My Technophilic Musings

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Motivated by Ronald’s ultimate wordpress plugin tutorial at devlounge, I decided that the best way to learn something is to use it in a live project. Armed with my laptop and multiple flasks of coffee, the marathon began on Friday night. My only experience with web-related development so far had been around 8–10 years ago as a kid when, just like everybody else at that time, I was fascinated by HTML and did a “read-through” of HTML 4.0. But I have always been a believer of the theory that a C programmer can program in any language quickly without having to go through the whole manuals. Thus that night bore fruit for me, and by 5:30 in the morning I had a working “Quote of The Day” plugin at my hand with all the features I wanted it to have in its first avatar. Did a bit of polishing last night, fixed a few bugs, and created a readme, and here it is, Mr. shantz-wp-qotd “1.0”, in all its glory, ready for general consumption.

Features at a glance:

Continue reading »

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Quote of the day: “You can’t fight ideas with bullets.” - Leo Gold

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, QOTD, qotd plugin, quote of the day, shantz-wp-qotd, shantz-wp-qotd 1.0, widgets, wordpress, WordPress Plugin, wordpress qotd plugin

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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Shantz WP QOTD is a plugin to add quotes to your wordpress blog in a few easy clicks. It adds quotes to your posts and your sidebars with a multitude of options for sources and customization.

== Description ==

There are many quotes plugins out there. This one has been started with a view to have the best of features and options, ease of use and multiple sources to get the quotes from.

Features:

• Add quotes to all your posts automatically.
• Widget support - Can also have a widget in the sidebar for quotes.
• Customize and style your quotes with your own text and tags.
• Multiple sources for quotes (paste in admin page, get from file implemented, fetch from web/rss soon to come)
• Multiple patterns for quotes - Random Quote, Quote of the day (all posts display quote of the day), Quote of that day (all posts display quote for their own days)
• Pattern for widget can be different
• Customization for widget can be different
• Add quotes to top or bottom of posts
• Custom template tag to add quote anywhere you want
• Custom quote boundary decalarator tags/Multiline quote support
• Enable/Disable the quotes without deactivating the plugin
• Option to exclude pages from displaying quotes

Coming Soon:

• Fetch from web/RSS support
• Quotes Categories
• Pics support for quotes
• Anything else you want
• File selection

And more…

== Installation ==

The Shantz-WP-QOTD plugin can be installed in following easy steps:

1. Unzip “shantz-wp-qotd” archive and put all files into your “plugins” folder (/wp-content/plugins/). It is advisable to create a sub directory into the plugins folder, like /wp-content/plugins/shantz-wp-qotd/

2. Activate the plugin

3. Go to Options > Shantz WP Quotes, adjust your settings and save them.

4. For adding and configuring widget to sidebar, go to Presentation > Widgets.

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= How to add quotes anywhere in the posts/pages? =
Use the tag “<!– shantz-wp-qotd {option} –>” anywhere in your post (without the quotes).
Note:
1. {option} (including the braces) has to be replaced by the quote pattern that you want: qotd, qottd or r. qotd is quote of the day, qottd is quote of that day and r is random.
2. The tag has to be added using the code editor and not the visual editor, otherwise it will replace the <, > with their HTML equivalents.

= How to use the custom separator/multi-line quotes? =
By default, if you leave the custom separator box blank, the plugin uses a newline character as the separator. However, if you have quotes that have multiple lines, you can change this to a tag of your choice, say [quote]. Now, in your quotes file (or quotes pasted in admin panel options) add this tag at the end of each quote and you are done.

= What is the format for saving quotes? =
In text box in admin page, as well as in the file, the quotes have to be saved as one on each line. Each quote is separate by newline.

= Where is the file with quotes located =

For the get from file option, a file “quotes.txt” has to be present in the same directory where shantz-wp-qotd.php is residing. A sample quotes.txt has been given with this plugin (with some quotes from southpark, simpsons, matrix and deus ex)

= I checked the option “exclude pages” but my pages are still displaying quotes =
Check your WordPress version. This option is effective only for Version 2.1 and above

= How to upgrade to a new version =
Simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.

== Screenshots ==

Config Screens and plugin in action:

You can also see the plugin in action right here on my site (check bottom of posts and the right sidebar topmost widget)

== Version History ==

• Version 1.2.2
  • Fixed a bug because of which quotes were blank some times. Thanks to Thom for reporting it.

• Version 1.2.1
  • Option to exclude pages from displaying quotes is also compatible with wordpress version < 2.1

• Version 1.2.0
  • Added option to exclude pages from displaying quotes
  • Fixed a bug that quotes source selection checkboxes always remain checked after updating settings.
  • Cosmetic: Fixed a few spelling mistakes

• Version 1.1.0.1
  • Cosmetic: Changed readme.txt according to wp-extend standards

• Version 1.1.0
  • Added Custom tag support for adding quotes anywhere in your posts/pages
  • Added Custom quote separator support and multi-line quotes support
• Version 1.0.1
  • Fixed some styling related issues in text added before/after quote displayed in widget (especially links related issues)

• Version 1.0.0
  • Initial version

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written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: plugin, QOTD, quote of the day, Shantz, sidebar, widget, widget support, widgets, wordpress, wordpress blog, WordPress Plugin, WP-QOTD

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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The awesome i3theme that this blog uses is a treat to the eyes, except to a lot of IE6 users. The issue is that for many people viewing wordpress blogs using this theme, the right sidebar doesn’t appear on the right, but below the middle column main area.

I didn’t know this problem existed as I don’t use IE but when a friend mailed to let me know, I started hunting around for the solution. Infact, found on the home page of i3theme, that the author acknowledged this bug and fixed it in v1.5, except the fact, that the fix doesn’t work. Because this blog was also using the same version.

Now, not taking anything away from the author, who has done a wonderful job with the theme, I took it upon myself to fix it, and the solution turned out to be really simple.

Continue reading »

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Quote of the day: Morpheus: Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: i3theme, IE6, largest, resize, right sidebar problem, sidebar, tags, widgets, wordpress, wp_tag_cloud