide dates from comments. It makes tracking of conversations so difficult. The argument to remove dates in that post is that users discriminate against the old articles and don’t give them much value. I wanted to comment at that post but then I preferred making a separate post and giving my views and opinions here. Anyways if you check the comments section of that post, you will find almost all commentators are against the idea of hiding dates.

I am also against the idea of hiding dates on blog posts. Hiding dates means you are treating your readers as fools. Whether your articles are timeless or not, date should be posted. Trust your loyal readers because they are intelligent enough to figure out whether the article deserves a thorough read or not even if it was posted 2 years ago. Regarding the argument of discrimination, it also boils down to the blog author on how well his blog is laid out and how well readers can reach even to the older posts. Blog author should highlight his best posts and even if they are 2 or more than 2 years old readers will value them if they are of real value even today.

Yes there are some type of posts where dates can be done away with like on movie reviews blog or receipes blog but still I would prefer the dates on them. For example on movie reviews blog, I would prefer dates atleast to know when was the review posted, whether on the same day of movie release or few days after release.

Regarding the discrimination point mentioned in WeblogToolsCollection post, it reminds me of A List Apart Blog where articles as old as 2006 are still referred to and read by Web Designers because they still hold value even when the technologies available at that time and now differ a lot. I don’t think discrimination factor comes at all if your readers are intelligent enough. So don’t underestimate your readers and give them what they want. Stop Hiding dates on your blog posts unless and until you are making a complete static based or CMS based site using Wordpress or any other Blog Software. And if you are hiding dates, be ready to have full justification for it. If you are doing just to save screen space, bah that’s the worst argument I have heard in favour of removing dates. They hardly take any space.

So, what’s your take? Do you hide dates or not? And if yes then why?

Convert your Wordpress Blog to an Ipad App with PadPressed

Navjot Singh — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:15:38 +0000

First it was Mobile Browsers, then Iphone then Blackberry, then Android and hosts of other smartphones and devices for which we had to create sites for. This summer, Apple released Ipad. Now just because your blog has been optimised for other mobile devices, it doesn’t mean it would give an optimal viewing experience in Ipad. Ipad has many ways of browsing which are not supported by conventional methods of rendering a site for mobile.

Padpressed is a new Wordpress plugin which converts a Wordpress blog to an Ipad App of sort and provides optimum viewing experience including support for Accelerometer and Swipe features of Ipad.

Shown below is a demo of Padpressed plugin on an Ipad Device.

Following are the features of PadPressed Plugin:

Accelerometer Aware – With this feature blog rotates itself according to the orientation of the device whether its held in Landscape Mode (Blog becomes 3 column) or Potrait Mode (Single Column View) .
Swipe to Advance – Plugin allows users to use swipe gestures on the device to advance to the next or previous articles.
Touch Navigation – Users can use touch navigation features to switch blog categories instead of long dropdowns or hard to click links.
Custom Home Icon – If you add your blog to Ipad’s homescreen, the blog’s logo will be used as a Homescreen logo and making your blog as an application rather than a bookmark icon.
Social Sharing – Padpressed supports a native Sharing Widget which allows users to share articles via Facebook, Twitter and Email.
Custom Theme Options – PadPressed has a detailed theme options panel that allows you to set the logo used for your homescreen icon, icons for touch navigation, featured slider settings, and your unique skin.
Works with Any Theme – You don’t need to make changes to your existing theme for Padpressed plugin to work. Its compatible with any Wordpress theme running in parallel.

The plugin is not free but costs $49.99. I wouldn’s say overpriced but yes a bit higher. But if your blog gets ample of Ipad based visitors, I would definitely recommend you to buy the plugin.

Buy PadPressed Plugin

Vote to pick the topic for Blog Action Day 2010

Navjot Singh — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:25:11 +0000

Every Year on October 15, Bloggers from around the world unite to come forward for a cause and spread awareness about it by participating in Blog Action Day. This Year’s Blog Action Day is coming near and this time you can vote for the cause for which you want to spread awareness about.

