This post describes using the WordPress Roaster Plot Plugin to graph Hottop profiles.

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A client asked for a small WordPress plugin to permit restricting page and post access to members only. Now there are a number of plugins that restrict the whole blog to members only but this plugin permits you to restrict an individual post or page without restricting the whole site.

To restrict a page or post put [memberonly] in the body. If the user is logged in the markup will be removed. If the viewer is not loggin in the message you set in Settings/MemByPost will replace the contents of the page/post.

Download

I have been working on a coffee roasting log plugin for WordPress. The idea of this software plugin is to log coffee roasting.

Here is a sample

If you float your cursor over a point it will tell you the time and temp of that point.

To put this in I just installed the plug in and in this post put

[ROAST:6.5:72,74,89,97,119,145,158,181,204,220,242,244,270,289,289,287,277,262,250]
[COFFEE:Mexican FTO Decaf]

The syntax is
[ROAST: minutes_roasted : temp_at_0, temp_at_.5, temp_at_1.0,…]
[COFFEE:name of the coffee]

Now I am roasting with a Caffe Rosto CR-100 and measuring the temperature through the glass lid with an infrared sensor so I know my readings are low but as long as they are consistent I am OK with that.

Download

Now I can post my roast logs on my site. On the balance of the post I can put any other information that I want.

Restrictions:

1. The plugin only handles one plot per page/post.
2. In IE8 must turn on compatibility mode to see the graph

NOTE: This version has been replaced with the HotTop supported version

I hate SPAM. SPAM to me is litter on my manicured lawn. Spammers are the lowest technical scum on the net, the bottom-feeders. The Akismet plugin is great about filtering out the SPAM comments and quarantining them to the SPAM folder for later deleting.

But I wanted more. I am yet to have a valid comment from Russia, China or Nigeria. There are a few companies with static IP addresses that bombard my site with airline offers. They always end up in the SPAM folder, but once a day I end up deleting them, like cleaning up my lawn.

This weekend I found a new plugin – WP-Ban by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. Lester has written some of the best technical plugins.

Installation is typical. Then go to Settings – Ban and start blocking SPAM. You can even configure the banned message that appears.

The down side is you could block desired comments. Who knows – maybe there is a valid comment from Russia.

Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-ban/
Plugin Site: http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-ban.html

In my work with WordPress I sometimes find the unexpected. ComicPress is an example. ComicPress is a theme and plugin for creating a comic site. Tyler Martin created the original WordPress ComicPress theme in November 2005. In May 2008, programmer John Bintz developed the ComicPress Manger WordPress Plugin to make the management of the site easier. Together these ComicPress elements form a powerful web comic publishing system.

I am a big fan of comics, and WordPress is a great vehicle for creating a daily feature. Every morning I start my day visiting some 28 comic strips.

WordPress has a feature called scheduling a post. This means you set a date/time in the future, and at that time the post will become visible. When I used to write automotive articles for the Toronto Sun, they bought 30 days exclusive first rights to the article. I would put the article on my blog and post-date it for 30 days later. I didn’t have to remember; it would just appear. With the WordPress scheduling feature, comics can be placed on the site to appear at a regular interval.

ComicPress makes it easy to manage a comic site, reducing much of the administration. Who’d a thunk it?

http://comicpress.org/ Comic Book WP Theme
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comicpress-manager/ Comic Manager

One weakness of WordPress sites is how they print. How a site shows on the screen and how it prints are both controlled by the template. Many templates do not focus on printing.

Here is an example of my wife’s website: www.theWritingFairy.ca

This is how the site looks when viewed on the screen. Select Print Preview on FireFox and you see:

The entire first page contains menu links and the top area. WP-Print by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan is a plugin designed to focus on the content and format for printing. WP-Print adds a Printer-Friendly link to the site. The user clicks on the link then prints the resulting view. Here is the same page in the WP-Print printer-friendly format.

