By Jeffro on January 28, 2012
A brand new plugin released by GreenHost aims to make censoring the web next to impossible. It’s called RePress and turns any WordPress powered website it’s installed on into a proxy server. The plugin was created in response to piratebay.org being blocked within the Netherlands due to a court ruling.
Header Image As Seen On Their WordPress.org Plugin Page
RePress uses phpproxyimproved as its HTML parser which is another piece of open source code that allows the proxy magic to happen. After installing the plugin, you’ll need to give it a unique URL that will be used when going through the proxy to the blocked website. I received the following message after trying to view one of the default websites that are added to the proxy list:
In order to protect your blog from cross-site scripting attacks, please log out of your WordPress administration backend before accessing any of the proxied site urls.
Please log out of WordPress by clicking on this logout link.
Afterwards you will be directly redirected to the proxied website.
For security reasons. This will also delete all cookies for this domain (your remembered settings will be lost).
So if there is a particular website that you visit often using your site as a proxy, you’ll need to bookmark the URL and visit it only when you’re logged out of WordPress.
If you decide to give RePress a try, please give GreenHost some feedback on it via the following forum thread.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged censor, Plugins, repress |
By Jeffro on January 24, 2012
Daniel Immke has published his own primer on using native user interface elements for the administration of plugins. By following his basic primer, you’ll be on your way to creating a plugin that looks and functions as if it were a part of the core of WordPress which is what plugin developers should be aiming for. WooCommerce is an excellent example of the various UI elements that are built within WordPress that plugin authors should be taking advantage of. ∞
Posted in Plugins | Tagged admin, interface, Plugins, users |
By Jeffro on January 18, 2012
In-depth article by Siobahn McKeown that breaks down how commercial plugin developers are monetizing their efforts through the WordPress.org plugin respository. The article covers the guidelines that plugin authors should follow, examples of successful plugins as well as plugins that didn’t meet the guidelines, and various ideas plugin authors can try. One of the things I learned through that article is the existence of a detailed plugin guidelines page which didn’t exist before. It’s about time something like this was created as it answers questions up-front instead of leaving a ton of uncertainty up to the plugin author. ∞
Posted in Plugins | Tagged commercial, guidelines, Plugins |
By Jeffro on January 18, 2012
If you’re using the self installed version of WordPress and looking to participate in the internet blackout day today, check out the SOPA Blackout Plugin. This plugin contains flexibility so that you don’t have to turn your entire website into a black hole. Instead, you get to set blackout dates as well as a myriad of other options to configure when and who sees your blackout message. One of the nice things about this particular plugin is that when it’s deactivated, all of its settings will be removed.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged blackout, piracy, plugin, sopa |
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
Earlier this morning, I discovered that while moderating comments, a small little X icon appeared that I’ve never seen before. After inquiring on Twitter why WordPress never gave me a new feature pointer to explain to me what this feature was, I was told that it came with the newest version of Akismet. On January 5th, 2011 Akismet released version 2.5.4 of their plugin and amongst the changes was the addition of a button that allows site administrators to easily remove the commenter URL. This particular feature is something I’ve become used to using as it’s part of the Ajax Edit Comments plugin. I think it’s pretty slick that this feature is now available despite it not actually being in core. In fact, if you didn’t know any better or forgot that you recently upgraded Akismet, you might think that it was added with WordPress 3.3.1 like I did.
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url |
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
WordPress consultant, Konstantin Kovshenin has published an excellent guide describing what theme/plugin lock-in is and how to avoid it. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time but have never been able to put into words for a post. The biggest culprit in my opinion when it comes to lock-ins are themes, especially commercial ones. These themes not only come with features that make it unique, those features sometimes store or alter data in a way that makes it very difficult to switch themes or even upgrade WordPress. The first comment on that post by Diane illustrates my point exactly.
This problem is even more pervasive than articulated here. The theme options of many commercial themes create functionality unique to that theme and then if you want to make a change, boy are you screwed. We see this problem with clients all the time.
