Philip John » Plugins

New WordPress plugin: Restore Admin Header

Philip John — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:39:18 +0000

WordPress v3.3 removed the header from the admin interface, merging it with the admin bar.

This meant that the link to your site’s front page was taken away and you now have to go through drop down menus to get to the link.

Instead, this plugin puts that link back onto your admin interface.

Download now!

Copyright © 2008
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only.
The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 91abf54e823c3ccd52804d27e0b0c59c (38.107.179.214) )

WordPress Author Bio Shortcode v1.2 plugin released

Philip John — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:21:04 +0000

I finally got round to updating this quick-release Author Bio Shortcode plugin. The main changes are background stuff and making sure it’s compatible with the latest version of WordPress (v3.2.1 as I type).

One important feature is that I’ve locked in compatibility only to v3.2.1 and older. If you’re using a version of WordPress prior to 3.2.1 you won’t be able to activate. Upgrade!

Secondly, while the original version only allowed you to place the bio of the current post’s author (i.e. it would print my bio here because I’m the author of this post), you can now specify an author using one of three methods.

Here’s some examples…

Show the current post author’s bio:

[author_bio]

Display the author bio of the author with user ID #4:

[author_bio id="4"]

Display the author bio of the author whose username is ‘bobby’:

[author_bio username="bobby"]

Display the bio of the author whose e-mail address is me@example.com:

[author_bio email="me@example.com"]

This is really useful for creating a “team” page on your site.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback, leave them here or on the WordPress.org forums.

If you use it and it works, please leave a rating and mark it as working on it’s WordPress.org plugin page!

WordPress Plugin: Author Bio Shortcode

Philip John — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:37:59 +0000

I’ve just written a quick and simple plugin. It provides a shortcode which, when inserted into a post or page, will print out the bio of the author as provided in their profile.

You can download from WordPress.org now.

Any issues/requests, use the comments below.

Add a shortlink to the end of your WordPress posts

Philip John — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:14:21 +0000

Once again, that Andy Mabbett has given me the reason to knock out a quick WordPress plugin.

This one prints out a “Shortlink for this post” link (see screenshot) to the end of all your posts. It uses WordPress’ built in shortlink feature which doesn’t always produce very short URLs so you’ll want to use one of the shortener plugins alongside it.

You should also consider activating this shortlink plugin too which adds machine-readable references to the shortlink in the code for each page.

Download the plugin here and then,

Unzip and upload add-shortlink-to-posts.php to your /wp-content/plugins directory
Login to your dashboard
Go to Plugins and activate the Add Shortlink to Posts plugin
Check it works okay

WARNING: This has not been tested extensively and may well cause a black hole to open up and swallow your dog. Ensure you have a back up before trying out any untested plugins like this one.

If you do get it working, I’d appreciate you letting me know in the comments including what version of WordPress you are using and whether it’s a Multisite or not.

Schedule Selected Content for WordPress: Perfect for live events!

Philip John — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:13:17 +0000

Yet another excellent plugin from the folks at WPMU DEV*

This allows you to specify certain portions of a post or page to be hidden until a certain time.

Just like you can schedule posts to be published at a certain time, you can use this plugin to schedule content at a particular time.

Here’s some example where you might use it;

To live-blog an event using CoveritLive or a similar tool without showing the embed until the event is about to start
You might do a show on an internet radio station every Monday 4-7pm and you could use this to show/hide the live stream according to those times on your own site.
To hide the entry form for a competition that has a defined closing date and time.

It’s a premium plugin but if you get the full membership with WPMU DEV it’s well worth it, believe me!

*Disclaimer: I work for Incsub, the company behind WPMU DEV and all links to them on this post are affiliate links.

Building a hyperlocal business directory: call for suggestions

Philip John — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:23:37 +0000

I’ve long been planning to build a hyperlocal directory for The Lichfield Blog and something which can be used by other hyperlocals.

B31 Blog launched their business directory the other day using a simple form submission and manual entry of listings. Owner Sas Taylor complained on Twitter about the lack of a decent business directory plugin, something I’m well aware of.

