If you’re worried about paying for Akismet in the future or are curious as to what some of the alternatives are, check out this plugin roundup via Themergency where Bradvin takes a look at six alternatives. ∞
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen an upgrade notice for Gravity Forms but alas, 1.5 is here. This new version incorporates a ton of new features and enhancements. Among the new features are:
Multi-Page Forms – Using the new Page Break field you now have the ability split longer forms into multiple pages or steps. We have also integrated a visual paging status bar that can be used to show a progress bar or the steps involved in completing the form.
Pricing Fields – Pricing Fields allow you to create quotes and order forms. It features integrated pricing calculations and is compatible with the Gravity Forms PayPal Add-On. Pricing Fields consist of a Product Field, Option Field, Quantity Field, Shipping Field, Donation Field and Total Field. They allow you to easily turn your form into an order form and collect payments when combined with the PayPal Add-On.
Text Counter – A visual cue to show visitors the number of characters available for use on a text area.
CSS Ready Classes – Easily create multi-column layouts using built in CSS classes. These keywords are custom CSS classes you add to the CSS Class Name option under the Advanced tab for each field.
Default Notification – One of my favorite new additions will now automatically setup an admin notification that uses the WordPress Admin email as the Send To and includes all submitted form fields when a new form is created.
There are a couple of other things added as well but you can check those out on the spiffy new GravityForms Website. I’ve been using Gravity Forms on WPTavern.com to handle my contact form for a few months now and I’m happy to say that it’s some of the best money I’ve spent. While I only use it for a contact form, the UI enables me to quickly and easily create a post submission form or edit my existing forms. So far, I’ve yet to see an alternate form solution that’s as elegant and easy to use as Gravity Forms.
Kudos to the team on their newly designed website. One of the pain points regarding their old design was that it was difficult to locate the blog part of the site. Thankfully, they’ve fixed that by adding the blog link to the top of the new design.
Over the past few days, I’ve had a couple of people ask me what plugins I use to accomplish my commenting system here on WPTavern.com. I’m not a fan of using a third party system so in no particular order, here are the plugins I use.
Akismet – I’ve had no problems with Akismet taking care of spam comments on this site.
Filosofo Comments Preview – This plugin enables a live preview of the comment before it’s published.
Subscribe To Comments – Enables users to checkmark a box to receive notifications of new comments
WP Ajax Edit Comments – This is one of my favorite plugins because it provides a very easy way for visitors to edit their own comments. It also has built in support for After The Deadline meaning commenters can spell check before submission. It’s a commercial plugin but well worth the price.
Secret Sauce:
There is one particular feature of the WPTavern comment form that makes it a little unique. For each comment, there is a Reply link. When a visitor clicks this link, something like the following shows up: @Jeffro – The @ symbol as used by Twitter means you’re replying to someone specifically. The comment number is the unique comment ID and will link to the comment being replied to so the conversation is coherent. Last but not least the comment authors name is bolded.
Now here is where it gets tricky. This functionality is not part of a plugin but is code that has been added to my child themes functions.php file. I don’t know where you would add this code in your own theme to achieve the same functionality but if someone could use it as a starting point and create a plugin that just does this, that would be cool.
/**
* Custom comment meta. Adds a custom comment reply link.
*
* @since 0.2
*/
function tavern_news_comment_meta( $meta ){return str_replace('</div>', ' [tavern-comment-reply-link before=" | "]</div>', $meta );}/**
* Shortcode for displaying a comment reply link. A better solution would be to find a
* script that works within the WordPress comment system.
