So, I wrote another WordPress plugin, Featured Blog Authors. I am waiting to get it approved for the directory, but I am releasing it here for now. More info to come.

latest.zip

So, after googling for an INSANE amount of time for what seemed to be a fairly simple task – how to remove the sidebar all-together from the WordPress Thesis Template – I finally figured it out on my own. So, for you other frustrated Thesis users out there that are looking for this info – here it is – and you’re going to kick yourself once you see it.

From the Template Dropdown selection – select “No Sidebar” on the page that you don’t want to have sidebar’s on. Pretty stupidly simple, huh? Well, I had tried custom functions and editing of the files, and I am suprised it took ME as long as it did to figure it out. Anyways, until next time.

Enjoy!!!

I recently installed LesterChan’s plugin, WP-Print. It is a great plugin and works wonderfully, but I had just one issue with it. When you click on “Print this Post/Page,” you would be taken to the printer friendly page, but no print dialog would come up. You would have to actually hit Cmd-P (or Ctrl-P for you misguided Windows users) or click the little link at the bottom to get the print dialog.

Well, I wanted something a little more lazy – I mean “user friendly” – so I came up with this nifty little JavaScript. The easiest way to implement it is to put it into the Disclaimer/Copyright Text area on the WP-Print settings page.

<script>function printme() {window.print(); return false;} window.onload=printme;</script>

Enjoy!

Since releasing the WordPress Admin Bar Improved, I have been looking around at the different WordPress Admin Bars that are available to see what I can do to improve mine. Well, I came across the Grand-Daddy of Admin Bars – the Admin Drop Down Menu from Ozh! I had read about it on some blog or another, and decided to check it out for myself. It TOTALLY BLOWS OUT (sorry Viper007Bond) anything I have ever seen before! Not only is it themeable (in a totally awesome sort of way – I mean c’mon, it has it’s own color picker!!!), but it has full API support for developers to add their own custom icon to the menu items created by their extensions!

Much like Viper007Bond, Ozh has NO PLANS on releasing this with front-end support – he does not want this to work if a user is logged out. I have other plans though. I am going to create another plugin that will detect which admin bar you have running (either Ozh’s or Viper007Bond’s) and pull it onto the frontpage if the user is logged in. If the user is not logged in, it will display a login form as well some relevant links for users when they visit your site.

I am not sure when this is going to get done – but I will post updates here.

If you want to help with development, please contact me here. If you want to help even more, you could send me a donation @ dilbert4life@gmail.com. Donation module to come soon.

There have been many comments over at Viper007Bond’s site requesting that he modify his admin bar to work site-wide, whether the user is logged in or not. He has repeatedly said that that was not the purpose of his plugin, and that it would not be supported. Well, I want to thank Viper007 for releasing his extension via GNU GPL, graciously allowing modifcations and re-releases as long as they are also GNU GPL. So that’s what I did.

I present to you the WordPress Admin Bar Improved. It allows for site-wide use, whether the user is logged in or not, and if they aren’t logged in, gives them a log in form, much like the one seen on WordPress.com or Blogger.

I will write up more later, but all you really need to know is that you need to unzip the files, and upload them to your wp-plugins folder. If you are installing it on WordPress MU, do the same thing, and then move the wordpress-admin-bar-improved.php file to the mu-plugins folder.

Enjoy!

You can always download the latest from here:
Latest.zip

Or you can get it direct from WordPress here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-admin-bar-improved/

Or you can install it from your Plugins->Add New page by searching for WordPress Admin Bar Improved.

I have been getting into WordPress MU recently, and came across and awesome plugin, the WordPress Admin Bar, that I wanted to utilize for my site. However, one functionality that I wanted to add to it is the ability for it to be viewed on the frontend even when a user was not logged in. Well, I did some hacking, and came up with this. It only works if you have WordPress 2.8 or higher.

Here is my original comment to Viper,

Great plugin! I love it. I too, like many here, want to be able to show it even if the person is logged in or not, and give them the option to log in if they want to. Well, since WordPress 2.8, this is now possible by editing 1 line in your code and commenting out another.

For those of you who want to have it show whether the person is logged out, just comment out line 49 (the one that says if ( !current_user_can(‘read’) ) return;) and then edit line 436.

Old Line 436

<li><a href="<?php echo wp_logout_url(); ?>"><?php _e('Log Out'); ?></a></li>

New Line 436

<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>

I was having some issues with my WordPress after installing WP-Cache and Referrer Detector together. None of my referring links worked correctly! Nothing would show up when I linked to my site from an external site, and it was quite frustrating. I automatically assumed that it was because of WP-Cache, so I disabled it. And sure enough, after that, Referrer Detector worked just fine. So I set about googling to figure out if there was a way to integrate Referrer Detector and WP-Cache, and was coming up empty for a while.

I eventually pulled up a post from the maker of Referrer Detector and found out that he CODED IT TO WORK WITH CACHING ENABLED! There is nothing you have to do to “hack it” to make it work. To get it working, follow the steps laid out below.

1. Install Referrer Detector.
2. Install WP-Cache (if it is not already installed).
• If it is installed, disable it, delete the caches, and the re-enable it.
3. Enjoy your new Referrer Detector Extension!

And Seriously, that is all that there is to it.