Ashfame | Tech Blog

Show custom excerpts of the post in WordPress

Ashfame — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:30:52 +0000

When WordPress is used as a CMS, then we no longer wants the homepage to be a chronological order of posts. We would want the homepage to be something which serves the purpose of telling everything about itself. Certainly that should have a section where blog updates are being highlighted either with excerpt or with just titles.

Since in our implementation, we only be having a single section where I would want to use the WordPress loop so we can straight go ahead and use it. Had you been using WordPress loop somewhere else on the page then you would have to use a different object for the WP loop.

Showing links to latest updates from the blog

[php]

[/php]

Change the value of count to your choice and there you have a list of latest updates from your blog.

Showing the latest post with an excerpt

I have created a function which you can call anywhere in your theme to do its job of printing the excerpt of the latest post with your specified character limit.

[php]

[/php]

You can change the value of 300 to the limit of characters you want to display.

Add this function in your functions.php file (under your theme folder only)

[php]
function ashfame_get_stripped_content($limit)
{
$content = get_the_content();
$words = explode(" ",$content);
unset($content);
$length = 0;
foreach ($words as $i => $w)
{
$length += strlen($w);
if ($length < $limit)
$content = $content." ".$w;
else
break;
}
$content = apply_filters(’the_content’, $content);
$content = str_replace(’]]>’, ‘]]>’, $content);
$temp = " (<a title=\"Continue Reading..\" href=\"";
$temp = $temp.get_permalink();
$temp = $temp."\">Continue reading →</a>)</p>";
$content = str_replace(’</p>’,$temp, $content);
echo $content;
}
[/php]

Showing multiple posts with an excerpt

You will have to execute the WordPress loop here to access multiple posts. You can show multiple posts with an excerpt by calling the function of above case inside the loop like this :

[php]

[/php]

Change the value of count to your choice and there you have multiple posts each with an excerpt. Have any questions then use the Comments section below. Make sure you check out the whole WordPress as CMS series.

Building a FrontPage using WordPress

Ashfame — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:30:11 +0000

This tutorial assumes that you are comfortable enough in designing WordPress themes. I suggest you take the hang of both the methods and decide which one you want to go with. Technically I haven’t come up with any limitation of expanding WordPress capabilities that one may face by using either of the method.

We will require to use page templates in both the methods, so if you don’t know how to create them, here is a good chance to understand how they work and how you can use them. Read this article – WordPress page templates and come back to this tutorial.

Using Page templates

Create two page templates. One for the homepage and another for the blog page.
Create two pages named Home & Blog (You can name them anything)
Make sure that you select the respective page template while creating them to use the custom layout and content as specified in the page template.
Make sure that under Reading Settings (Settings > Reading), the FrontPage is set to display static page.
That’s it. Go check out your homepage and blog page.

Here in this method your posts on the blog are controlled by what you have specified in the Reading settings and in the next method it will depend on the value used in the code.

Personally I use the second method.

Using home.php

Make sure that under Reading Settings (Settings > Reading), the FrontPage is set to display latest posts.
Create a page template for blog and one similarly a home.php file for the homepage
Create a page named Blog and select the blog page template while creating it.
Place the home.php in your theme folder
That’s it. Go check out your homepage and blog page.

For content that you need to update manually like some text or anything else, you can widgetised the area too. Then you can add text-widget or anything else.

Blog Page Template Code

[php]
$recentPosts = new WP_Query();
$recentPosts->query(’showposts=5′.’&paged=’.$paged);
if ($recentPosts->have_posts()) : while ($recentPosts->have_posts()) : $recentPosts->the_post(); ?>

’); ?> Posted in |

[/php]

Subscribe via RSS or via email to keep up with the WordPress as CMS series so as to learn what all crazy stuff you can build with it.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have via the comments. I will be glad to answer them.

Page template usage in WordPress

Ashfame — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:00:51 +0000

How does a normal WordPress page look like? Header, content, sidebar and footer. What if you want a different layout for a particular page or a set of pages. A different sidebar or multiple sidebar or no sidebar at all? Different styling and arrangement of other things (purely CSS based)? Anything different from the regular layout can be incorporated within WordPress using Page templates.

