FiddyP

Announcing the release of a new plugin for WordPress (single and multisite) that will allow you to use your purchase of aMember to protect your posts and/or pages very simply, easily and best of all – do it for FREE!

Download the plugin at the wordpress site here

Download aMember 30 day trial here

How to install

• Download the file from the official WordPress page or visit your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins/Add New and search for “easy amember protect lite”.
• If you downloaded it, extract the folder from the zip file and upload the whole folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory using FTP
• Activate the plugin

How to configure

The plugin assumes that your amember installation resides in a folder called amember in the root of your wordpress install. If your installation uses a different folder name or is in a different location you will need to set the correct location in the settings page.

How it Works

You should already have some products in your aMember setup and the PHP_Include plugin activated (it should be anyway).

The plugin will use the product ID number from your aMember setup as the value of the custom field you add to the posts or pages that you want to protect.

The aMember product you want to allow access to

Once you know your product ID, add the custom field to the post you want to protect.

If you want to allow access to more than one product, add a new custom field for each product.

Format your post with –more

If your blog shows the whole post in the archive view or blog post list, you need to use the < !--more--> tag after the text you want everyone to see. Once someone clicks on the title of the post or the link to read more, they will get redirected to the amember login page (if they aren’t already logged in).

the more tag in HTML mode

The more tag in wysiwyg mode

Have fun!

With a bit of imagination and time on the amember forums, you should be able to get your own premium content membership on WordPress site up and running in next to no time!

Notes

This plugin is not a replacement for the official amember wordpress plugin, it wont create a new user on WordPress or allow you to log in to both sites. It simply allows you to protect a single page or post from being seen by someone unless they have an active subscription to one of your amember products.

This plugin is provided ‘as is’ and is free for you to use any way you wish.

Hire me to do your dirty work!

If you want support, modifications and/or custom code then you can contact me on the amember forum (my username there is Andyb) with the details of what you want and request a quote. Prices range from 20$ for telephone support, 50$ for a simple mod, 100$ for custom coding additions and up to and over 250$ for more complex requests. (quotes are free and it costs nothing to ask!)

If you want to try out aMember before you buy, you can download a fully functional 30 day trial for free here. I recommend it if you need a quick solution to add a paywall to your site or you want to charge people to download an ebook, zip or other file.

I’m having some issues with trying to put the WP-Twitip-ID plugin into the final version.

Right now, the beta version stores the twitter ID in the post meta for each post but that’s not really ideal because it can only show the twitter id on the comments of the post that the user has already commented on. New post comments require the user to add their twitter id again. Not too much trouble because if they have entered a twitter id in a previous comment then the plugin sets a cookie on their machine and adds it to the field when they comment again.

What I’d rather do is store the twitter id in the database so it’s accessible outside the post meta. I could store the id’s in wp_options but that would probably cause loading time issues because wp_options values get loaded automatically and considering the amount of comments a blog gets, it would bloat it out massively.

My solution is to create a new table on the database and add the twitter id and email address in there, that way I only have to update the db once when a new twitter id is entered.

The problem I am having is creating the table! for some reason, it’s not adding it. I’ve even copied and pasted another plugins code to do it and it still wont work!

here’s my code :

function atf_install() {
global $wpdb;
global $atf_db_version;
add_option("atf_db_version", $atf_db_version);

$table_name = $wpdb->prefix . "wptwitipid";
if($wpdb->get_var("show tables like '$table_name'") != $table_name) {
$sql = "CREATE TABLE " . $table_name . " (
id mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
email varchar(120) NOT NULL,
twitid varchar(120) NOT NULL,
KEY email (email)
);";
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php');
dbDelta($sql);
}
}
$atf_db_version = "1.0";
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'atf_install');


There’s a problem with the $atf_db_version too. It adds an option to wp_options for the key of “atf_db_version” but no value and it’s really starting to piss me off!

anyone out there in geek land that can help me here?

Fixed!!

A massive thanks to @clearskynet who answered and solved the problem within minutes of me posting this.

hurray!!

The nice folks at PacktPub sent me a pretty good book called “WordPress For Business Bloggers” by Paul Thewlis. I’ve been reading it for a couple of weeks and it turned out to be an excellent read.

Who is it for?

It makes it clear in the beginning of the book that you should at least be familiar with WordPress as a blogging platform. It doesn’t expect you to know any HTML or PHP skills, just a working knowledge of the WP interface for adding posts and pages, activating plugins and general use.

The book says it is aimed at anyone running or starting a business blog using WordPress. It can be for PR, marketing, profit or driving traffic. Whatever you use it for, if it’s for a business then this book is for you.

