WordPress 2.9 has just crossed 3 million downloads, and had 140+ contributors to its code base for that release cycle. I have the unique distinction of being the person responsible for removing the word ‘janky’from the UI for this release. Infosec posted an article naming all of the contributors to WordPress 2.9 they could track down.
Since more than one person has asked me for my Nginx Virtual Host recipe for WordPress sites, I’m posting it here. Be sure to change domain.tld to your actual domain name. The wildcard record will allow your site to respond to ANY sudomain request, which may not be something you want.
You’ll also need to change the path to your log files, as well as the path to your public webroot folder. Finally, up the client_max_body_size to match your upload_max_filesize and post_max_size settings in php.ini.
Finally, this assumes you are running your PHP fast cgi process on port 9000.
This is the recipe for WordPress (single site). I’ve also posted one for Drupal and WordPress MU / BuddyPress.
Download Nginx vhost Recipe for WordPress
Please post ways to improve this in the comments. I use this on a number of production sites, but there is always more one can do. Thanks to all of the blogs and articles that I ripped off helped me understand Nginx and got me started.
The underlying architecture of the WordPress content storage and retrieval systems provide a flexible and powerful way of creating all manner of sites.
This talk is an overview of that capability and stern reminder that its not about the WordPress plugins you install, but the Information Architecture you implement that will make your site a success or not.
If you’re using the Shared Users Table trick to create an ad-hoc blog network, then you need to be using WP-Orphange. When you set the constants CUSTOM_USER_TABLE and CUSTOM_USER_META_TABLE in your wp-config.php file, your users can log into any blog that defines the same Users table. However, if the blog isn’t the one they registered on they won’t be assigned any Roles or Capabilities on the other blogs, and they will be shown an error. I call these users ‘orphans.
WP-Orphanage is a WordPress plugin that automatically adopts all of your orphans automatically, and will set a Role for them on the blog they are trying to log into. You have control over which Role they are set to in wp-admin.
The v1.1 update fixes a bug introduced in the option screen in v1.0.1 and is recommended for all users of this plugin.
Many thanks to Vince from Alphak.net – Born to Be Wired for reporting this error and helping me debug the solution.
How Not To Build a Plugin by Will Norris
Spotted on WordPress TV. Lots of examples of how to make your plugin less flexible, less secure, and more prone to misbehaving.
Video After The Jump
If you’ve implemented the Shared User Table trick in WordPress by defining CUSTOM_USER_TABLE and CUSTOM_USER_META_TABLE in your wp-config file, then you’ve probably realized there is a serious draw back to this approach when building a blog network: Users who sign up on one blog do not get any privileges on any of the other blogs in your network. This is by design, but you don’t have to leave it at that.
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Or how to create a blog network with out WordPress Multi-User.
Almost 2 years ago, I was charged with the duty of building an integrated Blog network with WordPress, for the Parents Everywhere Network. WordPress MU wasn’t quite ready for prime time, as most plugins hadn’t been ported over, and documentation was sparse, and only the bravest of souls wanted to tangle with it. Remember, this was back before WP and MU development were in sync. So I had to come up with another way.
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v0.10 of XEN Carousel, the WordPress plugin to allow you to associate images with Posts or Pages, and display those images (linked to the Post) in a Slideshow / Carousel, powered by jCarousel Lite, has been released.
I was able to address a bug pointed out by one of my users (Thanks Connor!), and also minified all of the JavaScripts, so it should also load a bit faster, too. The plugin is still in its early stages, and should be considered alpha software, but I’ve already begun to use it on some of the sites I’ve been working on lately.
I’ve updated my K2 Hook Up WordPress plugin to include support for two of the latest K2 Hooks: template_primary_begin and template_primary_end. You need to be running the latest version of K2 to take advantage of it, but once you are, K2 Hook Up will help you target over 10 regions in your theme with the content of your choosing – without having to edit any files. Current Users will be able to auto-update from wp-admin. New Users can get started here.
For developers looking to contribute to the plugin, K2 Hook Up is now on GitHub, so fork the project and send me a pull request with your changes.
I started moving my open source code over to GitHub, since it supports working with contributors in a natural, but controlled manner. However, for many of my WordPress plugins I already have a local working copy, since they are hosted in the WordPress plugin repository to support auto-update. I didn’t want to disrupt my svn working copy, nor did I want to start fresh in github.
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