For example : A regular WordPress page generated from page.php of your theme :

[php]

[/php]

For a special page, you don’t want any sidebar. For which the code of the page looks like :

[php]

[/php]

Creating a Page template in WordPress

Just before the code of that special page, add these lines

[php]
/*
Template Name: Special Page
*/
?>
[/php]

so that the whole page template file looks like this :

[php]
/*
Template Name: Blog
*/
?>

[/php]

That’s it. Your page template is ready to be used. Just drop the file in your theme folder with any name. However I would recommend giving the template name to the file name too so that it becomes easy to recognize it.

Using a Page template in WordPress

Now when you are creating a new page, you can select the page template under the Attributes tag on the right side.

You can also make the page use by quick editing the page under Edit pages page.

Go fire up your creativity. Now you can have different layouts for different pages. Have any questions then use the Comments section below. Make sure you check out the whole WordPress as CMS series.

WordPress as CMS basic Setup

Ashfame — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:30:13 +0000

Two things you would like to setup before you move on with the series is to select your permalink settings and the way you can setup WordPress to act both as CMS and regular blogging engine.

Permalink Settings (Settings > Permalinks)

Set the custom structure to be /%postname%/

Reading Settings (Settings > Readings)

You can set here what your front page displays. Select the page to display as your homepage if you want simple plain content on the main page and if you want a different layout on that page then stick a page template to the page you are using as a homepage.

Alternatively you can build up a home.php file in your WordPress theme and it will automatically be use as your homepage. You can also build it up dynamically using content fetched from custom WP queries.

If you chose the former then you can select another page to become your blog where posts will appear in chronological order and if you chose the later option then you can use another page template to get your blog by using WP queries.

I will demonstrate the usage in the upcoming post of the series till then feel free to respond via the comments. Make sure you check out the whole WordPress as CMS series.

WordPress CMS Series

Ashfame — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:30:39 +0000

I am starting this series so as to demonstrate the capabilities of using WordPress as CMS coupled up with other scripts (like forum script bbPress). The series will begin with the implementation details of WordPress and bbPress in my recent project Need A Project (a site for students looking to improve their coding skills). Then it will continue with how I used WordPress to design my college website JEC, Kukas.

First of all, we will decide how we are going to build our website using WordPress. We will use a page on the homepage of the site. A different page will act as a blog and will show the posts in the chronological order.

For example :

Homepage : http://needaproject.com
Blog : http://needaproject.com/blog
Forums : http://needaproject.com/discussion

Posts / Pages : http://needaproject.com/post-or-page-title/

Follow the tutorial to install WordPress (manually via FTP/SFTP, via fantastico or via SVN) first and then catch up with the whole series here:

Basic Setup
Building a Front page using WordPress
Showing posts or custom excerpts of posts
Showing random items from a list
How to use a page template
Showing bbPress content inside WordPress
- List of forums with topic & post count
- Topics started with post author, last reply poster & freshness of a forum
- Latest Discussions from forums (a plugin is available for it too)
Having multiple widgetized different sidebars in WordPress

If you are a WordPress based developer or want to develop your own web projects using WordPress then you might want to hook up with the series. In fact, I would suggest you to hook up as it will prove to be really helpful. Live examples with demonstrations can’t hurt. Now can they? So via RSS or via email.

And if you want to ask a question about any implementation of WordPress and bbPress on NAP, then I encourage you to freely ask here in the comments section and I will cover that in a post.

New Orkut Screenshots & Invites Giveaway

Ashfame — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:52:18 +0000

A few days back, Orkut got a revamped look with some additional functionalities but new Orkut is available to users on invite only. When I checked today then I saw the invitation on my Orkut home. An important thing to note is that one need an invite to use new Orkut. Either you get it from Orkut itself or from some friend who has invites with him/her.

How to know who has an invite?

A pink ring shows up with the display name of any user who is on new Orkut and has got invites.

Check my profile – Ashfame on Orkut

New Orkut Screenshots

Profile Page

Home Page

Scrapbook

Photos (Album)

By now you must be excited to try this new Orkut look. Well I have got a few invites with me to giveaway here on my blog.

How to get an invite?

