My blog isn’t terribly popular but I do have a good number of links to my plugins which has made me a more visible target for comment spammers. The built-in Wordpress spam filter does a pretty good job but it does nothing to stop bots from hammering my blog and eating up bandwith. One of my friends in my extended blog network had a post that tipped me off to a more active method of spam prevention, Bad Behavior.
Bad Behavior works by analyzing the HTTP requests made by clients and running them through a set of tests like checking the user agent description. Before installing the script I was receiving about 200 spam comments per day and maybe 1 or 2 would slip through per week. Now I’ll get maybe 1 a day in my spam queue. Not sure how much this affects the bandwith the spammers are using but it will definetely save a little on database.
Tagged with: blogging, spam, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Things were getting a little old around the blog so I spruced things up a bit. Ditched the nav bar across the top, it was a bit of a pain to work with. Put login stuff in the sidebar like Nathan has on the Blarg, RSS buttons down at the bottom (which you should use, if you don’t know how or why please ask) and a thing for my flickr account. There should be more changes and more posts coming.
Tagged with: blogging, theme, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Gives you manual control over the order of your Wordpress pages by letting you easily set an explicit order. Works with subpages too. Now with built-in Widget support.
Download My Page Order:
If you find my plugins helpful consider giving a small donation, I provide support in my scarce, spare time.
- Update 3/30/2008: For WP 2.5, I’ve moved all future downloads to the Wordpress Plugin directory. This page will stay up as a testament to this plugin’s popularity over the past 2 years.
- Update 9/30/2007: Checked compatibility with WP 2.3.
- Update 6/30/2007: The release you’ve all been waiting for!!! Built in widget support, hacking the widgets.php file is a thing of the past.
- Update 5/17/2007: Javascript include bug fix, won’t mess up the editor now, redownload if you had the previous 2.1.3 version. 2.2 update coming soon but current version should still be compatible. Things are good with 2.2.
- Update 5/10/2007: Big update! I rewrote the interface and replaced the unfriendly up and down arrows with spiffy new drag and drop ordering. Check it out, definitely worth the upgrade, I’ve only tested on 2.1.3 but it should work on any 2.1.x install.
- Update 1/22/2007: Updated to WP 2.1.
- Update 1/14/2007: Checked compatibility with WP 2.0.6, no changes needed.
- Update 9/8/2006: Checked compatibility with WP 2.0.4, removed annoying javascript popup warning when arrows were clicked without anything selected, pages with no subpages will no longer show up in the dropdown, change to prevent submission if nothing selected in dropdown.
This is my third Wordpress Plugin and I’m continuing with the idea of being able to control the order of how things are displayed. Categories and Links have various means of being ordered, there’s just no way to manually set an order.
Pages on the other hand have a means of specifying an order which was introduced in WP 2.0. The Page Order tab was added on the Write Page screen. The way this ordering is implemented though makes it completely useless. The order doesn’t automatically increment when you start a new page and it is a major pain to insert a page where you want it. Got a new page you want to insert at the top of 25 other pages? Have fun incrementing the order on 25 pages (unless it accepts a negative number which is just another bad idea).
This plugin gives you a simple interface that allows you to arrange the order of your static pages. It uses and sets the same field in the database as WP does so if you have set an order before it will be preserved.
Installation instructions:
- Move mypageorder.php to /wp-content/plugins/
- Activate the My Page Order plugin on the Plugins menu
- Go to the “My Page Order” tab under Manage and specify your desired order for pages
- If you are using widgets then just make sure the “Page” widget is set to order by “Page order”. That’s it.
- If you aren’t using widgets, modify your sidebar template to use correct sort parameter, “sort_column=menu_order”:
wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>’ ); ?>
Sort attribute
In your templates (accessible through the theme editor or downloading the file off the server) there might be several places your list of pages gets outputed. To use your sort order each instance must have the sort column argument set like the following:
wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order’);
That’s it. Out of the box everything is there to make the manual ordering happen, it just needs a better interface to make it less time consuming for the WP user to manage and my plugin is really just a stopgap measure until something better gets built into the WP release.
If you have any problems let me know, I am more than happy to help resolve any issues you may have. I’ll respond to your comment through email so be sure to put a valid email in. Even if you don’t have problems leave a comment or throw a couple bucks to buy some beer.
Tagged with: wordpress
Posted under: Uncategorized
I got quite a number of requests from people asking for a plugin that lets you choose an explicit order for your WP Categories. Geesh, I guess people weren’t content with just being able to set an order for the links and link categories. Check it out at http://geekyweekly.com/mycategoryorder/ or hit the little button underneath my header image that says “WP - My Category Order”.