Change.org the organisation behind Blog Action Day has put up a poll where you can vote for the cause you want the world’s bloggers to talk about. Here are the six suggested causes by Change.org for the Blog Action Day:

Water – The UN recently declared water to be a human right, but millions around the world still lack even the most basic access, causing widespread disease and the possibility of military conflict over access to clean water.
Human Trafficking – From prostitution to forced labor, more than 27 million people are modern-day slaves, making human trafficking one of the most overlooked man-made tragedies in the world.
Women – The most discriminated against group in the world isn’t a minority: it’s women. From inequality in schooling to reduced economic opportunities, women face a disproportionate degree of adversity all over the world.
Sustainable Food – Industrial agriculture has overtaken the world’s food supply – creating obesity in the developed world and spreading genetically modified crops and oftentimes undercutting local farmers in the developing world.
Hunger – While many of us may take healthy, nutritious food for granted, more than 1 billion people around the world see it as an unattainable luxury.
Oceans – Overfishing and pollution have decimated untold species of fish and other ocean life over the past few decades, and recent oil spills have shown how vulnerable aquatic life is to man-made disasters.

Apart from the above suggested topics, you can add your own topic in the poll as well. Winning Topic will be announced by early September. So act fast and raise your voice. So don’t waste time and Vote now.

Wordpress 3.0.1 Out Now

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:46:46 +0000

Wordpress finally released 3.0.1 version with 55 bug fixes. These include few export related errors and a bug related to incompatibility with PHP 5.0.5 version.

A new Function was also added with this release. The function is “unregister_nav_menu()” and has been added so that child themes can unregister the existing navigation menu and add their own menus. One more change you will find that Twenty Ten theme has been updated to 1.0.1 version with this new release. Find more on what has changed in it from WeblogToolsCollection.

Download your copy of 3.0.1 or hit the upgrade button from the dashboard.

Wordpress 3.0 Released

Navjot Singh — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:49:21 +0000

Yesterday Night, Wordpress released its latest version codenamed ‘Thelonious’ after the famous American Jazz pianist and composer. This release contains some of very impressive new features apart from 1217 bug fixes. Here are some of its new features in brief:

New Default Theme Titled ‘TwentyTen’. Check my Post about the theme.
Hierarchial Custom Taxonomies and Custom Post Types Support
Custom Menus
One Click Plugin Upgrades
Secure Installs which allow you to choose your username/password on New Install
Custom Header Improvements
Shortlinks Support
Merge of Wordpress and Wordpress Mu
Contextual Help Menus

There are lots more improvements which are listed at Codex. Here is a video from Wordpress Blog about new Features of Wordpress 3.0:

Also check my post about the new Template Tags introduced in Wordpress 3.0.

So Download your Copy of Wordpress or Hit the Upgrade Button from your Dashboard.

Get 90% Discount on WordPress Hosting

Navjot Singh — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:37:26 +0000

Well everyone knows about WPWebhost – A company which has pioneered the way of hosting Wordpress Websites. Many Big reputed Wordpress Blogs are now hosted on WPWebhost. Well if you have been looking to choose your hosting your blog, don’t look any further. Because this is a chance you wouldn’t like to miss anyways. A Chance which will give you 90% discount of your hosting bill.

Starting 3 June, 2010 from 00:01 AM (GMT -7:00) Time, first 10 WpWebhost Customers will get 90% off their hosting bill. Well if you miss being the first 10, don’t worry. Next 30 signups will get 80% discount off the hosting. Well these discounts will continue till 390 signups occur. Following is the full slab of Coupon Codes:

Discount	Available Units (First come first serve)
90% off	10 units
80% off	30 units
70% off	50 units
60% off	100 units
50% off	200 units

Condition is that discount is only available on their Freedom Plan and no other plan. Coupon code will be revealed when the offer opens.

Template Changes/Tags for Wordpress 3.0

Navjot Singh — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:34:17 +0000

By now everybody must be knowing that Wordpress 3.0 will soon be released with some heavy duty featureset which will enable Wordpress to directly compete with other CMS systems like Joomla and Drupal. And as happens with any other new version of Wordpress, there are bound to be some new features/functions available for Wordpress which Theme/Plugin authors need to keep themselves updated with. Let me tell you about all the new template changes required for Wordpress 3.0 which the theme authors should keep themselves updated with.

