I have updated my Search Meter WordPress plugin, based on feedback from its many thousands of satisfied users. (That figure is an estimate based on the half-dozen users that I actually know about.) The new version has the following new features. Continue reading “Search Meter WordPress plugin updated” →
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Plaintext: a WordPress plugin
When you click one of my PHP code download links (for example, the Less WordPress plugin), you see the PHP source code on your screen, even though the file is a .php file. How do I stop the server executing the PHP code? With a WordPress plugin, of course. Continue reading “Plaintext: a WordPress plugin” →
Popularity Contest for Pages
I’ve been enjoying Alex King’s excellent Popularity Contest plugin for several weeks now. It’s fascinating to see which posts are being viewed, commented, tracked and pinged, all through the one interface. After using it for a while, I thought of a useful way to extend it and also found and fixed a wee problem. Perhaps these changes will make their way into the next version of Alex’s plugin, but till then you can always download my version from here. Continue reading “Popularity Contest for Pages” →
Web hosting
It’s not always easy finding the best web hosting provider for your websites, so I thought I would recommend the web host company I use. I set up my first website in 1996, and since then I have used several website hosting companies. Initially, I evaluated them based only on features and price. However, a couple of years ago my old web host had a system crash, and incredibly had no recent backups. I had my own local backups, fortunately, but I did lose some email. I immediately started searching around for a new web host, and settled on Lunarpages because they had everything I needed at a reasonable price. I thought I should write a little Lunarpages review to help you evaluate the many options for web hosting. Continue reading “Web hosting” →
Read your readers’ minds
The Search box on your blog is a valuable source of information to you as a blogger. If you keep track of what your readers are searching for and what results they get, you’ll know what your visitors want to read. Then you can make sure they find it on your blog, and turn casual searchers into regular readers. In this article, I describe a few ways you can keep track of this essential information. I also introduce a WordPress plugin that does it automatically. Continue reading “Read your readers’ minds” →
Search Meter: a WordPress plugin
I have released Search Meter, a new WordPress plugin that should help you keep your blog focused on what your visitors want to read. It does this by keeping track of what your visitors are searching for, and more importantly whether they are finding it. Continue reading “Search Meter: a WordPress plugin” →
The C++ Programming Language
WordPress pingback and trackback bug
There is a bug in the way WordPress 1.5.1 handles draft posts and Advanced Editing mode. One effect of this is that pingbacks and trackbacks are sometimes sent with the wrong URL. This problem has been around for a while, but it looked a bit complicated so I figured that somebody would fix it one day. But as I was trying to write a useful new plugin, the bug hit me. So I have investigated the bug and found out what it’s all about. I have also written a plugin that fixes the problem. Continue reading “WordPress pingback and trackback bug” →
WordPress rewrite rules
This is an investigation into some problems with the way WordPress generates .htaccess rules to make its fancy permalinks work. For a new site I am building, I wanted the permalinks to not have the date in the URL. Accordingly, I set the permalink structure to the following.
/%category%/%postname%/Once I did this, I couldn’t access any single posts. Continue reading “WordPress rewrite rules” →
Less: a WordPress plugin
Less is more.
Less is a WordPress plugin that makes reading posts more intuitive for your many readers. With Less, when readers click a (more…) link on your post “teaser”, they see the full article on the screen, not just the part after the (more…).