If you’re using the Simple Tags plugin, you might be holding off on upgrading to WordPress 2.9.1 because this plugin is only Compatible up to: 2.8.

Well, turns out the plugin does actually seem to work with WP 2.9.x — but you have to make a quick edit to the plugin file itself. Now, normally i’m not a fan of hacking plugin files to get things working because your changes would be lost with each new release. But, in this case, i figured that when the author does decide to release an update, i would be ok with losing these changes because they would no longer be necessary anyway.

Note: if you’re not comfortable editing plugin files directly (although this edit is really easy), then maybe you should wait until the author releases an official update. Otherwise, i’ve included the bit of code here for reference.

To get Simple Tags working with WP 2.9+

1) Open simple-tags.php and find the line:

if ( strpos($wp_version, '2.7') !== false || strpos($wp_version, '2.8') !== false ) {

2) Change that to:

if ( strpos($wp_version, '2.7') !== false || strpos($wp_version, '2.8') !== false || strpos($wp_version, '2.9') !== false ) {

That’s right, it’s just a matter of adding the additional condition which allows WP version 2.9 to work.

As always, be sure to backup and test this fix on your own site before going live.

This fix was found / documented here:
- http://www.wordpress-fr.net/support/viewtopic.php?pid=173448#p173448
- http://www.herewithme.fr/simple-tags-et-wordpress-2-8#comment-34072

ok, with the release of WordPress 2.8.3 – if finally got around to upgrading my Notify Admin Only plugin to work with WP 2.8+

Download Plugin: Notify Admin Only v2.0

in case you’re not sure what this plugin actually does, well, it removes this text from the backend that says: “A new version of WordPress is available! Please notify the site administrator” – (see the images below).

great for admins who don’t want their many users to ever see the WordPress Update nag.

anyway the new code is really simple: (thanks Lazzymonk)


< ?php
function stop_wpupdate() {
if ( current_user_can('manage_options') ) {
return;
} else {
remove_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );
}
}
add_action( 'admin_notices', 'stop_wpupdate', 1 );
?>


the old plugin is here and only works for WP 2.3 – 2.5 series.

As far as i could tell, there are currently 2 other CC plugins for WordPress – wpLicense and cc-configurator – however both of them only let you set your license on a global level. That is, they let you pick one license for all your posts and pages throughout your entire site. I thought it might be useful if each WP user/author could choose between different CC licenses and be able to set them on a post-by-post basis. So, i modified the wpLicense plugin to do just that.

“The main purpose of this plugin is to give WP admins who run sites with multiple users/authors the option let these users/authors set specific CC licensing terms on a post by post basis.”

How it works:
It uses the CC api and the JsWidget to add a new section to the write/edit post page and then displays a small CC graphic/button and text on your published posts for all to see. The widget lets you choose the appropriate licensing structure and then your choice is automatically saved to a custom field the next time you click “Save and Continue Editing”, “Save”, or “Publish”. Then, it uses the CC api (details-license-uri-uri) to call some javascript that displays a small graphic/button and some text linking back to the definitions for the license you have chosen. Jquery was used to insert the new CC license section to the write/edit post pages as well as to open/close the new section. I also had to use Jquery to fix the tooltips for the JsWidget. Lastly, this plugin is optimized so that it will add only 1 DB query (the cc_js_result_uri) to each post that has set a CC license and stores it to a custom field for that given post – whereas the wpLicense plugin seemed to use 3 seperate db queries to set the global licencing for the site.

Screenshots:
Check out the plugin in action.

Download:
Click on the following link to download the plugin: per-post-license_v.02.zip

Requirements:
1. This plugin has been testing and works on WP 2.3.x using the default theme (but it is still a work in progess / comments and suggestions are welcome).
2. Your web server needs either curl (most have it installed and it’s the default setting used in this plugin) or URL file-access enabled (to be able to run file_get_contents() instead of curl).

