Jaymin Patel

WordPress Instant Search Plugin

Jaymin Patel — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:09:58 +0000

WordPress Instant Search Plugin looks for matched tags and categories on your blog and offers suggestions to readers which improves search experiece. Since WordPress searches into tags and categories for entered text, this plugin will let readers choose correct tag or category that match what they are looking for on your blog and WordPress will return very accurate results.

Requirements

WordPress 2.9.2 Minimum
Search Template in your theme with input element id “s”. Example:
Make sure wp_head action hook is added within the section of your active theme header.php template. If does not exist, add it right before in your active theme header.php template. Should look like this

How Plugin Works

in your active theme header.php template will load required JavaScript files.
Plugin hooks in jQuery, jQuery Suggest and Instant Search JavaScript files within the section of your active theme header.php template
As reader starts typing into Search box, jQuery triggers AJAX call to plugin
Plugin suggests tags and categories starting with entered text
Reader can select the suggested terms (tags and categories) to fill out the search box and hit Enter key

What’s coming next

Configuration Screen with option to load jQuery or not. You might already have jQuery loaded from Google or somewhere else, so you can check this option off if you do not want two jQuery loaded on the page.
Input boxes on Configuration Screen to change CSS (including properties like color, bgcolor of selected text or classes itself)
Options to expand auto suggest to Pages & Posts Titles and Custom Taxonomies

Tweets

WP Instant Search – A plugin developed by New York Times blogs developer, @jayminkapish http://bit.ly/aasA1H — Jeremy Zilar (Blogs Specialist at The New York Times)
New WordPress plugin by @nytimes developer @jayminkapish: WP Instant Search http://db.ly/vy — Daniel Bachhuber

New WordPress Theme – Optimized and SEO Friendly

Jaymin Patel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:01:35 +0000

I’ve subscribed to many Theme Blogs’ RSS Feeds. They publish a few posts every week featuring WordPress Themes free as well as paid. And every time I take a look at new designs, I want something like that on my blog too!. I was used to design this blog theme every month and was not satisfied until now.

Before I start designing this blog, I started taking notes from different blog themes. Mostly all themes have two and three columns layout which is very very common. My very first note was “I do not want two/three columns theme”. So I started designing HTML site with SlideDeck and Google Fonts API. I started with index.html, single.html, 404.html, archive.html and search.html. I designed my logo which is also very simple and optimized for web.

When I had all HTML files ready, I started working on SEO. Remember!! Page Titles are so important?

I installed Google Page Speed and YSlow!. I mostly profile my html pages on Google Page Speed.

Google Page Speed highly recommends,

One HTTP request for CSS
One HTTP request for JS
No whitespaces/empty lines in HTML
Compressed CSS and JS
Add Expiration Headers for JS and CSS

I am using SlideDeck Slider so I had SlideDeck CSS and my theme CSS. How could you make one HTTP request for two different files? I could think of two options:

Copy two files into one file and compress
Follow wp-admin/load-styles.php which reads so many files and compress them

I chose second option because if I upgrade SlideDeck, I will have to do exercise again. With the second option, I can just drop the file at the correct location and I’m done. I did same thing with JS files too which reads jQuery, Google Analytics and some JS code that I wrote to support this theme.

I also added mod_expire lines in my .htaccess file that tells browsers to load resources (CSS/JS/Graphics from cache if not expired). Google recommends expiration should be at least 1 week.

#Expiration ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 week" #End Expiration

I removed all white spaces and line breaks from my Theme files (Not sure how much that makes difference but will definitely reduce the size of the document). I also compressed JS/CSS using TextMate and YUI Compressor Bundle. I added alt text, height and width to all images I am using currently.

Compressing JS/CSS and one HTTP request for JS/CSS was helping a lot. After installing W3 Total Cache plugin, ranking went up and up.

My blog theme is not too heavy with loaded sidebars and fancy headers and footers but I smile when I see Google Page Speed Tool gives me 94 out of 100.

I want to thank the followings:

If you like this theme, contact me and I will bundle it for you.

WordPress MU: accessing blogs from dropdown in admin bar

Jaymin Patel — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:50:39 +0000

function my_blogs_listing($actions) {

global $current_user;

$blogs = get_blogs_of_user( $current_user->ID );

$actions["#"] = array("*** My Blogs ***", 'edit_dashboard');

foreach ($blogs as $blog) {

$actions["{$blog->siteurl}/wp-admin/"] = array($blog->blogname, 'level_7');

}

return $actions;

}

add_filter('favorite_actions', 'my_blogs_listing');

This code snippet (can be used as a plugin) adds list of blogs that user has access to on MU site. Blogname links to blog’s wp-admin, saving you time.

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();

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!”?

I'm attending WordCampNYC!

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

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!

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."
";

}

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.

Jaymin Patel

WordPress Instant Search Plugin

Requirements

How Plugin Works

What’s coming next

Tweets

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