KAPISH::Blog

Wordpress MU: get posts/pages from different blogs under same installation

Jaymin Patel — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:58:43 +0000

How can you create a loop to get posts/pages from different blogs under same MU installation?

1) you can use switch_to_blog function
http://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Functions/switch_to_blog

2) create wordpress loop (this will get posts from the blog you just switched)

3) do whatever you want with data

4) restore current blog you are on so everything runs after this code go to the blog it supposed to
http://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Functions/restore_current_blog

switch_to_blog(1); // we are switching to blog id # 1

query_posts('showposts=5'); //this would get top 5 posts from blog id # 1. you can change the loop to the get posts from x category

if (have_posts()) :

while (have_posts()) : the_post();

//do whatever you want with data here...

endwhile;

endif;

restore_current_blog();

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Secure Your Wordpress Installation

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:50:28 +0000

Very nice presentation @ Wordcamp NYC this year on Wordpress Security.

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/williamsba/wordpress-security-updated

Video on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/7685380

Also upgrade your blog as soon as new version comes out.

Can we say now “Hack it if you can!”?

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I'm attending WordCampNYC!

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:44:50 +0000

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Wordpress MU Site Upgrade Bug: Your server may not be able to connect to blogs running on it

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:37:40 +0000

I was upgrading mu site to 2.8.4. I went to Site Admin -> Upgrade and hit Upgrade Site button. It worked for first 25 – 30 blogs and then died with message

Warning! Problem upgrading . Your server may not be able to connect to blogs running on it.

Error message: 200: Operation timed out after 3 seconds with 0 bytes received

This is what I did to fix my problem

I opened wp-admin/wpmu-upgrade-site.php and wp-includes/http.php

function &_getTransport( $args = array() ) {

on line number 94 of wp-includes/http.php, wordpress tests different http request methods exist on your server during upgrade.

1st test was the culprit on my server which uses http_request method built into PHP. I guess this method was taking long time to resolve DNS and so it was timing out.

if ( true === WP_Http_ExtHttp::test($args) ) {

				$working_transport['exthttp'] = new WP_Http_ExtHttp();

				$blocking_transport[] = &$working_transport['exthttp'];

			}

I did comment out this test and let Wordpress start with next one.

if ( true === WP_Http_Curl::test($args) ) {

				$working_transport['curl'] = new WP_Http_Curl();

				$blocking_transport[] = &$working_transport['curl'];

			}

And guess what? All 150 blogs were updated in a few minutes without any problem.

If even curl does not work for you, you can comment it out and move on to the next until WP upgrade site works for you.

Good Luck!

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Wordpress: Calculate font-size in Tag Cloud

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:38:49 +0000

$fontSizeUnits = "px";

$fontSizeMin = 15;

$fontSizeMax = 50;

$maxValue = 12;

$minValue = 1;

where $results is MySQL result set.

foreach ($results as $result) {

$tag = $result->name;

$tagURI = get_option('home') . '/' . $result->taxonomy . '/' . $result->slug . '/';

$count = $result->count;

$weight = ( $count - $minValue ) / ( $maxValue - $minValue );

$fontSize = $fontSizeMin + round( ($fontSizeMax - $fontSizeMin) * $weight );

echo "".$tag."
";

}

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Parent Child Theme – Easiest Way!

Jaymin Patel — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:46:10 +0000

This solution will work for you if you want your child theme have fewer templates and if any template is missing, it should not break your blog but should go to parent theme and load it.

And a few important things to set,
1) parent theme folder name
2) child theme folder name
3) Template set in child theme style.css must match parent theme folder name

Because child theme name and Template set in child theme style.css are stored in options table.

So I started looking into wordpress core files

 wp-includes/template-loader.php

wp-includes/theme.php

These files load templates from active theme on your blog.

What parent theme must have
Your parent theme must have all template files necessary for any typical wordpress theme and parent style.css must have these lines

/*

Theme Name: Parent Theme

Theme URI: Your Blog URL

Description: My Parent Theme

Version: 0.1

Author: Your Name

Author URI: mailto:your_email_goes_here

*/

What child theme must have

style.css must have these lines where my_child_theme must be the name of child theme folder and my_parent_theme must be the name of parent theme folder.

/*

Theme Name: my_child_theme

Theme URI: Your Blog URL

Description: My Child Theme

Version: 0.1

Author: Your Name

Author URI: mailto:your_email_goes_here

Template: my_parent_theme

*/

and screenshot.png and functions.php

functions.php should add_filter to ‘home_template’

add_filter('home_template', 'load_child_home_template');

I am going to take home/index template as an example here. Lets say child theme is having these files. What does this mean? This means you want index.php/home.php loaded from child theme and everything else should come from parent theme.
1) style.css
2) screenshot.png
3) index.php or home.php
4) functions.php

wp-includes/theme.php has

function get_home_template() {

$template = '';

if ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . "/home.php") )

$template = TEMPLATEPATH . "/home.php";

elseif ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . "/index.php") )

$template = TEMPLATEPATH . "/index.php";

return apply_filters('home_template', $template);

