Archive for the ‘General Wordpress’ Category
| 6 Dec 2009 |
17 Amazing Twitter bird icon sets which you probably haven’t seen before |
Taking a glimpse at the web you can easily realize that Twitter is no longer a trend, but a lifestyle. Millions around the world are talking about what they are doing in the exact minute of posting, they are sharing ideas and having conversations , just like via an instant messaging client. The best part is that anyone can join a conversation!
You can see the twitter bird icon on millions of websites, and what you can notice is that many websites use the same icons(maybe you too!) and this is the time when you can start wondering “why shouldn’t i be different?”. This is where the talented artists come in, who release amazing icons and icon packs(mostly on deviant art).
I’ve done some research and collected 17 icons & sets which will get your blog, website or forum readers look out to the tweet icon.
Amazing Twitter bird icon sets
Remember to read the licensing of every icon/icon set on the download pages!
1. Twitter Icons .PSD
2. Free twitter bird icons
3. Twitter Bird
4. Adiumy Twitter
5. Blue Bird Twitter Icon Pack
6. Twitter Icons Pack
7. Twitter Icon BIRRRDFON
8. Twitter Replacement
9. Twitter dock icons
10. Twitter Icon Pack 1
11. Twitter Icon Pack 2
12. Twitter Icon Pack 3
13. TwitterJoy icons
14. The GodTwitter Follow Button
15. Twitter Icon
16. Twitter Space Icons
17. IconTexto Twitter Buttons
Free twitter bird icons by ~Stockgraphicdesigns
| 4 Mar 2009 |
Contest: Care to win a custom made WordPress template? – $600 value! |
If you constantly read my blog you most probably know that i’m a professional wordpress designer and my colleague, mbogdan is a professional coder. Together we create custom themes, plugins, but also release free themes and free plugins to the community. To check some of my previous work take a look at my portfolio (it is outdated due to my lazyness).
Say what?
A lucky reader(maybe you?) will win a custom made wordpress theme based on their requirements, which will be ready to upload & use on your blog.
You will be treated just like other customers: you will describe your blog, the niche of your blog, and you will tell me your vision of the desired wordpress theme(color combinations, number of columns, structuring, and anything else you find important for me to know).
After getting all the details i will open up Photoshop and i will make a detailed draft and this will represent the starting point.
We will talk things over again after which i will modify the placeholders to fit your requirements. From this point everything goes straight forward: i work my ass off and finish your design as soon as possible. Also i will offer support via instant messenger (MSN LIVE or Yahoo! messenger).
After the design is complete you will make the final revisions and once you are satsified with the outcome i will forward the design to my colleague mbogdan who will code it(XHTML/CSS valid, tableless coding, widgetized sidebars).
Contest Duration
The contest will run from March 5th(tomorrow) till May 5th(in 2months), and the draw will be made using random.org .
This means that the more entry credits you have the bigger your chances will be of winning your very own custom made wordpress theme!
How to enter?
There are 5 ways you can earn entry points, it’s really simple earning them in fact:
1) Get 3 Entry points by posting a comment to this post with a link to your blog and why you want a custom theme (REQUIRED)
Your name:
Your blog’s tite:
Your blog’s url:
Why do you want a custom theme?
2) Get 10 Entry points by Subscribing to my RSS feed using the form below(use the name you used in the comment form)
3) Get 20 Entry points by blogging about this contest( link to this post so i can track it)
4) Get 50 Entry points by signing up at Bluehost hosting , or referring someone to sign up under my referral id.Before you sign-up read my review of Bluehost.
5) Get 100 Entry points by referring a customer to order a custom wordpress theme(the entry points will be given only after the customer has made the payment)
What’s next?
Go ahead, post your comment and start earning entry points. You can earn 8 entry points in just 2 minutes of work!
Good Luck!
| 11 Feb 2009 |
WordPress upgrade process easy as 1-2-3 |
The most awsome features in WordPress are the automatic plugin and core updates, no need to download new package and reupload, with one click you can simply upgrade both your plugins and core. I just upgraded to 2.7.1 and it took like 5 seconds to upgrade. I was stunned!
This is both awsome and secure(remember the old wordpresz.org exploit, which infected lots of bloggers), with this process you surely know that the package is the real deal. If you’re running WordPress 2.7 and haven’t upgraded yet to 2.71 click the yellow bar in your admin panel and check out the upograde process!
| 7 Feb 2009 |
Ad integration v2.0 and Custom Widgets v2.0 due to be released next week |
Due to high demand from the public i decided to upgrade both Ad integration and Custom Widgets plugins to v 2.0 and make them compatible with wordpress 2.7.
With Ad integration v 2.0 you will be able to add ads to your widgetized sidebar and even between posts.
What might be in Custom widgets v2.0(depending on how we can hack wordpress):
- You will have the possibility to add names to your text widgets.
- The link to CW won’t be a top level menu.
- Assign widgets to homepage if you have a custom page set for it.
- Full compatibility with WordPress 2.7 legacy
..and that’s about it. If you have suggestions you can post here or simply mail me.
| 14 Nov 2008 |
Custom Widgets added to WordPress.org plugin repository |
A few days ago I added my Custom Widgets v1.2 plugin to the WordPress.org plugin database. As my download counter shows not many people downloaded from wordpress.org, most of them downloading the plugin from my blog.
Before i uploaded my plugin to wordpress.org i wrote a propper readme.txt file which is compatible with wordpress.org’s standards and included it in the package. I also updated the zip file located on my download server, so regardless of where you download it from you will get the same package.
Currently i do not have any plans for a next release of custom widgets, but most probably i will have to once wp 2.7 is released(to make it fully comptible).
If your using custom widgets please Rate my plugin Thanks!
| 12 Nov 2008 |
Will WordPress developers ever change the Default theme? |
WordPress Default 1.6 by Michael Heilemann- The default WordPress theme based on the famous Kubrick.
WordPress 2.7 is almost ’round the corner and what i find a bit weird is that the WordPress developers didn’t consider changing the good o’l default theme. WordPress 2.7 will be a huge hit, but released with the well known default theme.
I’m tired of it. In my opinion it depreciates the current WordPress’s value, and a new, more appealing theme with the new features embedded in it would be more suitable for a WordPress release in the future.
MANY bloggers stick to the default theme, considering this conclusion why shouldn’t they get a better default theme?
| 1 Nov 2008 |
WordPress Weekly Talkshow overview – Halloween edition |
I wanted to participate in the Talkshoe chatroom during the show, but i was invited to a halloween party and i got home exactly 2 ago. I’ve listened to the show while i was doing some design work and now, after drinking 3 cups of coffee here I am writing this post.
Jeff’s special guest this week was Jane Wells , who works at Automattic at the user experience(usability) section. They mostly talked about the new WordPress 2.7(which is due to be released 10 days from now – Nov 10th) and the improvements in it. Also they talked about how important the user input is, and little surveys that are easy to do can get important information and help them improve WordPress.
slayer’s opinion:
Making surveys and asking for user opinions, feedback, and suggestions is great at a product or even at a web site. The survey results are like the results of a huge brainstorming session, where of course many great ideas emerge.
Okay, so Keith‘s first question blew me away!, that question was the best IMO:
“What do you think for people who are doing some of their own design work, what are the most common usability mistakes that you see?”
Jane said that the most common usability mistake is that website most owners don’t consider that their visitors think the same, and that they should rather put theirselves in their visitors shoes.
Getting back to WP 2.7 they talked about the dashboard and quickpress(which allows you to make posts directly from the dashboard) along with Comment moderation directly from the dashboard.
Jane also says that Plugin developers shouldn’t put links to their plugin options page in the Top Level menu.
slayer’s opinion:
IMO this is stupid. For example i decided to put links to Ad integration and Custom widgets options pages in the top level section cosidering that they will be highly used and to ease the usability. This way the user doesn’t have to search for it, and go to sections and subsections to access it.
Either way, we’ll have to wait till WP 2.7 is released and see what happens.
The WP 2.7 BETA will be most probably released tonight. This means 10 days of testing and bug fixing. To do more extensive testing the WP team graduately implements 2.7 features in wordpress.com, by this way the BETA testers are all wordpress.com users.
Jane mentioned that Otto wrote a post named “Getting your theme ready for WP 2.7″ so i googled it and found the WordPress 2.7 Comments Enhancements post. This means that as soon as WP 2.7 will be released theme designers will have to update their themes to make them fully compatible with wordpress 2.7.
That’s about it, if you want to listen the whole show head over to the Talkshoe chatroom and press play.
| 27 Oct 2008 |
Had a busy weekend but made time for some projects also |
This week-end i was busy to the top of my head:
-as on every saturday i went to visit granny and help around the house, after which i had to go and work on the setup for saturday night’s party(which was a blast!)
- sunday i got up late and had to carry lots of bags of potatoes(like 70 pounds each) up to the 4th floor(wasn’t a too pleasant experience to my back,lol) after which i went out down town with my girlfriend.
Finally Sunday night i got the chance to do a bit of more productive work:
- did some work on 2 themes that i’m preparing to release for free soon.
One of the themes will most probably have 1(one) sponsored link on it, due to the much attention and involved work that it requires, because if you thought that Chameleon was an advanced theme wait till you see this one. So far all i can tell you about it is that it will be magazine styled.
The other will be a nice and clean blue theme, named TS Thoughts, which thanks to the $100 prize money from lunarpages contest won’t have any sponsor links, just a link back to me, as promised before the contest ended.
Custom Widgets v1.2 Plugin
This plugin was a blast thanks to the featuring on the WP show. Thanks to this bugs were reported and features were asked, so i made a txt document with the changes that will be made for Custom Widgets v1.2 along with the design for the options panel(you’ll see what i’m talking about when v1.2 will be released) and forwarded them to Jeff , who also is excited about the release(which isn’t far away).
Users who have servers which run on php 4.x reported that the plugin isn’t working on php 4.x. If your running php 4.x wait till v1.2 is released which will be compatible with both php 4 and php 5.
| 24 Oct 2008 |
WordPress 2.6.3 released due to a low-risk vulnerability |
Ryan announced today the release of WordPress 2.6.3 . The new wordpress version contains the patch which fixes the vulnerability in the Snoopy Library which is used by your wordpress to fetch the feeds which are shown on your admin dashboard.
Although secunia rated the vulnerability Highly critical, it seems that for wordpress users it doesn’t represent such a high-risk Ryan rating it Low-Vulnerability:
” Although this seems to be a low risk vulnerability for WordPress users, we wanted to get an update out immediately.“
Better safe than sorry! The only 2 modified files in the wordpress core are wp-includes/class-snoopy.php and wp-includes/version.php.
If you’re a newbie wordpress user download the whole wordpress package and upload the contents to your current wordpress installation overwriting the older files.
If your a more advanced user download only the 2 modified files from the WordPress 2.6.3 Release post and upload them to the wp-includes folder.
| 16 Oct 2008 |
WordPress Plugin – Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0 |
Custom Widgets v1.2 is out! Please head over to the Official Release post.
If you are running Custom Widgets v1.0 it is highly recommended you upgrade it to v1.2
This plugin will make your widgetized sidebars so flexible that you will almost think that your running a more advanced CMS system and not WordPress.
With WordPress if you add a widget to the sidebar it is visible on every page. NOT ANYMORE!
This plugin enables the usage of different widgets in different sections, categories, posts,pages, and so on. For example you will be able to have ads related to gaming in the Gaming category and in the same place in the Kids category you will be able to have ads related to Toys for example.
Mark of WeblogToolsCollection suggested that i make a more expanded introduction, for you to get a better idea of what the plugin actually does.
Basically you can add a selected widget ONLY to the page you want to. Below you will find a few live examples, sit tight we’ll get to that. Because in writing it’s a bit hard to explain i’ve made a video for you guys:
Here are some practical examples:
1. Requirements
The same old requirements:
1.1 WordPress 2.2 and above
1.2 Administrator account
1.3 Ftp acces to “wp-content/plugins” directory for upload
2. Options Panel
Just as any usual plugin Custom Widgets also has an options panel and once you’ve activated the plugin you will be able to see it even if you’re half blind.
Great, now you activated the plugin, went to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section but see no widgets. By this time you probably feel confused. Don’t be. In order to use custom widgets you need to add some widgets to your sidebar from the good old Widgets Page (Design -> Widgets).
Simply Add the widgets to the sidebar and save the changes.
Now that you got some widgets added to your sidebar head over to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section where you will notice that the widgets you added to the sidebar are now visible.
Those which have the blue color weren’t added to any pages/posts/tags/categories. Those which are red were already added to a section(this was implemented in order to make a difference between widgets in use and widgets not modded by my plugin.
Now, if you click one of the widgets you will be taken to a management page where you can select where you want your widget to appear: on a selected Post, Page, Category, or Tag.
If you made it this far there isn’t much to do, except to define where you want your widget to appear by using the Edit links.
On the tags section if you have many tags the load time may be a bit large, but it’s worth to wait. By tags i mean tags pages( example:http://www.thaslayer.com/tag/design/ ).
Donate to Development
If you find this plugin useful and understand that a lot of time was spent in its development and lots of nerves were killed feel free to donate a few bucks which will fund further releases.
3. Download Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0
Slayer’s Custom Widgets v1.2 (Primary Download link)
Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0 (Primary Download link)
4. Installation Instructions
4.1 upload the slayer_Custom_Widgets directory to wp-content/plugins
4.2 activate the plugin (dashboard -> plugins -> find “Slayer’s Custom Widgets” -> click the activate button
4.3 head over to the usual Widgets section (wp-admin/widgets.php) and add some items to your sidebar
4.4 Now go to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section and select the widget you want to customize.
4.5 Add the desired widgets to the desired pages.
4.6 You’re all done!
If you want to show some love feel free to comment or to blog about the plugin 
