This post should be redirected to the theme page at http://www.flowdrops.com/projects/wordpress/wordpress-theme-flowdrops-grey/ anyway…

IntenseDebate originally launched to the public last October, sporting features including OpenID support, user profiles, and the ability to track a user’s comments across multiple blogs.

This will probably be the end of my plugin, iF AJAX Comment for WordPress. I already had a feeling that this could happen, I commented about it. When WordPress 2.7 is out, we’ll see what’s still missing.

More about the aquisition:

• http://ma.tt/2008/09/intense-debate-goes-automattic/
• http://toni.org/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/

What I didn’t want was to have the guest authors as registered WordPress users on my blog, just to keep things simple (and save). I came up with the following solution:

In my theme folder I have my ‘functions.php’ file and I added the following code to it:

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// Guest Posts
function theAuthor()
{
	$guestName = get_post_custom_values("guestName");
	$guestLink = get_post_custom_values("guestLink");
 
	if ($guestName)
	{
		if ($guestLink)
		{
			echo '<a href="'.$guestLink[0].'" target="_blank">'.$guestName[0].'</a>';
		}
		else
		{
			echo $guestName[0];
		}
	}
	else
	{
		the_author();
	}
}

The code checks if the post has a custom field ‘guestName’. If the field is found, the code further checks if there’s a custom field ‘guestLink’. If that field is found as well, the code returns the name of the guest author as a hyperlink back to the guest authors website. If there’s no ‘guestLink’, only the guest author’s name is returned. If both custom fields are missing, the code returns ‘the_author()’ which is the registered WordPress user.

Next I replaced all occurences of ‘the_author()’ in the theme files with ‘theAuthor()’

To mark any post in your WordPress Blog as a guest post, you just add a custom field ‘guestName’ and the name of the guest author as value. If you want the guest author’s name appears as a hyperlink, just add a custom field ‘guestLink’ and the web address of the guest author as value.

That’s it. Simple and fair for your guest author(s).

Mystery Man - the default Gravatar

I just had a problem with my own gravatar not showing up on my own site for the comments I wrote. First I thought that clearing the browser cache would solve everything. I was wrong. After clearing the cache, deleting cookies and checking my gravatar (http://en.gravatar.com/site/check/), I was really out of (quick) ideas. Then it suddenly hit me: a few days ago I changed a few things in my Blog’s user accounts. I added new accounts with different user rights and merged the old accounts with the new ones.

After having a look at WordPress’s gravatar code (wp-includes/pluggable.php), everything was clear: WordPress actually pulls the user id and gets the email address which is stored in the user account data for this id. This ensures that if a user changes the email address in the user account, it will always pull the new gravatar associated with the new email address. The user id - for registered users - is stored in the comments table for each and every comment.

That said, if you change user accounts and a user id changes, you need to run

UPDATE wp_comments SET user_id = new_user_id WHERE user_id = old_user_id

otherwise you’re going to have a lot comments from the mystery man…

First, we need a PayPal form with the donation stuff inside:

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<form id="form_paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
  <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
  <input type="hidden" name="business" value="paypal@email.com">
  <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="My Donations Subject">
  <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="0">
  <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
  <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
  <input type="hidden" name="tax" value="0">
  <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF">
  <label for="">Amount (US$) : </label><input type="text" name="amount" id="input_amount" width="10" class="text" />
  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Donate" class="submit" />
</form>

More information about the PayPal donation buttons and the form code behind can be found here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_donate_techview_outside

Next, we need to add some more code to the form where we want to show the various messages displayed by jQuery. These messages are set to be hidden (display:none;):

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<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Donate" class="submit" />&nbsp;&nbsp;
<span id="msg_moreamount" class="icon_warning red" style="display:none;">PayPal takes $0.35 commission for a $1 donation. Please enter at least $1.35 , thank you!</span>
<span id="msg_noamount" class="icon_warning red" style="display:none;">Please enter the amount you wish to donate and try again.</span>
<span id="msg_activity" style="display:none;"> <img src="images/loader.gif" align="absmiddle" />&nbsp;Transferring to PayPal, please wait...</span>

