You will need: the WP Holding Page theme; the Theme Test Drive plugin, and of course a WP install.

Install and activate the above. Basically, we're going to use the theme to show everyone else a holding page, and the plugin to ensure that signed-in admins can see the new theme and content we're working on.

Change the WPHP options to show the holding page messages you want. The nice thing about this "theme" is that it doesn't show ANY WP posts, so if you're working on content, you can publish it and see what it looks like without anyone else being able to see it.

Now we need to make sure that you can see the "real" theme. From the dashboard, go to Appearance > Theme Test Drive Options, select the theme you want from the drop down menu and click "enable theme drive". From this point, you'll be able to see the theme you just picked, but anyone else just surfing in on your blog will see the holding page.

When you're happy your blog is ready to face the world, then click "disable theme drive" on the TTD Options page, enable the theme you really want to use from Appearance > Themes, and you're done.

Which is why I loved the idea of a plugin which Donncha reviewed earlier today. Upgrade Notification by Email checks with WordPress.org once a day, and emails you if the version you're using isn't the latest one. It's perfect for people who don't check their Dashboard often, or who have several dozen WP installs to look after.

Photo credit: Freschje

Share This

Share This is the most complex of my four: it's so much more than just a plugin, and can be used with WordPress, Blogger and Typepad blogs as well as with any other web page. It also provides stats and analysis of how people are sharing your posts across 46 support social networking sites plus email. There are a variety of options for how the Share This link appears, based around either the standard green Share This icon, or an animation that cycles through icons for each available network.
I like the stats, baby. I'm not reliant on extrapolating from Google Analytics with this one: I can see exactly how people are sharing my content. Nice.
I don't like the recognisable icons being hidden behind a pop-up window. Sure, there's an animation, but if people miss that, the "Twitter this" icon isn't in their face enough to remind them to do it. I don't think the green icon is standard enough (yet) to prompt too many people to click it.

Sociable

Sociable is a bit less complicated. It's a neat WordPress plugin with a sweet drag-and-drop backend that means you can arrange some or all of 94 sites plus email in any way you like. Sociable's the one I'm using on this site, and it's the one I keep coming back to.
I like that the actual icons are visible, and that I can add extra sites to it myself, though with 94 already included, I'm hard-pushed to find any that have been missed out. I like that I can control which ones appear and which ones don't.
I don't like the default CSS which decreases the opacity of the icons on the default display - though it's easy enough to edit the included stylesheet. And stats would make it absolutely perfect.

AddThis

This was the sharing plugin of choice for the PopJudaica blog. You can choose either an ultra-compact button with two layers of pop-up (the first with your choice of more popular ways to share, and the second with 49 different networks, browser-bookmark, add to Amazon Wishlist, or print), or a larger button with some network logos already visible.
I like the neat button graphic - it invites clicking.
I don't like that the customisation options rapidly become horribly complex.

Bookmarkify

I must confess I only found Bookmarkify in the course of writing this post. It says it has more than 50 site options plus email. And it looks pretty good: the combination of your choice of visible icons plus a "more" link to pop-up the rest seems to combine the best of each of the three options above. And you can use it either as a WP plugin or standalone on any PHP page. So I can't tell you what I like (or don't) about this in practice, but I'll be trialling it next.

Bonus plugin: the Tweetmeme button

Let's face it: some social networking sites are more equal than others. Twitter's pretty hot. And so is Tweetmeme's button, which not only allows your readers to retweet your post in one click, but also shows a live count how many times it's already been retweeted.

Are you using any of these? What's your favourite? Leave us a comment.

Frankly, I'd rather have my own URL in people's faces than bit.ly's - so I tweaked one line in the plugin to pass the shorter permalink URL http://domain.com/?p=xx to Twitter. For most domains, this should be short enough that Twitter will leave it intact.

Here's what you need to do. In Plugins > Edit, select Twitter Tools and in twitter-tools.php, find the line$url = apply_filters('tweet_blog_post_url', get_permalink($post_id));

Comment this out (put // at the beginning of the line), and below it, add$url = get_bloginfo('wpurl')."/?p=".$post_id;

This short version of the permalink will automatically redirect to the pretty version (the one with the post title) if you have that enabled.

