Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: wordpress

  • How To Submit a WordPress Plugin

    How To Submit a WordPress Plugin

    Submit to WordPressI’m not a super-psycho coder. But between being a busybody and being a volunteer plugin referee, I do spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at the code people put in for plugins, which means I actually see a lot more code, and a lot more submissions, than you might expect. This puts me in a place where I actually can offer some of the world’s most basic advice ever, that a surprising number of people seem to miss, about how to submit your plugins, what will get them downcheked, and what you really just shouldn’t do.

    This list is not all encompassing, but touches on the issues I see the most often.

    What You Must Do

    Failing to do the following will likely end up in your plugin being yanked (or not approved at all).

    Read The Guidelines

    We are not pirates. These are not wishy-washy rules, though they are intentionally kept as light as possible. You see, the more you make a rule “You can’t do this!” then the more you get “Well, you said I couldn’t dig to China, not Australia!”(That’s a true story on my part. I once got my kindergarten school class to dig to China. After being told not to, I got them to dig to Australia. At this point, they said ‘No digging tunnels at school.’ My parents explained in more detail why this was dangerous, and we watched The Great Escape to understand tunnel collapse. I forget how Dad explained the distance, but I remember a long explanation about the earth’s core being molten, and no, you can’t dig under the ocean. I was bummed. I was also 4.) The basic guidelines are on the front page of the Developer Center, but it’s the expanded guidelines you really need to read. I helped write those guidelines (over beery emails with Otto) and he and I both hate that we have to spell certain things out, but apparently they’re unclear. Just read them. If you think you’re doing something that might be on the far side of okay, ask around. Tweet, post in the forums, or find a plugin dev you respect and ask them directly.

    Check Licences

    All plugins must be GPL2 (or later) compatible. This is pretty basic, but a lot of people don’t realize what that means. First, there’s the issue of GPL2 versus GPL3. While the WordPress repository accepts GPL3 plugins, it’s still not compatible with everything, so make sure the code you fold into the plugin will work with which ever license you chose. If you don’t want to use GPL, you don’t have to! Remember, there are a lot of GPL Compatible Licences. At the same time, there are a lot of incompatible licences as well. And there are the Non-free Software licenses. When you’re only releasing your own code, this is pretty easy. You pick a compatible license and move on. When you’re incorporating other people’s code, however you have to study their license carefully.

    Generally I’ve seen people get dinged for using the Creative Commons license, and in most cases this is because they’re not using the CC0 license. That is the only CC license that really works with GPL (except for CC BY ND). Your code really shouldn’t be CC licensed, anyway, though. Just don’t use it.

    Provide the code

    World Wide DownloadsWhen you submit your plugin, put in a link to the code so it can be downloaded and checked. (See Expanded Guidelines, Rule #16) If, for some reason, you can’t because the code is behind a paywall, or you don’t want it in the wild, don’t worry! The only people who see that link are the plugin review team, and they’re trustworthy. They don’t need an API key, either, they just want to make sure you’re not breaking the repo guidelines. If you don’t provide a link to the code, you don’t get in. It’s really that simple.

    Don’t break the other WP rules

    Did you know you can’t use ‘wordpress’ in your domain name without permission? If your author or plugin URL is http://mycoolwordpressplugins.com then your plugin will be rejected. (See Expanded Guidelines, Rule #17) In addition, you’re still going to be held subject to the forum rules with your account. I mention this because if you get blocked on the forums for rampant asshattery, you won’t be able to check new code in. Basically remember that it’s the internet, and we can see your behavior on Twitter, Forums, Faceybooky, etc. Don’t be an idiot.

    What You Should Do

    Not doing the following won’t get you punted from the repo, but they’re still good to do, in order to provide the best support possible.

