WP Minify version 0.4 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Minify has the following enhancements.

1. Automatically exclude CSS conditionals.
2. Automatically exclude CSS media != all, or screen.
3. Automatically exclude https URLs.
4. Added sanity checking for buffer start & stop.
5. Moved buffer start to init with priority 99999.
6. Fixed “strpos()” warnings when settings have empty lines.

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

If you haven’t noticed, I have an advertise page on this blog that displays various OMNINOGGIN statistics for any interested advertiser to see. If you visit that page, you will also notice a little section under “View Counts” that displays the number of page views on my blog in the last 30 days. This statistics is tracked in my Google Analytics account and I use a hacked version of the Google Analyticator WordPress plugin to display it.

The reason why hacked the plugin to display the number of page views is because advertisers usually care more about the number of page views than the number of unique visitors.

In this tutorial I will show you how to hack the Google Analyticator plugin to display the number of page views instead of the unique visitors and display the count in any one of your posts or pages.

Changes to the Google Analyticator Plugin

Here are the changes I made to the Google Analyticator plugin version 5.3.1. The guys at Spiral Web Consulting can feel free to use it and integrate it into their plugin (with a link back to here I hope).

Index: google-analytics-stats-widget.php
===================================================================
--- google-analytics-stats-widget.php	(revision 151304)
+++ google-analytics-stats-widget.php	(working copy)
@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@
 
 		echo '<td style="width:auto!important;border-width:1px;border-color:#' . $font_color . ';border-style:solid;padding:0px 5px 0px 5px;text-align:right;background:#' . $inner_background_color . ';min-width:80px;*width:80px!important;"><div style="min-width:80px;">'. $visitor_count . '</div></td>';
 
-		echo '<td style="width:auto!important;padding:0px 5px 0px 5px;text-align:center;font-size:11px;">' . $line_one . '<br />' . $line_two . '</td>';
+		echo '<td style="width:auto!important;padding:0px 5px 0px 5px;text-align:center;font-size:11px;">' . $line_one . '</td>';
 
 	}
 
@@ -235,16 +235,16 @@
 		# Get the latest stats
 		$before = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-' . $time . ' days'));
 		$yesterday = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-1 day'));
-		$uniques = number_format($stats->getMetric('ga:visitors', $before, $yesterday));
+		$pageviews = number_format($stats->getMetric('ga:pageviews', $before, $yesterday));
 
 		# Make the array for database storage
-		$visit = serialize(array('unique'=>$uniques, 'lastcalled'=>time()));
+		$visit = serialize(array('unique'=>$pageviews, 'lastcalled'=>time()));
 
 		# Store the array
 		update_option('google_stats_visits_' . $account, $visit);
 
 		# Return the visits
-		return $uniques;
+		return $pageviews;
 	}
 
 }// END class

Displaying in Your Posts and Pages

Google Analyticator plugin be default only allows you to display this information in your sidebar widget. You will have to do some more hackery in your theme’s functions.php to be able to display this information in your posts and pages.

1. Modify functions.php

Here is the code I added to my functions.php.

function display_ga_stats($content) {
  $stats_pos = strpos($content, '##google_analyticator_statistics##');
  if($stats_pos) {
    ob_start();
    $google_stat_options = array('title'=>'', 'account'=>'ga:7875704', 'timeFrame'=>'30', 'pageBg'=>'f6f6f6', 'widgetBg'=>'999', 'innerBg'=
>'fff', 'font'=>'333', 'line1'=>'Views in the last 30 days', 'line2'=>'');
    the_widget('GoogleStatsWidget', $google_stat_options);
    $ga_stats = ob_get_contents();
    ob_end_clean();
    $content = str_replace('##google_analyticator_statistics##', $ga_stats, $content);
  }
  return $content;
}
add_filter('the_content','display_ga_stats');

2. Insert ##google_analyticator_statistics## into your posts

Now all you have to do to display this information on your posts and pages is to include the text “##google_analyticator_statistics##” anywhere you want to display in your posts and/or pages. Enjoy!

