Ring Of Blogs

For WordCamp SF 2008, Andy Peatling introduced Gravatar enabled name badges. He also released most of the source code he used to produce them - thanks Andy

On November 16th I will be attending WordCamp Israel 2008in Tel-Aviv. For the event, Sharon Gefen and I have prepared the graphics and script that will produce nice little blackdark blue Gravatar enabled name badges. The main problem was, big surprise, the use of Hebrew fonts with the fpdf library. After some time playing around with it I have managed to produce the following sample:

I hope Andy can find a place to use the Hebrew name badge I have prepared for him with the WordCamp Israel 2008 template:

If the budget will allow us, we will print these name badges for everybody at the camp. In the meanwhile please make sure that you register or update your Gravatar.

WordCamp Israel 2008 is set for November 16th in Tel-Aviv. Just a day after we opened the registration we have about 130 submissions on our attendees list but we are aiming for a crowd of about 400!

Beside the WordPress usual issues, this year, we are devoting part of the camp to social involvement stuff like non-profit organizations - this should be interesting.

Please help spread the word.

Following the great success of WordCamp Israel 2007 work has begun to organize the 2008 event.

No date had been set yet but I will post about it once a date and location will be determined. Also, a message will be post on the WordCamp site.

I have updated the WPMU new blog settings plugin to work with the new version of WordPress-Mu, 2.6 (for previous versions see here). The hook used was changed to a new one: populate_options and the update_option function call was replaced with the add_option function call. The main code of the plugin looks like so:

<?php
function new_blogs_setting( $blog_id )  {
//set your options here:
add_option('gmt_offset', 2);
// stop editing here
return;
}
add_action('populate_options', 'new_blogs_setting');
?>

Download here.

Donncha posted that the new version of WordPress MU, 2.6, is out:

Some of the new features in this release of MU:

1. Version number is 2.6 rather than 1.6 because it just makes sense to synchronise the major version numbers.
2. Signup page now has a nonce which should help in the fight against spammers, for a short while anyway.
3. Redirecting to the signup page for 404s and for unknown blogs is not enabled by default. Check out wp-config-sample.php for instructions.
4. “allowed_themes” filter, much like the plugins filtered added previously.
5. New functions: get_id_from_blogname(), is_main_blog().
6. get_blog_details() can now take a blogname as well as a blog_id.
7. Custom first posts didn’t always work. Now they do.
8. Blognames in the “Add blog” form in wpmu-blogs.php are now sanitized.
9. Added “pre_site_option_*” and “site_option_*” filters like the similar option filters.
10. Meta fields will be passed on signup again.
11. Added an “admin_header_navigation” filter so the top right navigation in the backend can be customised.
12. The signup page uses “blogname” instead of “blog_id” to avoid confusion with the global variable of the same name. Plugins will break if not updated!

Grab it here.

Donncha released yesterday the first beta version of WordPress-MU 2.6. This version includes the new features of WordPress 2.6.  WordPress MU specific changes include

The version number is being bumped to 2.6 rather than 1.6 because of version confusion.

Signup page now has a nonce to help defeat spammers.

Plugins in wp-content/plugins/ are version checked like in WordPress. mu-plugins isn’t covered just yet.

Major object cache changes.

And many more bug fixes. Check the timeline for a list of changes.

Download wordpress-mu-2.6-beta1.zip

WP TagAdsis another plugin by Jorge for you to use as a monetizing tool:

WP TagAds is a new way to display ads on your WordPress blog. WP TagAds is an advertising solution tailored for WordPress bloggers, ads are displayed based on the post tags you assign to a post in your WordPress blog. This is different then say Google Adsense where the page is crawled then ads are displayed based on the findings.

With WP TagAds you are served eBay products based the keywords you assign to a post. Don’t like the ads your are seeing, just change the keywords around a little to get the ads you are looking for.

Ads are displayed via a sidebar widget that is included in the plugin and you can place the widget where you like inside your template. You will need a eBay Campaign ID to start making money. A eBay Campaign ID is issued to you free by the eBay Partner Network.

See it action here (top right)

WPMU Cleanup is a script that checks the WordPress-MU database for blogs that have not been updated for some time. Then, it sends to these blogs authors an email telling them that their blog will be deleted in a few days if they don’t update it. If the blog is not updated in time it it removed from the system.

Here are the instructions:

This script checks the WPMU database for blogs that have not been updated for X days, then sends a notice to the blogowner that the blog will be deleted after Y days.

It also automatically deletes blogs that have not been updated for Y days, then sends an email to the blog owner.

On both occasions, the script will send a report with details on warned and deleted blogs to the administrator.

This script has *NOT* been programmed as a plugin since it is intended to be executed by a cronjob. As it is now it should be run once every 7 days, but you can configure it to do otherwise.

This script is *NOT* a final version and should be used with caution and only if you know what you are doing. I recommend testing it on a testsite rather than a livesite.