    Write a good readme

    A good readme file is going to tell the person everything they need to know before they download the plugin. This means:

    1. Describe what the plugin does
    2. Explicitly state any and all requirements
    3. Be upfront about any external accounts required (for APIs or what have you)
    4. Inform users if their information is being sent to another site, where, and why (not necessarily technical explanations, just ‘Your IP, browser specs, etc will be sent to Google for Analytics purposes. This is required if you want to use Google Analytics.’)
    5. Include screenshots of the options
    6. Include a screenshot of what the plugin looks like on the unmodified default theme
    7. Document if no support is provided (or if support is handled somewhere other than the WordPress forums)

    Credit Appropriately

    Thank YouA subset of that is that if your plugin is a fork of someone else’s, be the good person and credit them! It’s not required all the time, but take a look at the copyright information on a plugin. Sometimes they say they require credit in the code. If so, you’ve got to do it. Even just a line that says “Copyright 2009-2011 Some Other Dude” and then “Copyright 2011 Me” below it. That’s a nice CYA. If you want to be really nice, put their userID under ‘contributors’ in the readme file, and they’ll have their pretty face on your plugin.

    Write Good Code

    Using good code is complicated. I don’t pretend to be the best at it myself (seriously, the level of shenanigans I went through over nonces cannot be measured on a human scale). But I know that good code is secure code. I know I should use nonces in certain situations, I know to protect against SQL injections, and I know to not let total strangers upload executable files (so they can’t upload a PHP file that wipes my DB, for example). And I know when to go find Otto, WePay him a beer, and say “So what the hell did I do wrong, here?”

    Writing good code is exceptionally complicated, which is why, if you’re going to write a large plugin, you need to know what you’re getting into. The problem a lot of people get into is the classic ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.’ When you write a plugin, keep it simple. Start with the code you know, slowly fold in the new stuff. Try to test as many different ways as you can think of, but know that you’re going to miss something.

    What To Do If Your Plugin Is Yanked?

    Every plugin developer’s worst nightmare is waking up to find that their plugin was yanked from the WordPress repository.

    Don’t panic!

    Don't Panic This happens when your plugin has been reported as possibly being in conflict with the developer guidelines, or it has a security hole. Many times you will not be notified when this happens. Sometimes you’re not notified because the report is found to be incorrect, and sometimes it’s because you’ve been warned before. And, once in a while, it’s because the person who closed your plugin doesn’t have the ability to email you. Surprise! There are some people on the plugin repository team who don’t have the access to the plugins email system, so when they close your plugin, they’ll ask someone else to email you. If that person is busy, it might take a while.

    When a plugin is closed, the rest of your plugins are usually checked over to make sure they’re not also having an issue. For example, if you have one plugin with a front facing link that’s turned on by default, all your plugins will be checked for that and, if they all have the same problem, they will all be yanked. This is why you need to keep up to date on the plugin guidelines, and follow the WordPress Development Blog.

    As soon as you find out your plugin is closed, email plugins@wordpress.org and ask what you can do to restore it. Posting in the forums won’t help much.

  • I Make Plugins CPT

    I Make Plugins CPT

    Mark Jaquith makes plugins. He also makes a plugin about making plugins, called I Make Plugins, which auto-formats your ‘local’ plugin pages, so you don’t have to write anything, and just pull in the WordPress repository readme for your plugin. It’s almost like the Victor/Victoria of plugins. Anyway, my issue was I don’t use pages for my plugin listing, I use CPTs. And in order to use Mark’s plugin, I had to hack it.

    How-to-install-Wordpress-Plugins

    So I did the smart thing, and emailed him with an “I love your plugin! Here’s what I had to change to make it work with a CPT, though.” A couple days later, Mark replied with “Use these filters instead. Untested!” He also bailed me out when I screwed it up, so he gets an Internet today.

    Even though I’ve never actually messed with filters in this way (actions yes, filters I’m still learning), I sat down with my coffee and started reading. Yes, I actually read things before I jump in, contrary to what my friends think.

    This turned out to be pretty simple, when you got around to it. Since Mark called apply_filters(NAME,PARAMS), all I had to do was add_filter(NAME,MYFUNCTION) and then make a function, passing the PARAMS and parsing as I needed. Mark fixed my original code (which was hellishly not optimized) and fixed my weird preview issue by returning an option I forgot.

    Post Type
    First I had to set the post type. In this case, Mark defaults to pages, I default to plugins. Yes, I named a post type ‘plugins.’ It works.

    add_filter( 'i-make-plugins__post_type', 'halfelf_imp_posttype' );
function halfelf_imp_posttype() {
	return 'plugins';
}

    This takes in the arguments as $args, resets it to plugins, and returns the new value.