Custom Menus

This new feature enables you to have custom menus in Wordpress which can have pages/categories/external links or even links to posts in a single menu. The following function prints the custom menu in Wordpress 3.0:

wp_nav_menu();

wp_nav_menu() function has the following parameters:

id – The menu id. Defaults to blank.
slug – The menu slug. Defaults to blank.
menu_class – CSS class to use for the div container of the menu list. Defaults to ‘menu’.
format – Whether to format the ul. Defaults to ‘div’.
fallback_cb – If the menu doesn’t exists, a callback function will fire. Defaults to ‘wp_page_menu’.
before_link – Output text before the link.
after_link – Output text after the link.
before_title – Output text before the link text.
before_title – Output text after the link text.
echo – Whether to echo the menu or return it. Defaults to echo.

But before using the above command to print the custom menu, you need to add support of Custom Menus to your theme by adding the following code in your theme’s function.php file:

~~add_theme_support( ‘nav-menus’ );~~ [This function has been deprecated in favor of register_nav_menu(s)]

For Details on how to create Navigation Menus, I suggest reading tutorial by Justin Tadlock.

Custom Post Types plus Custom Taxonomy Improvements

Earlier we could only create Posts or Pages. But now with Custom Post Types, we can create lot more types of posts like Gallery Items, Movie Information Posts etc. which will be independent in style from a normal post. Custom taxonomies which got introduced in Wordpress 2.8 got a small upgrade which now allows them to be hierarchial too just like a normal Category.

Its difficult to explain all this in a small post plus there are already awesome tutorials on this. Just Linking to them:

Custom posts explained by Kovshenin – Part 1 and Part 2
Guide to Custom Post Types by Justin Tadlock
Show Custom post Types on your Homepage by Justin Tadlock

Custom Background

Wordpress 3.0 comes with inbuilt support of changing background of your Wordpress themes. To Add support for Custom background, drop the following line in your theme’s function.php file:

add_custom_background();

This tag adds a custom body style tag inline in between your tags.

Standard Comments Tag

Wordpress 3.0 introduces a new standard comment form tag which enables any theme to have a full blown comment form by just modifying/specifying a few parameters.

Here is the standard comment form function in action:

comment_form() can be changed for any theme using filters and custom styles. For More Details on this, read this post by OttoPress.

Automatic Feed Links

Earlier theme authors had to add the feed links manually in the header.php. But now with Wordpress 3.0, this can be done automatically. Just add this line in your theme’s function.php file:

add_theme_support('automatic-feed-links');

Custom Header Improvements

Earlier there was a single option where users could upload a custom header for a theme. But with Wordpress 3.0, themes can give users a choice to select some of the pre-made headers too apart from uploaded headers. To enable this feature, just use the following example code(taken from twentythen theme):

register_default_headers( array (
		'path' => array (
			'url' => '%s/images/headers/path.jpg',
			'thumbnail_url' => '%s/images/headers/path-thumbnail.jpg',
			'description' => __( 'Path', 'twentyten' )
		),
		'sunset' => array (
			'url' => '%s/images/headers/sunset.jpg',
			'thumbnail_url' => '%s/images/headers/sunset-thumbnail.jpg',
			'description' => __( 'Sunset', 'twentyten' )
		)
	) );

Make sure to replace twentyten with the theme's folder name while using the above code. You can add as many pre-made headers to your themes for your users.

ShortLinks

For Displaying the Shortlink of a post, you need to use the following code:

the_shortlink( $text, $title, $before, $after );

$text is link text or html to be displayed which defaults to 'This is the short link.' $title is the tooltip for the link. $before and $after are html which can be shown before and after the shortlink respectively. All parameters are optional.

One can filter the_shortlink() function to display custom created shortlinks using pre_get_shortlink() and get_shortlink() hooks. More Information by WPEngineer and OttoPress.