My own addition to this is that it will be perfect for someone who runs their own personal blog and is used to people asking them blogging questions. Why? because with this book, you could move from doing minor updates to personal blogs to heading up a business blog for your workplace or local businesses. You will see why below…

The Plan

One of the things that really impressed me with this book was how Paul gives good examples of specifics, what makes a great blog is the first question covered in the book. It doesn’t try to explain from the beginning what a blog is which would take a whole book but instead, it gives an example of different blogs that are aimed at;

• Increasing sales
• Adding value
• A dialog with your customers
• Raising awareness
• Showing expertise
• Customer Service
• Public relations
• Driving Traffic

The first chapter will give you an excellent summary of what you will learn from reading the rest of the book including, monetization, promotion and statistics.

The Case Study

This is where the real value of the book comes into play. So many “how to blog” books and blogs don’t go into specifics. They go on about how you should do this and that but not exactly how to go about doing this and that!.

The WordPress for business bloggers book has it’s own case study site to take you from planning (including strategic goals, tactical goals and implementation) all the way through from Chapter 3 – Designing your blog, how to install to your local machine so you can develop a blog before it goes live to blog design principles, layout, typography, colors.

Images, video and content are all covered in chapters 4 and 5. I was really impressed by the content of these chapters, every sub heading had a gold mine of information associated with it and was able to cover a large amount of the whole blogging for business idea without getting too wordy or cluttered with random information. It’s quite clear that Paul knows an awful lot about blogging and WordPress!

Through each chapter you get to work on the case study and see it grow as you complete each chapter and learn how each new bit of information gets applied to a real blog.

Why would you buy it?

Far from being just for business bloggers, I think this book would be an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know a bit more about blogging. All the information and guidelines would be applicable to any new blog.

You could even use this book as a self study course, work through each chapter and follow the case study and by the end, you will not only know how to make a full site but, you will know why you put headings here, how you should respond to comments, what to do with SEO and how to apply it and much more.

The case study site is quite simple and will give you a good ‘heads up’ on how to add and remove items from an existing theme so you could adapt a regular theme to word specifically for your business.
The code is available to download from the packtpub website.

If you’re working for your company and they don’t have a blog, just the information in Chapter 1 and 2 about mapping out a strategic plan and how to implement solutions would arm you with enough ‘know-how’ to talk your boss into getting your company into blogging. And wouldn’t it be nice if you knew just how to start?

Click here for WordPress For Business Bloggers

Get ANY book from PacktPub for FREE

Being the nice folks that they are, Packtpub has offered up 2 books from their vast collection as ebook downloads. My first packtpub book was an ebook and from it, I learned all that I needed to know about wordpress design so I really recommend that you enter this contest!

Requirements

1. Visit the PacktPub website and browse their collection and leave a comment here with what book you would like to win.
   (link to the books page at packtpub if you like)
2. Write about this contest on your own blog and link to this post.
   (it doesn’t have to be a whole post, it can be included as part of a new post but mention “wordpress for business bloggers” or “packtpub” in the paragraph and link directly to this post)

Details
Contest will run until Jan 16th 2009.
Winners will be chosen by a magic script at Random.org
Please use an email address that you can be contacted on when you comment, this email address will be used to receive the ebook

After deciding to take the day off, I managed to play a Jedi mind trick on myself. With all the pressure off for creating, my juices started flowing!

I have now updated the CommentLuv WordPress plugin to work with WP2.7rc1

It was working before but not if you wanted to change the settings. I’ve fixed that now and added some extra checks to the javascript so it shouldn’t need any more editing of the settings other than to enter the commentluv member id number.

You can download the very latest version of CommentLuv 2.6 here

It’s a beta version so you only need to download this one if you have 2.7 WordPress and you need to change the settings. Otherwise, wait for the big update to 2.7 when it happens in the new year!

Back to my off time!

WordPress Theme Design – Tessa Blakeley Silver
PacktPublishing
Price 35.99 USD (ebook $27.19)

I bought a book recently after seeing it mentioned in the WP dashboard news items, it’s called WordPress Theme Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver and although a lot of the information regarding the functions of wordpress can be found at the codex, the book gives you so much more like the process gone through to design a theme from scratch.

I do quite a lot of sites in wordpress now and find it much easier to provide a client with a website that can be updated so easily, a few plugins here and there and you can provide a website that does all and more that’s needed.

Usually I get a standard theme and cut it up a bit and change the css to give me my site, or create in photoshop and send off for wordpressing but lately due to some more custom design requests I’ve received and the always dependable mistakes that freelancers can make I have wanted to do the whole thing myself from scratch..

I’ve downloaded a tutorial before about WP theme design from small potato before it was taken over and that was pretty darn useful but was made a little while ago so it wasn’t 2.5 specific.

That’s why I like what Tessa has put her book, it takes you step by step through the process of creating a non-blog wordpress blog, from sketch to WP core code. It’s made a big difference to my initial prototyping of concept sites and has really opened my eyes to what you can do with a bit of manipulation of the wordpress template tags. I’m even working on a magazine style front page for here so I can have a featured post for contests that stays up while it’s open for entries as well as excerpts to the regular posts..

You can buy the book printed or get it as pdf for a bit cheaper (I printed mine out from pdf on someone elses printer lol!) at packet publishing

Packtpublishing is sending me a new book about WordPress For Business Bloggers , they’re offering a deal if you get both books together. Stay tuned for the review of the new book!