    Get Plugins
    Mark also has a ‘post parent’ so where I just use the CPT’s archive page for https://halfelf.org/plugins, he has an actual page with sub-pages. I don’t need post parent, so per Mark’s suggestion, I need to remove it from ‘get plugins.’

    add_filter( 'i-make-plugins__get_plugins', 'halfelf_imp_getplugins' );
function halfelf_imp_getplugins( $options ) {
	unset( $options['post_parent'] );
	return $options;
}

    Since the parameters I’m pulling in are an array, I have to use unset instead of making it a null value.

    Is Plugin
    The last check is to verify this is a plugin, and we can return the content. The normal string for this checks if the parent of the page is the ‘page parent’ (set earlier normally, unset by me). I just swapped it for a ‘is this a plugin?’ There are two parameters in this one, and the second is the post ID, which I need to check post type. 

    add_filter ('i-make-plugins__is_plugin', 'halfelf_imp_isplugin', 10, 2);
function halfelf_imp_isplugin( $is_plugin, $post ) {
	$post = get_post( $post );
	return $post->post_type === 'plugins';
}

    Originally I had a call to is_preview() because, for some reason, it was overwriting all my post previews. While that only annoys me, it really annoys me! Thankfully once Mark fixed my ‘Get Plugins’ call, it all started working.

  • You Don’t Need Any Plugins

    You Don’t Need Any Plugins

    I Want to BelieveLorelle said it right when she said there were no plugins she couldn’t live without (except Akismet), and you could even do without Akismet if you turn off comments. She hit the nail right on the head as to why I step out of any ‘What plugin/theme should I use?’ discussions, except when someone asks a specific ‘What plugin should I use to do this…’ version there of.

    Out of the box, WordPress has all the major tools you need to start publishing. Turn on Akismet and you are good to go. What happens next is up to the needs and goals of your site.

    Out of the box, WordPress needs nothing. It works just fine as is, and you don’t need to do a blessed thing to it. But you want to. And that’s where it all gets messy.

    Needs and wants are different things, and few of us need everything we have installed on our sites. I have 27 plugins currently installed on my network. Of those, three are ‘mu-plugins’ that aren’t so much plugins but sitewide functions, nine are network activated, and one is Hello Dolly. I average about 10 of the others per site, and I know that at least Hello Dolly is actually not used at all. Some sites are the only one to use a certain plugin (like the ‘Downloads’ plugin I use here), and others aren’t network activated but are used on many sites (like WordPress SEO and W3TC).

    Even here on my network, I have different tools for different sites. Heck, one site has only one additional plugin activated on it!

    What Do You Want?So when you look at all that, you may wonder if there’s a plugin I can’t live without. The answer is a flat out no, but you’re not asking the right question.

    What you need to ask is What features are required for my site?

    When someone tells me they want help with their site and what plugins should they use, I tell them “You need to make a list of what features you need. Not want. Need.” There’s a huge difference between the stuff you want, to make your site look cool and neat, and the ones you require for the desired functionality. What a website needs is a way to display content in an easily absorbed way.

    People forget the purpose of a website is for people to find your stuff, read it, and help spread the word. Now, if your ‘word’ is videos, then yes, you totally should consider a video plugin. But that’s a need, not a want. A ‘want’ for a video site is a fancy slideshow of New Videos. Look at YouTube, though. They don’t do that. YouTube knows they’re going to get a lot of traffic, so they pull things back to their purpose. They want to show videos, that’s all they do. Obviously they added in a couple wants, which are the ability to comment, vote, favorite etc. Those are pretty minor when you get around to it, in so far as they don’t affect site speed as much as the actual videos do.

    For most blogs, you really don’t need plugins. If you pull your site back to the things you must have, you get a better understanding of what your site is. Once you look at your site ‘naked,’ with no plugins at all, you can start to add plugins back in.

    Each and every plugin I add has to serve a purpose. Even my RickRoll plugin has a purpose (though its not something that would be on every site I make). The point of a plugin is not ‘Oh look, this is cool!’ but ‘How can it serve me best?’ If I can’t come up with a reason this makes my site better, and I am brutal with myself, I don’t use it.

