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I have revived this site in a static format - no new posts and no new comments. All my work will be posted on my main site: www.webdezine.ca . I apologize to anyone that attempted to access the site over the last 6+ months, but I abruptly returned to school which has gobbled up all of my free time. I will be around my webdezine site attempting to update the menu to work with Wordpress 2.3-2.5.
Thanks for all your support in the past 
Best,
Sheri
I love to customize my sites to do what I want them to do. And yes, it’s hard to tell when enough is enough.
The idea for the ‘rating system’ came to mind when I created the separate bookmark category menu. I love feedback of all sorts. It’s how I grow as a designer and developer. Just because I like something doesn’t mean it’s everyones cup of tea and I would really like to get a handle on all the different opinions that pervade peoples minds on topics of interest.
So, I have implemented a rating system for my bookmark category posts. I started with a great little plugin called Rate My Stuff to enable me, from the administration side of the site, to place a rating on any post. I will only be using it for bookmark sites that I post but the ability is there to place a rating on other items — if I ever feel the desire to rate anything else!
Now, it’s nice that you know my opinions but that’s only half the story. If you take the time to comment, you should also be able to share your ‘rating’ opinion. I like to be fair!
Now you can. On every bookmark post you will be able to comment and rate the site. The rating is a general overall rating. As time wears on it might become necessary to split things up. We can then have different categories within the rating system such as design, usability, content, support etc. But for now, this is a good start! The rating system is from 1 to 5. I didn’t bother to go below 1. A rating of one star is all that is needed to tell the world that you think the site sucks the big one. From there on it proceeds with half stars.
I hope to get some ratings in the comments table as I have a lot of bookmarks I want to share with the world. There are some awesome sites out there and of course some that make me want to gag.
Tags: blog, Design, Development, modification, wordpressThis came from a post on Wordpress Support where the member was looking to lessen his workload by ‘including’ the pages he wanted to display rather than excluding them. As he posts new pages regularly he had to constantly update the pages to ‘exclude’ in his sidebar navigation. Here is the post:
Hello,
This is my first website with wordpress so please excuse if my question is obvious.
I want to create a navigation menu on the sidebar using wp_list_pages funtion, but instead of excluding certain pages I want to INCLUDE only certain pages. Is this possible?
The reason for this is that as I add more pages to the site I constantly need to update my sidebar.php to exclude the new page ids.
I thought of the possibility of creating a static menu linking directly to the pages in question, but then I loose the current_page_item class that is otherwise automatically added.
Any pointers would be of great help.
Thanks in advance,
Frank
In response to Frank’s query, Otto42 came up with a little known parameter that can be used in the ‘wp_list_pages’: the ‘include’ parameter.
Though it's not documented well, wp_list_pages() appears to support the "include" parameter. So you can do something like this:
wp_list_pages('include=4,8,15,16,23,42');
To show only those pages. Not entirely sure how that would work, mind you, so the results may be unusual. Or they may not. Hard to say.
This does work! but I like to keep on my toes and this seemed like a simple little thing to accomplish, so I took a stab at it.
<?php
function get_the_pa_ges (){
global $wpdb;
if ( ! $these_pages = wp_cache_get('these_pages', 'pages') ) {
$these_pages = $wpdb->get_results('select ID, post_title from '. $wpdb->posts .' where post_status = "publish" and post_type = "page" order by ID');
wp_cache_add('these_pages', $these_pages, 'pages');
}
return $these_pages;
}
function list_certain_pages($page_ids=''){
$page_ids = explode(',',$page_ids);
$output = '';
$these_pages = get_the_pa_ges ();
foreach ($these_pages as $thats_them){
$the_page_id = $thats_them->ID;
if (isset($page_ids) && in_array($the_page_id,$page_ids)){
$output .= '<a href="'.get_permalink($thats_them->ID).'" title="'.$thats_them->post_title.'">'.$thats_them->post_title.'</a><br/>';
}
}
return $output;
}
echo list_certain_pages('2,10,89');
?>
This also works. I included a call the database that can be cached. And if someone were to already have my wordpress menu installed, you could use the already cached function called ‘get_pa_ge ()’ to load up the page array needed to create this little side menu by replacing this line :
‘$these_pages = get_the_pa_ges ();’ with ‘$these_pages = get_pa_ge ();’.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I can tell what you are thinking: “If Wordpress natively supports ‘inclusion’ in the function….why use your function?”. And the answer from beyond this realm is quite simple. Page Load Time. The wp_list_pages function parses at least 183 lines of code through the various functions required to produce the list while my function uses 21 lines.
Tags: Development, menu, modification, php code, wordpressSome of you might have noticed the popular posts addition to the sidebar (looks like about 300 people so far! 
) . I originally borrowed the code from the Fire Stats Plugin for Wordpress that I installed a few days ago.
I created a new function for the addition by modifying the original code a little to allow re-placement of the url with the post title. All was well until I changed my base url option to include the World Wide Web (www) prefix, and then changed my permalinks to Apache’s mod-rewrite .
ARGH!
So now, the stats in the popular mod were waaay off. They only reflected the results for one url per post rather than the multitude of urls now populating my database. Another wonky problem was the original code for Fire Stats. It populates the url table using php’s predefined variable $_SERVER[’REQUEST_URI’]. This variable grabs a hold of the ENTIRE uri including any parameters which might be tacked onto the end. When displaying the “popular post” I was only displaying the count of direct links to the post–no parameters, no www, and no mod-rewrites were included in the count.
If you know me then you know that this problem was getting under my skin and I couldn’t just let it be!