I have learned a gadoodle of information over the past 3 weeks of coding the update to CommentLuv and it would have gone a lot smoother had I known these 2 things.

Including jQuery with wp_enqueue_script

This seems to be simple at first but there is an important caveat to note.

You can include the jQuery library manually by echoing out a <script src=”… in your plugin code which works but could cause a problem if a user has changed their wp-content location or there are other plugins including jquery which would mean it gets loaded twice or more which isn’t ideal.

The solution is to use wp_enqueue_script but, it needs to be put in the right place!

If you use the wp_head action to call a function that has wp_enqueue_script in it then the library wont be included, using wp_head is too late in the render process for WP to put in the include.

Instead, I put wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery’); under the actions and hooks commands so it is run as early as possible in the execution of the plugin.

The plugins directory constant wp_plugin_dir

This has always tripped me up for some reason but it all became clear recently.

If you want to reference an image or js file in your plugins directory it is a lot better to use a constant than to put in an absolute url. I thought I had solved everything by using the constant WP_PLUGIN_DIR which works with WP2.6 and up but doesn’t work with WP2.5.1

What if you want to make it compatible with wp2.5? simple!, use this code in your plugin and you can use all the constants for WP2.6

if ( ! defined( 'WP_CONTENT_URL' ) )
define( 'WP_CONTENT_URL', get_option( 'siteurl' ) . '/wp-content' );
if ( ! defined( 'WP_CONTENT_DIR' ) )
define( 'WP_CONTENT_DIR', ABSPATH . 'wp-content' );
if ( ! defined( 'WP_PLUGIN_URL' ) )
define( 'WP_PLUGIN_URL', WP_CONTENT_URL. '/plugins' );
if ( ! defined( 'WP_PLUGIN_DIR' ) )
define( 'WP_PLUGIN_DIR', WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/plugins' );

CommentLuv is now released to the Codex and is officially at final version 2.1. All beta testers need to upgrade their beta plugins because the remote files have changed…

Here’s a list of all the beta testers who helped get CommentLuv to version 2.1 and their allocated numbers for entry into the contest to win the 100$ … if any of their first 3 numbers match the bonus number drawn this Saturday 27th September on the UK Saturday Lotto Draw then they win 100$!

Here’s the twist for all you testers, you have all got 1 number shared with one other person and if it’s that number that wins, you both win 100$ each!!! OMG!!

Good luck everyone and thanks so much for the feedback and help…

You will need to make sure you have CommentLuv version 2.1 running and working on your blog by the draw date to qualify for the prize!

Yan from
http://thoushallblog.com/ was talking about 10 plugins to install
has 1,2,3 and 43 as extra

Sunil from
http://www.bloggerslab.com/ was talking about Great plugins to build a community
has 4,5,6 and 43 as extra

Suzanne from
http://dotcommogul.net/ was talking about flipping out
has 7,8,9 and 44 as extra

David from http://www.yogamatsclothesdvds.com/ was talking about Listening to yoga music
has 10,11,12 and 44 as extra

Dragon Blogger from
http://www.dragonblogger.com/ was talking about how to fix your blogs 404 page
has 13,14,15 and 45 as extra

Lyman Reed from
http://freepdmaterial.com/ was talking about A free PDF for Self Empowerment
has 16,17,18 and 45 as extra

Larry from
http://www.larryhnetka.com/wordpress/ was talking about being On the Road again
has 19,20,21 and 46 as extra

Sire from
http://wassupblog.com/ was talking about Joining the F Group
has 22,23,24 and 46 as extra

Anti Scams Product Reviews from
http://www.antiscams.info/ was talking about the Mona Vie Scam
has 25,26,27 and 47 as extra

Witchypoo from
http://psychicgeek.com/ was talking about Anxiety
has 28,29,30 and 47 as extra

Minadin from
http://www.wheresmydrink.com/ was talking about Sniper in the left tower!
has 31,32,33 and 48 as extra

Chas from
http://www.creative-lifestyles.com/ was talking about Fear of Food
has 34,35,36 and 48 as extra

Rhys from
http://biznz.org/ was talking about Hosting from Hell
has 37,38,39 and 49 as extra

Tata from
http://www.imnotbeautifullikeyou.com/ was talking about Work and Play
has 40,41,42 and 49 as extra

You can download the very latest version at the WordPress Plugin Repository for CommentLuv

On the off chance that the winner doesn’t qualify for the prize because they haven’t got version 2.1 installed and working at the time of the draw then their extra number partner gets their numbers too (so you could potentially win 200$)

You have 4 days to get version 2.1 installed and working, please let me know if you need help to get it working. It should go through ok once you check your settings page after install.

The CommentLuv WordPress plugin has been updated to version 2.7 and combined with a new WordPress network. Click below to get the latest copy of CommentLuv or visit the site to create your own WP2.92 blog with CommentLuv already installed.