jonathan stegall

I’ve made my first, hopefully useful for public consumption, plugin for WordPress. I’ve made a few other plugins, but none of them seemed to be really useful or customizable to benefit others.

About this plugin

This plugin uses the same data as the WordPress function wp_list_authors();. This function lists all of the authors that have posts associated with their accounts. See the Codex for more information about this function.

Note that you cannot use this function outside the WordPress Loop. There is another plugin that creates a list of authors outside the loop, and it works very well for this purpose.

My plugin, which is a widget that can be used in any widgetized theme, allows you to pick users and list them by inserting the widget into your theme. If you have users with posts who should not be listed, simply do not check their names.

If there is interest, I’ll expand this so that it can be used inside the Loop as well, but it seems to me that it is most practical for sidebars.

Why make this plugin?

This plugin is not an attempt to compete with any of the methods listed above, although certainly it does have some of the same functionality and could easily be expanded to have all of the same functionality. Its difference is that it allows for users with posts to be excluded from the list. There are a couple of situations where this could be useful.

• You have a blog with a large number of authors, and would like to feature a few of them. Maybe they are more popular, or have more posts, or are more regular posters. You can check these to be included in the list.
• On the flip side, you could have a blog with certain authors that you do not want to feature. You can simply leave these authors out of the list.
• You use your user pages to include users that have comments, instead of just users that have posts. The configuration of this plugin shows all users, regardless of whether or not they have posted or are assigned a certain role.

Download

Without further ado, feel free to download and try out this plugin.

Plugin:

Choose Authors From Registered Users (maybe it needs a better name).

Version:

0.5

Download

wp-chooseauthors.zip

WordPress has officially released version 2.6, with some nice changes.

In my various work and ministry endeavors, I have varying degrees of responsibility for several WordPress blogs (in addition to this one), and have thus upgraded several installations from 2.5.1 to 2.6.

Apparently, an issue that is at least relatively common in this particular upgrade experience is that, after upgrading, one is unable to log back in to the admin system. I encountered this issue in one of the upgrades I performed, and then saw it mentioned on Twitter.

In the hopes that anyone else who encounters the issue can resolve it quickly, here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Return to the main (not admin) page of the website.
2. If there is a status indicator there (depending on the theme), click the Logout link.
3. If there is not a status indicator, visit http://sitename.com/wp-login.php?action=logout.
4. Go back to the admin login page, and log in.

So, if you run into this issue, try the above steps. Feel free to post comments, if it does or does not work for your installation.

Update

While I’m thinking about WordPress upgrades, I’d like to put in a plug for some great ways to ease your upgrade experience.

First of all, I would be amiss if I did not recommend my current webhost, DreamHost. For as affordable as they are, they are a solid host with lots of freedom and even more disk space. In addition, if you use the promo code JSTEGALLBLOG, you will receive $25 off if you buy a year of hosting. If you host your WordPress blog with DreamHost, there is an easy one-click installation and upgrade process. Also, there are frequent backups in the event that something does go wrong.

If you do not host your blog at DreamHost, there are two plugins that can make your upgrade experience go much more smoothly.

WordPress Database Backup

This plugin will prove invaluable, should your upgrade run into any issues. Back up your database, and save it to your hard drive. All of your posts, comments, etc. will be stored there, and you can restore them if necessary.

If you have a host that does not backup your database for you, you should use this plugin and set it to email you backups on a regular basis (perhaps weekly, or twice a month)

Instant Upgrade

This plugin is just like it sounds. You click a button, and it does all the upgrade work for you. You will need to change some of the permissions that are on the files on your host server, but this is very easy and there are good instructions for how to do so included with the plugin.

It is possible that there are hosts on which this plugin will not work, due to the permission change requirement. However, I have been forced to use Godaddy for a few work-related projects, and it even works there. I suspect there are very few hosts where it will not work.

My favorite FTP client is FileZilla. In the last year or so, it became cross-platform. For myself, I currently run it in Windows and Linux, which in my system reside on separate hard drives. I share the data between the two.

