I launched a new WordPress plugin to export a blog’s comments. Specifically, this plugin creates a tab-delimited text version of the wp_comments database table. Options include approved, pending or spam (or any combination of) comments.
This page will soon expand. For now…
I learned something today about WordPress that I would like to share. The “break comments into pages” feature can create duplicate content for all posts that have only a single page of comments. I made this graphic to explain exactly what happens.
This plugin redirects users of your WordPress website to any page you like after they publish a new post or log out. You can provide any URL, so the page can even be on a different website altogether.
Landing pages can help coordinate, congratulate or incentivize users who are already interacting with your website.
I have also written a non-free version that includes redirects after leaving a comment and user login in addition to the free features.
I have been using this functionality to thank contributors for their posts, and it works wonderfully. If you are interested in the enhanced feature set, that version is available here for 6$ USD.
I wrote a WordPress plugin to modify the behavior of the recent comments widget. Since WP version 2.8.0, popular widgets have been included as core functionality. I don’t like how the recent comments widget works, so I changed it. Instead of displaying the post titles that received comments, my plugin shows comment excerpts. I made this graphic to show the difference between the default behavior and the effect of this plugin:
Visit this plugin’s page in the official WP plugin directory.
Enjoy!
When a new user creates an account on a wordpress.org blog, the administrator is sent a notification email. Websites that have a large number of signups each day can generate a lot of emails announcing each new user.
I wrote a simple WordPress plugin to disable the new user notification email. Visit this plugin’s page in the official WP Plugins Directory.
I wrote a WordPress plugin that displays a small collection of site stats in a sidebar widget. Here is a screen shot of sample output:
The widget includes a control panel to change the title and format the HTML that is inserted before and after each numerical stat.
This plugin is in the official WordPress Plugin Directory here.
Providing labels is a great way to help users interact with your website properly. I like to put instructional text inside text boxes to save space. Users get annoyed when the text inside the box they click on does not disappear when they are ready to type. Users do not want to backspace default instructional text before typing in boxes, so some code is required to make this happen.
I would like to share two small Javascript functions. The first clears out default text box contents automatically when a user clicks on the box. The second restores the default instructional text if the user leaves the box empty.
Implement these functions using onfocus=”wash(this);” and onblur=”checkWash(this);” on your text input control. You may want to avoid the second function on text fields where input is optional, so the user can leave the text box blank.
function wash( anInput ){
if(anInput.value == anInput.defaultValue) anInput.value = '';
}
function checkWash( anInput ){
if(anInput.value == '') anInput.value = anInput.defaultValue;
}
Look, I made a demo!
To get longitude and latitude coordinates from Bing Maps, follow these steps:
javascript:map.GetCenter()
If you are using a browser with a lot of built-in security roadblocks like Internet Explorer, you may have to acknowledge security warnings before javascript code will execute.
Today, I made a simple flowchart to describe how and why craigslist ads are flagged and removed.
My classic ASP error logging scripts were dead in the water when I moved them to a Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7.0.
Some code like this is useful to record errors in a database:
dim objErrorInfo, errorStringStr
set objErrorInfo = Server.GetLastError
errorStringStr = objErrorInfo.File & ", line: " & objErrorInfo.Line & ", error: " & objErrorInfo.Number & " " & objErrorInfo.Description & ", " & objErrorInfo.ASPDescription & objErrorInfo.Category
errorStringStr = replace( errorStringStr, "'", "''" )
Instead of using the default 500 item in the list, create a new handler for status code 500.100. Point this at your script, and you should be all set to log errors.
Another way is to enter the Error Pages module of the website profile, and click “Edit Feature Settings” on the right hand sidebar.
This screen will appear:
Configure yours in a similar fashion, and Server.GetLastError will start working in your script.
While revamping a PPC advertising account last week, I discovered the lack of a convenient keyword multiplier. I am sure there is some fancy pants way of combining keyword lists in a spreadsheet application, but I find no fun in writing macros for some piece of software.
I installed the Google Adwords desktop editor because it has a built-in keyword multiplier. It sucks. The Goo’s multiplier only combines three lists at a time, and I wanted four. It also automatically removes keywords that have low Google search volume, so if you are using their tool for any other purpose it is rather useless.
I made my own keyword multiplier, and you can use it, too. Please try it out, and let me know if you find it to be a useful keyword tool.
Disguise your email address or any text with this character obfuscation. This code corey@example.com will show up on a web page as [email protected]. You can share your email address without worrying that it will be collected by a spam bot.
Some losers send spam email for a living, and will send garbage to any email they can find online. Obfuscating email addresses in character codes cloaks them from some of the leeches. I decided to create code to automate this task.
Here is an ASP classic function that will convert a string to ASCII characters. PHP code below. These characters will display as normal text to the casual user. The difference between alphabet characters and ASCII characters is that encoded characters must be evaluated before they look like an email address. This thin veil of secrecy is enough to fight off some email harvesters.
public function asciiDisguise( string )
build = ""
for i=1 to len( "" & string )
build = build & "&#" & asc( mid( string, i, 1 )) & ";"
next
asciiDisguise = build
end functionHere is the same function in PHP.
function asciiDisguise( $str ){
$build = "";
for( $i=0;$i<strlen( $str );$i++ ){
$build .= "&#" . ord( substr( $str, $i, 1 )) . ";";
}
return $build;
}