• WordPress Optimization Bible -The WordPress Optimization Bible is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site. If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.
• What’s in Store for WordPress Themes in 2009? – Justin Tadlock shares his thoughts on what he expects out of WordPress themes in 2009.   In my opinion, you’ll see many more premium WordPress themes, as well as a shift towards theme frameworks and child theme releases.   Click over to see what Justin is expecting!
• 135+ WordPress Tutorials – Instant Shift has compiled another large collection, this time featuring a number of our WordPress Tutorials and our WordPress code page.
• The A to Z of .htaccess – Alex of Nometech has published an excellent post covering a bunch of information about the .htaccess file.    Useful resource to bookmark for any webmaster!

You are reading WordPress News & Notes – April 16, 2009 © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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To replace Log in/Log Out text with a desired image, simply copy the code below and make your functions.php file ready for editing (through WordPress Theme Editor or FTP),

//Image instead of text for the "Login & Log Out" links
function ax_login() {
$before = '<li class="axLinks">';
$after = '</li>';
$theme_url = get_bloginfo('template_url');
if ( ! is_user_logged_in() )
$link = $before . '<a href="' . wp_login_url() . '">' . '<img src="' . $theme_url . '/images/login.png" alt="Log in" />' . '</a>' . $after;
else
$link = $before . '<a href="' . wp_logout_url() . '">' . '<img src="' . $theme_url . '/images/logout.png" alt="Log Out" />' . '</a>' . $after;
echo apply_filters('loginout', $link);
}

Paste the code you copied and then submit/save the file. Pick two icons you like (the size it’s up to you to decide but names are relative to the code, see: login.png, logout.png) and upload them to your theme images folder. Reload your WP site and ta-da!!! There you see two new shiny icons you didn’t have before. This code applies to any situation, whether you do have or not the Meta Widget active.

What just happened?

This function will override the output of loginout filter, it requires you to have wp_loginout(); somewhere on  your theme where you want to show your login icon. You can even style it using CSS by adding the .axLinks{ } class to your theme’s style.css file, and then manipulate it as you desire. Here’s a small CSS block which gives only basic directions.

.axLinks li, a, img{
background-color: transparent;
list-style: none;
text-decoration: none;
border: 0; }

The same treatment can be applied to the register filter as well, with just some small necessary changes, of course a new functions needs to be created only to avoid confusion. Below you can find the code for Register/Site Admin links. Follow the same steps as with the function above.

//Image instead of text for the "Register & Site Admin" links
function ax_register() {
$before = '<li class="axLinks">';
$after = '</li>';
$theme_url = get_bloginfo('template_url');
if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
if ( get_option('users_can_register') )
$link = $before . '<a href="' . site_url('wp-login.php?action=register', 'login') . '">' . '<img src="' . $theme_url . '/images/register.png" alt="Register" />' . '</a>' . $after;
} else {
$link = $before . '<a href="' . admin_url() . '">' . '<img src="' .$theme_url . '/images/site_admin.png" alt="Site Admin" />' . '</a>' . $after;
}
echo apply_filters('register', $link);
}

This function will override the output of register filter, it requires you to have wp_register(); somewhere on  your theme, more precisely wherever you want your register/site admin icon. Now if you don’t have any pre-chosen icons, there are numerous choices out there.

This little modification has been tried and proven to work up to WordPress.2.7.1 and is intended to save you from editing the core, instead creating two easy-to-customize functions that can be delivered with your theme. If you encounter any potential problems feel free to ask by commenting below.  Cheers!

This was a guest post by Arian Xhezairi, a WordPress manic, web developer and Twitter user (follow him here!). You can also check out his site, iTechnologize.net. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

You are reading How To: Add Images to WordPress Login/Register links © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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If you are looking to improve the comments field of your blog’s theme, Instant Shift recently took the time to feature a number of comment hacks, which can be viewed here.   Looks like they’ve already got 30 hacks included, including a few we’ve featured here in the past.

You are reading Collection of WordPress Comment Hacks © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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If you look at it now, you’ll find a lot of extremely basic tutorials for people new to WordPress, but one cool thing is you can submit requests to see future WordPress video tutorials.  I would imagine over time you’ll start to find a lot more advanced WordPress tutorials.