So when I mentioned I have been planning my own I got a few excited responses and figured if there’s interest why not ask those interested what they’d like in a directory.

Let’s start off with fields;

Name (of the business, of course!)
Address (incl postcode, of course)
Phone number
Fax number
Mobile number
E-mail address
Opening times
Contact name
Web site address
Description
Wheelchair/disabled access?
Toilets?
Disabled toilet?
Photo
Location(s) (pinpoint on a map)
Twitter
Facebook
Foursquare

Features

Ratings
Reviews
Maps (using postcode/address)
Search, with filters
Show directory as;
- a list,
- categories,
- a map.

Options

Toggle visibility of fields
Payment option (to charge for listings)
Paid-for upgrades (e.g. add additional photos/info)
Use opening-times.co.uk for opening times so we simultaneously build up that site (which I made a plugin for)
Pre- or post-moderate listing submissions

Any others? Add your suggestions to the comments below…

WordPress plugin: Show blogroll links in a post or page with ease!

Philip John — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:00:22 +0000

I’ve decided to start blogging when I find or use a really good plugin that I think people should know about, this being the first!

WP Render Blogroll Links allows you to add a simple shortcode to a blog post or page to display a list of links. You can see an example of it in use on Journal Local.

The plugin has a wide range of customisation options including;

Show/hide category titles
Include/exclude categories
Show/hide descriptions
Customise order of links
Show descriptions alongside, or below, links
Add ‘rel’ attributes to links

All of these are detailed in the clear and comprehensive FAQs. You can download the plugin from WordPress.org.

New hyperlocal WordPress plugin: OpeningTimes.co.uk

Philip John — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:05:52 +0000

I received a tweet the other day from the wonderful Andy Mabbett. It read;

http://opening-times.co.uk/ is very #hyperlocal oriented. They’re on Twitter: @opening_times / @willperrin @getgood (widget, @philipjohn ?)

So I toddled over to the Opening Times web site and had a gander, found some XML there and thought to myself,

Hmm that’ll only take five minutes.

It took twenty but I created a very simple widget for WordPress that displays search results for an area you specify. Here’s a screenshot:

A screenshot of the opening times widget

You can download it now although be aware that it’s in beta so it might throw up errors occasionally. I already know that it doesn’t handle postcodes very well, so be careful with using them.

If you have any thoughts/suggestions/comments/criticisms, add a comment below!

OpenAustralia plugin for WordPress

Philip John — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:57:32 +0000

I’m delighted that after my release last week of my TheyWorkForYou.com plugin for WordPress, Henare Degan has created an adaptation which provides the same functionality but using OpenAustralia, an Australian version of TheyWorkForyou.com.

You can download the plugin from Henare’s github, just click on “download” at the top and select “ZIP” then follow these instructions on how to install it.

Hopefully as I build more features onto my TheyWorkForYou plugin, Henare and I can apply them to the OpenAustralia one too. Fantastic!

GroupsNearYou.com WordPress plugin

Philip John — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:00:29 +0000

This is the last one this week, I promise. For Talk About Local I have just developed a WordPress plugin using the GroupsNearYou.com site. The plugin creates a simple widget which shows the groups in your area, based on a postcode that you provide.

I made a demo video and wrote instructions on how to set the plugin up which have been posted over on the Talk About Local blog, as well as instructions on installing the plugin.

All that’s left to do now is download the plugin (ZIP).

Philip John » Plugins

New WordPress plugin: Restore Admin Header

Related posts:

WordPress Author Bio Shortcode v1.2 plugin released

Related posts:

WordPress Plugin: Author Bio Shortcode

Related posts:

Add a shortlink to the end of your WordPress posts

Related posts:

Schedule Selected Content for WordPress: Perfect for live events!

Related posts:

Building a hyperlocal business directory: call for suggestions

Related posts:

WordPress plugin: Show blogroll links in a post or page with ease!

Related posts:

New hyperlocal WordPress plugin: OpeningTimes.co.uk

Related posts:

OpenAustralia plugin for WordPress

Related posts:

GroupsNearYou.com WordPress plugin

Related posts: