WordPress MU Domain Mapping 0.1

A long sought after feature in WordPress MU is domain mapping. That’s where a blog on a WordPress MU site can be “mapped” to a new domain. WordPress.com has an advanced domain mapping feature that has proved to be very popular with users even though it’s a paid-for upgrade.

This domain mapping plugin isn’t quite as powerful and still requires plenty of testing. So, while domains and “sub domains” or hostnames can be mapped to individual blogs, there are a number of caveats:

  1. Remote login does not work. It’s possible to be logged in on the main site, logged in on the domain mapped blog as a different user or not logged in at all there!
  2. It only works if your WordPress MU site is using sub domains.
  3. It’s the 0.1 0.2 release. It’s basic.

Here’s the plugin page, and the download page. I’d like to hear how well it works for you.

I’m submitting this plugin to the WordPress MU plugin competition. There are only 2 other entries so the odds on my winning are pretty good!

I should have a Sitewide Tags update later this week, with thanks to Thomas Schneider who came on board last week to help and has done some super work!

Ron and Andrea found a bug in pre release testing that I forgot to fix in 0.1, so grab 0.2 if you were (un)lucky enough to grab the first release! Thanks Trent for testing too. Follow me on Twitter to get the inside scoop on my WordPress plugins, including a sort of super secret Twitter plugin..

WordPress MU is the multi blog version of WordPress that runs on WordPress.com and many other sites.

Gravatar enabled WordCamp Badges

Andy has the very exciting news that Gravatar icons will be printed on attendee’s WordCamp San Francisco badges this year!

gravatar badge

On supporting websites, Gravatars have become a de-facto identity for comment threads and discussions so to carry through the identity to the conference floor is just a logical conclusion.

There is one caveat. Gravatars can now be up to 512×512 pixels. The bigger they are, the better they’ll print. If your Gravatar is a measly 32×32 pixels it’s going to look like a dirty smudge next to the shiny badges of the big boys. Andy has created a handy form for checking if your image is the right size. If not, please upload a new Gravatar before August 14th!

I won’t be at WordCamp this year but after seeing the line up of speakers I’m looking forward to seeing the blog coverage afterwards.

PS. Andy has a new post showing how to create those badges with the help of a PDF library.

WordPress MU 2.6

Version 2.6 of WordPress MU is now out! WordPress MU is the multi blog version of the popular blogging software WordPress. It’s the engine behind WordPress.com and many other blogging sites.

This version of WordPress MU is based on WordPress 2.6. There’s a long and interesting WordPress.org post on the new features in 2.6 so get over there to read up on post revisions, “Press This!”, Gears, Theme Previews, and the long list of developers who helped make this release a reality.

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!

That last change is quite a major one. If you have any plugins that interact with the signup form they will need to be updated!

This release also addresses some security issues spotted by Alexander Concha and Juan Galiana. Thank you both for alerting us and for your patience while this release was prepared!

When will my broadband be upgraded?

Here in Ireland one company owns (almost?) all the local phone lines, Eircom. Just about every other company who provides a DSL service has to rent from them (anyone remember Smart?). The result of which is very similar pricing from every single broadband provider.

There is a silver lining of sorts. Eircom promised that they would upgrade all exchanges to support higher speeds by the end of July. We’re getting perilously close to that deadline and still no sign of upgrades for many. I received an email from BT yesterday giving this upgrade time page where I typed my phone number in and found out,

Your line will be upgraded on the weekend of the 26th July

Good news for me then. My 2Mb line becomes a 3Mb one. The upload rate remains at 256Kb unfortunately.

I twittered that url yesterday and others found out they’ll have to wait until August 9th. The page above works even if you’re not using BT’s service. When will your broadband be upgraded?

The Commodore 64 Book – 1982 to 199x

Several months ago my old C64 buddy, Andrew Fisher, emailed me to tell me about his new book, The Commodore 64 Book – 1982 to 199x. At the time his email fell through the cracks in the Thunderbird inbox and was destined to remain unanswered until I received a reply from another friend, Iain Black, curator of The Def Guide to Zzap!64 to a recent email I sent him. He asked if I had heard from Andrew so I went digging and found Andrew’s correspondence.

I’m glad I did. I just visited his site and ordered my copy of his book. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it and poring over all the reviews and little nuggets of retro goodness. If you were ever a fan of the C64, I think you owe it to yourself to splash out the couple of quid this books costs so you can bore the pants off your significant other, your work colleagues or friends with hopelessly antiquated nonsense from 20-30 years ago!

For the Speccy fans, there was The ZX Spectrum Book – 1982 to 199x but unfortunately only 1000 were ever printed and it’s sold out.

c64 golden years

In 1982, the Commodore computer company launched its new machine – the Commodore 64.

Twenty five years later, that machine is still going strong with new games and thousands of users worldwide.
To tell the story of the best-selling home computer of the 1980’s, writer and Commodore 64 fan Andrew Fisher looks back at around two hundred of the top games and how the industry has changed. From the pioneering third party companies like Electronic Arts and Melbourne House, to the homebrew software of the new millennium, the story of an 8-bit computer (and its remarkable sound chip) is a nostalgia trip for games fans.

Yes, difficult as it may seem, but people are still coding on the C64. I presume most of them work on emulators and I remember reading a forum post from a young guy who had never owned the machine but wanted to learn 6502 assembler. The C64 Scene Database lists almost every single demo produced and new ones are being added all the time. Not bad for such an old machine eh?

Sitewide tags pages for WordPress MU

For WordPress MU only. My latest plugin is the sitewide tags pages plugin.

This is the initial release of a plugin that creates a set of pages like the WordPress.com Hot Topics pages. It’s a lot more simplistic, but by feeding posts into one blog it also creates a sitewide feed of all posts plus feeds of any tags and categories too.


Sitewide Tags Options

WordPress MU is a multi blog version of WordPress that runs on WordPress.com. If you use the regular version of WordPress this plugin is not for you and you can ignore this post.

PS. In other MU news. Raanan has a new post on the Publisher Blog about Nationen! blog, a new Danish blog site based on WordPress MU that looks rather nice!
The site was developed by Incsub who are also the guys behind wpmu.org where you’ll probably find all sorts of useful nuggets of MU goodness on a regular basis!

Anti spam-blog plugin for WordPress MU

The very popular WP Hashcash plugin for WordPress has been modified to work on the WordPress MU signup page.

WP Hashcash is an anti spam plugin that protects blogs from comment spam. It does this with Javascript and is quite successful. I worked on it over the last few days and the plugin now offers the same protection on the WordPress MU signup form!

This is the first release of the code so handle with care. Grab the latest version (version 4.2 as of this moment) from the download page. Unzip it and copy wp-hashcash.php into wp-content/mu-plugins/ and visit “Site Admin” -> “WordPress Hashcash” to confirm it’s working.

Now logout and create a new blog, just to make sure everything is working ok. Occasionally some users will have problems registering, and those that have Javascript turned off won’t be able to create a new blog at all. That’s the downside of using this plugin unfortunately.

Keep an eye on the stats counter on the admin page. I want to hear how well this works on your site!

WordPress MU 2.6 beta 1

Edit: The release candidate is now online. Here’s the forum thread on it. Grab the zip file to test!

WordPress MU 2.6 beta 1 is now available. WordPress 2.6 is due for release shortly and it’s already on it’s third beta so it’s times for WordPress MU to be updated.

This release has many new features as well as a few security fixes. In his beta 1, beta 2 and beta 3 posts Ryan listed some of the main features, including post revisioning, gears support for faster loading, theme previews, better SSL support and much much more.

WordPress MU specific changes include:

  • The version number is being bumped to 2.6 rather than 1.6 because of version confusion. Minor MU versions will probably append a letter to the version.
  • 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

Excuses for ringing in sick

If you thought you’d heard it all, watch this video and listen to the outrageous lies and excuses four guys give their new employers. How long can they last and who will remain employed the longest before being fired?

Film by Dogmedia Productions (warning, large embedded movie file), via Jazzbiscuit and Justin. Originally shown at the Darklight Festival in 2007.

Back to the Eighties

Well, the Irish economy is tanking and is heading towards recession. Last time things were this bad was in the Eighties so here’s a few memories from that decade. After yesterday’s rather technical post, I need a nice squeaky throw away nostalgic one today.

Continue reading “Back to the Eighties”

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.