Sandbox Development and Consulting Inc.

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!

I get a lot of client requests for some sort of gallery plugin and it is clear to me now that the best gallery plugin for WordPress is: NextGen Gallery. The user interface is easy to use, the plugin is actively being developed, there are lots of options for the users, and it is a joy to work with. Out of the box it comes with a widget to load in recent or random images in your sidebar (or page) as well as an easy way to display single galleries or multiple galleries (albums). This is a must have for anyone who is looking for an elegant solution to display images.

There is a new (relatively) caching plugin in town for WordPress called WP Super Cache and after using it now for a few version, I have to say I would recommend this over the old standard WP-Cache plugin. The plugin is easy to install, easy to configure, and will produce a noticeable load time decrease for your WordPress sites. There are also options to set if you want to “digg-proof” your site, use compression, or “lock down” your site during an expected traffic spike.

Today Automattic released an update to the Akismet. This is a great plugin to help with comment spam and has been priceless on all the sites I manage. If you are not using this plugin, you can use it for free for personal sites, or pay $500 for commercial sites. Check it out!

If you have ever wondered how to clean up WordPress URLs by removing the /category/ from your URLs, check out the plugin: Top Level Categories. After you activate it, you can access your web pages that were once only reachable by: /category/web-design/ by now using just /web-design/.

Ever wonder how some web sites have little icons (gravatars) next to peoples’ comments? If you would like to have this functionality on your WordPress blog or web site, check out the WordPress documentation on gravatars.

After looking for a media player for WordPress sites and blogs, I have finally come to the conclusion that Cool Player is a great plugin to take a look at. A number of my clients need the ability to play a number of media files, and with an impressive list of supported media types, I recommend looking at Cool Player:

This version supports those types of files: rm, rmvb, ra, rv, ram, smil, smi, rtsp, rpm, asf, wm, wma, wmv, wax, wvx, ogg, ape, avi, mid, midi, wav, mms, m3u, asx, mov, qt, mqv, m4v, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, flc, fli, cel, aiff, aif, aifc, cdda, bwf, rts, 3gp, 3gpp, 3g2, 3gp2, au, snd, ulw, smf, kar, qcp, sdv, gsm, amr, caf, amc, mp4, sdp, pdf, fdf, xfdf, xdp, xfd, gif, jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, xpm, dir, dxr, dcr, cst, cct, cxt, w3d, fgd, swa, swf, spl, mp3, flv, rtmp, rbs, xml, rss, xspf, atom.

If you ever want to change your permalink structure in WordPress, but still want to have all your old URLs to work, download Permalink Redirect Plugin. This plugin will make sure that all your posts will get redirected to the new permalink structure you moved to without any hassle whatsoever. Not only will your readers be thankful, your SEO rank will not suffer with any URL reorganization.

If you need to display pages dynamically within WordPress, and want to order them (and their sub pages), check out the My Page Order WordPress plugin. This plugins allows the WordPress administrator to manage the page order from within the WordPress admin area without hard coding anything in your template.

A number of bugs can easily be solved by making sure you have the latest version of a particular plugin. If you are like most people, you do not have time to go to each and every plugin’s web site and confirm you have the latest version, but the Update Manager plugin will. The plugin is relatively new and somewhat in beta, but it has already saved me countless hours – and hopefully will do the same for you.