The WordPress Plugin Competition is the best moment of the year, plugin wise. This year’s edition is still running till the end of the month of July and as of writing, there are about 10 plugins (with some really interesting stuff). Still, new plugins are released every day. Why aren’t these authors joining the competition? Participating in [...] → Read more

So, if I didn’t forget to upload a zip archive or to press a “Commit” button, it should be all here for you: the GPL’d URL shortener I wrote about earlier that Lester Chan and I have been using for a while now. Our URL shortener service is called YOURLS, as in Your Own URL Shortener. [...] → Read more

I’ve just read on TechCrunch the announcement about awe.sm, a service that sells custom URL shorteners (a la TinyURL) for your own domain. That’s funny: I’ve been using my own private URL shortener for about a week now (notice the “shorter link” mention at the top of this post). The script I’m using is based on [...] → Read more

In the upcoming WordPress 2.8 there’s an interesting function set meant to help authors manage their plugin custom options. In a nutshell: whitelist your options, define how you want them to be validated, and just lean back and rely on the API to handle everything for you. Your new best friend is function register_setting(), and I’m [...] → Read more

A few minutes ago, Mark from WebLog Tools Collection announced the 2009 Edition of the totally cool WordPress Plugin Competition. As I’ve written several times already, this is the best moment in the plugin year. Awesome ideas and awesome plugins popping, that’s a truly exciting moment. This year, Mark introduced a new rule: winners from past [...] → Read more

Filed in the “I hate SEO plugins” category (why), and tagged as “but some are better than others”, there’s an article on Urban Giraffe that gives a comparison of WordPress SEO Plugins. The article is factual and tends to prove that HeadSpace is the most comprehensive and featured pack plugin, particularly compared with All In One [...] → Read more

If you’re a Twitter user, got a WordPress blog, and would like to throw in some interactions between those two, don’t miss this plugin: Twitter Connect. Using the brand new Twitter’s OAuth API, this plugin lets you identify yourself using your Twitter account. I like it for several reasons: it’s cool, it’s quick, and it opens [...] → Read more

OK, let’s step down a bit from Twitter for a while. This is a much overdue update to the übercòól Admin Drop Down Menu. Aside from minor tweaks related to the upcoming WordPress 2.8, more languages than ever (German being the latest addition), the plugin is now fully RTL friendly (hence the so witty post [...] → Read more

Best practices when it comes to writing plugins is a frequently asked question on the wp-hackers mailing list. Good news: Mark Jaquith, one of the WordPress core developers, has an ebook planned: Too many WordPress plugins have security issues. Solution: I’m writing a short e-book on how to write secure WordPress plugins. I’ll buy. Share This Related posts Use Twitter [...] → Read more

Coders using WordPress, this post is for you. Here are a few plugins that should make your WordPress hacking life faster, happier, and more productive. What a promise, heh? :) Plugin: User Switching John Blackbourn freshly released this handy plugin with which you can instantly swap between user accounts, without having to log out then log back [...] → Read more