Tweet about this giveaway on twitter and leave the link to status in the comment. To enable non-twitter users to participate here now one just need to comment here. I will giveaway 2 invites everyday. The selections will be random for each day so you comment the next day for another entry. Go on try your luck!

This contest was ruining the fun, so its over, just leave a comment here and everyone will be invited till I am out of updates. Users have reported that more invitations are given to you once you have used up all the invitations, so keep commenting.

Invitations sent out for the following people :

Luv
Vanshaj
Ashwin
Aditi
Claudio

Just comment and I will sent the invite as soon as possible. Happy Orkutting!

[bbPress Plugin] How to disable bbPress registrations

Ashfame — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:41:26 +0000

There may be cases where users want to disable new member registrations so as to keep the forum close to the existing members only or its a invite only forum or whatever the case may be. In this post I will demonstrate how can you disable bbPress registrations.

All the registrations are handled by the file register.php of bbPress. So if we just remove the code from register.php then no registrations can take place. But that would be overwritten in a bbPress upgrade so we can make a plugin for that too but checking for an extra thing on every page load is a little overhead that I would want to avoid. Busy forum owners would agree with me on this but if you don’t like to touch the code at all, then you can go for plugin too. Its up to you.

Replace original register.php with this register.php

The contents of new register.php is a single line

Or right click & save this file & then rename it to register.php and replace the original file.

bbPress Disable Registration Plugin

The Code has been taken from a post in bbPress forums.

Download the plugin

If you have any questions about bbPress, then feel free to ask via comments. I love both questions & bbPress

WordPress Optimized WebHost – WpWebHost Review

Ashfame — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:00:02 +0000

Selecting the right webhost is crucial for a web publisher as it keep hosting woes at bay and let the publisher concentrate on what is important i.e. generating content. WpWebHost Offers everything one would expect out of a hosting package. The thing worth mentioning about them is that their servers are specially configured for WordPress users so they give better performance as compared to webhosts which are configured for general use.

By optimization I mean that their servers execute the WordPress script (its a php script after all) fast and hence gives a edge over its competitors. And did I mention that they have got great support? I myself always try out new things with WordPress and whenever I need to contact them, I shoot them a support mail and believe me their support is really awesome (I generally don’t use the word awesome easily but that was the first word which came to my mind).

I almost always get the reply on the same day. Whenever I communicate with their staff, I always feel that I am getting personal attention. They are very friendly. When I signed up for them a few months back, I paid almost a week after using their service because I had some issues with PayPal but they didn’t impose any restriction on me. They even gave me a free week of hosting. That’s cool!

Being WordPress optimized webhost they don’t restrict you in using any other script. I would recommend them to WordPress developers too as you will get great help and support from them.

I need to say it. You will love their service for sure. Now they even have special packages for WordPress MU and recently they added a Semi Dedicated plan which is like powering up your site with a VPS, all which are specially optimized for better performance.

One thing that I would like to mention is that when I bought the hosting, I ended up on a IP Address which was hosting two adult sites too. So as not to harm my SERPs I got a dedicated IP Address for myself. I would have taken it anyway but I took it because at that time I had to.

Their hosting will cost you 5USD per month. I highly recommend WpWebHost. Sign up with them and you won’t regret it.

Why use sftp instead of ftp

Ashfame — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:00:19 +0000

We all know about the good old FTP which we have used so many times to upload or download data from/to a web server to/from our computer. But do we know how much risk is involved in using FTP? Many of us don’t. So through this post, I will try to highlight why one should and how to use SFTP for the tasks we still use the vulnerable FTP.

FTP

In a FTP connection, the login credentials (username & password) are passed in clear text format and anyone spoofing on the packets can get to know about the login credentials. Moreover, any sensitive data being transferred over a FTP connection is not safe either. The spoofer can have the data very easily. Hence we need something better which overcomes the risky nature of FTP but still can connect like FTP.

SFTP

SFTP is just like a FTP connection with the exception that all of its data is in encrypted form and no-one spoofing on the data can make sense out of it because the data is encrypted. This clearly eliminates the security concern of FTP.

How to use SFTP?

Just like you need a FTP client for connecting via a FTP connection, you need a client which supports SFTP connection over SSH tunnel. My all time favorite Filezilla is capable of connecting via SFTP too.