Tagged with: categories, plugin, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Gives you manual control over the order of your Wordpress post categories by letting you set an explicit order. Works with subcategories too.
Download My Category Order:
If you find my plugins helpful consider giving a small donation, I provide support in my scarce, spare time.
- Update 3/30/2008: For WP 2.5, I’ve moved all future downloads to the Wordpress Plugin directory. This page will stay up as a testament to this plugin’s popularity over the past 2 years.
- Update 2/09/2008: Works with 2.3.3, just copy taxonomy.php again.
- Update 1/22/2008: Fixed a bug that cropped up in the 2.3 release. 2.3.2 is the only version where subcategories are working correctly. Also added Exclude and Include options to the widget so you can specify category ID’s there to exclude or include. Also cleaning house a little on the page, older comments might disappear.
- Update 9/30/2007: Updated to WP 2.3. The category table got nuked this release so you’ll need to go back and order your categories again.
- Update 6/30/2007: The release you’ve all been waiting for!!! Built in widget support, hacking the widgets.php file is a thing of the past. HUGE thanks to Tony for the code, much easier to “widgetize” something than I previously thought.
- Update 5/17/2007: Javascript include bug fix, won’t mess up the editor now, redownload if you had the previous 2.1.3 version. 2.2 update coming soon but current version should still be compatible. Things are good with 2.2.
- Update 5/12/2007: Made some changes to how categories are differentiated between post and link categories. Now any category with 0 links in it is considered a post category, this allows the use of empty categories for better categorization and still have them show up in the plugin. Thanks for the feedback and testing Marci.
- Update 5/10/2007: Big update! I rewrote the interface and replaced the unfriendly up and down arrows with spiffy new drag and drop ordering. Check it out, definitely worth the upgrade, I’ve only tested on 2.1.3 but it should work on any 2.1.x install.
- Update 1/22/2007: Updated to WP 2.1, theme template change needed, see update below.
With the success of my first Wordpress plugin My Link Order, I got a good number of requests asking for something similar that gave control over the order of post categories instead of link categories. I listened and here it is, My Category Order.
Installation instructions:
- Upload the mycategoryorder.php to /wp-content/plugins/ on your server.
- 2.3 and above: move taxonomy.php to /wp-includes/
- Activate the My Category Order plugin on the Plugins menu.
- Plugin tab appears under the Manage menu, give the categories an initial order.
- WIDGETS: Just drop the “My Category Order” widget in your sidebar that gets installed with the plugin and that’s it!
- Modify sidebar template to use new sort attribute, see below.
Sidebar Modification: If you aren’t using widgets then you’ll need to change your template to use the new sort parameter, “orderby=order”:
wp_list_categories(’orderby=order&hierarchical=0&title_li=’);
If you have any problems let me know, I am more than happy to help resolve any issues you may have. I’ll respond to your comment through email so be sure to put a valid email in. Even if you don’t have problems leave a comment or throw a couple bucks to buy some beer.
Tagged with: wordpress
Posted under: Uncategorized
I got an e-mail today from someone who found my My Link Order plugin but wanted to order his pages instead. At first I wasn’t completely sure if you could but a quick look at the core files, database, and WP site answered that question.
Yes, you can set the order in which pages show up in your sidebar, but it is a little clunky. When you edit a page, there is an option to set the “Page Order” to a certain number (in WP 2.0 this is one the collapsable boxes). Now follow these steps:
- Set the Page Order on each page in your desired order.
- Check if that changes the order, if not you will need to make a change to your template to tell it to sort on that order instead of by name.
- Go to Presentation->Theme Editor and select the Sidebar page (I’m assuming this is where your list of pages is being displayed). Find the line that is using a function named wp_list_pages, the whole line should look something like this:<?php wp_list_pages(’title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>’ ); ?>
A parameter to tell it to sort by your order needs to be added:
<?php wp_list_pages(’title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>&sort_column=menu_order’ ); ?>
With that added your pages should now be sorted. I might create a plugin similar to My Link Order to handle the setting of orders because the current way is annoying and very very very user-unfriendly.
Tagged with: blogging, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Probably the most exciting thing that has happened around here in the past month or so is the release of my Wordpress plugin. I spent a good amount of time exchanging e-mail with people about it and I’ve started to get more comments. So what has the plugin done for my site’s traffic? Check out the numbers for yourself, I released it the last few days of January 2006.
Month Unique visitors
Oct-05 76
Nov-05 165
Dec-05 331
Jan-06 329
Feb-06 1113
For the plugin itself I’ve had about 650 downloads, but a number of those might be repeats for upgrading. Hopefully I’ll have something a little more interesting to post about soon, school and work are time, motivation, and creativity killers.
And boo, the wordpress editor that comes with 2.0.1 doesn’t like tables for some reason. Have to install a more advanced one.