    Queen: I Want It AllIf you’re going to have a website, it’s incumbent on you that you’re mean to yourself. You hear the horror stories of clients who want all sorts of crazy things on their sites, and there’s a reason a lot of us sit and laugh (and cry) when we read the Oatmeal’s How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell. I push developers to fight back against the crazy, but you clients need to step up and understand that ‘more’ isn’t ‘better,’ and if you’re hiring someone to make a site, you really should listen to their suggestions and recommendations.

    But the point in the end is that, to make a website, with WordPress, you need no plugins. What you want is another matter.

  • Giving WordPress That New Car Smell (Part 2)

    Giving WordPress That New Car Smell (Part 2)

    Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

    In Part One I talked around what I did. Here are the themes I picked, what I feel about them, and what I loved and hated.

    All three themes are frameworks, and I’m using children there of. Unlike just making a child theme from TwentyEleven, these are true, robust, themes, designed by artists. This took me maybe 10 hours of work, total, to do everything on all three sites, and as most of that wasn’t me sitting down and concentrating, but multitasking and bouncing around, so it may have been 4 hours serious work.

    Oh and all these themes are ‘premium.’ And worth it.

    Origin – In use on Half-Elf On Tech

    Origin Theme

    Origin was the first theme I picked, from DevPress, and I decided on it after playing with a bunch of different DevPress themes. I’m partial to them (and ThemeHybrid) because I’ve been using Hybrid Core since before it was released, and I know it. I’ve memorized the hooks, and I like being able to quickly spin up my functions.php for it. All the serious changes are done in a pretty small file, actually, and mostly have to do with inserting FaceBook and Google into the header and footer, my comments ‘rules’ and that cool clickable (and hoverable) asterisks in my site description. I also really like the ‘full page’ view, and used it on some of my content-only-no-comments pages like Licensing.

    Since I have a mini rant later on about favicons, Origin lets you update the favicon right there in the theme settings.
    Origin Favicon

    This is especially important for Multisite installs, where each site will want their own favicon. Now I don’t need a plugin. And if anyone can think of a cooler favicon for this site than the Spock Eye, let me know.

    Balance – In use on Ipstenu.org

    Balance Theme

    Balance, from StudioPress, was next. This was a huge departure for me, and oddly it’s the theme I love the most and have the most issues with. Let me explain.

    While I’m perfectly comfortable bashing away at a functions.php file, unlike Origin, Balance is a child theme. See, HybridCore is a ‘starter’ parent theme, where you make your own child off it. Balance is a true child theme. When I got it, it came with a copy of Genesis, which is the parent. So while with Origin I made ‘HalfElf Origin’, I couldn’t do that here. I would have to edit the Balance theme directly, which goes against my nature.

    Back in the day when I used Hybrid News, Justin made a massive upgrade. I hated it, as I’d made all sorts of tweaks to the theme, and it was a bitch to fix. Now, I happened to agree 100% with the choice to make those changes, you had to upgrade the menus for WordPress 3.0, but it was painful. This sort of hassle scarred me for life. I don’t like to edit themes directly. So I pinged Andrea and asked her ‘How often do these themes update? She said ‘rarely’ which isn’t the same as ‘never’ and, while calming, wasn’t the best thing in the world for my neuroses.(Nacin makes ‘tin foil hat’ jokes about me for a reason. I don’t trust anything.) Personally I’d love to see Genesis go the same way that Hybrid did, and to make a ‘core’ that is included in all their themes. Then Balance would include all the files for Genesis and Balance, and people could happily make their own children.

    With that in mind, I did a smart thing. Instead of editing the child theme, I made two files: ipstenu.css and ipstenu.php (I told you I’d get back to why there was no style.css(Actually, there is a style.css in the folder, but only to stop WordPress from throwing silly errors. It does nothing.)) and put them in a fake theme folder called ipstenubalance. Those I included into the style.css and functions.php of the actual child theme.

    Calling the CSS was easy:

    @import url("../ipstenubalance/ipstenu.css");

    And the special functions is just this:

    require_once( get_theme_root() . '/ipstenubalance/ipstenu.php' );

    Now all I have to remember is that if the default style or functions gets edited in Balance, to re-add those calls in.

    The reason I dislike Balance, however, is not my own personal issues (and I’m well aware they’re just mine). It’s that there was a favicon forced on me. I hate that with a passion. You see, everything else is really a small change. I want a larger font, a darker blue, a bigger curve. But a favicon is … your site is naked without it. And it should resemble who you are. That’s why I have my ‘me’ image as my favicon most of the time.

    But at the same time I love Balance, because I was able to overwrite the favicon with this:

    remove_action( 'genesis_meta', 'genesis_load_favicon' );
add_action( 'genesis_meta', 'ipstenu_load_favicon' );
function ipstenu_load_favicon() {
	echo '<link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://ipstenu.org/favicon.ico" />';
}

    Other than that, Balance is my first go-at with a ‘managed’ theme, and I have to say I’m really astounded. If you didn’t know anything about functions and hooks, you could still make this site (in fact, I did, via a Genesis Hooks plugin). It’s crazy customizable, without feeling clunky. And yes, some of the other ‘pro’ themes I looked at felt that way. StudioPress impressed the hell out of me. If you need a ready-to-go theme and don’t want to mess around with code, StudioPress is the way to go. They set the bar for parent themes. And like Origin, they too have a full-screen template, which I used on my terms of use. I suppose this is why the don’t go the route of Hybrid Core. Most of their users aren’t going to play with child themes, and instead will use the built in features, or the Genesis Plugins to customize things from the WordPress admin dashboard.(This morning it occurred to me that having ‘hybrid core’ as a non-parent theme means that if Hybrid updated, Origin would need to be, and now someone has to edit that. The difference is I’m only editing my child theme. When Origin gets updated, it doesn’t impact my child, and a trained theme guru will make the edits, not a newb. On the other hand, if Balance is updated… Yeah. I suspect at this point it’s too much work to say ‘Make a child theme!’ for the Genesis users, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation!)

    It’s a step ‘back,’ in terms of me being a developer, but at the same time I feel a burden lifted when it comes to managing things. A strange balance.(The pun was totally intended.)

    Dotos- In use on Ipstenu.Photos

    Dotos Theme

    The last one was for my Photo site, Ipstenu.Photos, and I wanted it to look like a photoblog. This was really easy, since as Dotos is also from DevPress, I could cheat and make a child theme called photodotos and copy my Origin functions over, renaming halfelf for photos. I did one minor css tweak on Dotos, and that was to hide the ability to comment on photos. Didn’t want it or need it. I have a lot less to say about it, since everything I said in Origin applies here, and I did less tweaking.

    So there you have it. My sites got a facelift, and I’m so happy, I load them up just to smile at how sexy they look. My site feels bright and new, and I want to blog more. And that is a win, no matter how you look at it.

  • Giving WordPress That New Car Smell (Part 1)

    Giving WordPress That New Car Smell (Part 1)

    It’s been a while since I redesigned my sites, and this isn’t something I do very often. I also have a tendency to stick to a ‘theme.’ For the longest time, I was really homogeneous with the sites on this server. All my Ipstenu sites ran Retro Fitted and then Twenty Eleven. As we got near 3.4 I was all set to shift to Twenty Twelve, but when that was kiboshed, I sat and thought “Well, what do I want?”

    Redesigning a site is not to be taken lightly. As I mentioned before, too many changes confuse your visitors. For the last few years, I’ve kept my sites pretty much the same, and this is normal for me. I mean, look at the designs for JFO! Clearly I find a style and stick by it. I don’t consider myself a ‘theme designer’ person, either. I can tweak the hell out of a theme, but inventing them? No way. I’ve never been very good at the part of art where I’m supposed to take an idea and make it visual. Oddly, I can do it with words and ‘people’ (think directing a play), but while I can see these things in my head, putting it down on paper fails me.

    So why the dramatic change from everything the same to everything different?

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. There’s a theme through these themes, actually. They’re all simplistic, focusing on the content in a way that I can, easily, shove the sidebars out of the way when needed, and showing you what’s important. I didn’t want to get distracted by bells and whistles, but I also wanted a theme that was easy to tweak. Ipstenu.org I wanted to look a little more grown up, Half-Elf needed to be more professional (but still as irreverent as I am (In talking to Dana Severance, she asked what my ‘voice’ was for my ebooks. I said ‘Ms. Frizzle, after 10 years in corporate America.’ And it’s true.)), and my photos needed to be about photos and nothing more. I also didn’t want to fuss with colors too much, they can be a big distraction, and just putting up a black/white with accents felt ‘right.’

    Once I committed to simplification, I cut down my menus while keeping them similar to what they were, and I kept my favicons as they were (though Half Elf has been sporting a Spock eye for a week now). Menus are tricky. You want people to find what they want, quickly, but you also want to guide them to where you want them to be. By cutting down the clutter, and having a little down-arrow on menus with drop-downs, I can gently nudge people around.

    Buzz-words annoy me, and I try to avoid terms like ‘call to action’ whenever possible. Instead I thought of as the purpose. I like using ‘static’ content on front pages for that, as they can explain why you’re here, show you what’s new, and grabs you. The new Half-Elf page really does that, with the big honking ‘ad’ for the book. The haiku keeps you thinking ‘This is Mika,’ and the rest confirms that. On Ipstenu.org, the sales pitch is smaller, but you still have a little ‘who am I?’ blurb to get you started. While I wanted it to look grown up, I really felt the ‘feel’ of me had to stay. That’s the only site where you’ll see my Twitter stream, for example. As for the photos, well, they were simple.

    I drew out what I saw in my head on paper a few times. A header, a menu, a ‘grab you’ blurb, and the content. It’s a good layout for me, I felt the eyes naturally flowed. Sorting out where on Half-Elf to put that ‘recent post’ inset was tricky, as I wanted it to be ‘above the fold,’ if you’ll pardon the archaic reference. Speaking of, all these themes are ‘responsive’ so if you shrink your browser, they adjust. Except for the leaderboard ad in the footer. I need to sort that out.(What I want is for if your screen is less than X wide, it vanishes. Maybe I’ll play with hiding the overflow.) This does not contradict my drawing deficiencies I mentioned before, by the way. When I ‘drew’ my layout, what I did was grid it out. That part wasn’t ‘art’ and I didn’t try to make anything pretty. I just made a list of what the themes needed in black, what I wanted in blue, and what I knew would be custom work in red.

    I ended up with three premium themes that I’ve added functions and style to, but that’s it. While I may have made child themes, there’s no duplication of code. That is, my child themes have two files (functions.php and style.css) and possibly some images. That’s. It. halfelforigin is the child for Half-Elf, ipstenubalance is for Ipstenu.org, and photodotos is for the Photo site. The first half of the name is the site, the second half is the theme. I’ve always done it this way, which is why I also have an ipstenu2011 folder in there.

    Oh, and why does the ipstenubalance not have a style.css? We’ll get to that.

    But that will have to wait for the next post, where I break down each theme, what I liked and disliked, and what code I wrestled with. It’s a little longer than this post, which is why it’s split up.

    By the way, the title is thanks to Ryan, who took my joke seriously.

    http://twitter.com/Ipstenu/status/193061445762691072

    http://twitter.com/ryangiglio/status/193061904686649344

  • WordPress Site Description

    WordPress Site Description

    Someone asked me how I got the asterisks in my site description to be a link. It was actually really frustrating for about an hour. And then I remembered my filters.

    This site is using Hybrid Core, so there are some extra hooks:

    
add_filter('option_blogdescription', 'halfelf_site_description');

function halfelf_site_description($desc) {
        $desc .= '&lt;a href=&quot;https://halfelf.org/#bitch&quot; title=&quot;Brave, Intelligent, Tenacious, Creative and Honest&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;';
        return $desc;
}

    If you’re doing it on a non-Hybrid theme, you have to filter bloginfo

    add_filter( 'bloginfo', 'halfelf_bloginfo', 10, 2 );
function halfelf_bloginfo( $text, $show ) {
    if( 'description' == $show ) {
        $text .= '&lt;a href=&quot;https://halfelf.org/#bitch&quot; title=&quot;Brave, Intelligent, Tenacious, Creative and Honest&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;';
    }
    return $text;
}

    Pretty simple.