The oEmbed feature means you can just paste a YouTube URI in your post, and it will show up as an embedded video on your site. Nifty! But URIs passed to the plugin was thus parsed and output as embedding code, which broke the whole shebang (this bug only occured when using URIs without title/description in front).

The version just released fixes this, so if you’re running on WP 2.9 or later, you should upgrade YouTube SimpleGallery. It also includes a minor fix for YouTube URIs containing double dashes, since WP changes these to ndash.

Thanks to everyone who has reported bugs – it’s very helpful for further development! Keep doing so; either in the comments, via email, or in the WordPress Forum.

How-To:

First off I add the Redirect To First Child Template to the Theme. What this does, is look for the first Child of a Page, and redirect to it. (To controll which Child is the first, I use the plugin My Page Order.) I then create a Page for each of the languages I want, employing the Redirect-Template on them. I then add what is to be the main menu items for each language, and add them as Children of their respective language Page. If the site has any subnavigation, I simply add these as Children to the Child-of-language-Pages. Follow me?

This gives me a rough navigation along the lines of:

• ENGLISH
  • Main Page
  • Products
  • About Us
  • Contact
• GERMAN
  • Startseite
  • Produkte
  • Wir über uns
  • Kontakt
• FRENCH
  • Page principale
  • Produits
  • A propos de nous
  • Contact

(Apologies for poor translation, if any, had to use Google Translator.)

Then I add the code for the navigation to the Theme. We can’t simply use wp_list_pages() for this, as it will simply output a list like the one above. Instead we use this script where we want our navigation to appear:

<?php
// CHECK IF WE ARE ON A PAGE
 if(is_page()) {
 $currenttitle = $post->post_title.'</a>';
 $subpages = wp_list_pages('title_li=&echo=0&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of='.$post->ID);

 $id = $post->post_parent;
 $sidebar_title = get_page($id);
 if($sidebar_title) {
 $prevpageparent = $sidebar_title->post_parent;
 }
 rewind_posts();

 if($subpages) {
 $pages=wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of=".$post->post_parent);
 $pagelisting = str_replace($currenttitle, $currenttitle.'<div id="submenu"><ul>'.$subpages.'</ul></div>', $pages);
 echo $pagelisting;
 }

 elseif($post->post_parent && $prevpageparent>'0') {
 $parent = $post->post_parent;

 $id = $post->post_parent;
 $myquery = new WP_Query("page_id=$id");
 $currenttitle = $myquery->post->post_title.'</a>';

 $subpages = wp_list_pages('title_li=&echo=0&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of='.$post->post_parent);

 $pages = wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&echo=0&child_of=".$prevpageparent);
 $pagelisting = str_replace($currenttitle, $currenttitle.'<div id="submenu"><ul>'.$subpages.'</ul></div>', $pages);
 echo $pagelisting;
 }

 else { wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of=".$post->post_parent);
 }
 rewind_posts();
} else {
// WE ARE NOT ON A PAGE, BUT A POST, CATEGORY VIEW, ETC
// SO WE HAVE TO DEFINE THE DEFAULT LANGUAGE MANUALLY AT THE END OF THE STRING
 wp_list_pages("title_li=&echo=1&sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&child_of=1");
} ?>

Line 40 is important; if we’re not on a Page the script can’t traverse back to it’s source (the Page that defines the language), so we have to manually put in the ID for the language Page we want to use as default, f.i. ENGLISH, at the end of child_of=.

Also note that this script is custom made to show vertical navigation, with any subnavigation positioned directly below its Parent both when the Parent is active and when the Child is active, like this:

• Main Page
• Products
  • Software
  • Hardware
  • Upgrades
• About us
• Contact

It can be shortened and/or modified for other needs and types of navigation.

A few of notes:

• It’s easiest to add the links for each language into the Theme manually. If you want to use flag icons, or simply text links, you can simply add: <a href="<?php echo get_bloginfo('home').'/english/'; ?>">English</a> and so forth.
• If you want the ENGLISH > Main Page to be the default Front Page, simply go to Settings > Reading in WP-admin and set Static Page: ENGLISH to display as Front Page.
• And most important: This won’t take you from the English Product Page to the French Produits Page by clicking the flag. When you change language, you will be redirected to the Front Page of the selected language!