The jQuery script which actually checks and validates the form looks like this:

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jQuery(document).ready(function()
{
	// the minimum required value to be entered.
	// in this case PayPal takes $0.35 from a $1
	// donation, hence we ask for at least $1.35
	var minimum_value = 1.35;
 
	// attach this script to the form's submit action
	jQuery('#form_paypal').submit(function()
	{
		// check if there is an amount entered
		if (jQuery('#input_amount').val() > null)
		{
			// is the amount equal to or higher than the minimum_value?
			if (jQuery('#input_amount').val() < minimum_value)
			{
				// need more amount
				// hide messages, show more amount error
				jQuery('#msg_noamount').hide();
				jQuery('#msg_moreamount').fadeIn();
				return false; // prevent the form from submitting
			}
			else
			{
				// amount is more than minimum_value
				// hide messages, show activity
				jQuery('#msg_moreamount').hide();
				jQuery('#msg_noamount').hide();
				jQuery('#msg_activity').fadeIn();
				return true; // submit the form
			}
		}
		else
		{
			// no amount entered at all
			// hide messages, show no amount error
			jQuery('#msg_moreamount').hide();
			jQuery('#msg_noamount').fadeIn();
			return false; // prevent the form from submitting
		}
	});
});

The code is documented so it should be clear what each block does.

The final step is to add some CSS styling:

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.red {color:#ff0000;}
.icon_warning {background:transparent url(../images/exclamation.png) left no-repeat;padding:4px;padding-left:20px;}
form#form_paypal input {padding:3px;border:1px solid #ddd;background:#fefefe;}
form#form_paypal input#input_amount {width:50px;}
form#form_paypal .submit {cursor:pointer;border-style:outset;}

If you want to integrate this form into your WordPress Blog then this is the way to go:

In your WordPress Theme folder (wp-content/themes/yourtheme/) create a new file named ‘donate.php’. To make the file available as a WordPress page template you’ll need to add the following code at the top of the file:

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<?php
/*
Template Name: Donate
*/
?>

A donation form template for the default theme would look like this:

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<?php
/*
Template Name: Donate
*/
?>
<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
  <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
  <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
    <h2>Make A Donation</h2>
    <p>If you think you have benefited or I have helped you in some way, by using any of my 
    WordPress plugins or themes, please consider making a donation. Donations support the 
    continued development of my websites and help cover the hosting costs. 
    Donations of any size are gratefully accepted. Thank you!</p>
    <form id="ppDonate" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
      <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
      <input type="hidden" name="business" value="paypal@email.com">
      <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="My Donations Subject">
      <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="0">
      <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
      <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
      <input type="hidden" name="tax" value="0">
      <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF">
      <label for="">Amount (US$) : </label>
      <input type="text" name="amount" id="ppAmount" width="10" class="text" />
      <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Donate" class="submit" />
      <span id="moreAmount" class="warningIcon red" style="display:none;">PayPal takes $0.35 commission for $1 donation. 
      Please enter at least $1.35 , thank you!</span>
      <span id="noAmount" class="warningIcon red" style="display:none;">Please enter an amount to donate and try again.</span>
      <span id="ppGo" style="display:none;">
      <img src="&lt;?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?&gt;/images/loader.gif" align="absmiddle" />Transferring to PayPal, please wait...</span>
    </form>
    <p><small>Info : once you click on 'Donate', you will be transferred to PayPal where you can enter your payment information.</small></p>
  </div>
  <?php endwhile; endif; ?>
  <?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Next you need to create a page in WordPress, call it ‘Donate’, ‘Make A Donation’ or whatever you want the page title to be. You can leave the page content empty as we will use our template file. Scroll down to the ‘Page Template’ section and select your page template (’Donate’ in our case). Save & publish the page.

Available Files

• Donation Form Example
• Donation Form - WordPress Page Template (default theme)

Hopefully this short tutorial will be of some use for you (if so, don’t forget to donate ) and if you still have some questions feel free to leave a comment below.

