The Xavisys WordPress Plugin Framework
A few months ago I was chatting with Joost de Valk and he was talking about a new plugin toolkit that he was making. The basic idea was to make a flexible base that he could use to build on for all his plugins. It would handle all the tasks that are common to all his plugins (options page, dashboard widget, etc) and still be easily extended so each plugin could handle more specific tasks as well. Now his plugins (at least some of them) use his toolkit.
It was a great idea, and I finally got around to writing one for my own plugins. I built it as an abstract class (and a tiny CSS file) that I extend for each plugin. Here you’ll get to see a quick tour of what the framework does. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in seeing a walkthrough of how it was built, and feel free to download Efficient Related Posts to see it in action.
Efficient Related Posts 0.3.4 Released
We just released version 0.3.4 of the Efficient Related Posts plugin for WordPress. It uses the new Xavisys Plugin Framwork (I’ll post more info on that soon), which gives it a nice new options page, links to the support forums, etc. We also did a lot of the work toward internationalizing it, and hopefully it will be fully translatable int he next version (coming soon).
If you want to request a feature, or need support, go to the Efficient Related Posts Support Forum. More information is available on the Efficient Related Posts page.
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Twitter Widget Pro 2.1.2 Released
There was a small formatting issue introduced in Twitter Widget Pro 2.1.0 where there were no spaces between the tweet and meta data or between the date of the tweet and where the tweet was from (such as “from TweetDeck”). When I added the shortcode functionality I had to remove a lot of the excess whitespace so that the formatting built in to WordPress didn’t mess up the formatting of the widget when it was embedded in a post or page. I just released version 2.1.2 that fixed the spacing without messing up the formatting for the shortcodes.
I also added in some links to the WordPress Twitter Widget Pro Support Forum to make it easier for you to ask questions or make suggestions or requests. For more information, go to the Twitter Widget Pro page.
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CSS Trick: Turning a background image into a clickable link
One of the things I most often get asked by people trying to master HTML and CSS is “How do I make a background image clickable?” It’s easy to wrap a regular image tag in a link, but what if your design or situation required that you use a background image? It’s actually quite simple. Just follow these steps and I’ll show you how to make a clickable background image like this:
Howto: Create and Stream a CSV with PHP
I find myself constantly creating csv files for users to download. Whether it’s a method for users to export their data to excel, a way for users to backup their hosted data, or just a simple way to send them report information, csv files are extremely useful. Normally I just create an actual file and link to it for the user to download. The files are usually cleaned up after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of newer files exist.
Recently however, I had a client that really wanted to be able to export data in csv format without ever creating a file on the webserver. Their concern was rooted in security, but the reality of the matter was that they were trying to obey the letter of the law with regards to company policies. Whether it was truly necessary or not is for another discussion. Instead, the technique is actually very useful so I thought I’d share.
The key to this is that the fopen function supports php input/output streams as wrappers.
10 Great WordPress Plugins
Posted by AaronCampbell on November 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment
One of the greatest things about WordPress is how extensible it is through it’s plugin system. There’s a plugin for almost everything. There are more than 4,400 plugins just in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory and there are plenty more that aren’t in the directory. Unfortunately, sometimes there are so many plugins that it makes it hard to find the best WordPress plugins in the massive sea of options. Here are some of my favorite overall plugins.
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