Here is a note to people who use my Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin. I recommend that you set cache expiration to 0 to make your statistics register correctly with the Buy Sell Ads network.

This is because Buy Sell Ads network is now also tracking the number of times the ads themselves get requested (not just the tracking pixel). If the ads are cached on your server, then they are not going to count in your Buy Sell Ads statistics whenever it is being displayed (lowering your impression count).

I am working on ripping out the caching mechanism right now, but for the time being, you should just set cache expiration to 0 in the Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin settings.

WP Greet Box version 5.3.0 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Greet Box has the following enhancements.

1. Added ru_RU translation (Thank you M.Comfi!).
2. Fixed exclusion rule that won’t work per Window’s end of line issue.
3. Updated readme.txt format (Changelog).

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

WP Greet Box version 5.2.0 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Greet Box has the following enhancements.

1. Added ability to not show greeting messages per post/page by adding “wpgb_hide” into a post/page’s custom field.
2. Moved documentation to omninoggin.com.
3. Fixed “Cannot modify header information” warning in admin media library.
4. Fixed fellow->follow typos in the default reddit message.
5. Fixed i18n bug “$this->plugin_domain” (Thank you Lutz!)

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

This post will explain the various options in WP Greet Box WordPress plugin. I just thought it would be nice to pull the documentation outside of the plugin itself, so that it can be updated more frequently.

Greeting Messages

This is where you manage all of your custom greeting messages that show up depending on your visitor’s referrer information.

Change look and feel of the greeting message

You can change the look and feel of greeting messages by modifying the wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/css/wp-greet-box.css file.

Active/Inactive Greeting Messages

You can make greeting messages active or inactive. Only active message will display to visitor depending on their referrer information.

“DEFAULT” Message

This greeting message displays to visitors who are new to your site and their referrer information does not trigger any other custom greeting messages.

“NOSCRIPT” Message

This greeting message displays to visitors who do not have JavaScript enabled.

Referrer URL

Each custom greeting message displays according to what you specify as the referrer URL. The “Referrer URL” field accepts a comma-delimited list of possible patterns. Multiple referrer URLs can be defined for each greeting message using the following simple syntax.

• Asterisk (*) can serve as a wild card for URLs. For example, the referrer URL “google.*” will match any variations of google (google.com, google.fr, etc.).
• Comma (,) can serve as a list operator. For example, the referrer URL “delicious, del.icio.us” will match either delicious.com or del.icio.us.

Continue to display greeting message until user first closes it

When checked, the appropriate greeting message will continue to display to the same visitor until they click “close” for the first time. After that, the greeting message will not show up for that user anymore. When this is checked, the “Visitor Timeout” setting below will be overridden.

Visitor Timeout

This field specifies the number of minutes since the visitor’s last visit until the plugin forgets the visitor. Let’s say you set this to 60 minutes. A new visitor will see the greeting message the first time they visit your site. If they return within the next 60 minutes, they will not see the greeting message and the 60 minutes timer restarts. If they visit after 60 minutes has passed, they will see the greeting message again.

For sites like digg.com you would want to set this setting to something small like “0″, because you would want the digg.com visitor to always see the request to be dugg on every visit. For sites like google.com you might want to set it to something higher like “1440″ (1 day) because you probably do not want to nag the google visitor that much. Play around with the values to see what suits you best.

Greeting Icon

The URL to the image that shows up next to your greeting message.

Greeting Icon URL

The URL that the image will redirect to when it has been clicked.

Greeting Message

Specifies the greeting message that shows up for your visitors.

Smart Tags

The following special tags are available for use in greeting messages and icon link fields.