Received Donations

• Sun 8/17/2008, $5.00 USD • Saarthak, http://lughole.net/

Thank You!

When I registered my Woopra account, I almost instantly got a email with the registration confirmation link. ‘Cool’ was my thought, ‘now I’m checking out how feature rich this thing is’. After registration, you have to add a web site profile. I did that and was checking my mail account every few hours for the approval confirmation. After several hours and no response I got a little nervous and went to the Woopra Forums to check out if there’s something about the approval time. Indeed, there are quite many topics about the site approvals. This made me ‘a little’ pissed because they haven’t stated this anywhere. Just a line like ‘during beta, it may take several weeks to get your web site approved for Woopra ‘ or something like that would have make things clear. Ok, I’ll wait.

8 days later my site got approved. Fired up the Woopra Client and was quite impressed by the UI (User Interface). Several days and X tests later I feel that Woopra is not really worth the hype. There are only a few features which makes Woopra different from other statistic app’s: the rich user interface, the real time analytics and the proactive chat function. I have the real time analytics with my PMetrics account, don’t need the proactive chat function (and I personally hate it when I get interrupted by those marketing assistants or whoever while browsing a site) and for the rich UI, there’s something in the pipe: Google Analytics AIR (Screenshots)

Beside all that, the collected statistic results were far away from my other stats software (AWStats, Webalizer, Google Analytics and PMetrics).

Woopra’s competitors do not sleep and I think we can expect some new things soon. Time will tell.

Further readings:

• Woopra
• Google Analytics
• Google Analytics AIR
• Analytics Talk

A theme can optionally use a functions file, which resides in the theme subdirectory and is named functions.php. This file basically acts like a plugin, and if it is present in the theme you are using, it is automatically loaded during WordPress initialization (both for admin pages and external pages). Suggested uses for this file:

* Define functions used in several template files of your theme
* Set up an admin screen, giving users options for colors, styles, and other aspects of your theme

The “Default” WordPress theme contains a functions.php file that defines functions and an admin screen, so you might want to use it as a model. Since functions.php basically functions as a plugin, the Function_Reference list is the best place to go for more information on what you can do with this file.

Ok, there’s a load stuff you can read into about the WordPress functions, but not much is written about this mysterious file or exactly how to use it. Here’s some info:

Open the functions.php file in your theme folder (create the file if it’s not there). Add a function to it between <?php and ?> :

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// Function example. Returns the actual date
function show_date() {
    echo date('Y-m-d');
}

To use the function in your theme, place this code somewhere (i.e. page.php) inside :

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<?php show_date(); ?>

The date should be shown on your page where you inserted the code. Pretty easy, huh. More? Read on…

Including stuff in the template header

For my part I always need to load some stuff in the header, sometimes under certain conditions:

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if (! is_admin() ) { // If we are not in the admin, load stuff
    add_action('init', 'load_my_script'); // on initialization, execute the function load_my_scripts
    add_action('wp_head', 'load_my_css');
}
 
function load_my_script() {
    // load myscript.js version 1.0, which is dependent on 'jquery' and refer to it as 'MyScript'
    wp_enqueue_script('MyScript', get_template_directory_uri().'/js/myscript.js', array('jquery'), '1.0');
}
 
function load_my_css() {
    // load myscript.js version 1.0, which is dependent on 'jquery' and refer to it as 'MyScript'
    echo '<link rel="stylesheet" href="' . bloginfo('template_url') . '/css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />'."\n";
}

You can check for certain conditions i.e. is_page(), is_home() and so on and add stuff to the header respectively. It makes more sense and saves you bandwidth if you load your JavaScript library which checks the contact form fields for errors only on the page on which the form appears.

Adding custom stuff

Personally I don’t like it when I work on a theme and while testing the theme locally, it needs to load stuff from the internet like the Google analytics code, sponsor banners and other things. I like it quick. The following code is a simple solution. If the page loads local, don’t load external stuff, if it’s on the server in the internet, then load everything. Sometimes, this speeds up things drastically.