This would also work for networking environments, where multiple designers or developers need to share FTP data from a central server or other system.

Configuring FileZilla

FileZilla has a file called fzdefaults.xml. On Windows systems, it resides at C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\fzdefaults.xml. Note that, when you first install the program, there will be an fzdefaults.xml.example inside the /FileZilla FTP Client\docs folder instead. Simply duplicate this file, move it into the main FileZilla FTP Client folder, and rename it to fzdefaults.xml.

On Ubuntu, if you install FileZilla from the repositories, the file resides at /home/username/.filezilla/fzdefaults.xml. The same process works, if there is an fzdefaults.xml.example. I have not yet had the pleasure of installing FileZilla on a Mac, but I suspect it is similar to the Linux path.

When you have this file in the right location, open it up. There is a line that reads

<Setting name="Config Location">$SOMEDIR/filezilla/</Setting>

Change the $SOMEDIR/filezilla/ to the centrally located folder where the data will be stored. An example is /media/shared/Filezilla_Profile/. Save.

Then, you should copy all of the files that are inside C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\FileZilla\ (Windows) or /home/username/.filezilla (Linux, but do not copy fzdefaults.xml) and move them to the above folder.

In the central folder, open up sitemanager.xml. This should be all of your FTP data. FileZilla will use this file the next time it opens, and from here on out it will update this file as you add new information.

Operating System Issues

Probably because FileZilla was originally a Windows program, there are few if any issues that will commonly arise.

On Linux systems, FileZilla requires that the central location (on another hard drive, or another server, or wherever it may be) have specific configuration when it is mounted. The current user (you, when you are logged in) needs to be able to read and write files in the mounted drive, or you will receive lots of errors when you try to open it.

For example, if you were trying to mount /sda5 as the external drive that FileZilla needed to use, you would do it like this:

In your terminal, type:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

This file controls what media (hard drives, CD drives, etc.) that the system mounts when it boots. Start a new line at the end.

/dev/sda5 /media/shared vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000

This would name your new drive “shared”, put a link to it in the media folder, and give it the proper permissions for your user. To get the proper uid, type id in a terminal window. Replace uid and gid, if necessary.

FileZilla, as well as other programs that could share data across systems and operating systems (Firefox, for example), will now be able to use the data properly.

Today, Adobe AIR comes out of beta. AIR allows designers and developers to create web applications that run on the desktop. There have been little tastes of this, from the OSX and Yahoo widgets, to the Vista Gadgets, but none of these are full-featured applications that run on the desktop.

Other than that, desktop applications have not been web applications. Developers have had to know desktop programming to create them, and they haven’t really had access to data that resides online. At least, not as part of their core functionality.

With AIR, full web applications can also be full desktop applications. It’s been an interesting thing to watch all this develop, and I look forward to coming up with ways of using it.

For what it’s worth, the example that first made me interested in this was the eBay Desktop. Worth a look, especially now that beta is over.

When I was posting about my Mac envy, I mentioned my hard drive crashing, and my fear that I was to lose all of my data and get to be forced to switch to Apple sooner than I had prepared to do so. I forgot to mention the solution to the data issue that stopped me from getting a Mac let me get all my important data back.

There’s a program called Get Data Back. Evidently, it is used by approximately 70% of Fortune 500 companies, and as I’ve searched the net I haven’t seen anything negative about it. In any case, the basic workflow of this program is this:

1. you have a hard drive crash, power failure, virus, etc.
2. life as you know it is over
3. you visit Get Data Back, and download the free trial
4. said free trial, if installed on a working Windows drive, allows you to see the directory structures, and open the files, on the corrupt drive… but you cannot save them
5. you think… I’m saved. I can get my data back. You pay the money for your hard drive’s correct version of the program (NTFS was $79).
6. You run the paid version, and get your data back. You gush and ooo and aaaaa and tell everyone about Get Data Back

So I’m a big fan. And, of course, if I should encounter another hard drive crash, I still have my license. Out of 50 gigs of used hard drive space, I was able to retrieve everything I could possibly have needed. And, of course, a bunch of random stuff I don’t need.