I am neither the first nor the last one that will be writing about placing twitter follower counter in webpage. Though there already exist many widgets anyone can easily use and customize; see here and here; But those widgets have limited options in terms of color, layout and moreover they have their info attched (somewhere) in widget which does not feels good. Here’s my attempt on how to get follower count in twitter using PHP.
Easy availability of thousands of Plugins and support are one of the reason behind success of WordPress. In case if you find trouble with then don’t panic because there are hundred thousands of developers for your support via forums, blog posts. But wait, there are thousands of plugins in WordPress Plugin directory; Do you need them all? Simple answer is NO. The selection of plugin depends on the requirement of the project. For e.g; I use WP125 plugin for ads et cetera.
I am making a list of plugins that I use frequently in my most of the projects and recommend buyers to use.
After two months long work, StudioPress finally come up with a bang with new Genesis Theme Framework. Along with it, they have released two child themes Executive and Mocha to add up design flavor and extensibility to core theme. Overall, it looks great addition to theme list. As per them, new framework is created keeping BuddyPress extensibility in mind. I won’t be surprised if they offer BuddyPress theme using this framework.
Theme Junkie released clean news premium WordPress theme. The theme named ‘Portal‘ includes features like auto thumbnail generation, featured content slider, built in advertising, theme option panel and more.
Price:
- Standard Package: $19.95
- All Theme Package: $49.95
I wasn’t surprised when one of my buyer asked me if there’s a way to hide features like tags, comments widgets. Its not uncommon in a simple CMS based projects where tags and comments widgets are seldom needed. Hence, I came up with a simple trick to hide those widgets.
Basically I used help of CSS ‘display:none’ to achieve it. I created a function ‘hide_wp_tags_from_admin’ and then I added this filter to to admin head using WordPress automatically adds <p> tag for each line breaks within a post or page. For some, this filter can be a headache for their particular project. 
I quickly googled and fixed it by adding following code in function.php
remove_filter('the_content', 'wpautop');
;)
Last week I wrote about how to disable WordPress RSS feed completely from end users. Sometimes there are cases where we want posts from certain categories not to publish in RSS feed; we just wish to unpublish post in feed.
There are 2 ways to disable categories in feeds.
1. If you’re a feedburner user
You’ll have to edit the original feed source in your feedburner account like below;
http://designgala.com/feed?cat=-7&cat=-18
Above URL would exclude posts from categories with ID 7 and 18
2. From standard RSS feed
In order to use this method, you need to add following code in function.php of your active theme.
/** * disable RSS feed */ function exclude_categories_in_feed($query) { if ($query->is_feed) { $query->set('cat','-7,-18'); return $query; } add_filter('pre_get_posts','exclude_categories_in_feed');
I hope this was short but cool wordpress hack to exclude categories from RSS feed.
RSS feed is one of the best feature of WordPress for sharing post. But there are cases where feeds either have little importantce or does not have any roles to play as in static websites, CMS. For all who do not need RSS feature in WordPress it can be disabled with a little effort.
Step 1:
Create a new function in function.php located in your active theme folder like below:
/** * disable RSS feed */ function wp_disable_feed() { wp_die( __('Sorry, no feeds available, return to <a href="'. get_bloginfo('url') .'">homepage</a>') ); } add_action('do_feed', 'wp_disable_feed', 1); add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'wp_disable_feed', 1); add_action('do_feed_rss', 'wp_disable_feed', 1); add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'wp_disable_feed', 1); add_action('do_feed_atom', 'wp_disable_feed', 1);
I told you. Its very easy to disable feeds.
I was just checking in for WordPress plugin for embedding video for one of my client. And I came with the following cool plugin list. All of these plugin allows to embed videos from sites like YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, Metacafe and many others; in very easy way.
1. Viper’s Video Quicktags
This plugin adds on new buttons to the rich text editor on WordPress. In order to embed a video, you just need to paste the video URL into the prompt box. With this plugin you can also fully configure the width, height, colors and alignment on the page.
Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/
2. FLV Embed
This plugin supports video sitemap generation, includes options such as auto start and menu control bar. It also supports text only output for RSS that prompt readers to visit the original post for Flash content.
Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flv-embed/
3. Interactive Video Plugin
Apart from video embed this plugin also includes the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor. You can even enable video responses, manage and track your video content.
Includes custom sizing of the video player, advanced sharing options and allow readers and subscribers to add video and audio comments.
Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/kaltura-interactive-video/
4. Flash Video Player
This plugin allows the addition of videos into WordPress by using a menu with post-level overrides for customization of size, background color etc. Give up your style wishes once, and you never ever have to manually style a video again.
Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flash-video-player/
5. Video Embedder
To embed a video using this plugin, all you need is the ID of the video. With this plugin you can manage the settings for all of your embedded movies from the WordPress settings for Video Embedder, the properties for all the movies will be updated instantly as soon as you save the settings.
Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video-embedder/
Missed Any? Let us know.
Whenever I work with WordPress and needed SQL hacks, have found this article very helpful. True said that there are cases when it becomes inevitable to run SQL queries directly to get things done despite of availability of many plugins.
Here are collection of my favorite WordPress SQL hacks.
1. Batch Delete Post Revisions:
Post revisions are very useful but they also increase the size of your MySQL database. You can manually delete revisions, but that’s very long and boring work.
SQL:
DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";
2. Erase all Spam Comments:
Even though I have differnt plugins like AKismet, reCaptcha; I’ve always had very hard times dealing with spam. This solution made me very happy when I first used.
SQL:
DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = '0';
3. Manually Reset Your admin Password:
SQL:
UPDATE `wp_users` SET `user_pass` = MD5('mypassword') WHERE `wp_users`.`user_login` =`admin` LIMIT 1;
4. Change Your WordPress Address:
I often use this hack very often. There are many cases when project development is done in demo site address. When we need to make it live; there’s already lots of data (testing + live) and its necessary to run following SQL to get things going.
4.a. changes WordPress URL:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, 'http://www.oldsite.com', 'http://www.newsite.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
4.b. Replace the relative URL (guid) of each post:
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, 'http://www.oldsite.com','http://www.newsite.com');
4.c. Search and replace in the wp_posts table to make sure that no absolute URL is still here:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'http://www.oldsite.com', 'http://www.newsite.com');
We’re done changing WordPress Address. I am sure you do have your own collection of fav SQL hacks.