Login Form

Wordpress 3.0 introduces a new login form template tag which you can place anywhere in your template to get readymade Login form for your visitors to signup/register to your blog. The following template tag outputs the Login form:

wp_login_form( $args );

Following are the arguments of the tag:

echo - Display the results. Defaults to true.
redirect - Url to redirect to. Defaults to current page.
form_id - Form id. Defaults to loginform.
label_username - Label to give to Username. Defaults to 'Username'.
label_password - Label to give to Password. Defaults to 'Password'.
label_remember - Label to give to Remember me field. Defaults to 'Remember Me'.
label_log_in - Label to give to Login Button. Defaults to 'Log In'.
id_username - Id for the Username field. Defaults to 'user_login'.
id_password - Id for the Password field. Defaults to 'user_pass'.
id_remember - Id for the remember me field. Defaults to 'rememberme'.
id_submit - Id for the Submit button. Defaults to 'wp-submit'.
remember - Whether to remember the values. Defaults to true.
value_remember - Whether to tick the Remember me field or not. Defaults to 'false'.
value_username - Value of Username field. Defaults to last used value.

New Url Functions to Refer to Blog, Homepage and Admin

Earlier we used bloginfo('url') or get_option('site_url') to get blog or site's urls. But wordpress 3.0 comes with new functions to get urls easily. They are listed below:

home_url(); // retrieve the home url of the current site
get_home_url(); // return the home url of the current site
site_url(); // retrieve the url of current site
get_site_url(); // return the url of current site
get_admin_url(); // retrieve the url to the admin area for a GIVEN site, defaults to current admin_url() was introduced earlier.

Improved Author Template Support

Now we can create a simple file like author-name.php or author-id.php and it will show a customised Author template for that author.

Modular Template Support

Most of The template files contain repeated code like the loop code over and over again. But Wordpres 3.0 introduces a function get_template_part() with which you can include same code from a file whereever you want just with a single line. In its simplr form, one needs to use it like this:

get_template_part( 'navi');. //Looks for a file named navi.php
get_template_part( 'navi', 'sidebar' );. //Looks for a file named navi-sidebar.php

For More Information read article on Modular Templates by Daryl Koopersmith ( Part 1 and Part 2 ) and by WPEngineer.

Theme Organisation Update

Earlier if your theme just had a index.php and a style.css file, your blog still ran perfectly without any errors as it considered default theme as its parent theme. But with Wordpress 3.0, default them has been removed. If you still want to run your theme perfectly on Wordpress 3.0, just keep the default theme [it won't come with Wordpress 3.0 package] and include the following line at the top of your style.css:

Template: default

In future versions, compatibility support like this will be removed. So you need to make sure either the parent theme contains all the relevant files or the theme itself.

More Information from Westi.

Note: To maintain backward compatibility, use function_exists() to check whether the theme is being used on Wordpress 3.0 or not otherwise your theme will break on Wordpress 2.9 and below versions on using the codes above.

Add Custom Taxonomy Columns to Edit Posts Page

Navjot Singh — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:18:44 +0000

Wordpress’s Edit Posts Page pretty much shows information you need to use. But with the inclusion of Custom Taxonomies from Wordpress 2.8, it becomes difficult to check which posts are using which Taxonomies unless you edit each post manually. To make the job of editing custom taxonomies easy, its better if we could see all our custom taxonomies on Edit Posts page too. Well there are several tutorials on web which will tell you how to add custom columns to the Edit Posts Admin page but none tells you exact method for adding Custom Taxonomies column. Let me take through a walkthrough of it.

Big Help to This post at Themehybrid for the idea and code. The following tutorial adds 2 columns to add Films and Language [picked from one of my video blogs] (with the custom taxonomy slugs as film and lang) taxonomies to Edit Posts Admin Page. [Works on Wordpress 2.9 and 3.0]

Open your Theme’s functions.php file and add the following code just before the last ?>:

add_filter( 'manage_posts_columns', 'govid_columns' ); //Filter out Post Columns with 2 custom columns

function govid_columns($defaults) {
    $defaults['language'] = __('Language'); //Language and Films is name of column
    $defaults['film'] = __('Films');
    return $defaults;
}

add_action('manage_posts_custom_column', 'govid_custom_column', 10, 2); //Just need a single function to add multiple columns