• [[rss-link]] – The url of your rss feed. You can set this in the “General Advanced Options” section.
• [[email-link]] – The url for subscribing via email. You can set this in the “General Advanced Options” section.
• [[permalink]] – The current page’s url.
• [[escaped-permalink]] – The escaped version of the current page’s url.
• [[title]] – The current page’s title.
• [[escaped-title]] – The escaped version of the current page’s title.

Exclusion Rules

WP Greet Box will not display for any referrers that match any rules you specify in this option.

• Rules are line delimited. To not show greeting messages to visitors from friendfeed or google reader, use the following rule:

  friendfeed.com
  google.com/reader

• When regular expressions is enabled, each line will be used as a regular expression. The same rules above in regular expressions will look like:

  friendfeed\.com
  google\.com/reader

• For regular expression usage, refer to user guide and reference.

General Configuration

Automatically show greeting messages on posts/pages

When checked, WP Greet Box will automatically display greeting messages within your posts/pages (no theme modification necessary). Uncheck this option if you use manual insertion (see below).

Manual Greeting Message Insertion

To manually position your greeting message, you will have to:

1. Disable automatic insertion on posts and pages.
2. Copy the following code to your desired location in any of the theme files.

   <?php if(function_exists('wp_greet_box')){wp_greet_box();} ?>

Allow users to close greeting message

When checked, greeting messages can be closed.

Have icon link open a new browser window

Adds a target=”_blank” to icon links.

Position greeting message before/after post/page

You can automatically insert greeting messages before or after posts/pages. This option only works with automatic greet box insertion.

Related Posts Options

Detect keywords from search engines referrers and display related posts

Enables related posts functionality within greeting messages if search keywords are passed along the referrer from most search engines.

Position related posts before/after the greeting message

Choose between displaying related posts before or after the greeting message.

Show post excerpt in related posts

Shows excerpts from each post in the related posts list.

Expand related posts by default

Make related post listing visible instead of hidden upon greeting message displaying.

Limit related posts

Choose how many related posts to display.

Limit related post excerpts

Choose how long the related posts excerpts should be.

Advanced Options

Enable compatibility with cache plugins

When checked, WP Greet Box will use JavaScript instead of PHP to load the greeting message. When checked, WP Greet Box will work with WP Super Cache or any other caching plugins, but there will be a delay before the greeting message shows up after the page loads (there’s a slight *bump down* of the content when the greeting message shows up). If you are not using any cache plugins, I recommend unchecking this option so that WP Greet Box can operate in PHP mode.

Enable css/wp-greet-box.css

Automatically reference css/wp-greet-box.css. Uncheck this if you have your own CSS file and want to not use wp-greet-box.css.

Enable js/functions.js and js/onload.js

Automatically reference js/functions.js and js/onload.js. Uncheck this if you want to include these files in the theme yourself.

Your RSS feed URL

This is the text that replaces all instances of [[rss-link]] in your custom greeting messages.

Your “Subscribe via Email” URL

This is the text that replaces all instances of [[email-link]] in your custom greeting messages.

Various HTML code placements

Used for customizing HTML code that wraps around each greeting message.

Import/Export

You can export your entire WP Greet Box options into a flat text file which you can use to modify and re-import into your current WP Greet Box installation or any other WP Greet Box installations.

Buy Sell Ads WP Plugin version 0.5 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of Buy Sell Ads WordPress plugin has the following enhancements.

1. Fixed for encrypting BSA statistics JS script (So BSA counter does not get blocked and your stats are more accurate on buysellads.com).
2. Cleaned up some code. Also updated to circumvent the updated Easylist.

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

WP Minify version 0.3 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Minify has the following enhancements.

1. WordPress 2.8 Compatibility Fix (minify files enqueued in the footer)

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

WP Greet Box version 5.1.0 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Greet Box has the following enhancements.

1. Added option to make the greet icon open up a new browser window when clicked on.
2. Added POT file for translations.
3. Added bing.com. (Thank you mynetx!)
4. Updated Google icon. (Thank you Shahar!)
5. Fixed svn:executable properties for php scripts and images.
6. Removed legacy “Allow self referral option” (and always leave it on).

