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BuddyPress for Single user WordPress installs – Confirmed

Published Feb 8, 2009 | In WordPress

Well, the rumours are confirmed now. BuddyPress is going to be available for single user WordPress installs, later this year. The news has been confirmed by Andy Peatling, the lead developer behind BuddyPress, whom Automattic (the parent company behind WordPress) recruited to build BuddyPress.

So here is the tweet by Andy Peatling confirming the news

andy-peatling
This tweet was in reply to the following tweet
buddypress

It’s really very good news that BuddyPress is going to be available for single user WordPress installs, because when compared with WordPress MU, single-use WP is easy to install and maintain. Also this will surely increase the adoption rate of BuddyPress.

Also BuddyPress is getting stable and the 1.0 version might be released on Feb 12th 2009.

Meanwhile, if you are wondering what the heck is BuddyPress, then let me explain. It is a set of WordPress MU Plugins which will convert a plain WordPress MU install into a social network platform. You can get more information about BuddyPress at it’s about page.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Bulk Move Posts in WordPress

Published Feb 7, 2009 | In Plugin Releases

After I released my Bulk Delete WordPress Plugin (which can be used to delete posts in bulk) some of the readers of this blog asked me if there is a Plugin to move posts from one category to another in bulk rather than deleting them.

So I have created another Plugin called Bulk Move, which you can use to move posts from one category to another in bulk.

Screenshot

The following is the screenshot of the admin interface
Bulk Move WordPress Plugin Admin Screen

Download

You can download the Plugin for my WordPress Plugin page.

Disclaimer

Similar to the Bulk Delete Plugin, there is no way to undo the changes done once the categories are moved. So be very careful while using this Plugin and also note that you cannot hold me responsible for any damages done.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Notes for “DOM is a mess” by John Resig

Published Feb 6, 2009 | In JavaScript/jQuery

I just finished viewing John Resig’s talk titled “DOM is a mess” at Yahoo. I took some notes while watching the video and I am posting them here, so that I can refer to them at a later point of time (It is easier to search when it is not on paper 🙂 ). Also it might help someone to get the outline of the talk before actually watching the video. The original video runs for more than an hour.

Also be warned that the following is my own interpretation of the video and I might have missed or could have interpreted some point differently. 🙂

About the speaker, John Resig

As you all know John Resig is the creator of the excellent jQuery library. He works for Mozilla corporation and you can get more information about him from his blog.

DOM is a mess

This is the first thing John Resig said about DOM methods after saying that DOM is a messy

Nearly every DOM method is broken in some way, in some browser.

The following are some of the bugs in the DOM methods

getElementByID ()

IE and Old versions of Opera return elements whose name == id

getElementByTagName ()

.length gets overwritten in IE if an element with an ID = “length” is found

getElementsByClassName ()

Opera doesn’t match a second specified class

querySelectorAll ()

Safari 3.2 can’t match uppercase characters in quirks mode.

So the moral is that almost every method in DOM is messed up.

Writing Cross-browser code

Find out the cost/benefit ratio for supporting a browser and then pick the browsers you are going to support before writing your code.

He talked about Yahoo’s graded support and jQuery browser Support.

Escaping from DOM’s mess

The following are some of the tips to escape from DOM’s mess.

  • Having a good test suite is not a facility but a requirement.
  • Don’t introduce global variables or extend native objects.
  • The order in which style sheets are included matters.
  • Don’t use browser sniffing, but use Object detection or feature simulation instead.
  • Don’t assume a browser will always have a bug. They might get fixed in a future release.
  • Gracefully degrade for old browsers
  • As your code matures, the number of assumptions should reduce.
  • While removing elements from DOM, clean it by unbinding the events

Links

So my dear readers what you think about my notes. Also let me know if you like notes for videos in this format. If there is a demand, then I can post some of my notes on other videos which I have already viewed.

Posted in JavaScript/jQuery | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Yahoo Open Hack day 2009

Published Feb 5, 2009 | In Events/Conferences

The annual Yahoo Open Hack day is back and this year it is happening in Bangalore on Feb 14th and 15th (What a way to spend the Valentines weekend 😉 )openhack2009web

There are two different tracks, Info Geek and Hacker Gurus. Both are free, but you need to register at the official site. You also need to support your application with some information about you (like a link to your blog etc). Hurry up, only limited seats available.

I signed up for Hacker Guru and have got my application approved. I am waiting for the clear chit from my doctor (due to my recent weight loss 😉 ) and if I get it, I will be attending. 🙂

Where

The Taj Residency
Bangalore
India

When

14th and 15th Feb 2009

More information

Official website
Facebook Group
Twitter

Let me know if any of you are attending, we can meet and also probably collaboratively hack:)

Posted in Events/Conferences | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Turning 26 today

Published Feb 3, 2009 | In Random/Personal

Well guys, I am turning 26 today (but will still continue to be a kid at heart). 🙂

Like last year, I am eagerly waiting to face the surprises which life has for me this year 😉 Let’s see how life treats me this year 🙂

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Bulk Delete Posts in WordPress

Published Feb 2, 2009 | In Plugin Releases

Recently I was playing with some auto posting WordPress Plugin in my test server and it quickly filled up a particular category with posts. I then wanted to bulk-delete the posts belonging to a single category. But I could find any WordPress Plugin to bulk-delete posts based on category or tag. So I created one. 🙂

So guys I am releasing a new Plugin called Bulk Delete, which you can use to delete posts based on category or tag. I have also added abilities to delete all drafts, all post revisions or all pages.