function govid_custom_column($column_name, $post_id) {
    global $wpdb;
    if( $column_name == 'language' ) {
			$tags = get_the_terms($post->ID, 'lang'); //lang is the first custom taxonomy slug
			if ( !empty( $tags ) ) {
				$out = array();
				foreach ( $tags as $c )
					$out[] = " " . esc_html(sanitize_term_field('name', $c->name, $c->term_id, 'lang', 'display')) . "";
				echo join( ', ', $out );
			} else {
				_e('No Languages.');  //No Taxonomy term defined
			}
		} else if( $column_name == 'film' ) {   //Adding 2nd column
			$tags = get_the_terms($post->ID, 'film'); //film is the next taxonomy slug for column Films
			if ( !empty( $tags ) ) {
				$out = array();
				foreach ( $tags as $c )
					$out[] = " " . esc_html(sanitize_term_field('name', $c->name, $c->term_id, 'film', 'display')) . "";
				echo join( ', ', $out );
			} else {
				_e('No Related Films.'); //no Films found
			}
		} else {
            echo ''.__('None').''; //Only 2 columns, blank now.
        }
    }
?>

To learn about Custom Taxonomy, I would suggest reading this post by Justin Tadlock covering basics of Custom Taxonomies in Wordpress 2.8. Any questions, please post in comments.

Wordpress’s New Default Theme is Out – 2010

Navjot Singh — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:35:01 +0000

Finally Wordpress SVN has included the new default theme which we will get in 3.0. Its called TwentyTen (2010). It’s based on the Kirby Theme by Ian Stewart released earlier this year as a proposal for a Default Wordpress Theme. Eventually, Wordpress seems to have picked it up for its new default theme. There are lots of new features currently available in the default theme which include:

Drop Down Page Menus
6 Widget Areas including 2 in Sidebar and 4 footer widgets
Asides and Gallery Posts Styling
Archives, Category and Search Pages show now only excerpts instead of full posts improving the SEO (though Search’s broken as of now)
HTML 5 Validation
Author Template plus Author Styling beneath each post
Sticky Posts Styling
Much Improved and descriptive Page Titles for various Pages
Improved Read More Text
Control Excerpt’s Length via Functions.php
Next and Previous Image Links when a gallery image is posted

To check the theme in action, head to 2010dev.wordpress.com

And to install and test the theme yourself, get Wordpress through SVN.

Here are some screenshots of the New Theme:

Get your Wordpress Blog with Support for Free

Navjot Singh — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:28:56 +0000

Does that sound to you a little tempting? Though everybody says working on WordPress is a breeze, but for a person who has never blogged before or for first time WordPress user, getting through the WordPress and its jargon can get a bit overwhelming sometimes. And support for WordPress out there is mostly community based and searching for the right answers can be time consuming and tedious at times.

Well I am now providing you with a unique WordPress Install and Support Service which will help you with setting up of your first WordPress blog, getting a cool theme for it and a set of essential plugins/addons for it. I will also submit your blog to major search engines. I will also optimise it for SEO, Adsense and setup feed subscriptions on your blog and even email notification for new posts. Also I will coach you about WordPress so that you become comfortable in using it. On top of it, I will offer a 20 day Support and Maintenance service.

A Recap of the services I offer:

Brand New Installation or Migration of Wordpress’s latest version (Currently at 2.9.1).
15 Plugins installation and configuration.
5 Theme Installation of your choice.
Setting up of Feed Subscription and email notification
Submission of Blog to Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search Engines
SEO Optimisation of Blog with Suggestions for Optimisation
Google Analytics and Adsense Code Suggestions and Optimisation
Blog Consultation with Various Suggestions for Improvement
Unlimited Support and Maintenance for your Blog for 20 days

All this for only $50 if you have hosting already.

And if you don’t have hosting, then you can buy hosting using Hostgator. I will give you a coupon which will give you first month for just $0.01! If you buy hosting from us, this service is free! I can also give you 20% off on your hosting package.

How to proceed?
Contact Me if you are interested and I will help you get forward.

FAQ

Q. Do you provide design services for the theme or logo?

A. Sorry, we are not into design at the moment. But we will guide you to getting the right theme and to the right designer.

Q. What are the modes of payment?

A. We accept payments via PayPal. You don’t even need PayPal account to pay, just use an International Credit Card (Visa, MasterCard or Diners Club) for payment.