*
* @since 0.2
*/
function tavern_news_comment_reply_shortcode( $attr ){
$attr = shortcode_atts( array('before'=>'', 'after'=>''), $attr );
$out = $attr['before'];
$out .="<script type=\"text/javascript\">
/* <![CDATA[ */
function addAuthor(\$authorName, \$commentId) {
var \$author = '@<a href=\"#comment-' + \$commentId + '\" rel=\"reply\">' + \$authorName + '</a> -';
document.getElementById('comment').value += \$author;
}
function moveToComment() {
location.href = '#comment'; document.getElementById('comment').focus();
}
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type=\"text/javascript\">
document.write('<a href=\"#comment\" onmouseup=\"moveToComment()\" onclick=\"addAuthor(\'" . get_comment_author() . "\', \'" . get_comment_ID() . "\');return false;\" class=\"reply\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Automatically include a link to the original comment\">Reply</a>');
</script>";
$out .= $attr['after'];return $out;}
When WordPress 3.1 was released, it introduced a new feature which made it easy to link posts published in the past. I’ve found that feature to be too limiting. For starters, the linking is limited to posts on your site. Secondly, you need to use the Visual editor in order to use the linking feature. There is a better way to accomplish the same feature set and more with a plugin called Insights by Vladimir Prelovac. This plugin adds a meta box that you can move to the right side or below the post editor and does not require the use of the visual editor. When in use, you type in some search terms into the search box and select where to perform the search. This is where Insights shines as you can select your own blog, Google Images, Google Videos, Wikipedia, Google, Google News, Google Blogs, and Google Books. The search results are present in the same meta box where you can either open the result in a new tab or copy the link to put in your post.
Search Results For Insights On WPTavern
Sometimes I need to find a link to a site when I’m writing a post and I can do that easily by selecting the Google search where I can copy and paste the link without using a new window or leaving the post editor. Talk about convenient. So if you’re looking for more flexibility in linking to content from the past while not being required to use the visual editor, the Insights plugin should fit the bill.
Earlier today, I received an email asking me what plugin I was using that allowed for the quicktags to be displayed within the comment form of the site. I love these quick tags as they provide similar functionality as you’ll find within the post writing panel within WordPress. Unfortunately, the original creator of the plugin is now involved with the Habari project and is no longer maintaining it. I did manage to find Comment Form Quicktags on the plugin repository but I’m unsure as to why I’m not using that one as opposed to my current setup. After browsing the plugin repository, it looks like there are quite a few Quicktag plugins available but the one I’m using has been rock steady and still works, even with WordPress 3.1. You can’t find it on the repository though and it’s not available from the plugin authors site so I’m putting the download link here just in case someone would like to take the plugin, fork it, and maintain it on the repository.
WordPress 3.0.5 was released the other day to address a couple of issues dealing with security and untrusted user accounts. While those issues were addressed, it was soon discovered that one of the security fixes for 3.0.5 created another problem of stripping HTML on display from people with the unfiltered_html capability. Instead of fixing that minor problem and releasing 3.0.6 which would have been embarrassing to say the least, a hot fix was applied to the latest version of Akismet which was also due for an upgrade. This solved the problem for at least a few users but not everyone.
Mark Jaquith then created a plug in which contains the hot-fix but also mentioned that the plug in could be used in the future to fix selected bugs as well. If a number of WordPress powered sites would have this plug in installed, it would be a handy way of pushing out fixes.
I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning behind this. 3.1 is right around the corner and that branch already has the fix applied while those who know how can simply update their sites via SVN through the nightly builds. In the comments, Ozh also raises a good point in that how do you explain the difference between a hot fix versus an update for WordPress? It’s an unnecessary process that I don’t want to go through. There was also the suggestion of perhaps bundling the Hotfix plug in with WordPress like Hello Dolly or Akismet which is a bad idea. There is a strong contingent of people (I’m one of them) working hard to try and de-couple Hello Dolly and Akismet from the core package of WordPress and the last thing we need is yet another bundled plug in with core.
The best recommendation came from Andrew Nacin in the comments of strengthening the update procedures of WordPress. By the way, one tidbit of information to keep in mind throughout all of this is that somewhere around WordPress 3.2, the goal is to stop updating over the wp-content directory which I know will make some people happy.
This post is an FYI to plugin developers. According to Scribu who posted on the WordPress development update blog, If you were using register_activation_hook() to also handle updates from older versions of your plugins, you will not be able to do so any more in WP 3.1: [16012]The activation hook is now fired only when the user activates the plugin and not when an automatic plugin update occurs. This is consistent with how the deactivation hook works.. There is a proposal for a register_update_hook instead within ticket 14912.
