OMNINOGGIN

As a quick tip, one of my readers, Luciano Passuello, suggested a great Firefox Add-on called refspoof for testing WP Greet Box WordPress plugin.

Upon installation, you get another address-bar-like toolbar that you can use to type the referrer URL to spoof.

If I enter something like “weblogtoolscollection.com” into the bar and press enter, I get the the same page with the added referrer info. Because of that, my wonderful WP Greet Box plugin properly displays the Weblog Tools Collection banner:

I think the WP Greet Box administration interface already does a great job at displaying what your greeting message will look like, but it is always good to be able to see it along with the rest of your theme.

WP Greet Box version 4.9 is here!

What’s new this release?

This version of WP Greet Box has the following enhancements.

1. Added the ability to keep displaying the greeting message until after the user clicks close for the first time. After that, the greeting message will not show up for that user anymore.
2. Added support for icon links so icons are now clickable.
3. Fixed default CSS display for when the greet box is too long compared to the greeting message.
4. Fixed PHP cookie writing outside of place bug in PHP mode (Thank you Daniel from Bonetree Blog!).
5. Fixed cookie bug in PHP mode (causes message to show up too often).
6. Fixed some XHTML stuff.
7. Fixed other minor bugs.

Read on…

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This post will explain the various options in WP Minify WordPress plugin.

Basic Options

Enable JavaScript Minification

When checked, all JavaScript files will be extracted from the HTML output and be minified and served as one compressed JavaScript file.

Enable CSS Minification

When checked, all CSS files will be extracted from the HTML output and be minified and served as one compressed CSS file.

JavaScript files to exclude from minify

You may specify any patterns for excluding any Javascript files from the Minifying process. The entries are line delimited so if you specify:

prototype
wp-greet-box/js
googlecode.com

Then the following Javascript files will not get included into the Minifying process if it’s being enqueued via wp_enqueue_script():

• http://example.com/wp-includes/js/prototype.js
  (matching first rule)
• http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/functions.js
  http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/onload.js
  (matching second rule)
• http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js
  (matching third rule)

CSS files to exclude from minify

Works the same way as the “JavaScript files to exclude from minify” option except that this field will filter out CSS files.
Read on…

You should use this tutorial if you still notice some Javascript and CSS files not being processed by WP Minify after activating the plugin.

Problem

WP Minify only sees scripts and styles enqueued via the wp_enqueue_script() and wp_enqueue_style() function. So if your theme or plugin does not use these functions for printing Javascript or CSS references, then WP Minify will not include them into the Minifying process.
Read on…

photo credit: Magnus.

After the release of WP Minify and the many months supporting my other plugins (such as WP Greet Box), I am feeling quite a bit burnt out. Because of that, I am sadly announcing that I am discontinuing support for all of my WordPress plugins. I realize how important some of these plugins are to you guys so I have actually recorded myself on my web cam talking about why I have made this decision. Please hear me out in this video.

More reasons about why I’m doing this.

I have previously reviewed the Minify PHP application and found that the only drawback it had for a WordPress user was that it was semi-tedious to integrate with WordPress. Because of that I would like to release the ‘WP Minify’ WordPress plugin that will integrate Minify into WordPress for you and help you improve your site load time.

Description

This plugin helps you easily integrate the Minify engine into your WordPress blog. Once enabled, this plugin will combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time. Read on…

photo credit: miss604

A few people have asked me how to make WP Greet Box work with non-WordPress pages.  Luckily there is a way to easily do this and I will show you how in this tutorial:

Requirement

You must have WordPress installed with WP Greet Box plugin enabled.

JavaScript Modification

You will have to make a copy of “http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/onload.js”, modify it, and place it somewhere accessible by your non-WordPress page. As an example, I will place a copy of the file at “http://example.com/non-wordpress-platform/onload.js”. Now open “non-wordpress-platform/onload.js” and modify the line:

url: "index.php",

to point to your blog WordPress blog index.php.

url: "/index.php",

For example, if your blog is installed under “http://example.com/blog/”, you would change the code to:

url: "/blog/index.php",

JavaScript Placement

There are a few Javascript files that you need to reference to do this. Make sure you drop the following Javascript references into your non-WordPress page:
Read on…

photo credit: om nom nom

I posted an article on Weblog Tools Collection about the top 10 characteristics of a great WordPress plugin.

10. Easy Installation
9. Seamless Upgrade
8. Uninstallation Option
7. Meaningful Error Messages
6. Localization Support
5. Intuitive Admin User Interface
4. Reset/Import/Export Options
3. Optimized
2. Secured
1. Good Support and Thorough Documentation

Read the full article here.

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