Parse Shortcodes in your Custom Fields

Navjot Singh — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:40:51 +0000

Shortcodes and Custom Fields are two very powerful features of Wordpress which allow you to insert any custom content anywhere on your site. But in certain cases, you may need to insert a shortcode into your Custom field. This can happen if a plugin you use only offers shortcodes but you need to insert that shortcode only on a certain portion of the theme (e.g. single.php). Now custom fields can be placed at any place of the theme but Shortcodes only appear in post content. And if you include shortcode directly as a custom field value, it will be displayed as it is without getting parsed. For example, if you insert [youtube]VIDEOURL[/youtube] in your custom field to display youtube’s video (In the Viper Video Tags Plugin), it will show up as [youtube]VIDEOURL[/youtube] instead of the video which is because it does not parse shortcodes. But then Wordpress is too great so don’t worry, since a hack is there which will allow you to parse Shortcodes into your custom fields:

ID, 'Custom Field', $single = true) );
?>

In the above code, instead of directly getting a custom field’s value and displaying, apply the filter ‘the_content’ directly to the retreived custom field’s value. This ensures all post content properties including shortcode are applied to the custom field’s value. And hence the shortcode is parsed in the custom field. Now you can use $var anywhere to show the parsed value of the shortcode.

You will need to apply the filter to all the custom field variables individually.

Updated so that the concept is more clear. Also cleaned up and eased the code.

Wordpress World Map – Add yourself

Navjot Singh — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:05:47 +0000

Oliver Schlöbe of WPSeek has created a WordPress World Map where different bloggers, companies related to wordpress, core developers and developers of themes and plugins and even wordpress fans can register themselves and place themselves on a map dedicated to Wordpress.

Here is a screenshot of user density from WP World Map:

This map has lots of features including:

1. Ability to have your individual profile containing your name, email id, twitter handle, wp.org profile, wp.com profile, company name and your location ofcourse.
2. Ability to follow other wp people by signing using Twitter
3. Check out people interested in wordpress near you
4. Each User gets a unique profile link at WP World Map and you can edit your information anytime.
5. Find Wordcamp locations around the world

So I would suggest every person interested in Wordpress to signup on WP World Map.

Wordpress 2.9 – Features, Tips and Screenshots (Updated)

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:08:00 +0000

[tweetmeme]Wordpress 2.9 Release is now nearing day by day. Wordpress Development Team has stated as October end as the release for its first beta version and few release candidates will be released in November. Final 2.9 version can be expected by End of November or December start. And since 2.9 is so near, let me show you some of the new features and enhancements which will be a part of 2.9 version: (Screenshots are included at the bottom)

Easy Embedding of Media – This is the biggest feature in terms of media management in Wordpress 2.9. Now you won’t need plugins to add photos, videos and audio in your posts. Just paste the url of the video, audio or photo and Wordpress will embed it automatically provided the source of your video, audio and photos understands and supports oEmbed API. Writing about Easy Embeds here is long. Check out Viper’s Detailed Post on this.
Trash Status for Posts, Pages, Images and Comments – Now you will not have to repent that you deleted any post or comment by mistake. All posts, pages, images and comments will be put in a trash bin at start and you can restore them anytime. Trash bin will hold the data for 30 days only. After 30 days, trash will be emptied automatically. You can ofcourse change this value by adding this line into your wp-config.php:
```
define( 'EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 30 );
```
For some more developer related information on Trash Status, check WPEngineer’s Post.
Image Editor – Wordpress 2.9 Sports a cool Image Editor which will allow you to rotate, flip, scale and crop images.
Post Thumbnails – Now you can specify a specific thumbnail to be associated with each post. No more custom fields or messing with Timthumbs. Just upload a image, edit it and then select it as a thumbnail from write/edit post page. To display the thumbnail, include the following code in your theme’s php files:Post Thumbnails can be styled using wp-post-image class using CSS. You can even check whether a post has thumbnail and show thumbnails only if present. Here is the sample code to demonstrate this:

