Efficient Related Posts 0.3.4 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on November 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

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 2.1.3 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on November 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

The new Twitter Widget Pro support forum has turned up some great ideas and has helped catch some easily missed bugs. This latest release of Twitter Widget Pro includes a bugfix that removes a duplicate closing tag for the title link, which was caught by someone in the forums, as well as an enhancement that makes the date format a per-widget setting (also suggested int he forums).

If you want to request a feature, or need support, go to the Twitter Widget Pro Forum. For more information, go to the Twitter Widget Pro page.

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Twitter Widget Pro 2.1.2 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on November 15, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

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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Twitter Widget Pro 2.1.1 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on November 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

Recently, a Twitter Widget Pro user (alx) asked on the support forum for a new feature. He wanted to be able to have all the links open in a new window, and that’s a great idea! I just released version 2.1.1 of Twitter Widget Pro with this exact feature. If you want to request a feature, or need support, go to the Twitter Widget Pro Forum. For more information, go to the Twitter Widget Pro page.

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Twitter Widget Pro 2.1.0 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on November 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

I just tagged a new version of Twitter Widget Pro which includes an oft-requested feature, a twitter-widget shortcode. You can now embed a twitter widget into any post or page by simply dropping in a shortcode like [twitter-widget username="xavisys"] to embed a widget like this:


Tweets from Xavisys

To read more about how to use the shortcodes and to download the plugin, go to the Twitter Widget Pro page. For support, go to the Twitter Widget Pro Forum

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Efficient Related Posts 0.3.2 Released

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on August 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

Version 0.3.2 of Efficient Related Posts was just released. Due to popular demand, it now has a shortcode to add add the list of posts anywhere shortcodes are supported in the loop. The readme was also updated to answer some of the common usage questions and to explain how to use the new shortcode.

The best place to find information is on the Efficient Related Posts page which is updated regularly. However, here are some of the new FAQs.

How can I add a list of related posts to my posts?

You can configure Efficient Related Posts to add related posts automatically in Settings -> Related Posts. Alternatively you can use the shortcode [relatedPosts] or the helper functions wp_get_related_posts() and wp_related_posts() in your theme files.

How exactly do you use the [relatedPosts] shortcode?

To use the default settings (from Settings -> Related Posts) you just need to add [relatedPosts] to your post or page where you want to list to be. You can also add some attributes to it such as num_to_display (Number of related posts to display), no_rp_text (Text to display if there are no related posts), and title (Title for related posts list, empty for none) like this:

  • [relatedPosts title="Most Related Post" num_to_display="1"]
  • [relatedPosts num_to_display="1" no_rp_text="No Related Posts Found"]
  • [relatedPosts title="Try these related posts:" num_to_display="3" no_rp_text="No Related Posts Found"]

How do the theme helper functions work?

You can use wp_get_related_posts() and wp_related_posts() to display a list of related posts in your theme. They need to be used in “the loop” and the only difference is that wp_get_related_posts() returns the list and wp_related_posts() echos the list. You can also pass an associative array of arguments to it such as num_to_display (Number of related posts to display), no_rp_text (Text to display if there are no related posts), and title (Title for related posts list, empty for none) like this:

  • wp_related_posts(array('title'=>'Most Related Post', 'num_to_display'=>1))
  • echo wp_get_related_posts(array('num_to_display'=>1, 'no_rp_text'=>'No Related Posts Found'))
  • wp_related_posts(array('title'=>'Most Related Post', 'num_to_display'=>3, 'no_rp_text'=>'No Related Posts Found'))

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WordPress Twitter Widget Pro 1.3.0 released!

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on April 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

I just uploaded version 1.3.0 of my WordPress Twitter Widget Pro plugin. It has been updated to allow HTML in the title and error message, which will allow for more inventive titles (like the one currently being used in the sidebar here). Additionally, the plugin no longer relies on you having a caching solution installed and set up. It now caches the tweets for 5 minutes using the built-in blog options functionality. Twitter limits the number of requests you can make in any given hour, so this caching should greatly reduce the number of times you see the “twitter not available” error message. Lastly, we phased out the old Snoopy class in favor of the new HTTP class.

Please discuss this plugin on the WordPress Twitter Widget page.

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Twitter Widget Pro 1.2.2 Released!

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on June 26, 2008 · 10 Comments 

I just uploaded version 1.2.2 of my WordPress Twitter Widget Pro plugin. Since twitter has slowed down, a lot of people (especially on slower servers) have been getting the “Could not connect to Twitter” message when twitter was slow but not down. I’ve added a setting on each widget to specify the number of seconds to wait for Twitter. It still defaults to 2 seconds, but you may have to bump it up. Just remember that when twitter IS down, it will try for that full amount of time to reach them BEFORE your page loads, so don’t set it too high!

Please discuss this plugin on the WordPress Twitter Widget post.

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WordPress Google Analytics 1.2.2 Released!

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on June 13, 2008 · 7 Comments 

I just uploaded version 1.2.2 of my WordPress Google Analytics plugin. It squashes one major bug that has been plaguing some users. Those that switch back and forth from visual to HTML editor, will not longer have problems with it getting stuck!

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WordPress Twitter Widget Pro 1.2.1 released!

Posted by Aaron D. Campbell on June 9, 2008 · 2 Comments 

I just uploaded version 1.2.1 of my WordPress Twitter Widget Pro plugin. It includes the removal of the “friends feed” option, the addition of custom error message setting for when Twitter is down, and optional anonymous statistics collection (more on this in a moment). Unfortunately, the database query that Twitter had to run to retrieve these feeds was contributing to their constant crashes. They have removed this functionality, and have no immediate plans to add it back. If they ever do, I’ll redo the plugin to use it. I’m sorry, but it’s completely out of my hands.

Regarding the anonymous statistics collection, as my plugins are getting more and more popular (1000s of users now), I’m struggling to keep in touch with my plugin users. Gathering some statistics will help me to design my plugins to meet the needs of the users. This is not meant as an invasion of privacy, and you can easily disable it from the options page.
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