I recently upgrade from WP2.5 to WP2.7. For anyone who is interested, there is a fairly simple method on doing this upgrade. You could use the plug-in “Wordpress Automatic Upgrade“. It will automatically backup the database, download, and handle the upgrade for you in a simple manner. I completed the entire upgrade in less than 20 minutes using this method. Highly recommended.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/

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Here is a little neat trick for Wordpress. Normally, you would use the WordPress tag “query_posts” to query against the database to list all of the posts relating to one or more categories.

Usually a simple query against a category would like something like this:


<?php query_posts(showposts=5&cat=$category);
while(have_posts()) { the_post();

}
?>


Basically all this is doing is show 5 posts for the category, where $category is either one or more categories depending if you have a outter loop or not. What if you have a lot of posts per category and want to only show 5 per page. Plus you want to have the previous page and next page button. That would be cool huh?

You can easily do that. Using the above code as example, you can easily transform it to look like this.

<?php $paged = (get_query_var(’paged’)) ? get_query_var(’paged’) : 1; ?>
<?php query_posts(”cat=$category&posts_per_page=5&paged=$paged”);
while(have_posts()) { the_post();

}
?>

Somewhere else on that same page, you need to call the function code that handle the previous page and next page logic. They look something like this

<?php next_posts_link(’« Next Page’) ?> || <?php previous_posts_link(’Previous Page »’) ?>

What you’ve just done essentially is use the get_query_var to capture from the url string what page is it currently on and pass that to the page. At the bottom, it detect what page is next and previous.

You can see a sample in action from the SAPHELPBYKEVIN page link above.

Additional References:
Wordpress Query Post: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts

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This should be helpful for anyone who decided to host their own blog using WordPress another location. It took me awhile to search for this since the new blogger version template style changed a bit.

http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress

Thanks to laffers.net for putting this together. It was extremely useful!

Here are snip of what he presented there. All credit goes to him and those who supported him on this.

set up redirects

I’m assuming that at this point you have imported your posts to the new blog at Wordpress.com (if not, go to “Manage/Import”, select the obvious choice and do what you’re said).

Log into your Blogger account and click your way through the awkward navigation menu until you are at the “Template/Edit HTML” page. To redirect visitors from the main page, insert the following between the <head> and </head> tags:

<meta content='6;url=http://yournewblog.wordpress.com/' http-equiv='refresh'/>

Number 6 means that the redirection will take effect after 6 seconds. Replace the url with your own.

The tricky part comes now. We want to redirect users from individual post pages to the corresponding post pages on the new blog. For that, we need a piece of JavaScript spiced with Blogger proprietary tags. Insert the following right after “<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>” in the template:

<b:widget id='Redirector' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var new_page=&#39;yournewblog.wordpress.com/&#39;;
var permalink = &#39;<data:post.url/>&#39;;
var timestamp = &#39;<data:post.timestamp/>&#39;;
timestamp = timestamp.split(&#39;/&#39;);
timestamp = timestamp[2]+&#39;/&#39;+timestamp[0]+&#39;/&#39;+timestamp[1];
new_page = permalink.replace(/youroldblog\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/[0-9]{2}/,new_page+timestamp);
new_page = new_page.replace(/\.html$/,&#39;&#39;);
document.location.href = new_page;
</script>
</b:loop>
</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Don’t forget to enter your new blog’s URL at var new_page = .

Important note! For this script to work, all your posts should have been imported to Wordpress.com using their Manage/Import function. The creation dates of all posts must match, because they are part of the permalinks.

 

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Here is a little WordPress tip / trick. For anyone who is trying to build their sidebar and or want to add a dropwdown list style for category listing, this is one simple method.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_dropdown_categories

You can use the code snip they’ve provided

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
var dropdown = document.getElementById("cat");
function onCatChange() {
if ( dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value > 0 ) {
location.href = " ?>/?cat="+dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value;
}
}
dropdown.onchange = onCatChange;
--></script>
</li>

Parameters

show_option_all 

(string) Causes the HTML for the dropdown to allow you to select All of the categories.

show_option_none 

(string) Causes the HTML for the dropdown to allow you to select NONE of the categories.

orderby 

(string) Key to sort options by. Valid values:

• 'ID' (Default)
• 'name'

order 

(string) Sort order for options. Valid values:

• 'ASC' (Default)
• 'DESC'

show_last_update 

(boolean) Sets whether to display the date of the last post in each category. Valid values:

• 1 (True)
• 0 (False – Default)

show_count 

(boolean) Sets whether to display a count of posts in each category. Valid values:

• 1 (True)
• 0 (False – Default)

hide_empty 

(boolean) Sets whether to hide (not display) categories with no posts. Valid values:

• 1 (True – Default)
• 0 (False)

child_of 

(integer) Only display categories that are children of the category identified by its ID. There is no default for this parameter.

exclude 

(string) Comma separated list of category IDs to exclude. For example, ‘exclude=4,12′ means category IDs 4 and 12 will NOT be displayed/echoed or returned. Defaults to exclude nothing.

echo 

(boolean) Display bookmarks (TRUE) or return them for use by PHP (FALSE). Defaults to TRUE.