Earlier this evening I finished a brand new function that tracks down all the various url’s for each individual post, combines the counts, then displays the links with “true” counts for reference. The function took a little fiddling around and a lot of testing but I am very happy with the result. No matter where the link originated, what is attached to it or what format it is presented in…it will be counted!
Tags: Development, fire stats, menu, modification, php code, wordpressI have implemented gzip compression on this site. The speed is like night and day. The page began as 28k and ended as 7k. Not bad. Not bad at all. To implement this wonder of virtual mother nature I first attempted to include the information within my .htaccess file. This only produced errors. More googling produced a solution. I could place the information within my php.ini file. PRESTO! It worked.
The operative line reads: zlib.output_compression = 4096
I really didn’t bother to read what exactly this means…I just know that it speeds up my site.
To test out the compression I entered my url into a form found on this page:
G-Zip
Test my page for yourself! What a difference a day makes
That’s my story an’ I’m stickin’ to it.
For awhile anyway.
The member section mod is up and running. Available through the Members menu, it takes you to a page where all sorts of member info is listed — that is, the info that the member chooses to list, besides the basic name, reg. date, and comments posted info. The display preferences can be chosen from the profile page page after log-in.
I had a little bit of a rough go with this one. It’s because I am so aware and some might say obsessed, with sql queries namely the number and efficiency. Try as I might - joins flying in all directions - I could not get this mod working in one query. It is because of the layout of the Wordpress mysql tables. While selecting information from the users table returned a few plump little multidimensional arrays with all the values I could ask for in a single row, the users meta table forced me to retrieve many more rows to get the information I needed - resulting in many scrawny little arrays. To illustrate my point more clearly: (more…)
Tags: Design, Development, modification, social networking, wordpressThis post is a reiteration of a thread over atWordpress Support. I am placing it here for posterity 
I have need for a setup that will display posts from a specific category "Announcements" on the main page, and mask all others. Other posts must still be accessible through direct linking and through the sidebar. I have not been able to develop a fix for the current setup. Is there a straightforward solution to this?After carefully scanning the Wordpress Source Cross Reference I came up with a
Tags: Development, modification, wordpressAnother wordpress hack. I’m working on the “member” section to allow members to share some or all of their profile and I noticed an annoying little glitch in the profile.php file.
Wordpress allows the user to select a name from the many stored in the database to display publicly when they post a comment. Well, the drop down menu pulls all the names and places them in a drop down list whether they are different or not. Quite annoying to see “joe” written out 4 times!
So I hacked the code…again.
(more…)
So, my blog customization is finished. Wordpress is a very straightforward code. It was shocking to see plain language embedded right into the core files. IMHO, it limits the global attraction of Wordpress. Everytime you have to edit the source code to change the heading of a box, it increases the possibility that errors are going to be made. Using a language file which defines variables in relation to plain language is a safer way to create content. Even then…not everyone knows PHP and one missed single quote could frustrate an administrator or noob. I’ll step off my soapbox now.
I have used these plugins: (more…)
Tags: Development, modification, wordpressThe Webdezine Pure CSS Horizontal Menu is a dropdpwn, cross browser multi-level (nested) css navigation system for Wordpress that can be displayed across the top of your header area. It includes support for Pages, Categories, Archives, Blogroll and Meta Links. The menus can be used in place of or in addition to the default Wordpress fuctions wp_list_categories, wp_list_pages, wp_get_archives, wp_list_bookmarks, and meta data that is contained in the sidebar.php. The menu is currently compatible with Wordpress 2.1.* and will soon be available to 2.0.* Wordpress users. The menu is as always, free for personal use, although support is greatly appreciated. Commercial users (including developers) should download the commercial version of the menu.
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<ul> <li><a href="">LIST NAME <table> <tr> <td> <ul> <li><a href="">PARENT CAT <table> <tr> <td> <ul> <li><a href="">CHILD CAT <table> <tr> <td> <ul> <li><a href="">SUB-CHILD CAT</a></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </table> </a> </li> </ul> </td> </tr> </table> </a> </li> </ul> </td> </tr> </table> </a> </li> </ul> Why the tag soup? To make it compitable with IE of course!
| OS | Browser | Version | Compatible? | Issues? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows XP | Firefox | 2.X | Yes | None |
| Windows XP | Internet Explorer | 6 | Yes | None |
| Windows XP | Internet Explorer | 7 | Yes | None |
| Windows XP | Opera | 9.1 | Yes | None |
| Linux | Firefox | 2.0.0.3 | Yes | None |
| Linux | Konqueror | 3.5.6 | Yes | None |
I need a heads up for non-windows OS browsers. Please drop me a comment listing your Operating System, Browser, Version, whether it’s compatible or not and any issues related to the operation of the menu.Thanks for your help!
SITEMAP FIX for 2.0.3 (457)
COMMERCIAL: Webdezine.ca Wordpress Menu V2.0.3 (1254)
PERSONAL: Webdezine.ca Wordpress Menu V2.0.3 (2062)
I found the default lists impractical and IMHO quite ugly. I also wanted to use the same menu for my blog that I will be using for my main site.
<?php
if (function_exists('get_menu'))
get_menu('topmenu');
?>
It will look like this in the default theme
<div id="header">
<div id="headerimg">
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php
if (function_exists('get_menu'))
get_menu('topmenu');
?>
</div>
</div>
<hr />
The function variables can be changed from the admin option menu. Note: Please remember that should you change the CSS class names available through the option menu, you will also have to change the class names within the CSS file.
Found a bug? I’d be happy to squash it. Just leave me a comment and I’ll do what I can.
Here is a link to another way to accomplish a dynamic css menu for wordpress:
side dynamic menu for pages. While not a drop down or one that is used for all links, it does highlight the page links if that is more important to the blog than the other links available.
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