The top is the address to the website. In the box, the title and summary are followed by the content, and it finishes up with the details of the address. The command “Click here to print.” will not actually appear on the printout. It is there on the screen as a convenience. Finishing up the page is the copyright statement.

The printout has the important elements: content, how to get there, and the copyright. The printout can be configured with options to print the comments, link details, images videos and exactly what statement appears at the bottom.

Basic installation is standard, but the printer-friendly links have to be manually inserted into the template. This was the first time I had altered a template. Lester has good documentation on the plugin site on how to do this. You can edit the theme from the Appearance/Editor area of the WordPress console. Make a copy of each file of the template before making any changes. Then you can restore the original if you mess it up.

I use WP-Print on most of my sites. It is one of my favorite WordPress plugins.

Download WP-Print: http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-print.html

Once you have created and promoted your website, it is time to check on your site traffic. The basic statistics are: the number of visitors per day, where are they from, how they found your site and which pages they visited. Be wary of anyone quoting hits. To display a web page with 5 images takes a minimum of 6 hits. The real measurements are visitors and pages displayed. A visitor is a person or process accessing a page of your site.

Google Analytics is a free service from Google for site statistics. To use Google Analytics requires a free Google Account ID. Log into the analytics site and add a site to your Website Profiles list. You provide the address of the website and a name for the site. Google then provides you with a small piece of JavaScript code that you add to each page of your site.  In WordPress this can be placed in the theme header file (header.php), but if you change themes you have to make the change again.

Part of the code will be the Google Analytics’ UID. The structure will be UA-123456-1.

In the Website Profiles listing, this UID will be displayed beside the site address. The 123456 will be your account number. The first site will have -1 with each additional site -2 and so on.

Rather than inserting the Google JavaScript code in the header, I prefer to install the Google Analyticator plugin. The installation is standard; upload to the wp-content/plugins folder or install the zip file via the WP 2.7 Plugsin/Add New interface.

Once installed, activate then go to Settings/Google Analytics and put in the UID supplied by Google when you added the site. There are other options that can be set such as not logging in when an administrator is visiting the site. This keeps the stats more accurate by removing your visits from it. Update the settings.

To validate that the plugin is working, visit your website and do a “Right Click-View Source.” You should see some code close to the top with your UID. It will take Google at least a day before any statistics will appear.

Google has excellent documentation on how to use the service. Now you can visit Google Analytics for statistics on your sites. There are other Google Analytic plugins, but this is the one I am most familiar with. It has served me well.

Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analyticator plugin:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

If your WordPress (WP) site is going to support comments, then Akismet is a requirement. Letting comments appear on your site without any moderation is an open invitation to porn site and other SPAM comments. WordPress supports comment moderation ranging from the requirement of having an administrator approve every comment before it is displayed, to all comments appearing as soon as they are entered.

Moderating every comment is a lot of work. If you expect few comments on your site, approving every one is the safest approach. If you want a lot of comments, then remove all approvals and turn on Akismet. Akismet is a plugin that scans each comment as it comes in and moves ones it suspects as SPAM into a SPAM area that requires approval. All others appear immediately.

There are two possible problems areas of this approach: missing a SPAM comment or suspecting a valid comment is SPAM. My experience with Akismet has been positive. I find it occasionally puts a valid comment in the SPAM bucket, but seldom misses SPAM.

Best of all is the installation. Nothing could be easier, as Akismet is included with WordPress. All you do is go to Plugins and activate Akismet. For Akismet to work, you will need an API key. Go to http://wordpress.com/signup/ and sign up for a WordPress.com account. Your API key will be emailed to you as part of the confirmation message. If you already have a WordPress.com account, your API key is listed on your profile page, which you can get to by clicking the “My Account” link in the top right when you’re logged in.

Once Akismet is activated, you will see three types of comments in the Comments administration area: Pending, Approved and Spam. If you have multiple WordPress sites, you need only one API key for all of them.

By using Akismet, comments appear automatically on my sites, but SPAM comments await moderation.