Better Excerpt screenshot

The problem with the_excerpt() is it's not very flexible. It's fixed at 55 words. It's wrapped in <p> tags. The ellipsis at the end is the ugly [...]. And without hacking WP core code, there's no way to change that.

A few people have come up with solutions to this. I like mine best.

• It modifies the standard the_excerpt(), and
• has an options page in WordPress admin, so
• there's no need to edit themes or learn PHP on the fly.
• You can change the length of the excerpt,
• the text and/or code that goes before and after it (wrap it in <div> tags or whatever you like)
• change the ellipsis or miss it out altogether, and
• optionally add an automatic link to the full post to the end of the excerpt.
• It removes HTML tags, line breaks *and* WordPress image captions.

If you'd like the plugin:

1. Download the zip file.
2. Unzip it and upload to your wp-content/plugins folder.
3. Activate the plugin in WordPress admin.
4. Set your preferences in Settings > Better Excerpt.

Please note: requires PHP5 and WordPress 2.8.

PS: this is the first plugin I've ever properly released and I'm nervous If you're using it, please leave me a link - I'd love to see!

Update: It's now in the repository here.

Excerpts of varying lengths

From version 0.2 of the plugin (19th September 2009), it's possible to have excerpts of varying lengths: so for example, if you want a "featured post" on your front page to have a longer excerpt than a dozen other posts, you can do that. Call the function manually like this:
<?php echo better_excerpt($length, $ellipsis, $before_text, $after_text, $link_to_post, $link_text); ?>
for example
<?php echo better_excerpt(500, '...', '

', '

' 'yes', 'read more'); ?>
obviously replacing the variables with your own values. The value of link_to_post should be 'yes' or 'no'. All variables need to have values, so if you don't want any - e.g. - code before or after the extract, you need empty inverted commas ''

I wanted HTML....

The plugin removes HTML. It is DESIGNED to remove HTML. That's what the excerpt does. If you want to leave HTML intact, please use the "more" tag instead.

<?php

/*
Plugin Name: Ordpressway Luginpay
Version: 0.1
Description: translates the text of your blog into pig latin
Author: Sue Bailey
Author URI: http://blogmum.com
Plugin URI: http://blogmum.com/plugins

*/

global $wp_version;

//this particular plugin should work on any version of WP, I think; but I'm going to get into the habit of thinking about version compatibility right from the start
$exit_msg = 'This plugin requires WordPress 2.5 or higher. Please upgrade!';
if (version_compare($wp_version, "2.5", "<")) {
	exit($exit_msg);
}

function translate_piglatin($text) {

	$text = strtolower($text);
	$text = strip_tags($text);
	$text_array = explode(" ", $text);
	foreach ($text_array as $word) {
		$prefix = substr($word, 0, 1);
		$suffix = substr($word, 1);
		$piglatin = $suffix.$prefix."ay";
		$output_string .= " ".$piglatin;
	}

	echo $output_string;

}

function piglatinise($content) {
	return translate_piglatin($content);
}

//automatically apply the function to the content
add_filter('the_content', 'piglatinise');
?>

If by any mental chance you should want to install this, copy above, save as piglatin.php, upload to wp-content/plugins and enable from WP Admin. But, really, don't.

Just because I'm feeling a bit pleased

Is the plugin uploaded to the right place?

If you uploaded via FTP (rather than installing through the WP admin section), did you upload the plugin to the right directory? It should be in wp-content/plugins/PLUGIN-FILE.php or wp-content/plugins/PLUGIN-FOLDER/ If you have a plugin folder, check that *that* contains the .php files: if there's another folder before you get to any .php files, you've uploaded it incorrectly, so try it again.

If the folder or single .php file seems to be there,

Is the plugin activated?

Go to WP admin > Plugins > Installed, and make sure that you can see the plugin, and that it's activated. If it's not activated, activate it.

If it's there, and activated,

Do you need to do something else?

Some plugins work straight out of the box. Many do not. Some require you to add information to a settings page (probably under Settings in WP admin, but sometimes under Plugins or Tools). Some will require you to edit the theme itself. If your plugin has a readme file, read it - or check the "installation" and "faqs" tabs on the plugin's page in the plugin directory, or the developer's page if it's linked from your installed plugins list.