In the functions.php add:

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// Function to stop external things from being loaded while on localhost
function is_local() {
  $is_devbox = false;
  $this_host = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
  $this_host == 'localhost' ? $is_devbox = true : $is_devbox = false;
  return $is_devbox;
}

and in the template add:

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<?php if(! isLocal() ) { ?>
 
// Add all your stuff here you don't want to load while on localhost i.e.
// your google analytics code.
 
 
<?php } ?>

Query the WordPress Database

There’s a widget for the recent posts. What if we don’t want to use widgets in our sidebar? We create the function:

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function get_recent_posts($number) {
// code taken and stripped from wp-includes/widgets.php
if ( !$number || $number <= 5 )
	$number = 5;
else if ( $number < 1 )
	$number = 1;
else if ( $number > 15 )
	$number = 15;
else
	$number = $number;
 
$q = new WP_Query(array('showposts' => $number, 'what_to_show' => 'posts', 'post_status' => 'publish'));
if ($q->have_posts()) :
?>
<ul>
<?php  while ($r->have_posts()) : $r->the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php if ( get_the_title() ) the_title(); else the_ID(); ?> </a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>
<?php
wp_reset_query();  // Restore global post data stomped by the_post().
endif;
}

Place the following code in the template where you want to show the links to your latest posts:

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<?php get_recent_posts(8); // latest 8 posts ?>

Or you could include a RSS Feed:

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// Retrieving a RSS feed
function getRSS($uri) {
// http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_rss
$xAbspath = str_replace("\\","/",ABSPATH);  // Win/XAMPP compatibility
require_once($xAbspath.'/wp-includes/rss-functions.php');
echo '<ul>';
get_rss($uri);
echo '</ul>';
}

And on your page:

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<?php getRSS('http://www.flowdrops.com/feed') ?>

There’s really a lot of functionality you can add to your WordPress theme just by adding php functions to the functions.php file. A good start is the functions.php in the ‘default’ theme folder. It shows also how you can add a theme admin page. Go, modify your theme and add some functionality. But keep in mind: less is often more.

Thanks to the lively nature of Patong nightlife and the overdevelopment of Patong, Phuket has a bad rep, but it’s not all justified. Sure, Patong is a dump and why people opt to spend their vacations there is a mystery in itself, but people seem to forget that Phuket is an enormous island that has about a dozen other beaches than Patong and just as many islands dotted around the coast.

Phuket still has a lot of its original appeal, but you just have to look away from the busiest beach spots to see it. If someone who lives in Phuket wants to go to the beach, he or she would never choose to visit Patong, but rather, would head out to Mai Khao Beach, Yanui Beach, Laem Singh Beach or anywhere the tourists don’t flock to en masse.

Phuket is a great island for a vacation and it’s a little disheartening to see so many people favoring the other nearby tourists traps. Although it’s perhaps not the most exciting place to live, Phuket is a great place to visit and, despite contrary reports, it’s actually really cheap.

This post was written by Matt from Phuket Vogue and Thailand’s Lost Boy.

0.98.9 (July 26, 2008) • Download

Description

AJAX enabled commenting based on the jQuery framework. This plugin will hook into the comments form and posts the user comment the AJAX way.
Many configuration options trough the settings page which can be found at ‘Settings -> AJAX Comments’.

Installation

1. Upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
2. Activate it in the Plugin options
3. Open the settings page at Settings -> AJAX Comments to set the default options (initial options are set automatic) or further customize the look & feel of the plugin.
4. Happy commenting!

Frequently Asked Questions

• I’ve tried everything, the plugin does not work. What should I do?
  • Try the plugin with the ‘default’ theme. If it works, your theme is missing one or more of the following tags:
  • <ol class=”commentlist”>
  • <h3 id=”respond”>
  • <form id=”commentform”>
  • <textarea id=”comment”>
  • pay attention to the id & class names

• I’ve tried to run the plugin with the ‘default’ theme, still no luck. What’s next?
  • Do you have other plugins activated? Try to deactivate another plugin, and run the test again. If my plugin works after deactivating a certain plugin, you have just found an incompatability between my plugin and the one you deactivated. Please inform me about this, thanks!