}

Wordpress applies filters at the end and we are going to take advantage of it.

child theme functions.php must have this function as well

function load_child_home_template($template) {

if(empty($template)) {

$template = 'index.php'; /* if you have home.php, replace index.php with home.php */

}

return check_child_template($template);

}

function check_child_template($template) {

$template_file_name = basename($template);

$template_option = get_option('template'); /* has 'my_parent_theme' */

$current_theme_option = get_option('current_theme'); /* has 'my_child_theme' */

$theme_root = get_theme_root();

$child_template_root = $theme_root . '/' . $current_theme_option;

$child_template = $child_template_root . '/' . $template_file_name;

$parent_template_root = $theme_root . '/' . $template_option;

$parent_template = $parent_template_root . '/' . $template_file_name;

if(file_exists($child_template)) {

return $child_template; /* if child theme has index.php/home.php, load it */

}

else if(file_exists($parent_template)) { /* if child is missing index.php/home.php, load index.php/home.php from parent */

return $parent_template;

}

return $template;

}

You may want to put some html comments in parent theme index.php/home.php and child theme index.php/home.php to debug which theme is serving home page by looking into source code.

Date archive for a category

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:52:53 +0000

There are a few ideas out there How to build date archive for a category. I am joining the race now.

Some of us, wordpress developers, may think this is hacky but I bet a few will like it this way because this works!.

This idea would end up in url like this

/archives/category/{category-slug}/yyyy/mm/

Lets get started and you can Download code here and you can put that in your active theme’s functions.php file.

I am going to use init hook.

add_action('init','my_date_archive_for_category');

We can check if incoming request contains /archives/category/ inside my_date_archive_for_category function. If it does, this is our category/date archive page.

Now breakup incoming request, and check every part of the request. We need category slug, year and month in place.

$request_parts = explode('/', $request);

Parts of request

Array ( [0] => [1] => archives [2] => category [3] => category-slug [4] => yyyy [5] => mm [6] => )

Here, we need to validate a few parts of the request like category slug, yyyy and mm.

$category_array = get_term_by('slug', $request_parts["3"], "category", ARRAY_A);

Now time to query wordpress.

query_posts(array('cat'=>$category_array["term_id"], 'year'=>$request_parts["4"], 'monthnum'=>$request_parts["5"]));

If we have posts, display them otherwise set a flag which we can use later to show 404 so visitors do not get confused.



if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

........

endwhile;

else:

$is404 = true; /* set the flag so we know no posts found and display 404. */

endif;

DO NOT FORGET to put

exit;

at the end.

Putting exit at the end will end further PHP execution on your blog.

Do not forget to let me know how this works on your blog.

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JSON and Wordpress

Jaymin Patel — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:54:46 +0000

If you want to encode/decode JSON within/using wordpress, you can take a look at

/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php

This file has Moxiecode_JSON class which can do that for you.

Sample code

require_once(ABSPATH."/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php");

$json_obj = new Moxiecode_JSON();

/* encode */

$json = $json_obj->encode(array("key1"=>"value1","key2"=>"value2"));

//$json should have {"key1":"value1","key2":"value2"}

/* decode */

$json_array = $json_obj->decode($json);

//$json_array will be an array("key1"=>"value1","key2"=>"value2")

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Back in USA

Jaymin Patel — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:26:25 +0000

Hi Everyone. I’m back in the business!

I decided I will write about my trip the same day I was landed in USA but I was caught up checking 1,000 emails and work load.

It’s always great going back home and meeting your people. I enjoyed a lot this time in India. Hanging out with friends, family regroup, my grandmother and a lot! This year I relaxed a bit as well and some days were so busy. Kite Fastival, Uttarayana or Makarsakranti was too good. I fly kites after 2 years.

Still transfering pictures from my camera and an iPhone to my new MacBook. I’ll upload them to Flickr sometime today. There are 900 pictures. WOW!

I remember I was not quite happy coming back in Dec 2007. But this time, I’m happy. Jasmin and Jay stayed there so missing them a lot but it’s a matter of 8 weeks only. Since I was away for 3 weeks, first 3 days just passed but missing them a lot today. Do not know how these 8 weeks will go.

Jasmin was asking me this morning “Are you coming here on Valentine Day?”. I said “I want to but there is no chance”. I wish, I could.

I’ll have to update Jay’s blog as well. I did not write to his blog for last 4 months. That’s a big project!

So.. back to work now! Trying to keep myself a lot busy!!

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Automatically adjust for daylight saving time

Jaymin Patel — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:36 +0000

I have been googling for this and again come up with my own solution.



function my_set_gmt_offset($offset) {

      $timezone = date("T");

      if($timezone == 'EDT') {

           $offset = '-4';

      }

      else if($timezone == 'EST') {

           $offset = '-5';

      }

      return $offset;

}

if(function_exists('add_filter')) {

      add_filter('option_gmt_offset', 'my_set_gmt_offset');

}

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KAPISH::Blog

Wordpress MU: get posts/pages from different blogs under same installation

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