Some other cool things about WordPress.tv:

WordPress.tv is also now the place to find all that awesome WordCamp footage that was floating around the web without a home. See the presentations you missed and get a peek at behind-the-scenes action. We call it WordCampTV.

You’ll also find slideshows of presentations made by Automattic employees and other WordPress gurus, plus interviews I’ve done with the media and fellow bloggers.

I hope you’ll consider WordPress.tv not just a support resource, but also a place to hang out and keep up with all the geeky goodness going on in the WordPress community. Tune in regularly for fresh content and updates to the WordPress.tv blog. Lots more is on the way.

You are reading WordPress Launches WordPress.tv © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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I know a number of our readers do use WordPress MU, so I wanted to let you know that our friend Andrea of WPMU Tutorials has taken her popular post and published the information in an ebook explaining how to install WordPress MU.  For people that are considering starting a network of blogs, you’ll want to check out this free ebook!

You are reading WPMU Tutorials Releases a Installation eBook © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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There are a number of breadcrumb plugins you could use, but with a bit of WordPress code, you can avoid this. If you use sub-categories, then this will only display the name of the sub category.

A typical breadcrumb is something like this:

Home >> [Category] >> [Post Title]

WordPress can very easily do this – to get the name of the category the post is in, all you need is

<?php the_category(); ?>

Then, to display the post title, the code you need is

<?php the_title(); ?>

So our final code, with some arrows added in is:

<a href="/">Home</a> &raquo;  <?php the_category('   '); ?>   &raquo; <?php the_title(); ?>

So now that you’ve got your breadcrumb sorted, you can take this one step further and spice it up a bit. For the next part, we’re going to be using the code from a tutorial at Janko at Warp Speed, and with this code, we’re going to turn our breadcrumb into something that looks like the ones you see on Apple.com!

The Apple.com breadcrumb:

And what we’re making:

First, download the html version here, and open it in a your web editor (ie Notepad, Dreamweaver etc). Scroll down until you find <ul id=”breadcrumb”>. This is where we’re going to start editing. All you need to do is copy and paste the following code:

<ul id="breadcrumb">
<li><a href="/" title="Home"><img src="/images/home.png" alt="Home" class="home" /></a></li>
<li><?php the_category(', ') ?></li>
<li><?php the_title(); ?></li>
</ul>

This is basically the same code as we had above, just putting into a list. Make sure you upload the home.png file to /images/, and while you’re at it, upload the other images.

Next thing we need to do is the CSS. Go into your style.css and paste the following:

#breadcrumb {
font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
height:30px;
line-height:30px;
color:#9b9b9b;
border:solid 1px #cacaca;
width:100%;
overflow:hidden;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
#breadcrumb li {
list-style-type:none;
float:left;
padding-left:10px;
}
#breadcrumb a {
height:30px;
display:block;
background-image:url('/images/bc_separator.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right;
padding-right: 15px;
text-decoration: none;
color:#000;
}
.home {
border:none;
margin: 8px 0px;
}
#breadcrumb a:hover {
color:#35acc5;
}

Once you’ve done that, then you’re done! If you copy the code from the source file (which you should), then make sure you change the url of the images.

I recently redesigned one of my sites, and integrated this, so you can see a working example here.

This was a guest post by Alex Denning, who is a WordPress power user, web design freelancer and currently maintains two sites – Nometet.com and GreenGrassGames.com. You can follow him on Twitter here. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

You are reading Make an Apple.com Style Breadcrumb for Your WordPress Blog © 2009 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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For visual learners, this can sometimes be difficult.   For these people, a better solution is typically to watch one of the many WordPress video tutorials you can find scattered throughout the internet.   We’ve posted a few here before, but I wanted to draw your attention to a recent post over at Six Revisions where they’ve covered 30+ WordPress video tutorials. You’ll find a bunch of the better WordPress video tutorials from around the internet, all in one convenient location!

You are reading 30+ WordPress Video Tutorials © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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If you’d like to see a live demo of this tutorial, just click here.