• Tried with the ‘default’ theme and deactivated all other plugins. Still doesn’t work. What now?
  • Please post a comment or contact me. Include a link to your website on which my plugin is not working. Please leave my plugin activated. I will have a look at it and inform you about the next steps. Thanks.

Known Issues

• Under certain server configurations the plugin doesn’t get it’s variables via ajax. I’m currently investigating on this issue
• Incompatible with TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter
• Apostrophes in output messages getting escaped (backslashed)

History

• Version 0.98.9 - July 26, 2008
  • Changed to PEAR Services_JSON for PHP versions prior to 5.2 -> thanks to macwoern (http://espressoblog.de/)
• Version 0.98.7 - July 22, 2008
  • Updated readme.txt
• Version 0.98 - July 14, 2008
  • Changed internal AJAX call, works now cross-domain
  • Added option ‘Allowed Hosts’ for cross-domain calls
  • Added option to set ‘Live Preview’ title text -> thanks to ADRIANO [http://philosophyquest.com]
  • Added option to set ‘Invalid Email’ text
  • Added ‘CSS Style’ option
• Version 0.97 - July 8, 2008
  • Bugfixes
  • Added ‘AJAX Edit Comments’ compatibility -> thanks to GENE [http://www.macnightowl.com/]
  • Packed JavaScript
• Version 0.96.1 - July 6, 2008
  • Bugfix (Subscribe to Comments) -> thanks to MANAN [http://beingmanan.com/]
• Version 0.96 - July 2, 2008
  • added Unicode support & Unicode Bugfix -> thanks to vsy [http://blog.meetsee.ws/]
  • removed the jQuery script option in the settings (check is done automatically)
  • improved security
  • improved code
• Version 0.95 - June 24, 2008
  • removed 2 bugs from 9.4. One was a typo and the other one was json_encode wich was (in my case) not available on the hosting server
• Version 0.94 - June 24, 2008
  • kicked Mootools, moved to jQuery
  • added ‘Live Preview’
• Version 0.93 - June 21, 2008
  • added setting to show/hide the form after a comment has been posted
  • overall improved settings page
  • JavaScript moved to external files
  • CSS moved to external files
  • corrected some typos
  • added internal version check
  • overall improved code
• Version 0.92 - June 17, 2008
  • Initial release

Notes

• If you installed Wordpress outside the document root (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/blog/) you must edit the file ‘/js/if-ajax-comments.js’ and set the ‘pluginPath’ variable at line 11 prior to uploading.

Bug reporting

If you find any bugs PLEASE leave a comment with a description so I can fix them!

Modify / Customize

Since I’ve been asked many times on how to modify certain things in this plugin, I’ll give a quick example. Here we change the appearance of the error message :

The error messages are handled in ‘/js/if-ajax-comments.js’ at line 144 - 150 :

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if(xError != '')
{
    jQuery('#'+css_commentform).before('<div id="msgError" class="msgError"></div>');
    jQuery('#msgError').html(xError).show().fadeOut(300).fadeIn().fadeOut(4000);
    xError = '';
    return false;
}

On line 126 two things happens:

1. the script is looking for the ID ‘#commentform’ and
2. injects a new DIV (the error message) before the ‘#commentform’.

Say, for example, we want the error message to be shown after the comment form, we change the line into this :

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jQuery('#'+css_commentform).after('<div id="msgError" class="msgError"></div>');

If we want the error message to be shown on top of ‘LEAVE A REPLY’, we would change the line to :

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jQuery('h3#respond').before('<div id="msgError" class="msgError"></div>');');

It’s pretty simple and you can do almost anything you want. Just keep in mind : whenever I update the plugin and put a new version to the repository at WordPress, your changes will be overwritten!

More information about jQuery

• jQuery Documentation
• Selectors
• Manipulation

Contributors, Bug finders & helpers

• Gene » http://www.macnightowl.com/
• Manan » http://beingmanan.com/
• vsy » http://blog.meetsee.ws/
• Adriano » http://philosophyquest.com/

Thanks to all testers & commenters, your feedback is much appreciated!