Happy commenting!

I have about 20 WordPress (WP) plugins that I use on my sites. A plugin provides additional capabilities to a WP site. Some are specialized, such as the calendar for showing future events, but many are appropriate for any site. I will start with the ones I consider the essentials. Here is my most essential plugin.

WordPress Database Backup
If the website has value, it should be backed up. Your hosting site can be lost by a system crash, disk failure or your hosting vendor going out of business. Nothing is more sickening than losing months or years of work on a website. To protect from this, I download my content on a regular basis as well as schedule an email database backup daily or weekly.

There are only three parts of a WP site that make that installation unique. All other WP files can be downloaded from wordpress.org.

• wp-config.php – This file in the root of the installation sets the configuration for the site. It points to the database as well as setting the prefix, language and security features.
• wp-content – This folder has all of the site-unique content: themes, plugins and uploaded files.
• The database. Assuming you are using the default prefix “wp_” then the table names beginning with wp_ are WordPress tables. These have the posts as well as all content and user information.

The first two (wp-config.php and wp-content) can be downloaded via an FTP utility such as FileZilla to your local computer. The database cannot be downloaded with FTP. It must be exported. “WordPress Database Backup” by Austin Matzko is one way to backup the database. Download the plugin and FTP the wp-db-backup folder into wp-content/plugins. In WP version 2.7, you can upload and install a plugin from the Plugins/Add New panel. If you are using the WP 2.7 Add New Plugin, you send up the original zip file.

Now go to Plugins and activate “WordPress Database Backup”.  To configure the plugin, go to Tools/Backup. The screen is divided into a top, middle and bottom. The top/middle is used to do an immediate backup.  If you have not installed any plugins that create new tables, all you need to do is go to the middle area and click on the “Backup now!” button. If you have other plugin tables, select them from the top area.

The most powerful feature of the plugin is the Scheduled Backup in the bottom section. Select a schedule interval. I use Once Daily for popular sites and Once Weekly for more static sites. Enter the best email address and click on the “Schedule backup” button. Now you will be emailed a zip file backup of your database.

How to restore the system in the event of a host failure is another discussion and is usually left to an IT person. Restoring a lost system is complicated, and it cannot be done without the backups. Hopefully you will never lose a site, but if you do, a simple backup can save it from being lost in cyberspace forever.

wp-db-backup is available from: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/

FileZilla FTP is available from: http://filezilla-project.org/

When I was a child I had an Erector Set. I spent hours manipulating wheels, girders, nuts and bolts to create buildings, cranes and the like. From the time he was a toddler, my son, Mike, had LEGO® to satisfy his need to build intricate things. This toy offered similar play value, except with plastic components. As he got older, his interest matured – and so did the LEGO we bought him. Selecting a new set had little to do with what it built and more to do with what parts he gained. When I bought Mike the LEGO 8858 Engines Expert Builder Set, it was the parts to form the connecting rods and the crankshaft that were the attraction. He was acquiring new tools for his craft of creating with LEGO bricks.

Today, my Erector Set is WordPress and the iPhone. I have been writing a campus system for offering courses online. The site started as a simple WordPress installation with a post for each lesson in the course. Once my canvas was prepared and I was ready to create my art, I found plugins, modified some and used them to construct the campus.

I love to collect plugins that add to my kit bag of capabilities. To find out what plugins were available, I spent a weekend browsing the 3,700 entries on the WordPress site. I cataloged the ones that were of interest. Last week at a meeting, I heard about an advanced search engine called Lucene. A check of my list revealed WPSearch, a plugin for the Lucene search. My erector set grew.

My latest fascination is with the Apple iPhone and iTouch. I wrote a plugin/theme so that a WordPress site can be viewed nicely on the iPhone. My interest now is in writing an iPhone application that can exploit a WordPress installation.

I am still looking for the web challenge that will use all the tools and allow me to merge my WordPress and my iPhone expertise – another tool for my electronic Erector Set.