I’ve currently been working on an update for one of the companies websites. The whole site runs on WordPress, my “new” favourite CMS. However, before going live the site is running on a different location than when ready. I noticed that the import/export feature doesn’t change the URI’s inside the posts and pages. Concequently I needed something to make the “move” as quick and automatic as possible.

Inspired by Alex King’s “Shortcut Macros” plugin I decided to make something similar that would convert any root URI references with a macro, ##root to be specific. To illustrate lets say your domain is http://www.example.com. So whenever you write or update a page/post the following will happen ;

http://www.example.com/link/to/page_or_post -> ##root/link/to/page_or_post

When viewing the page the plugin will automatically reconvert #root to your blogs URI as defined by get_option(’home’). This way your internal links will always be uptodate wherever you move your blog.

Grab the code and instructions from the download page.

As announced on Weblog Tools Collection and on the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog itself I just thought I’d help spread the word about the upcoming WordPress 2.5 Plugin Competition. And besides the fame and glory there’s already some cash and goodies in the pot for the winner(s).

You can read all about what, where and how on the above mentioned pages. In short “all” you need to do is write a plugin that is:

1. Original (new) and useful
2. Well documented
3. Supported

I’d love to participate, but workload has been somewhat keeping me busy 9 days a week lately. If you’re joining please leave a comment so we can follow your work from here - and not to forget, Good Luck!!

WordPress 2.5 adds tons of new features, but some disappeared as well. One of them is gzip compression that you could enable/disable from the control panel. On the other hand 2.5 introduced “a few” new features, among them a secret key for “salting password” and the possibility to increase memory allocated to PHP.

I’ve just finished tweaking my new WordPress 2.5 installation and thought I’d share a few pointers with the rest of you.

The secret key

Released with Version 2.5, this new, optional entry, called SECRET_KEY, causes better encryption of user passwords in the database. The secret key is a unique phrase.

define('SECRET_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here'); // Change this to a unique phrase.

More allocated memory

Also released with Version 2.5, the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT option allows you to specify the maximum amount of memory that can be consumed by PHP. This setting may be necessary in the event you receive a message such as “Allowed memory size of xxxxxx bytes exhausted”.

By default WP is allocating (trying to - depends on host) 32MB, you can increase this amount by adding e.g.

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64MB');

in the wp-settings.php file in your WP root directory.

Activate Cache

Similar to above you can activate page caching;

define('WP_CACHE', true);

If the WP_CACHE setting is set to true, the WP developers states that it will include the wp-content/advanced-cache.php script, when executing wp-settings.php. I for one does not see how this is done as I’m missing the included file, so if you know how this works please let me know!

GZip Compression

I believe a bug/malfunction in respect to the visual editor caused the removal of the gzip feature from the latest version. However a plugin is available that will re-enable this feature and save precious bandwidth. It simply takes advantage of PHP’s ob_gzhandler function.

I’d love to hear about more tweaks and rabbits, please feel free to share!

In case you are using Mr. Coolmann’s WordPress statistics plugin, Wp-Slimstat, then you might enjoy this unofficial release. Besides making it WordPress 2.5 compatible it also blends nicely with the new colour theme.

Installation - current users

To install, download Wp-Slimstat v.1.0.1, deactivate plugin, overwrite old file in your plugins directory with the new one and activate.

Installation - new users

Grab the code (including instructions) from the author directly. Before activating follow the simple steps as outlined above. This ensures the plugin is 2.5 compatible before activation. However, new users need a few extra files which is not included with the update.

Install and use at your own risk. It worked for me and should for you as well (I hope).

Following my recent upgrade to WordPress 2.5 (RC1) on my other blog/website I could not get my favourite statistic plugins working. The first, WP Slimstat, is no longer under development and is not compatible with WP 2.3 and above. The latter, Popularity Contest, is supposed to work with the latest WP versions but triggered a fatal error during install (at least for me).

At first glance it would appear I’d have to look somewhere else for alternatives. On the other hand I could dive into the code and try figuring things out myself. I decided on the last option.

Fix - Alex King’s Popularity Contest (v.1.3b3)

Fixing the installation error was far easier than anticipated. This is what you need to do if you experience any difficulties or plan on upgrading:

• If you have an older version deactivate the plugin.
• Download the latest release (link above).
• Open popularity-contest.php and scroll down to line 59. Replace

  require('../../wp-blog-header.php');

  with

  require('../wp-blog-header.php');

• Upload the edited file to your plugins folder (sub directory popularity-contest)
• Reactivate the plugin

I tried posting a comment mentioning the problem, but it went into comment heaven. The issue will most likely be solved with the next release (but I couldn’t wait…).

Update: In case you are doing a fresh install you might also need to create the DB tables manually. More about how to do this here.

Update - Camu’s WP Slimstat (v.0.92)

To avoid repeating myself please see my post “How to view and collect visitor statistics” for a proper solution. This tiny update should keep WP Slimstat working until the WordPress team decides on more DB changes. With any luck this might take awhile…

The “IP to Country database” update is not necessary, and will only apply for new log entries. However, to keep the data more or less correct it is probably a wise decision to have the database more up to date.

Feel free to let me know if you have any difficulties running these updates, or know of other plugins you’d liked “fixed”.