Screenshot

The following is the screenshot of the admin interface.

bulk-delete-wordpress-plugin

Bulk Delete WordPress Plugin Screenshot

Download

You can download the Plugin for my WordPress Plugin page.

Disclaimer

Please note that there is no way to retrieve the posts once they are deleted. So be very careful while using this Plugin and also note that you cannot hold me responsible for any damages done. 🙂

Update: If you are just looking for a Plugin to move the posts from one category to anothe in bulk, rather than deleting them, then check out my Bulk Move Plugin instead.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

Open Flash Chart Core 0.4

Published Jan 31, 2009 | In Plugin Releases

I have updated the my Open Flash Chart Core WordPress Plugin to version 0.4

This is a mandatory update. So please update it.

I have fixed a couple of bugs and have also introduced two new options which you can use in your own Plugins which depend on Open Flash Chart Core Plugin. The following are the two options.

  • SM_OFC_PHP_INC – This constant contains the directory (include) path to the Open flash chart PHP library
  • SM_OFC_INC_URL – This constant contains the url path to the open-flash-chart.swf file.

If you are a WordPress Plugin developer, check out the Plugin’s page to find out ways to intergrate this Plugin with your other WordPress Plugins.

You can download the latest version from the Plugin page.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Loosing weight without any exercise or diet

Published Jan 29, 2009 | In Photography, Random/Personal

Just now I realised that this is my first post in 2009. So Happy New Year guys (for both English and Tamil new year)

It’s hardly a month since New Year eve and I have already faced both sides of life 🙂 . 2009 started with a very high note for me and I was entirely occupied for the first three weeks, both due to work as well as due to hobby. (In fact I even planned to write a post titled Jam-paced Jan 🙂 )

Things started off well with Chennai Tweetup at Broken Bridge (Pictures) , FoodWalk at Mint Street (Yet to upload pictures) and then Chennai Sangamam (pictures)

On 16th Jan, I went to the grand finale of Chennai Sangamam at Besant Nagar with Aswin and Yuvi. It was damn good and as usual I started taking photos. It was too crowded and we were not able to get near to the stage. I started using Aswin’s head as a tripod. Seeing this, a shop keeper gave me a chair and I continued to take photos by standing on this chair. When Drums Mani was performing, people standing in the back started to push and someone knocked the chair in which I was standing. After a few second this is how the chair looked like 🙂

Chair on which I was standing

I got up and after laughing at myself, checked my cam and myself. There were only some minor Scratches and I started to enjoy the event and then the fireworks.

It was only after a couple of days later, I came to know that my heroics efforts have caused some internal injury and have ruptured my appendix. I had severe pain in my abdomen and got admitted to the hospital on 21st Jan. After two hours of surgery doctors removed my appendix and now I am back at home after losing 30 grams of weight. 🙂

I went to hospital again today to get my stitches removed. It seems that the Wounds have healed and I should get back to normal life style in a week or two.

At last I succeeded in reducing my weight without any diet or exercise 😉

Posted in Photography, Random/Personal | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Year End Stats 0.3

Published Dec 30, 2008 | In Plugin Releases

Year End stats, my WordPress Plugin which displays some fancy stats about your blog, has been updated to 0.3

This version requires my Open Flash Chart Core Plugin to be installed and activated. Please note that you cannot use Year End Stats Plugin without activating Open Flash Chart Core Plugin. You can download Open Flash Chart Core Plugin from my Plugin page.

The major change in version 0.3 is the inclusion of flash based graphs (which you can save as image). You can see these graphs in action at Leau.net (First 4 images)

If you prefer only text data, you can continue to use version 0.2 but if you want visualize the data graphically, then you need to upgrade to version 0.3

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Integrate Open Flash Chart libraries with your WordPress Plugin

Published Dec 28, 2008 | In Plugin Releases

Open Flash Chart is an excellent Flash-based, open source charting component which can be used to create high-quality charts with ease. The advantage of using flash is that you can create professional quality charts with minimum effort, but the only disadvantage is that the user viewing the charts needs to have Adobe Flash Plugin installed in his browser.

It is released under open source and you are free to modify it if you know Flash and Action Script. If you are planning to start, then it has excellent tutorials and a huge array of libraries. Both Akismet stats and WordPress stats Plugin use this for displaying data in charts.

I was playing with Open Flash Chart, sometime ago and decided to use it for my Year End Stats WordPress Plugin. Instead of just including the required files with the Plugin, I separated them out into a separate WordPress Plugin so that it can be shared by other Plugins as well.

You can download the Plugin file from my Plugin page and then upload it to your wp-contents directory.

If you are a WordPress Plugin developer, then you can check my Year End Stats Plugin to find out how to integrate Open Flash Chart in your WordPress Plugin.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments