This book will continue the Professional WordPress series with a focus on plugin development in WordPress. This alone is exciting news, but of course I’m not writing this book on my own. I’ve brought in two of the best known WordPress developers in the business: Ozh Richard and Justin Tadlock! Anyone who works with WordPress will be very familiar with these two guys. They both have a huge reputation for writing some of the most detailed, easy to understand, and extremely knowledgeable tutorials out there for plugin and WordPress development.

The excitement doesn’t stop there! We’ve also brought in two great Technical Editors for our new book. The first is Andrew Nacin. Anyone who follows the core development of WordPress will be very familiar with Andrew. Andrew is one of the most active core contributors to the WordPress project and his endless knowledge of the internals of WordPress are sure to help take our book to the next level. The second Tech Editor is Doug Vann. Doug is known for his expertise and knowledge in the open source CMS world. Doug will approach this book as a CMS user, thinking outside the box of a normal developer.

This book will be jam packed with plugin knowledge from beginner topics like creating your first plugin, security, and settings, to more advanced topics like JavaScript and AJAX, Cron, and the mysterious Rewrite API. This book will have something for everyone looking to learn or expand their knowledge on building professional plugins in WordPress.

You can following our process during the writing of this book using the hash tag #plugindevbook on Twitter. The book is currently planned for a March 2011 release date.

Related posts:

1. Professional WordPress – New Book Coming Soon!
2. Professional WordPress Is In Production!
3. Professional WordPress Has Hit The Shelves!

During the podcast we covered some great topics including:

• Intro to WordPress themes
• Where to start when building a theme
• Theme frameworks
• Theme options
• Selling themes and what to consider
• GPL and split-license

I had a chance to read the new book prior to the interview. I would classify this book as a must read for any designer looking to learn how to develop amazing WordPress themes. The chapter on selling themes is worth the book price alone!

If you haven’t done so be sure to pick up a copy of Wicked WordPress Themes and starting creating beautiful themes today!

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1. SitePoint Podcast Interview for Professional WordPress
2. Professional WordPress Is In Production!
3. The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology Book from SitePoint

Cinnamon Wings

The first thing I noticed is the wings are whole wings. So even though the serving is only 5 whole wings, it’s actually 10 traditional wings. When the waitress brought the wings we immediately smelt the warm cinnamon aroma. Even the guy sitting next to us asked if they were cinnamon flavored.

The wings were extremely delicious! The meat was juicy and cooked perfectly. The cinnamon was better than I expected, but I still felt like I was missing out on my normal hot wings.

Overall the wings at Teresa’s Next Door Bar were really good and I would recommend them to anybody. Now I need to go back and try the hot wings!

All plugins developed by Pluginize are released under the GPLv2 software license. Pluginize will also submit any plugin developed to the official Plugin Directory on WordPress.org. We’ll even setup a support forum section dedicated to your plugin to handle any support requests that come in.

Pluginize uses our soon to be “Famous 3 Step Process” to make creating a custom plugin as easy as possible. The goal of Pluginize is to create high quality custom plugins for WordPress using an extremely painless process.

We follow the proper WordPress coding standards to verify your plugin is fully compatible with WordPress. We also put a focus on security and verify our custom plugins are as secure as possible. If you are looking for a high quality custom built plugin for WordPress, look no further than Pluginize.com!

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The inaugural event will take place on August 11th at 7pm at Future Media Concepts (FMC) in downtown Philly. WebDevStudios.com is sponsoring the event and donating pizzas for all!

I’m really excited to find some local talent to come speak at our monthly gatherings. If you’re in the Philly area, and interested in WordPress. make sure you join the Meetup group and get involved!

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1. New Jersey WordPress Meetup coming in January
2. Indianapolis Twitter Meetup aka Tweetup
3. WordCamp NYC 2009 set for October 24th!

I plan on demoing a hacked website to show what hacks are capable of. I will also be covering top security tips and plugins for your websites and blogs. And lastly we’ll talk about how to clean up your website after a hack occurs. I will also be giving away some copies of Professional WordPress!

If you run a WordPress powered website these tips are not to be missed!

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1. I’m Speaking at WordCamp Montreal!
2. WordPress Security from WordCamp Montreal
3. New Jersey WordPress Meetup coming in January

I’m also starting up a new WordPress Tips and Tricks Newsletter so if you are interested be sure to sign up!

First we need to add a form field to the Edit Category screen. To do this we’ll use the edit_category_form_fields action hook available in WordPress:

<?php
add_action ( 'edit_category_form_fields', 'tme_cat_featured');

function tme_cat_featured( $tag ) {

	//check for existing featured ID
	$cat_featured = get_option( 'category_featured' );
	$featured_id = '';
	if ( is_array( $cat_featured ) && array_key_exists( $tag->term_id, $cat_featured ) ) {
		$featured_id = $cat_featured[$tag->term_id] ;
	}
?>
    <tr class="form-field">
        <th scope="row" valign="top"><label for="category_featured"><?php _e('Featured Post ID') ?></label></th>
        <td>
        	<input type="text" name="category_featured" id="category_featured" size="3" style="width:5%;" value="<?php echo $featured_id; ?>"><br />
            <span class="description">The post ID that will be the featured post when viewing this category.</span>
        </td>
    </tr>

<?php
}
?>

The above code will add a single text field (Featured Post ID) to the Edit Category screen as shown in the screenshot below:

Now that we’ve added a text field to our Edit Category page we need to save the input to our option array. To capture the ID when a category is updated we’ll use the edited_category action hook like so:

<?php
add_action ( 'edited_category', 'tme_save_featured');

function tme_save_featured( $term_id ) {
	if ( isset( $_POST['category_featured'] ) ) {

		//load existing category featured option
		$current_featured = get_option( 'category_featured' );

		//set featured post ID to proper category ID in options array
		$current_featured[$term_id] = intval( $_POST['category_featured'] );

		//save the option array
		update_option( 'category_featured', $current_featured );
	}
}
?>

As you can see we are saving the Category ID and Featured Post ID as a single associative array option value in WordPress named category_featured. As you add Featured Post ID values to each of your categories they will be added to this array and saved in WordPress. One thing to consider when using this method is scalability. If you plan on storing thousands of meta data values for your taxonomies this isn’t the method for you.

I packaged this example into a stand alone plugin so you can easily install on your WordPress website and test it out: Download the Taxonomy Meta Data plugin example.

Related posts:

1. How To: Load User Info Using the Admin Email in WordPress
2. Custom Post Type UI Plugin for WordPress
3. How To: Add a Post Thumbnail to an RSS Feed in WordPress

Be sure to check out the newest features in WP 3.0 including the enhanced custom post type support. You can use my Custom Post Type UI plugin for a quick and easy way to play with post types.

I loved seeing three WDS guys on the list of Contributors: Chris Cochran, Brian Messenlehner, and Me!

Also check out the video showing the new features in 3.0:

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3. Google OpenSocial Launches Today, Hallelujah!

I spent part of the day waiting for FiOS to be installed in the new house. After the install was complete we had my birthday dinner at Hooters, which is pretty much a tradition at this point. All in all it was a good birthday!

I found this quote online that seems appropriate:

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty. – Georges Clemenceau

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3. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!