You only need to specify the different port being used for SFTP and the rest are like the FTP credentials only.

You can get to know your SFTP port from your cPanel. Select FTP accounts, then under Account Management, select the option Configure FTP Client and there you can view your SFTP port.

Now just specify the new credentials in the SFTP client and you will be connected to your server safely without the risk of anyone spying on your data.

Enjoy Happy Computing! If you have any questions, then feel free to ask via the comments.

How to start a website or blog

Ashfame — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:50:25 +0000

With so many questions people asking me questions about how to start a blog, I am writing this article on how you can do the same.

Difference between a Website & blog

The only difference between the two is in the presentation of the content. The website has several pages with an organized hierarchy and the main page shows up with lots of option to navigation through the content whereas in a blog the content depends a lot on time and that’s why the content is organized in a chronological order (newer articles come up over the previous articles).

Static & Dynamic

Static means that no processing is done other than serving up the ready-made pages. Dynamic means the system is database driven and database driven websites are pretty common these days.

What do you need?

Domain

You will need a domain name that people will open the website / blog by typing the domain. Example: google.com google.net google.org are three different domains. Do some brainstorming and come up with a nice domain name. Preferably go for a .com unless you have a reason not to.

Domain names [.com] costs about 7+USD annually. I buy my domains from Godaddy.

Webhost

You will need a webhost where you can host your files. Take it like this that you need a computer with some space which can provide the site files to anyone opening up your site. This computer remains connected to high speed internet all the time. So this comes up with a price. Free ones are too troublesome. I recommend WPWebHost (WordPress optimized WebHost) for awesome service and support. I use them myself.

WPWebHost costs 5USD monthly and is definitely+ worth it considering their service and insanely awesome support.

WordPress

If you are not starting away with a static website (like uploading html pages) then WordPress is your best bet. They enable millions of publishers to publish content online effortlessly. I use WordPress both as my blogging engine and as CMS. Believe me its one framework that has the power of driving any web project. I myself develop WordPress based web projects. Moreover additional functionality can be added by plugins and there is a arsenal of theme available and one can design a custom theme with ease too.

Download latest version of WordPress

Installing WordPress

There are several methods of installing WordPress :

Install WordPress via fantastico (Automatic Install)
Install WordPress via SVN (Geeky but makes upgrading super easy)
Install WordPress manually (uploading via FTP / SFTP)

If you have any questions about the post then feel free to use the comments section below.

Install WordPress manually via FTP/SFTP

Ashfame — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:38:30 +0000

Here is a quick tutorial on how you can install WordPress by means of uploading files via a FTP/SFTP connection. SFTP is recommended over FTP.

All you need is a FTP/SFTP client to connect and upload files to your server and then a browser to run the installation.

Open FileZilla (my favorite client) and connect to your webhost by specifying login credentials i.e. hostname, username & password

Browse to the location where you want to install WordPress. For example select blog if you want to install on blog.ashfame.com or select ashfame.com if you want to install it on www.ashfame.com

Download latest version of WordPress

Extract it to a temp folder on your computer and then drag drop it on the selected folder view in Filezilla.

After all the files have been uploaded, open the URL in the browser and follow the instructions :

Select Create a Configuration File
Select Let’s Go
Fill in the database connection details & click on Submit.
Click Run the install.
Fill in the Title, email and select the SE indexable option.
It will give you your username (admin) and a random password.

Use this to login and change the password to something you can remember under your profile under Users option.

There are many other alternatives to install WordPress which are far better than this as manually uploading is a time consuming process. Feel free to ask your queries via comments.

Install WordPress via fantastico

Ashfame — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:50:02 +0000

Installing WordPress via fantastico is the most easiest method of installing WordPress. However, it doesn’t offer options to change the default WordPress table prefix. This tutorial holds screenshot of cPanel under WpWebHost (recommended WordPress webhost). With other hosting accounts placement of options may vary but the procedure should be same.

Select Fantastico under Software / Services

Now select WordPress under Blogs

Click on New Installation

Here select the domain where you want to install WordPress like I have selected wordpress.ashfame.com.

If you want to install it in a subfolder of the domain or the sub-domain then specify the name in Install in directory.