Install:
1. Unzip and Copy the per-post-license folder to your plugins directiory and activate it.
2. Add the template function (see next paragraph) to where you’d like the CC image/button and text to appear on your post (this might be the single.php or footer.php template file).
3. Go to the Write post page or Edit an existing post.
4. Look for the new section marked “CC License” and click the small “plus” sign to open the section.
5. Select “A Creative Commons license” and choose the appropriate licensing structure.
6. Save the post and You’re Done!

WP Template Function:
Add the following function to the WP template file (like single.php, or footer.php) to get the CC license to appear on your post.

Template Options:
Right now, there are only 2 options that you can use with the cc_insert_html() template function.
1. The first is the $display variable. [$display=true ---> will show the CC license , $display=false will not]
2. The second is the $use_curl variable [default is set to --> $use_curl=true , if you explicitly set $use_curl=false the plugin will revert to the php function file_get_contents() which is not always enabled on all web servers]

CSS styles:
Here is a sample style you can use to center, add padding and margins, as well as a horizontal dashed separator (you can ofcourse use any style you like). You would add this code to your style.css file in your template directory.
#cc_code { text-align:center; font-size:11px; width:450px; margin-top:25px; padding-top:25px; border-top:1px dashed #ccc; }
You could also just use inline css and replace the < div id="cc_code" > and add these styles directly – something like < div style="text-align:center; font-size:11px;" >.

To Do:
- get rss/atom feeds showing CC license
- possibly add CC to header (if appropriate)
- option to set per author licensing (for all an author’s posts)
- option to set global default license for entire site
- option to turn off graphic/button and just show text
- option to choose/add an existing licensing structure (other than CC) by providing a URL
- create another template function to gather and list all posts with CC licensing (by title)

From their site: “It has all the basic functionality of a mailing list manager, such as subscriber address management including automated bounce handling as well as message distribution and archiving. Its purpose is to efficiently send a message to a large number of recipients with minimal delay. It allows automated additions and subtractions from the subscriber database.”

i have seen it installed as the default built-in mailing list software for some shared hosting providers.
i needed a way to let visitors subscribe/unsubscribe to the ezmlm mailing list directly from a webpage.
but, when i searched the web for any existing WordPress plugins that could do this – i could not find any.
so, i thought there might be some wordpress users or admins that want to integrate ezmlm with their website using a standard web-based html signup form and some php magic.

description:
This plugin will allow visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe to your ezmlm mailing list – directly from your website – without having to manually send an email from their email client.

tested with WordPress 2.3.x
tested on Superb Hosting, and ezmlm mailing list software.

features:

1. basic error and spam checking built right into the plugin.
2. automatically prints out a “Thank You” or “Error” message on submit
3. you can use css to style the submit form to your heart’s content.
4. works even when your ezmlm is on a different server than you web server.
5. choose between using a standard text button or an image as your submit button.
6. choose between using the defulat privacy message, a custom message, or no message at all.

download:
ezmlm subscribe form v1.0

basic install:

1. download the plugin file, place it in the plugins directory, and active the plugin.
2. configure the plugin by going to Options > ezmlm signup form (see below for more details).
3. add the following code to your theme where you would like the ezmlm subscribe/unsubscribe form to appear.

< ?php if( function_exists('ezmlm_submit_form') ) { ezmlm_submit_form($display = true); } ?>

ezmlm options:
There are only 4 configuration options so far..

1. Set the Name of your mailing list (for example, you would enter: newsletter, if your mailing list was at: newsletter-subscribe@yourdomain.com)
2. Set the Domain of your mailing list (for example, you would enter: yourdomain.com, if your mailing list was at: newsletter-subscribe@yourdomain.com)
3. If you want to use an Image as the submit button: Enter the full URL to the image file (URL format: http://www.yourlocation.com/path/to/image.jpg – leave this blank and the form will use a standard text submit button)
4. If you want to set a custom privacy message: Enter it in the textarea provided (Or, type: DEFAULT and the default message will be displayed. Or, leave this area blank to have no privacy message displayed at all. Hint: you can use html in here too.)

screencap:

advanced usage:
- Template Tags –
To place ezmlm signup form on a specific page – like page 408 – add the following code to your page.php template file.
< ?php if(is_page(408)) {
if( function_exists('ezmlm_submit_form') ) { ezmlm_submit_form($display = true); }
} ?>

- Custom CSS -
You can style the signup form by adding the following IDs to your style.css file.
#ezmlmform (is the ID for the entire form)
#urlsubmit (is the ID for the image upload button)

/* example usage */
#ezmlmform { border:1px solid #000; padding:5px; }


credits:
Much of this code was borrowed from a forum thread called: ezmlm php subscribe/unsubscribe form
Documented here: http://forum.qmailrocks.org/showpost.php?p=16649&postcount=2.