Tagged with: traffic, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
A quick fix some people might be interested in is how to sort the files listed on the theme editor page alphabetically. Some themes can have a large number of files and the default Wordpress coding puts the list in no particular coding, making it difficult to track down a particular page. The addition of 2 lines of code can order the list to make it easier to work with.
- Save a copy of wp-admin/theme-editor.php to your local computer
- Backup the original version
- Open the local copy with a plain text editor (notepad works nicely)
- Around line 35 there should be a statement identical to:
$allowed_files = array_merge($themes[$theme]['Stylesheet Files'], $themes[$theme]['Template Files']);
- After this insert the following two lines directly after:
natcasesort($allowed_files);
$allowed_files = array_values($allowed_files);
- Save your copy and upload it back to the server
- Presto, list of files is now in alphabetical order
This will order by filename, but some files might display aliases like “Stylesheet” instead of styles.css, but it will still sort using styles.css, just be aware of that.
Tagged with: coding, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
I’ve taken the time to create a plugin to address the fact that some Wordpress users would like to have more control over the order their link categories and links in each category. Sure you can order by name or id or recently updated or this and that but what about setting an explicit order?
I actually had this idea last year when I wrote my own simplistic blog software and was dissapointed by the link management options Wordpress had. So instead of complaining I did something about it.
Right now the plugin is fairly simplistic, check out these screenshots for a quick preview.
For more info click on the tab in the horizontal navigation bar or click through to http://geekyweekly.com/mylinkorder/.
Tagged with: plugin, wordpress
Posted under: Geek Stuff
Gives you manual control over the order of your Wordpress link categories and links by letting you set an arbitrary order. Includes drag and drop ordering and a replacement Widget.
Download My Link Order:
If you find my plugins helpful consider giving a small donation, I provide support in my scarce, spare time.
- Update 3/19/2008: With 2.5 coming up, I’ve moved all future downloads to the Wordpress Plugin directory. This page will stay up as a testament to this plugin’s popularity over the past 2 years.
- Update 2/09/2008: Works with 2.3.3, just copy taxonomy.php again.
- Update 9/30/2007: Updated to WP 2.3. The category table got nuked this release so you’ll need to go back and order your categories again (link order is preserved).
- Update 6/30/2007: The release you’ve all been waiting for!!! Built in widget support, hacking the widgets.php file is a thing of the past. I’m also dropping support for WP1.5, if you really really need it just ask, but seriously if you are on 1.5 it is about time to upgrade.
- Update 5/17/2007: Javascript include bug fix, won’t mess up the editor now, redownload if you had the previous 2.1.3 version. 2.2 update coming soon but current version should still be compatible. Things are good with 2.2.
- Update 5/10/2007: Big update! I rewrote the interface and replaced the unfriendly up and down arrows with spiffy new drag and drop ordering. Check it out, definitely worth the upgrade, I’ve only tested on 2.1.3 but it should work on any 2.1.x install.
- Update 1/22/2007: Published WP 2.1 version of plugin. Eliminates need to modify core files but uses new WP template function. Also eliminated up/down arrow images, now uses plain buttons to avoid problems with image paths. See updated instructions above.
- Released January 2006 for WP 1.5 and soon after 2.0, many updates followed 2.3, 2.2, and 2.
Installation Instructions
- Unzip packed files
- Move mylinkorder.php to /wp-content/plugins/
- 2.3 only: move taxonomy.php to /wp-includes/
- Activate the “My Link Order” plugin on the Plugins menu
- Go to the “My Link Order” tab under Blogroll and specify your desired order for both link categories and links in each category.
- WIDGETS: Just drop the “My Link Order” widget that gets installed with the plugin and that’s it!
- Modify sidebar template to use correct function (additional parameters seperated by ampersands): <?php wp_list_bookmarks(’orderby=order&category_orderby=order’);?>
If you have a problem with it not ordering, make sure you have a plain “&” and not “& amp;” between the parameters which could happen if you copy straight out of the browser. Also make sure quotes are plain straight ones, some people have had problems when copying and pasting code out of the browser and PHP chokes on the bad quote character.
Thanks for checking out my first Wordpress plugin, My Link Order. I wrote this because Wordpress is sorely missing the ability to manually set the order link categories and links themselves will appear in. Wordpress provides seven options for ordering just links (ordering categories is mysteriously absent) and they all seem to tip toe around the idea of actually letting the user explicitly set the order they want. If you have any problems let me know, I am more than happy to help resolve any issues you may have. I’ll respond to your comment through email so be sure to put a valid email in. Even if you don’t have problems leave a comment or throw a couple bucks to buy some beer.
Tagged with: wordpress
Posted under: Uncategorized
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