This is the most common cause of things "not working", so it's worth spending a little time checking you haven't missed something.

If you're sure you've done everything you need to and it still isn't working, or something that used to work just stopped,

Are you running the latest version, and will that work with your WP version?

Sometimes WP upgrades break plugins, and not all plugin developers are actively maintaining their work (maintaining something forever, for free, is a big ask). Check your plugin's page in the directory: just because it says it's compatible up to 2.7.1 doesn't mean it won't work with 2.8 - but if it says it's compatible up to 2.5, it may not be being actively maintained anymore, and you might like to look for an alternative.

Many developers, of course, *are* actively maintaining their work, but if you're not using the latest version of the plugin, it won't work with the latest version of WordPress. So if you're getting a message to upgrade on in your plugin admin, do so.

And if everything is up to date but things still aren't right,

Is the plugin conflicting with something else?

If you just installed plugin B and plugin A suddenly stopped working, that could mean that the two don't play well together. It's not that common, but it does happen. So disable plugin B and see if A starts working again.

Alternatively, if you're sure you installed B correctly, but it just doesn't work, it's worth disabling other plugins one by one and seeing if that fixes things. At least then you'll know where the conflict is and can make an informed decision about which plugin to stick with and which to dump.

And if it's none of the above,

Ask for help!

The WordPress plugins directory often has helpful support forum threads linked from plugin pages: chances are if you have a problem, someone else has it too, and someone *else* has a fix. If not, start your own support thread - and don't forget to tag it with the plugin name.

Alternatively, many developers offer some form of support for their work. It's important to remember that you're getting a free product, so be nice when asking for help (clicking the "donate" button when you've gotten help is a good idea too).

And if all of the above fails drop me a line or leave me a comment and I'll do my best to help.

I like the Author Image plugin because it allows users to add their image directly to their profile in WP admin, rather than sending them off to Gravatar to sign up there. However, the plugin's a bit limited as to what you can output: it generates a whole img src with an attached CSS class, so if you want to use it in different sizes throughout your blog (e.g. a little clickable thumbnail linking the larger version of the photo), that's impossible to do.

So I wrote a bit of PHP to go and get the image file generated by Author Image and give me the filename to do stuff with (this only works within the Loop, btw.):

<?
if ($image = glob(ABSPATH . 'wp-content/authors/' . get_the_author_meta('user_login') . '-*.*')){
$image = current($image); }
else { $image = false; }
if ($image) {
$image_url = get_bloginfo('url') . stristr($image, '/wp-content');
echo "<img class=\"author-thumb\" width=\"40\" src=\"" . $image_url . "\" />";
}
else {
// put stuff here that you want to do if there isn't an image for this author
}
?>

photo credit: Hamed Saber

In the last few days, I've heard from a few people who've upgraded to WordPress 2.8 that they're missing some or all of the visual editor from the Add New Post page: even if the "Visual" tab is selected (not the "HTML" one), buttons are missing. People have also reported the dashboard page not loading properly.

The issues seem to be reported more widely in Firefox than any other browser, but that may be because the WP community uses FF more frequently than any other browser, rather than because it's a Firefox issue. But if you have Chrome handy, it might be worth trying that. Otherwise, this routine seems to fix things at least some of the time:

• in WP Admin, go to Tools, Upgrade, Reinstall automatically and reinstall it,
• then clear your browser cache,
• then refresh the dashboard.

Other people have suggested that switching off Google Gears and/or any caching plugins you have installed may help.

If that doesn't work, then using a plugin like Dean's FCKEditor will give you more visual editing functionality than the normal WP editor (including a "justify" button which I think may have disappeared from the WP interface).

Testing, testing...

Alternatively, you could upgrade to WP 2.8.1 beta, which should have resolved both of the above issues - though equally there are other, unfixed bugs, so you should only be using the beta if you really know what you're doing. But if you do want to be a WordPress tester, the lovely Westi has just released a rather neat plugin to allow easy installation of nightly builds for testing. Fun