The sollutions is simple: Remove the width and height attributes with jQuery. The following code between <head> and </head> will do the job:

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery.noConflict();
jQuery(document).ready(function($){

	$('img').each(function(){
		$(this).removeAttr('width')
		$(this).removeAttr('height');
	});

});
</script>

Note that this code will remove width and height on all images. You can use class or ID selectors if you just want to remove it on some, say in the sidebar: $('#sidebar img').each(function(){

Movie Buzz #187

Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Deathmatch

The Fast Show: Unlucky Alf

Weird Al Yankovic: “eBay” music video

Read more about the YouTube SimpleGallery plugin.

Exclude Pages from Navigation

I often want to add Pages to my WordPress site, without showing it in wp_list_pages(). So far WordPress doesn’t have an option for excluding Pages from navigation menus without setting Visibility to Private (which makes them unavailable for non-logged-in users). For this we have to use a Plugin: Exclude Pages. This plugin adds a checkbox to the Page Editor; “Include this page in menus”. Simply uncheck this to exclude Pages from the page navigation that users see on your site.

Alternate Titles

When creating Pages in WordPress, what you put in the Title Field will show up both in navigation and as a title on the website. This can be very impractical, not to say downright frustrating. Often I want the menu item to be “About Us”, but the Page title to be “Who We Are”, or something of the same. Not possible in WordPress out-of-the-box. The sollution is Custom Fields. In the Page Editor, add a new custom field called “alttitle”. Then edit your page.php, and replace <h2><?php the_title();  ?></h2> with:

<?php $alttitle = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'alttitle', true); ?>
<h2><?php if(!$alttitle) { the_title(); } else { echo $alttitle; } ?></h2>

That’s it. The code checks if an alternate title is exists, and if so, displays it. Otherwise the default Page title is displayed.

Make an Alternate Title Section in the Editor

If you have hidden the custom fields section from your users, or just simply want to make the sollution more elegant, you can use the More Fields plugin i mentioned in part 1. Here’s how to do it:

1. Install and activate the plugin
2. Go to Settings > More Fields and click “Add a new box!”
3. In Box title put “Alternate Title”, and select “Left” in the Position pull-down, save
4. Click the “Add new field!” button
5. In Key put “alttitle”, in Title put “Alternate Title is used as page heading, while Title field (above) is used for navigation items”, leave the rest as is, save
6. Click “Manage post types” in the top menu, click “Page”, scroll down to the bottom and check the checkbox next to Alternate Title, save

You will now have a new editor section in the Page Editor, where you can write alternate titles for your Pages.

I will show you two options; displaying related Posts based on either Tags or Categories. Put the code in your single.php where you want to display related Posts. Right above <?php comments_template(); ?> is probably the best place.

The following will display the five most recent Posts which share the same first Tag of the Post:

<?php
$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
if ($tags) {
	$first_tag = $tags[0]->name;
	$args = array(
		'numberposts' => 5,
		'tag' => $first_tag,
		'exclude' => $post->ID
	);
	$related = get_posts($args);
	if($related) {
		echo <div id="relatedposts">';
		echo <h4>Related Posts</h4>';
	  	echo<ul>';
		  foreach ( $related as $rel ):
			echo <li><a href="'. get_permalink($rel->ID) .'" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to '. $rel->post_title .'">'. $rel->post_title .</a></li>';
		  endforeach;
	    echo </ul>';
	    echo </div>';
 	 }
}
?>

If you don’t use Tags, or simply just want to find related Posts based on Category, the following code will do that – displaying the five most recent Posts from the first Category of the Post.

<?php
$cats = get_the_category();
if ($cats) {
	$first_cat = $cats[0]->cat_ID;
	$args = array(
		'numberposts' => 5,
		'category' => $first_cat,
		'exclude' => $post->ID,
	);
	$related = get_posts($args);
	if($related) {
		echo '<div id="relatedposts">';
		echo '<h4>Related Posts</h4>';
	  	echo'<ul>';
		  foreach ( $related as $rel ):
			echo '<li><a href="'. get_permalink($rel->ID) .'" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to '. $rel->post_title .'">'. $rel->post_title .'</a></li>';
		  endforeach;
	    echo '</ul>';
	    echo '</div>';
 	 }
}
?>

The upshot of using this method, as opposed to a plugin, is that you have complete control and can display and style the related Posts as you see fit.

Movie Buzz #187

Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Deathmatch

The Fast Show: Unlucky Alf

Weird Al Yankovic: “eBay” music video

Read more about the YouTube SimpleGallery plugin.