All plugin authors should read the post and the associated tickets to make sure your plugin will check for updates properly after WordPress 3.1 is released.
Dion Hulse also known as DD32 recently celebrated his birthday (happy belated birthday!) and in a recent blog post announced that he is looking for additional contributors to his plugins. According to Dion, his plugins are about to reach the 110,000 download mark in total and is concerned that if a security issue comes up with any of his plugins, it would end up leaving a lot of users out in the cold. There are a few caveats to those interested in becoming contributors as outlined by DD32:
You need to run it by me before you make a new Release of the plugin (that’ll be relaxed if you show you know what you’re doing, and I trust your judgement)
You need to retain the current naming, licence, and Commit-often strategy to the Plugin’s repo.
You need to respect the code and functionalities offered, as well as the users of the plugin, Upgrades to new versions MUST work nicely with users existing data, re-writing the plugin from scratch will not be taken nicely (But refactoring is fine, and there will be exceptions of course)
You MUST follow the WordPress coding standards
You cant just work on new features and ignore any present bugs, Sorry, but both need your attention.
According to the list of plugins Dion currently maintains, Add From Server is one of the more recent ones with close to 39,000 downloads and worked perfectly for me when I needed to move media items from an FTP folder on a server into the media library of WordPress. Earlier this year, DD32 was granted committ access to the core of WordPress and recently, has not had time to dedicate to either his plugins or the WordPress core. Dion is in the process of changing that by getting back in the groove starting with WordPress 3.1. For those that don’t know, Dion Hulse is primarily responsible for the WordPress installation process.
I’m only following the SVN Commits mailing list, and Trac tickets which I have personally commented on, So if you’ve got a ticket related to Upgrades, Filesystem, HTTP, Taxonomy, or something else I might be interested in, Please leave a comment pointing it out, If its up my alley, I’ll look at it, It’s going to take some time to go through the 2,000 open tickets on Trac.
Will be interesting to hear from him on what he plans on doing with WordPress QI.
As the first official “WordPress Crash Test Dummy,” Lorelle has long worshiped the ground WordPress Plugin authors walk over. Join her as she explores the world of WordPress Plugins that are pushing the barriers that many feel limit WordPress, changing site navigation, connecting with the social web, expanding WordPress Theme capabilities, unique solutions to tasks you might not have considered for your website, and even some Plugins which help Plugins do even more.
I don’t know about you, but I have a widescreen monitor and I’ve enjoyed having the WordPress administration menus collapsed versus extended. The extra real estate is nice to have with less for me to look at. However, this collapsed menu comes at a price whereas, this menu option does not allow me to see updates for plugins, themes, nor can I see if any comments are being held in the moderation queue. While I think this is a WordPress shortcoming, Scott Reilly has once again created a simple plugin that solves a simple problem. It’s called Notifications For Collapsed Admin Menu. This plugin shows a visual notification by providing a background color on the comment and plugin icons. As a bonus, if you hover the mouse cursor over the icons, a tooltip will show the number of comments or plugins that need to be taken cared of. The following image provided by Scott is a good explanation as to how this plugin works.
If you choose to use this plugin, keep the following note in mind:
As the plugin’s name suggests, this plugin only takes effect if the admin sidebar menu is collapsed. Also, the admin user must have JavaScript enabled.
Also refer to the plugin page for directions on how to change the color that is used for the visual notification.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen an upgrade notice for Gravity Forms but alas, 1.5 is here. This new version incorporates a ton of new features and enhancements. Among the new features are:
As the first official “WordPress Crash Test Dummy,” 
6 Alternatives To Akismet
By Jeffro on April 4, 2011
If you’re worried about paying for Akismet in the future or are curious as to what some of the alternatives are, check out this plugin roundup via Themergency where Bradvin takes a look at six alternatives. ∞
Posted in Plugins | Tagged akismet, comments, Plugins, spam | 6 Responses