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

photo credit: cycle60

WP Minify is supposed to work out of the box for many cases. That being said, there will always be plugins that conflict with WP Minify because of the nature of this plugin. In this post, I will show you how to troubleshoot these issues for yourself before you have to hit the plugin support forum.

How does WP Minify Work?

When activated, the plugin does the following:

1. WP Minify intercepts theme rendering at the get_header WordPress hook and puts everything that is echoed/outputted from the PHP code into an output buffer.
2. WP Minify then intercepts theme rendering again at the get_footer WordPress hook to stop the output buffer.
3. The plugin then evaluates the page content to extract all JavaScripts and stylesheets out.
4. The minified version of these JavaScripts and stylesheets are then re-injected into the content.
5. The page content is echoed/outputted as normal.

General Debugging Tips

Almost all issues can be resolved using the following debugging technique.

Here is what you will need

• Firefox browser
• Firebug add-on
• Debugging skills

Here are the steps you need to take

1. Load your site with the following Firebug options enabled.
   
2. Go to the “Net” tab in Firebug and you will probably see a URL that is highlight in red and returning 400.
   
3. Copy this broken URL and drop it address bar in a new browser window and make sure that it really does return a 400 error code.
4. The minify URL is in the form of “http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-minify/min/?f=” followed by a comma delimited list of files. You should try removing each file one by one from this list until the Minify call works (returns the minified version of all of these files).
5. Once you find the JavaScript or CSS file that is causing minification to break, you can exclude that file in WP Minify options.

Why do some JavaScript/CSS files conflict with WP Minify?

The authors of the Minify engine were nice enough to draft a wiki listing common problems when running JavaScript and CSS files through Minify. I suggest that you take a look at that document if you are planning to troubleshoot your JavaScript and CSS files instead of just excluding them in WP Minify options.

I still can’t get it to work!

If all else fails, there is always the plugin support forums.

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WP Minify version 0.2.0 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Minify has the following enhancements.

1. Changed the way CSS and JS files are picked up (No more wp_enqueue_* requirements!).
2. Fixed exclusion bug where specified files are not excluded from Minification.
3. Removed OMNINOGGIN dashboard widget.

Where do I download and read documentation?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Where do I file bugs, make feature requests, and get support?

Please visit the support forum.

photo credit: linh.ngân

Today I would like to announce the launch of the OMNINOGGIN plugin support forum.  From now on, I would like all support questions regarding all of my WordPress plugins to go through the appropriate categories in the support forum.  Here are my reasons for the shift:

• Intense Debate comments are not searchable by the end user.  It’s also hard to navigate the comments to find what you are looking for.  Because of that, people end up asking the same questions.
• Support plugins is starting to become a monumental task for me.  I’m hoping that having a forum will encourage 3rd party paticipation to help reduce some of my time spent on plugin support.  That way I can have some time to actually develop the plugins.
• I need the ability to separate which support requests are important and which ones are not as important.  To do that, I have created a set of free support forums and a set of premium support forums.  Free forums are for people who are using my plugins for personal/non-commercial purposes (and thus would not need urgent support).  Premium forums are for people who are using my plugins on blogs that are earning them money.
• Some people were unhappy at my attempts to gain traffic from my plugins by displaying an OMNINOGGIN widget in the WordPress adminitration dashboard by default.  The premium support forums will help justify the 20-30 hours I spend each week on my plugins, so I will be disabling these widgets by default on all of my plugins.

What is the difference between free support and premium support?

Premium forums will be identical to free forums except that I will not be monitoring free support forums as often as premium support forums. Also, there is no guarantee that your post will be responded to in free support forums.

How do I get access to premium support forums?