On the down side, i noticed that the archives page takes a little longer to load initially (i don’t think it takes as long the second time). But the advantage of applying Ajax techniques to the archives is that it eliminates page refreshes, which means that browsing through the archives becomes a lot faster and easier as a whole.

Installing the plugin was fairly easy.

1. Upload the entire “af-extended-live-archive” folder to your wordpress plugins directory.
2. Add < ?php af_ela_super_archive(); ?> to your archives template.
3. Enable the plugin in the wordpress admin.
4. Navigate to the “Options » Ext. Live Archives” tab to recreate the cache.
5. Add the css file (or copy and paste the code) to your site.
6. Optionally, modify the css file to suit your needs.

So far, i’m really happy with it. The only potential problem that i saw was for people browsing the site with javascript disabled. These visitors would see nothing at all. Even though this is a pretty clean default result (as opposed to printing out some nasty error), i wanted everyone to be able to use the archives page.

As a quick solution, and because i had only hidden (commented out) the original code (xhtml) when i added the ajaxified archives code, i decide to simply add < noscript > < / noscript > tags around the old code that was commented out. This would effectively hide the old code from browsers with javascript enabled, while showing it only to visitors with javascript turned off. With the javascript fix in place, i think this plugin might be a keeper..

1. Use Permalinks – to improve URLs
A great article on a site called Tom Raftery’s I.T. views explains exactly how to get the most out of this advanced feature. The basic idea is to get the unique keywords – the words people will later use to find you – as close to the beginning of the URL as possible. This usually means trying to get the title of each post to appear right after the first “/” (root folder) in your domain (ie: www.domain.com/reallygoodtitle/)

2. Use the Rewrite Titles plugin – to improve page titles
This plugin for WordPress allows you to dynamically rearrange the order of your page/post titles. Once again the purpose with regards to SEO is that you can get the unique titles of your posts to appear before the name of your blog. For example, instead of your page title being something like: “BlogName >> Blog Archive >> PageTitle”, you could have: “PageTitle >> Blog Archive >> BlogName”. This layout will likely rank higher for those unique words used in all your different posts.

3. Get the HeadMeta plugin -
This plugin allows you to include different meta data for each post. What this means is that you can add stuff like:<meta name="keywords" content="entertainment,movies" /> and <link rel="seealso" href="http://example.com/movies/" /> to the <head> of your html documents. The unique keywords and link relations would then be updated on the fly.

4. Linearize your content – [taken from socialpatterns.com]
“Move your content higher up in your code. Search engines place greater weight on text found near the beginning of your page. Use css to layout your site”. I have also read that search engines only read 1/3 of any given page before moving on to the next.

5. Optimize Dynamically – [taken from socialpatterns.com, again]
“For example, you could create three templates – one for your homepage, one for individual post pages and one for categories. For the homepage template you can optimize for a general set of keywords. For the individual pages template you would optimize using variables generated from the post title. For the categories template you would optimize around the category variable. This way every post in the future is automatically optimized”. They also say to “change your title tag so that it displays relevant keywords (like your post title) before your site name” – another reason to install the Rewrite Titles plugin.

Other useful resources:

- Check you keyword numbers and density using the Ultimate Seo Tool.
- Install the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress.
- Use either a robots.txt file for each site, or <meta http-equiv=”robots” content=”" /> for each page you put online. For more info read, Robots.txt File Tutorial.
- To prevent robots from following a particular page, use
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
- To prevent robots from following a particular link on a page, use
<a href=http://www.example.com/ rel=”nofollow”> I can’t vouch for this link</a>