1) – Make sure you’re using a custom field in your posts, with the thumbnail url.

There’s a lot of tutorials available online to add a custom field to your pots. This one is good in my opinion, so you should read it if you don’t know how to define a custom field.

2) – Download the required plugins

In order to customize your recent posts widget, you have to download the Recent Posts plugin by Sebastian Schmieg.

You’ll also need to download and install the Post-Plugin Library, which contains all the php functions needed by the Recent Posts plugin.

3) – Upload and activate the plugins

Once you downloaded the plugin and the library, unzip the files and upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory. Then, login to your WordPress dashboard, Go to “Plugins” and activate both the library and the Recent Posts plugin.

4) – Configure the plugin

After having the plugin and the library uploaded and activated, you have to configure the options so you’ll be able to display the post thumbnail on your sidebar.

To do so, login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to “Settings”, “Recent Posts”.
On “General”, you can tell the plugin how many posts to be displayed, if it should display posts and pages or only posts, and a lot more.

Once you configured the “General” options to fits your needs, go to the “Output” options. In order to display your custom field thumbnail on your sidebar, you have to enter a bit of html as well as the special parameter to embed the custom field.

Here’s the code that I entered:

<li><img src="{custom:Image}" width="48" height="48" alt="" />{link}
<div class="clear"></div>
</li>

The special parameter {custom:Image} tells the plugin to embed the Image custom field. Don’t forget to replace Image with the name of your custom field!

5) – Add the widget to your sidebar

Simply go to “Design”, “Widgets” and add the Recent Posts + widget to your sidebar. Visit your blog, your thumbs are showing in the sidebar along with your recent posts!

You are reading How to: Using Thumbnails in your Sidebar “Recent Post” Listing © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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This is probably the most important step of this whole tutorial: always backup your WP Database and files. This tutorial have been tested, however I won’t be held responsible for any kind of data loss.

Once done, you can connect to your server by using SSH. On Mac and Linux platform you can use the Terminal, on Windows I recommend using Putty.

Get the latest WordPress version available:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Uncompress it:

tar xfz latest.tar.gz

Delete the wp-admin and wp-includes directories:

rm -rf ./wp-includes/
rm -rf ./wp-admin/

Go to the wordpress directory:

cd wordpress/

Now, it’s time to copy the downloaded files to your existing WP install, by overwriting old files:

cp -rpf -f * ../

Once done, come back to the WordPress directory and remove the downloaded files:

cd ..
rm -rf ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz

Visit your blog and upgrade the database (if needed). That’s all, your blog is now up to date and the whole process didn’t took more than a minute or two!

For more WordPress tips and tricks, you should definitely take a look at my blogs WpRecipes and Cats Who Code!

You are reading How to: Upgrade your WordPress Blog in a Minute via SSH © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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For people wondering how to easily install Google’s Custom Search Engine (GCSE) on their WordPress blog, here are two resources I recommend:

• Build Your Google Custom Search Engine – The first step is to actually create your Google Custom Search Engine.   The post by Maki over at Dosh Dosh does a GREAT job of explaining how to do this.   Towards the end Maki explains how to actually integrate it into your WordPress blog, but rather than go through all those steps, you’ll want to instead check out the second step.
• Integrate your Google Custom Search Engine into WordPress – Once you’ve built your custom search engine, head over to this post and figure out a quick and easy way to integrate it into your WordPress blog.   This method ONLY requires you to alter the searchform.php and search.php files (which most themes come with), so it is really easy.

Why Use Google’s Custom Search Engine?

With the current setup of the WordPress search engine, posts are displayed with the most recent post first based upon the search term.   Using Google’s Custom Search Engine, it will use Google’s search algorithm to display your posts with the most relevant post on top and you can actually integrate it into your WordPress blog, so it looks natural.   Using this also allows you to display Google AdSense ads, which can earn you money on some blogs.

The main downside with this method is that Google has to actually index the post before it will appear in your blog’s search results, but that won’t be a problem for most blogs.  It will just add a small delay before posts appear in your search results.

You are reading How To: Building a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) into Your WordPress Blog © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress Directory | WordPress Forums | WordPress eBook

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