• 1 (True – default)
• 0 (False)

selected 

(integer) Category ID of the category to be ’selected’ or presented in the display box. Defaults to no category selected.

hierarchical 

(boolean) Display categories in hierarchical fashion (child categories show indented). Defaults to FALSE.

• 1 (True)
• 0 (False – Default)

name 

(string) Name assigned to the dropdown form. Defaults to ‘cat’.

class 

(string) Class assinged to the dropdown form. Defaults to ‘postform’.

depth 

(integer) This parameter controls how many levels in the hierarchy of Categories are to be included in the list of Categories. The default value is 0 (display all Categories and their children). This parameter added at Version 2.5

• 0 – All Categories and child Categories (Default).
• -1 – All Categories displayed in flat (no indent) form (overrides hierarchical).
• 1 – Show only top level Categories

n – Value of n (some number) specifies the depth (or level) to descend in displaying Categories

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I had mentioned in the Wordpress Plugin section, there is an Zenfolio RSS plug that is used to display nice little thumb nails on the side bar of your Zenfolio Galleries. In search of finding something more specific, I came across an alternative method. While it is no plug in yet, but a simple PHP / HTML knowledge could get you going with this. You can see a sample of it operating in my Flower Photographs section here (http://knguyentu.com/wordpress/photography-by-kevin/flowers-photographs/)

 The RSS engine I used there is RSS Parser for PHP5+ (http://rssphp.net/).

Download this RSS file and place it in the same folder as the theme files you are using. In my case, I’ve placed inside ./wordpress/wp-content/themes/(theme name)/… In another words, in the same location the theme index.php file is located.

Once you’ve place the RSS file there, you will need to setup a page to use as a template for your rss. You can easily make a copy of the page.php provided by your theme. Let’s copy it and call it photographs.php.

Now for the fun part. Edit the photographs.php and place the code in here, somewhere towards the bottom before the sidebar and/or footer calls.



<?php

$html = '';
foreach($items as $index => $item) {
$html .= '<h3><a href="'.$item['link'].'" title="'.$item['title'].'">'.$item['title'].'</h3>';
$html .= '</a><br />'.$item['description'].'<br />';
$html .= "<br />;
}
echo $html;
?>


This will loop through the RSS code and strip out the the RSS feed file and present it as your see int he example. You could wrap some HTML in the “$html” section in the code above to make the box look fancy and colorful if you like.

To be a bit more creative, with how the code is now, it will RSS pull all items in the RSS feed. You could add a simple loop around the code and limit how many items to pull per feed. See the code snip below. In BOLD is what was added to accommodate that.

 
<?php

Now all you need is to create a new page, using the photographs.php template.

In the Custom Fields, use custom field “photoRSS” tag and place the URL to your RSS feed and away you go!

Let me know what you think and what alternative you are using?

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A lot of people have asked me what theme is used for this new design and layout. When looking into redesigning the domain, I wanted something to infuse all of the blogspot account I have and with the content management style I had with the Nuke-PHP engine I used previously. That lead me to use Wordpress. But the standard WordPress theme wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. In searching, I came across hundreds of different themes and finally settle with one made by Michael Oeser.

The theme you are seeing now has 3 parts to it:
- Branford Theme
- Wynton Theme
- And lastly, my own customization coding to it

I like the main design of Branford, but also wanted some features of Wynton, both of which was creatively designed by Michael. That didn’t stop there, I wanted certain features and more dynamics to it, thus I made some modification to them. One main notice is on the front page. The feature article is no longer there, but in fact was replaced with an RSS PHP feed I had used in earlier web design. Using the CSS box design from the theme, I had infuse it with an RSS feed from various sources. The engine used is “LastRSS“. It is a simple, but yet powerful RSS parser.

Both the Branford and Wynton Theme are based upon Mimbo and Revolution style theme.

With some plugins, dabbing of PHP code changes, and various ideas, you have the website before you today!