For a advanced usage of Post Thumbnails check Matt Rude’s Guide and to see more discussions on it check WPEnginner’s Post.
BTW soon after this post got published, Wordpress 2.9 rare got updated and now Pages can also have Thumbnails.
Include and exclude specific images from Gallery – Earlier Gallery could include images only which were attached to a particular post/page but now you can include/exclude image from gallery by providing the image id. For example to include images with id 5 and 8 and to exclude images with id 20 and 45 just use this shortcode: [gallery include=5,8 exclude=20,45]
in your post content.
Change Excerpt Length and More Text – Wordpress 2.9 Introduces two new filters which will enable you to change excerpt’s length and the default [...] text. For more information, check WPEngineer’s post about it. Check on implementation details at Bavotasan
User can be created via XMLRPC – Now blog editors apart from creating posts and pages will be able to add users.
Category and Tag Templates can now be created as category-catname.php and tag-tagname.php – Previously it could only be created as category-id.php or tag-id.php. where catname and tagname means category and tag slug names and id refers to respective category or tag ids. So no more need to lookup ids and creating templates on them. Templates can be more meaningful now.
No More Threading comments level upto 1 which is uneccessary and confusing.
Add custom contact fields for users – You can now have Twitter link in user profile instead of Jabber ID which you can use to display in custom author boxes! See a small example at Yoast.
Batch Plugin and Theme Updates – Now wordpress allows you to upgrade all your themes and plugins from one place. Check WPEngineer’s post about it.
Custom Theme Directory – Plugins can now register custom theme directories by using ‘register_theme_directory()’ function.
Custom Post Types – Currently there are only 3 types of posts – post/page and attachment. But now one can define additional post types which will unlock more of Wordpress CMS Features.
Comment Metadata – Just as posts and pages carry metadata, comments also now will carry metadata.

For Complete List of Features coming in 2.9, check Codex Page.

Google Sitelinks for NSpeaks

Navjot Singh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:04:03 +0000

Though I have lost interest on how much NSpeaks is ranking at various places but yesterday I was answering somebody about Sitelinks and then I checked Google Webmasters Tools. I was surprised to see that NSpeaks has now 8 sitelinks. Here’s the screenshot:

Sitelinks is a feature where Google discovers some helpful links about the site and links to them directly under the site’s name in search results. Sitelinks are generated automatically and only for sites which are considered popular and authority sites by Google.

Kudos, so Google thinks finally NSpeaks is a Authority Site. Now need to write even better content.

[NOTE: Pagerank is also 4 now instead of 3…just a small update – nice addition.]

Get Google Wave Invites

Navjot Singh — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:30:36 +0000

Most of you have heard of Google Wave. It is a realtime collaboration tool to network and share with your friends and colleagues. If you ask me, its pure and real use is mostly to business users since they will find its concept highly useful. Now I have about 10 invites to share with you. Will share more if response is good. Here’s what you have to do in order to get Wave Invites:

Follow @nspeaks at Twitter and Tweet this(without quotes): “RT @nspeaks Get Free Google Wave Invite by entering a simple giveaway: http://bit.ly/41WGvD“
Comment here with your Twitter link and comment why you want a Google wave invite.

You need to do both to be eligible for getting a invite. Doing any one of the above won’t make you eligible for the invite.

10 Commenters will be chosen randomly on 1 November, 2009 and will be send Google Wave invites.

Things to remember before entering:

Wave invite will take atleast 2-10 days after I nominate you. They don’t come immediately.
When commenting, write your name in name field and not your business name. Otherwise, comment will be marked as spam and be barred from contest.

Proof that I have Wave Invites: I will not give all invites here. Some I have reserved for my friends and family.

UPDATE: – Contest closed, winners will be announced soon.

Ok, here are the winners:

You will receive your invites in next 4-6 days. Here is the confirmation that your invites are on your way:

All winners will also be notified by Twitter.

Thanks to everybody for entering the contest. A similar giveaway may be out soon – bigger and better.

Wordpress 2.8.5 Released

Navjot Singh — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:07:05 +0000

Wordpress 2.8.5 has been released. Termed as Hardening Release, this version fixes a critical exploit related to Trackback type Attacks which happened on several blogs recently. Hackers tried to overload the server by sending multiple requests via Trackbacks. So its recommended that you upgrade your blogs immediately. There are several other bug fixes apart from the Trackback DOS Attack Fix. (Yes for some strange reason, attack has been named DOS Attack). Read the original Post from Wordpress.org Blog about the release.