You can get access to premium support forums in any of the following ways:

• If you have made a donation of at least $5 to any of my plugins prior to today, please contact me via the contact form on my about page.  Make sure to specify your forum username and your Paypal email address, so that I can confirm the donation.
• Purchase premium plugin support.  You will have access to the premium forums immediately after purchase.
• Contribute to the free forums.  You will automatically have access to the premium forums after posting to the forums 50 times.  Please also make sure to not spam, but instead post only relevant posts.  I will ban you if I think you are a spammer.
• Send me an email via the contact form on my about page and tell me why you deserve premium support access.  I’m pretty reasonable provided that you are too .

WP Greet Box version 5.0 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Greet Box has the following enhancements.

1. Added ability to expand related posts by default.
2. Added ability to display related posts before the greeting message.
3. Added localization support.
4. Added version checking.
5. Cleaned up a lot of code.

Where do I download, file bugs, make feature requests, comments, and suggestions?

Please visit the original plugin post.

I have moved WP Minify out of beta stage.

What’s new this release?

This is the official release of WP Minify. This release fixes a bunch of bugs found and reported by the beta testers (THANK YOU!). Here are some updates on bugs and feature requests.

Known bug

1. Full compatibility with WPMU (I haven’t had time to reproduce this bug).

Upcoming Features

1. Placing minified scripts in the footer.
2. Automatic <link> and <script> detection for minifying.
3. Option for setting far future expiration.
4. Option for setting the location of local cache files.
5. Option to not gzip.
6. Ability to offload files to an external CDN.

Where do I download, file bugs, make feature requests, comments, and suggestions?

Please visit the original plugin post.

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Here is the winner from the previous WordPress Plugin Development Book Giveaway.

Winner

After including the people who did not win in the last contest (as promised), here is the lucky winner of Vladimir Prelovac’s WordPress Plug-in Development: Beginner’s Guide book.

Twitter ID: tenkabuto

How do I claim my prize?

I will be contacting the winner via Twitter to sort out shipping information.

Darn! I lost!

Feel free to purchase this awesome book from Packt Publishing. It’s a well $40 spent! Also I am planning to regularly run contests on this blog. Please stay tuned to the RSS feed for more contests!

photo credit: GeekMom Heather

As some of you may know, I have been writing on Weblog Tools Collection (WLTC) quite a bit lately. In this post, I would like to highlight a good tutorial I wrote on WLTC in case you guys might have missed it. The tutorial talks about one of the most important components of a blog contest: tracking RSS subscribers.

Blog contests are great tools for helping you gain readers. There are many great theories out there on the web about how to run a blog contest, but there are no tutorials that talk about how to track RSS subscribers in these contests. The tutorial will show you two simple WordPress hacks that is needed to be able to track RSS subscribers in a blog contest. Check out the full tutorial here.

Last week I reviewed Vladimir Prelovac’s WordPress Plug-in Development Book: Beginner’s Guide.  Today I would like to give the book away!

How to enter

You will only need to do two very easy things to win:

1. Follow @madeinthayaland on Twitter and stay followed until at least the end of the contest.
2. Tweet about this contest using the following text:
   

   Just entered a contest to win V.Prelovac’s “WordPress Plug-in Development” Book. Win by following @madeinthayaland and RT! http://is.gd/s7iM

When does the contest end?

This contest will end on April 17th, 2009, 11:59pm EST.  I will be announcing the lucky winner in the morning of April 18th, 2009.  Good luck everybody!

Sponsor

This contest is sponsored by Packt Publishing, publisher of WordPress Plug-in Development: Beginner’s Guide.

In this post, I would like to highlight a good tutorial I recently wrote on Weblog Tools Collection in case you guys have missed it.

The tutorial shows how you can easily hack your WordPress blog to highlight search terms using some jQuery magic.  I particularly like this method because it is an easy modification and jQuery will let you highlight any text within any HTML element no matter if the text is in the post title or in the post content area.

Read the full article here.