Monthly Archives: November 2010

How to Test Drive New Plugins And Themes Without Making Them Live On Your Site

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testdrive-mainApart from being a user-friendly CMS, what makes WordPress really great is the support for plugins and themes. With a huge library of plugins and themes, you can instantly add new features and new skins to your blog without any coding on your part.

However, if you have been blogging long enough, you will know that sometime a badly coded plugin can break the site. Worst still, it can even cause the site to crash. This goes the same for a new theme. Without any tweaking and configuration, 9 out of 10 times the theme won’t look great on your site. For such cases, it is wise to test them out before making them live.
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How to Replace WordPress Cron With A Real Cron Job

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wpcron-missed-scheduleWe are all too familiar with the “Missed Schedule” status, aren’t we? I am sure it is very frustrating to see that all your scheduled posts went MIA.

WordPress comes with its own cron job that allows you to schedule your posts and events. However, in many situations, the WP-Cron is not working well and leads to posts missed their publication schedule and/or scheduled events not executed.
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How to Add Featured Images to Your Theme

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WordPress first introduced the “Post Thumbnail” feature in version 2.9. This feature allows the user to set an image as the featured image for the particular post. In version 3.0, the “Post Thumbnail” feature was renamed as “Featured Image”.

By default, this featured image option is not turned on. You will need to place a simple code snippet in your theme file to activate the function. Here’s how you can get it to work in your current theme.
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Latest Update to WordPress For Android Now Allows You to Set Post Status

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I seldom blog from my Android phone, simply because the WordPress app is not good enough. Well, to be more exact, it is good enough for casual blogging and quick updating, but for managing a full fledge blog, it still can’t meet the standard.

A recent update to the WordPress for Android (version 1.3.8) app adds a new “set post status” feature. You will now be able to set “Draft:, “Pending Review”, “Private” or “Publish” from the app itself. While this is just another “should have been there long ago” feature, it is better late than never.

wordpress-android-set-status

Other bug fixes include:

  • Fixed crash when adding media on Dell Streak
  • Fixed crash when attempting to add a self-hosted site with an invalid blog URL
  • Fixed local db problem when upgrading from a 1.0.x or 1.1.x version
  • Updated Polish translation strings
  • Fixed crash when trying to add a second blog from a WordPress.com account or WordPress multi-user install
  • Fixed no-name blogs from showing as blank in the multi-user blog selection screen
  • Comments Loading progress bar no longer hangs

Version 1.3.8: Post Status & Bug Fixes [WordPress for Android]

How to Make Disqus Notify the Post Author When a New Comment Is Posted?

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By default, in a multi-authors blog, you can get WordPress to notify the post author when a new comment is posted. To do this, you just have to update the “Email me whenever” field in “Settings -> Discussion”.

comment-email-me

Now if you are using Disqus as your comment system, you will find that it won’t notify the author when a new comment is posted. Instead, it will only notify the moderators.

To fix this, go to the Disqus-Comment-System folder in the Plugins directory. Open the disqus.php in a text editor. Scroll down to line 289 where you see the following:

$comment_id = $commentdata['comment_ID'];
update_comment_meta($comment_id, 'dsq_parent_post_id', $comment->parent_post);
update_comment_meta($comment_id, 'dsq_post_id', $comment->id);

Add in the line “wp_notify_postauthor($comment_id);” so that it becomes:

$comment_id = $commentdata['comment_ID'];
update_comment_meta($comment_id, 'dsq_parent_post_id', $comment->parent_post);
update_comment_meta($comment_id, 'dsq_post_id', $comment->id);
wp_notify_postauthor($comment_id);

Save, upload and replace the file back to the server.

That’s it. It should notify your authors whenever there is a new comment.