Looking back at my history of using WordPress, choosing the right theme based on looks, options, and functionality was one of the toughest decisions I would have to make. I think I’ve only switched themes five times or less for both my personal site and WPTavern.com. Quite frankly, switching themes is a giant pain in the ass. Widgets become messed up, the layout is screwed up and although I like themes with options, I have to read the manual to figure out how to get the layout I like or at least, witnessed on the demo theme. Once I have a theme configured both functionally and aesthetically, I try not to do anything to disturb it. I get sick of the layout sometimes but the thought of switching themes and how much work that entails always settles me down into sticking with the current implementation.
Definitely read the comments at the end of the article as Mike Schinkel carries on an interesting conversation on ways or methods on which this entire situation could be improved.
Posted in Plugins, Themes | Tagged lock-in, Plugins, Themes |
By Jeffro on January 11, 2012
Dev4Press has an interesting post that contains performance benchmark numbers that show just how much of an impact certain plugins have on loading times within WordPress. Amongst the 35 tested plugins are bbPress, W3 Total Cache, WooCommerce and a few of the plugins developed by Millan. I as well as many others were shocked to see bbPress with such poor numbers thanks to it loading everything on every page load instead of only what it needs. Keep in mind that it’s not about how many plugins you have installed on your website, but which ones. It only takes one poorly coded plugin to cause you grief.
For some additional reading on how to optimize plugin loading, please see this tutorial by Millan.
Hat tip via WPCandy.com.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged benchmarks, dev4press, Plugins |
By Jeffro on January 10, 2012
@WraithKenny – #WordPress plugin repo should have a favorites button. – via Twitter
Now THAT’S a good idea! Stretch it further by giving us the option decision to make our favorite lists private or public on WordPress.org. There are all sorts of things you can do from there on in.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged favorites, lists, Plugins, repository |
By Jeffro on January 9, 2012
If you’re the owner of an iPad, you’ll likely love the sound of Touch Punch which is a newly released plugin by David Gwyer that enables users to use touch screen gestures to control the WordPress administration area. For example, with Touch Punch, you can now drag and drop widgets using your fingertips. Here is a list of activated WordPress admin pages that the gestures will work on.
- Admin dashboard – Drag to re-order admin dashboard widgets.
- Widgets page – Drag new widget instances into widget areas, and sort existing widgets.
- New posts/pages – Drag to re-order meta boxes on new post/pages.
- Edit posts/pages – Drag to re-order meta boxes on existing post/pages.
- Navigation menu page – Drag to re-order meta boxes, and individual menu items to change position/hierarchy.
- Add new links page – Drag to re-order meta boxes (Note: the first three meta boxes are fixed by WordPress but the others are sortable).
I don’t own an iPad so I’m not able to test this plugin but I know there are plenty of people within the WordPress community that do, so if you manage to try out Touch Punch, let me know in the comments what you think of it.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged gestures, ipad, plugin |
By Jeffro on January 2, 2012
Making the rounds on Twitter today is a WordPress plugin called Dashboard Site Preview that allows you to preview your website from the WordPress dashboard. The plugin was created by 10 year old, Jesse Friedman who goes by jesseenterprises on WordPress.org. According to Brad Williams, this guy attended WordCamp Philly in 2011 and used what he learned at that event to create this plugin.
Dashboard Site Preview adds a widget to your dashboard which is a simple iframe that shows you the front-end of the website. For widescreen monitors, you can maximize the use of the preview by setting the dashboard to display widgets in 1 column.
Not quite sure if this will save time when compared to other methods such as displaying the front end within another browser tab or within a browser window on a secondary monitor. However, this plugin excels at being a great learning experience for Jesse. I don’t know about you but I think it’s very encouraging to see younger folks getting involved with coding. After all, Matt Mullenweg believes that scripting is the new literacy.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged jesse, Plugins, youth |
Page 3 of 14« First«...234...10...»Last »
Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url | 9 Responses