The Idea Behind WP Questions

I was just reading this inspiring article called Five things Free Software taught me. One of the things that stuck with me is the idea that knowledge tends to spread, beyond any obstacle.

So instead of working to prevent this spread, why not encourage it? Why not get the ideas, capabilities, and functionality of any given piece of software out to as many people as possible and kindle the flame? There are many ways to make money, so why choose a method that requires investing just as much time and effort into making software that lots of people want to use as trying to prevent the usage of said software? It sounds counterintuitive and/or just plain stupid on paper, but is generally seen as the traditional and conservative way to do it. Physical products must be treated differently than knowledge.

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scbFramework: Version 1.4

The plugin toolkit has been getting a lot of useful classes recently, so I though a version bump was in order.

scbUtil

scbUtil is a collection of useful little functions that I was using in a lot of my plugins. My favourite is the debug() function. Then there’s html() and html_link() for HTML generation. There are several other useful bits in there, but you’ll have to discover them yourself.

scbRewrite

One of the areas I wasn’t comfortable working with was the Rewrite API. The scbRewrite class was distilled from a discussion on wp-hackers. It’s only job is to take the rewrite rules you specify and hook them in all the right places.

If you would like to “try before you buy”, you can browse the source here.

Handling plugin options effectively

The more popular a plugin is, the more options it seems to have. This goes for themes too. Managing options is apparently brain-dead simple, using add_option() and friends.

However, when you find a plugin specifically wrote for cleaning up the Windows registry WordPress options table, you know it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.

People often complain that their options table is filled with cruft from previously installed plugins. How can this happen? The main reason is that those lazy developers are too distracted to take out the trash when you’re done with their plugins.

Because I’m a plugin developer too, ergo hard-working & focused, I wrote a class to help me with this problem. It’s called scbOptions and it’s a part of my little plugin framework.

It takes care of removing the options automatically when the plugin is uninstalled via the WordPress interface. It also encourages and makes it easier to work with consolidated options.

So that takes care of 2 out of the 10 most common mistakes. Do you have any tips for handling options better? Do share.

Custom Field Images: Retired

This plugin is retired. Please use Post Thumbnails instead.

AWN 0.4 is awesome!

Avant Window Navigator is a dock-like window and launcher manager for Linux. The newest version (0.4) is available for testing.

Why is it awesome? Because it allows me to combine the two boring Gnome panels into one slick OS X / Windows 7 like dock.

I placed it on the right side to maximize the available vertical space, which is very scarce on my laptop screen:

After deleting the first Gnome panel, I found out that the second one can’t be removed. So I set it to auto-hide instead and put the AWN panel over it. It works suprisingly well.

I didn’t like the reflections so I set the Panel Offset to 0 in Dock Preferences -> Advanced.

I also set the Notification area background color to gray, so that the icons shipped with Ubuntu Jaunty look alright.

Now it’s just the way I like it. :D

You can read more about the new version over at OMG! UBUNTU!