OMNINOGGIN

You guys have probably noticed [and hopefully found useful] my “Weekend Links” series that I post at the end of every week.  In this post, I would like to share my method of doing these posts quickly and efficiently.

Problem

I want to share my Google Reader shared items on a weekly links posts.  Generate these weekly links posts manually takes a lot of time.  Postalicious lets you do this all automatically, but the newer version of Postalicious was buggy for me when I tried it (2.5rc4 at the time).  Postalicious version 2.0rc6 has an option for you to use Google Reader, but this option is grayed out by default unless you overwrite one of the core WordPress files (rss.php).

Solution

I used version 2.0rc6, and got around modifying the core WordPress file by feeding my Google Reader feed through Yahoo! Pipes and then back to Postalicious.  Let’s go through the setup step by step. Read on…

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Read on…

Because of the recent commotion in the WordPress community about the ethics of selling premium WordPress themes, I would like to stir things up by voicing my opinion about this topic.

I know you are thinking, “Who are you? Why should I care what you have to say about it?” To tell you the truth I’m just a regular WordPress junkie who has written some successful plugins and articles on WordPress (and of course some unsuccessful ones). I believe that I’ve dealt with GNU Public License (GPL) enough to both love and hate it.

Background

You probably know that WordPress is an open source blogging platform licensed under GPL. This means that all derivative works and extensions (themes and plugins) are also forcefully licensed under GPL themselves.

GPL purists argue that it is definitely unethical to charge for premium offerings and license it under a different license. Others (like me) believe that this is a gray area and we cannot apply the GPL by the book to every plugin/theme here.

My take as a non-premium plugin/theme developer

Currently I do not develop any premium WordPress plugins or themes, but I still believe that not all premium WordPress plugins and themes are unethical. Here are my reasons why some of them are perfectly ethical (and legal): Read on…

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Read on…

Today I would like to release the OMNICON glossy web 2.0 iPhone type icon pack version 1.  If you use the WP Greet Box plugin, you will probably recognize that these are the icons used for pre-installed greeting messages.  Just to be clear, I created these icons from scratch, but I got my inspiration from Fast Icon.  Also please feel free use the comment form for any more iPhone type button icon requests you may have.

Screenshot

License

These icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works.  They are free for the taking as long as you provide a link back to this page (via blog post featuring this icon pack, attribution link in the footer/sidebar, etc. (get creative)). Read on…

What’s new in this release?

In this release, I added more default greeting messages using my own set of social media icons. I also added the ability to specify multiple greeting messages per referrer by means of a wildcard (*) and a list operator (,).

The following new default greeting messages were added along with its own social media icons:
Read on…

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What’s new in this release?

On this release, I added the ability to detect the visitor’s search keywords and use those keywords to display related posts for the visitor. *IMPORTANT* Upon upgrading, make sure you deactivate then reactivate the plugin. This will give you default settings for newly available options.

Currently this works for the main search engines and other search engines that adhere to a few standard rules of query structuring.

This is what your visitors will see if search keywords were detected in the referrer:

Read on…

Here is a list of WordPress plugins developers that I follow (in alphabetical order). Most plugins created by these guys are ahead of its time so some of them end up getting merged into the core WordPress code. Being a WordPress plugin developer myself, these guys are great resources for idea bouncing and coaching. I highly recommend following these guys if you are a WordPress plugin developer or enthusiast.
Read on…

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