Sandbox Development and Consulting Inc.

I have been working on a new WordPress theme (to be released this week) and in one of the admin screens – I needed to get the category name by using the category ID. To do this (in or outside of the loop):

[php] [php]

Super simple – super helpful.

Reference: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_cat_name

I have updated over 25 sites so far and for the most part – everything has gone smoothly. There were a handful of sites though that had issues with a few plugins (including this site) due to one common issue: jQuery. If you are seeing any strange behavior – post upgrade, the first thing you will want to do is to make sure all your plugins are up to date. After that – if you are still having problems – check to see if any of your plugins rely on jQuery. If they do – next check the code (either look at the js files in the plugins, or look at your site’s source code to see if it is loading an old version of jQuery). There is a good chance they are using an older version, or are relying on something that no longer works with the latest release of jQuery (1.3.2 as of today).

Some plugin developers are aware of the issues but have not released an updated plugin. Because you are most likely not alone with your issues – check out their support forums, or post comments to see if someone came up with a quick fix so you can be back in business.

While most WordPress updates can be performed quickly and easily by almost any user – there are times when you run into unexpected problems that can cost you dearly. When this happens – don’t hesitate to call us. We have been working through WordPress updates for years and can help out!

WordPress 2.8 has officially been released. The update contains a number of bug fixes (over790) and tweaks both on the front end and the back end. The most noticeable change for most users will be the redesigned widget interface – which finally allows users a more intuitive interface when working with widgets. You can read more about all the changes and updates that went into 2.8 if you are interested. Overall – there are a lot of great updates, changes, and new functionality that make this release great for both users and administrators.

Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.8

WordPress 2.8 is one step closer to being released. The first release candidate is now available: WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1. I have been using WordPress 2.8 beta on a few sites now for a few weeks and have not experienced any major issues until now (I just tried to add in tags and nothing happened) – but if you want to take a look to see the changes in action or make sure your plugins/themes all function – download this version (not on production sites unless you are a risk taker).

I have been working on releasing a WordPress theme for awhile now and I keep adding in new functionality instead of just releasing it into the wild. Since I create a lot of custom themes for clients – I am often exposed to a lot of really cool functions, ideas, and designs. Before releasing my initial theme – I wanted to ask for some general feedback.

1. What is the number 1 thing you want from a theme? Ease of use (admin panels to manage your content), easily skin-able, simple, clean code?
2. How many people plan to have a mobile theme to handle their content on mobile devices? Would you ideally like this as an option from the get go?
3. Do you use “all” the theme template files (archive, links, etc?)
4. What would make you really happy with a theme?

We just updated our SDAC Related Content plugin to fix a few bugs and to also add in some additional functionality. You can now choose to show related posts by tag or by category. (No longer just category). This is a great plugin for anyone looking for related functionality on WordPress, WordPress MU, or VIP hosting as it does not make any database changes and it uses caching.

Check out the forum for any support issues or leave any feature requests and we will do our best to add them into future releases.

With WordPress 2.8 beta 1 now available – there are some great new features that I wanted to highlight for the upcoming WordPress 2.8 release.

An exhaustive list of all the updates are available for review, but here are ten highlights for the end user.

• Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
• Don’t notify post author of own comments
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
• Improved Plugin search on Administration > Plugins > Add New
• Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
• Support more than one gallery on the same page
• “Choose a city in the same timezone as you” for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General
• Add “Send this password to the new user by email” option to Administration > Users > Add New
• In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
• Add password strength meter to Add User and Edit User

Everything looks very promising and the developers are doing a great job with getting bug fixes in place, more options, and easier to user interfaces. Stay tuned for the release of WordPress 2.8 in the near future!

I am pleased to announce our first official WordPress plugin release: SDAC Related Content. This plugin was something I created as I had a need to have a related posts plugin for some VIP clients. The plugin had to not modify any DB tables and it had to use caching.

Version 1 of the plugin was a development version that I used for a few clients. Version 2 added an admin panel under Settings in the WordPress admin. This admin panel allows all kinds of customization.

Enjoy!

A number of my WordPress clients recently have been wishing for a way to offer multiple feeds with specific posts in them completely unaware that this is actually very easy to do with WordPress without any modifications.

You can simply accomplish specific content feeds by using category feeds. For example. If you have a WordPresssports site with 3 categories: Football, Baseball, Hockey and you want to offer a feed specific to each category - all you would need to do is to add "/feed/" to the end of the category URL.

Example: Your category feed is: http://www.sports.com/category/football. For this site - your category feed for football would be: http://www.sports.com/category/football/feed.

Advertising multiple feeds for your site can be very attractive for a few reasons:

1. Better Focus You can offer subject specific feeds since not all people like to read about everything. (ex. A reader likes your site for your coverage on a certain subject matter - but does not really care or come back for posts about anything else. Ex. With category feeds - you can really let the user/reader decide what they want content to read about on your site.
2. More Options = Happy Readers People like options. You would be surprised how many people get excited to pick and choose what they want to subscribe to vs. getting everything all at once. If they are forced to get all the content and only 15% of your content pertains to something they do not care about - they are likely to not subscribe at all or after awhile - stop reading your feed. If you offer some choice - people are more likely to subscribe because they will only get the content that they care about.
3. Featured Posts If you want to offer a special feed for "featured" posts - all you need to do is make certain posts in a category called "Featured" and you then offer a hand selected featured posts feed to your readers.

If you want to list all your categories and their feed links, you can simply add this into your WordPress theme:

Using Akismet for spam control has worked out really well over the last few years but I started seeing more and more spam get through (daily) so I decided I needed to look into something that would compliment Akismet. Once I installed the http:BL plugin - I have not had one spam comment get through. About the plugin:

http:BL WordPress Plugin allows you to verify IP addresses of clients connecting to your blog against the Project Honey Pot database. Thanks to http:BL API you can quickly check whether your visitor is an email harvester, a comment spammer or any other malicious creature.

If you are having any problems with spam getting through, check out: http:BL.