Im Rückspiegel: Brennende Geduld (20. 03. 2007)

••• The database code in WordPress is not prepared for plugins that require a separate connection to a second database. For plugin developers this is a very source of headaches. And in fact it is a general problem for any PHP coded site that needs to access data from more than one database to render a single page.

I’m actually one of those developers. My WordPress plugin MintPopularPostsWP needs access to the Mint database. Mints database tables can safely reside within the WordPress database. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to keep them in a separate MySQL database. Opening a connection to this separate database would usually close the WordPress database connection. As a result all subsequent WordPress database methods would fail.

In order not to interfere with the WordPress database code plugin developers have to take some precautionary steps. Since it took a decent amount of trial, error and testing for me to find the proper solution I want to share the solution I finally came up with.

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Im Rückspiegel: Meine Tochter (30. 01. 2007)

••• Der Turmsegler war heute über mehrere Stunden nicht zu erreichen. Alle WordPress-Plugins waren deaktiviert, so dass die Site nicht angezeigt werden konnte. Ich hoffe, dass es sich nicht um eine Sicherheitslücke in WordPress handelt, denn das Phänomen ist schon sehr merkwürdig. (Eben ist es ein weiteres Mal aufgetreten.)

Offensichtlich hat in jedem Fall mein Hoster ein gehöriges Problem. Die Störung scheint noch anzudauern. Immer wieder ist die Datenbank nicht erreichbar. Ich bitte, die Unannehmlichkeiten zu entschuldigen. Ich habe ein Support-Ticket geöffnet und hoffe, servage.net wird sich der Sache umgehend annehmen.

••• One of the most anticipated new features in WordPress 2.3 is the integrated tagging system. What it lacks, however, is the comfort and the great management interface that former tag plugins like SimpleTagging used to provide.

Amaury Balmer - maintainer of the SimpleTagging plugin - has just released a successor plugin called SimpleTags for WordPress 2.3. It comes with all the comfort we know from SimpleTagging but integrates itself into the core tagging system of WordPress 2.3. On top of that it comes with national language support and language files for German, French, Japanese and others.

It’s tidy, working - in a word: just great.

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Data Mining is my profession. So I wouldn’t run a weblog without a decent site traffic tracking and analysis tool. I’m using Mint by Shaun Inman, and I dare to say I’m a real fan.

Since Mint is tracking only human interactions and thus the real clicks to particular blog posts it is the perfect source for an unbiased favourites list as you can see in my sidebar.

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••• Did you ever want to show a dynamic link in your sidebar pointing to the last year’s post of the day? Now you can without much hassle. The WordPress plugin RearviewMirrorWP does it all for you.

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••• Jared Bangs has written the nice WordPress plugin MintBirdFeeder that modifies the WordPress feeds in a way that the site tracking system Mint can report the feed and seed usage. I was using his plugin for quite a time but noticed some shortcomings. As documented the plugin does not support comments feeds. Unfortunately it also misreports the feed usage for the Articles feed. How so? Let’s have a look at it.

WordPress serves three types of feeds:

• main articles feeds
  e. g. http://your.wordpress.blog/feed/
• main comment feeds
  e. g. http://your.wordpress.blog/comments/feed/
• comment feed for particular articles
  e.g. http://your.wordpress.blog/article/feed/

The MintBirdFeeder plugin does not support the second type and it reports the third type as of the first type. Since many people are subscribed just to the comments of my post WP-Plugin SitemapTags in order to stay informed of recent changes I found that these subscribers where actually reported as subscribers of the Articles feed. Since I’m interested in correct numbers of subscribers of the three types of feeds I felt the urge to write a replacement for Jareds plugin.

And here it is: BirdFeederWP. It does support the two types of comment feeds mentioned above and reports them apart from the subscribers of the main Articles feed. As with Jareds plugin Mint and the Mint plugin BirdFeeder by Shaun Inman must be installed before you activate BirdFeederWP from the WordPress plugin panel. No further action should be necessary. The actual number of subscribers won’t change dramatically; but you may find that a lot of subscribers belong to a different category and are not regular readers of your blog but just interested in the comments of a particular post.

The plugin has been tested with WP from version 2.1 up to 2.3.

Comments and (heaven forbid) bug reports are welcome. Just post a comment here or send a mail.

Download: » BirdFeederWP-104.zip (Version 1.0.4 • 01.10.2007)

••• Die Rubrik “Ausser der Reihe” wächst über Gebühr. Das soll so nicht bleiben. Eine Anmerkung ganz ausser der Reihe will ich heute aber doch noch machen.

Dieses Blog wird angetrieben durch Wordpress und viele nützliche, frei verfügbare Plugins. Zwei davon, die ich sehr schätze, sind SimpleTagging und der Google Sitemap Generator. Ich habe ein kleines Wordpress Plugin geschrieben, dass diese beiden Plugins verknüpft und die Tag-Seiten, die von SimpleTagging erzeugt werden, der Google Sitemap hinzufügt.

Bei Gelegenheit sollte das Plugin SitemapTags direkt die Konfiguration von SimpleTagging auslesen. Im Moment sind die beiden Konfigurationsoptionen noch direkt im PHP-Code einzusetzen. Wer das Plugin ausprobieren möchte, findet es hier. Anregungen für Verbesserungen nehme ich gern entgegen.

Und nun zurück zur Literatur…

Update 05.03.2007: SitemapTags is a Wordpress 2.1.x plugin. It requires SimpleTagging and Google Sitemap Generator and adds all your tag URLs created by SimpleTagging to your Google Sitemap. The plugin has been updated to version 0.9.1. It now uses the SimpleTagging configuration. No further configuration should be necessary. Just upload, activate, enjoy.

Update 30.08.2007: SitemapTags has been updated to version 1.0.2. It can now also be used with WordPress 2.3 Beta as well as WordPress 2.1.x and 2.2.x. Whenever the plugin detects the presence of SimpleTagging it will use it. If SimpleTagging cannot be found and SitemapTags detects a WordPress version higher or equal 2.3-beta1 it will use the WordPress tagging configuration. Even in this case the plugin Google Sitemap Generator is still required. As before there is no need to edit the plugin source, and you don’t have to configure any options. Just install, activate and enjoy!