Top 5 Reasons not to use Fantastico for Installing Wordpress

Navjot Singh — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:01:22 +0000

I see lot of friends and bloggers using and recommending Fantastico for installing Wordpress or any other script as its easy and takes only few clicks without even the need to upload any file or make databases. Well I always am against the idea of using Fantastico for installing Wordpress or other scripts. There are several reasons I can quote as to why not use it. First please look at them:

Updated versions of Wordpress or any script are not immediately released on Fantastico and it can have a delay of several days when the latest version of a script arrives on Fantastico and if you remember the release of 2.8.4 Wordpress, delay of a few days can be fatal for your blog given the kind of security loophole that was found in 2.8.3 and versions below it.
Fantastico bypasses almost all settings used for installing and directly takes to you to the installed script and you can lose quite a few setting options which you could have chosen had you done manuall install. Now in case of Wordpress, you can’t choose the custom setting while install to keep your blog private. You need to do it manually via Settings panel from Wp-Dashboard afterwards and keeping in mind that it was turned off in last few versions of Wordpress, many users found their blog not being indexed in search engines and lost quite a lot of traffic.
You will never learn to configure or install script if needed in emergency – Choosing Fantasctio every time will make you think installing php scripts is a breeze and you may never try to bother learning to install it manually. Doing manual install can make you aware of lot of common problems and tweaks you can use to improve script performance or even troubleshoot yourself in case of a problem later.
You can not customise database options while installing. For example, you can’t choose a descriptive name for your database, database prefix or even tell fantastico to use a existing database user.
Fantastico does not know how to do upgrades – Well this is one thing Fantastico does worse. It does not know how to perform perfect upgrades since they never created those scripts. It can work sometimes or break the install completely on next time. In case you have modified any core file or done some hack, Fantastico won’t upgrade the script in such case.

Here are my top 5 reasons to not to use Fantastico to install Wordpress or any other script. Though you may find it very easy on first use, in the long run it can do damage to your sites and your knowledge of scripts. Does Fantastico works for you or even you are against it? Please share your comments.

10 Unusual Wordpress Widget Plugins

Navjot Singh — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:11:03 +0000

[tweetmeme]There are thousands of useful plugins for Wordpress which you may come across but there are some unusual plugins for Wordpress. I am listing 10 such unusual wordpress plugins especially which work as sidebar widgets.

FaceThumb – This plugin allows visitors to take a snapshot of themselves with their webcams and upload it to the blog and blog stores all uploaded thumbnails on a page.
FreeLance Status – This plugin can show your freelance status in sidebar to show whether you are available or not. This plugin is unusual since one can use a simple text widget for it.
Men Quotes on Women – This plugin will show random quotes from men about women.
Women Quotes – And if you think that women are left behind, you are wrong. Here is women version of Men Quotes plugin.
Mood Personalizer – This plugin lets you show your mood in your blog’s sidebar.
Dave’s Whizmatronic Widgulating Calibrational Scribometer – This plugin lets you post your progress towards a goal and show it up in sidebar.
Tagnetic Poetry – You must have seen lot of Tag Cloud plugins but this one takes the cake. This shows Tags in a cool visual poetic format. You can even drag the tags to connect words to make a sentence. It uses Flash to display both tags and categories.
My Worst Posts – You may have come across plugins to show popular posts or top posts. But what about your worst posts? This plugin lets you share your worst posts or least commented posts. Maybe someone’s interested. Don’t worry if it says compatible upto 2.1, it works on latest wordpress too.
Wordics: Page Summary – This plugin generates a tag cloud from some specific words on a page. This plugin can particulary help you if you want to visualise how search engines see your blog and what words are being considered important on a page.
TwitterFountain – Generates a visual cool flash show containing tweets about a certain topic with background photos from Flickr about a specified category. Just specifiy category for Tweets and Flickr and see its cool effects. It can also be used on any site apart from Wordpress – visit TwitterFountain for details.

My Notes

Navjot Singh — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:14:03 +0000

I have launched a new blog which more or less acts like a twitter stream but sans the communication but with more emotions. Its called N Notes or My Notes as I should call it. It contains random thoughts from my mind. I will share interesting quotes, links, photos and videos on a daily basis. Its more like a diary which will be updated regularly.

Enjoy!

My Notes

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