Michael Oeser Themes: http://www.der-prinz.com/
Revolution Themes: http://www.revolutiontheme.com/
Mimbo Themes: http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2007/08/05/wordpress-magazine-theme-released/
Wordpress Blog Engine: http://www.wordpress.org/
LastRSS Parser: http://lastrss.oslab.net/

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In wordpress, the commonly used tag to show summary of an article or post is <?php the_excerpt(); ?>. By default, if you don’t provide an excerpt, wordpress will use the first 55 words in the article as the excerpt.

What if you want to have more or less than 55 words, how is this accomplished?

You can by easily editing the file ./wp-includes/formatting.php

function wp_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
if ( ” == $text ) {
$text = get_the_content(”);
$text = apply_filters(’the_content’, $text);
$text = str_replace(’]]>’, ‘]]>’, $text);
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt_length = 55;
$words = explode(’ ‘, $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
array_pop($words);
array_push($words, ‘[...]‘);
$text = implode(’ ‘, $words);
}
}
return $text;
}

In the above code, noticed in BOLD BLUE. By changing the default number of 55 higher or lower, that ultimately control how many words the excerpt tag will display.

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I had spent a whole day on the weekend trying to figure out why my .htaccess setup and error 404 is not working on wordpress. After numerous posts reading and blogs reading, I came across a site that perfectly describe the issue. Turn out it is a bug in version 2.5 and higher. This was suppose to be resolved in version 2.5.1, but never did.

It has to do with this page of code inside the ./wp-includes/query.php file.

if ( ('page' != get_option('show_on_front') ) || ( $reqpage != get_option('page_for_posts') ) ) {
$q['pagename'] = str_replace('%2F', '/', urlencode(urldecode($q['pagename'])));
$page_paths = '/' . trim($q['pagename'], '/');
$q['pagename'] = sanitize_title(basename($page_paths));
$q['name'] = $q['pagename'];
$where .= " AND (ID = '$reqpage')";
$reqpage_obj = get_page($reqpage);
if ( 'attachment' == $reqpage_obj->post_type ) {
$this->is_attachment = true;
$this->is_page = true;
$q['attachment_id'] = $reqpage;
}

Notice the part in BOLD BLUE. The bug is exactly right there. In line 922 of ./wp-includes/query.php file. By adding an additional “=” resolved the issue. The end result will look like

if ( ('page' != get_option('show_on_front') ) || ( $reqpage !== get_option('page_for_posts') ) ) {
$q['pagename'] = str_replace('%2F', '/', urlencode(urldecode($q['pagename'])));
$page_paths = '/' . trim($q['pagename'], '/');
$q['pagename'] = sanitize_title(basename($page_paths));
$q['name'] = $q['pagename'];
$where .= " AND (ID = '$reqpage')";
$reqpage_obj = get_page($reqpage);
if ( 'attachment' == $reqpage_obj->post_type ) {
$this->is_attachment = true;
$this->is_page = true;
$q['attachment_id'] = $reqpage;
}

This will get wordpress to properly recognize improper URL call and redirect the post properly to your 404.php file.

Not sure how to create one? If your theme doesn’t come with one already, you can easily create a very simple 404 error page. Just create a file and name it 404.php. Place that in the same folder as all the other php file of your theme, including the index.php file.

In the 404.php, you could be as basic as this


<?php ob_start(); ?>
<?php header(”HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found”); ?>
<?php header(”Status: 404 Not Found”); ?>
<?php get_header(); ?>

</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>


You could read up more about it at Wordpress.org or by clicking on this LINK

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In setting up the Photography By Kevin section, I wanted to display random pictures from my photography gallery I had hosted over @ zenfolio. Why Zenfolio? After the previous design of a photogallery website and using a flash photo album, I got tired of maintaining it through PHP. Zenfolio seems to fit the need with standard template layout and easy maintenance. 

Instead of spending time writing a PHP plugin, the first came to mind was to try to look for a plugin someone had done. Why reinvent the wheel when someone already did that?

Vibol Hou had used a flickr RSS plugin and modified for zenfolio need. While is perfect what I was looking. 

Plugin Homepage: (HERE)
Download Version 0.5:
 

You can see an example of it being used in the Photography By Kevin page (tab above). 

To use, you can simply download the plugin and place that in the plugins directory. In the Plugin control, you set how many image(s) you will be pulling per tag call. Afterward, a simple tag added to your post, page, or template will pull the photo from the gallery in. 

Using the tag 

<?php get_ZenfolioRSS(); ?>

Will take care of it. 

If you want to spice it up a bit, what you could do is set in the plugin setting to only pull one image. With that, you can call the tag “x” number of times. Each time it will call on random image. This will give you the flexibility to wrap a table loop around it or add spacer between each image. 

Pretty neat stuff. Try it out and let’s hear how you use it!

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