Choose Admin username and password. You can choose Admin nickname, Admin email, Site name and Description.

Click Finish Installation.

If you have any questions then feel free to ask via the comments.

Orkut adds new Promotion feature

Ashfame — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:56:40 +0000

Orkut has added a new feature of promoting or sharing something with your friends. Be it a cool picture, funny video or simple text, you can share anything with your friend list which can further be promoted by your friends and then that will be visible to all of their friends. Cool! Isn’t it?

It can be accessed by clicking on the promote link just below the links below the display picture.

It shows up on the top-right corner of the page just where you might have seen adsense ads.

You can create a promotion right away and the preview is shown side by side.

I have created a promotion of mine too. Its regarding my new project Need A Project. If you are in my Orkut’s friend list then feel free to promote it.

Good thing is that you get some statistics too.

You can also watch this online video on using Orkut Promote :

I liked the promotion feature very much. What do you think?

Fix bb_attachments plugin of bbPress

Ashfame — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:59:33 +0000

bbPress as of now doesn’t allow any uploading feature with native support and the famous bb_attachments plugin which was developed for bbPress 0.9 versions doesn’t work with bbPress 1.0+ releases. For those who are new to this plugin, it adds uploading capabilities to your bbPress forum. Users can now upload files from their computer instead of uploading it to file sharing services and then sharing the URL. I have aggregated the information on how it can fixed from the Extends section of the bbPress.org

Here is how you can fix it :

Download the 0.2.7 version of the plugin from the Extends section.
Upload it to the my-plugins folder under your bbPress root. (Make sure file permissions of my-plugins & my-templates are 755. (How to fix file permissions of my-plugins & my-templates folder)
Make a directory /bb-attachments/ above your webroot i.e. just above the folder which is accessible on internet. (This is for security purposes)
Set file permissions of the bb-attachments folder to 777. (If you don’t know how to change the file permissions then follow the steps of the link given in step #2)
Make sure that bb_attachments table has been created in your database. You can use phpMyAdmin to check. If its not there, you can run this SQL query to create it :

[sql]
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS bb_attachments (
id int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL auto_increment,
time int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
post_id int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
user_id int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
user_ip int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
status tinyint(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
downloads int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
size int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL default 0,
ext varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
mime varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
filename varchar(255) NOT NULL default ”,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
INDEX (post_id)
) CHARSET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci
[/sql]

Now you need to have correct path in your plugin file. Open it for editing and change this line as per your configuration :

[php]
$bb_attachments['path']=dirname($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'])."/bb-attachments/";
[/php]

If you are still having issues (red X signs), then the best bet is that path is not correct. Open http://example.com/bbpress?bb_attachments_debug and look for the value of [path]. You will get an idea if the path you set in the previous step is correct or not (Change the URL accordingly, here it is assumed that it is installed in a sub directory bbpress of example.com).
Once you get your path fixed, then the plugin should be working fine.

If you face any issues, then leave a comment here and I will try to help.

Share your day to day incidents online

Ashfame — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:32:47 +0000

We all live online. Don’t we? Many of us including me spends more time online as compared to the time spent in offline activities but when I do it, I do it right.

So, I am going to share ~~two~~ three really cool sites with you which you can use to share your small but worth mentioning incidents which made you feel either good or bad.

Ok! First the good one and then the another one.

It Made My Day.com

Share small things that made your day.

Like my girlfriend kissed me after a fight. IMMD

Isn’t such a thing worth to share? Share it on IMMD.

F My Life.com

Its a great place to share your fucked up stories.

Today, there was a traffic accident on the highway which I normally take. I couldn’t resist laughing at the driver since he was stupid enough to rear-end someone on the highway. What I didn’t realize is that I forgot to pay attention to the road and rear-ended the car in front of me. FML #

Jhand.in

Its another startup (by Abhishek) similar to FML and can be called as its Indian version.
Its a place to share your day to day Jhand stories (if that really happens day to day)

Today I was sitting in a restaurant with my boyfriend. There was a couple sitting next to us. I heard the girl say to her hubby ,”Would you still love me if I looked like her”. [ Zindagi Jhand Hai ] #

Go live your life & share online. I hope and I wish that you mostly have good things to share.