Setting a Parent for a Post

Normally, flat post types such as the Post post type do not have parents. However, some people like to use pages for their hierarchy and want posts to be children of these pages. Typically, these pages have a description and then a post list based off of a category.

While I personally do not recommend this type of site structure, Breadcrumb NavXT has supported Pages as the parent of Posts for quite some time. The caveat has always been that setting the parent of the post was an exercise left to the user. I’ve just written a fairly basic plugin that removes that makes things easier. All it does is add a Parent metabox with a pages drop down to the edit screen for posts.

Installation is quite easy:

  1. Download the Master branch zip archive from GitHub
  2. In your WordPress Dashboard navigate to the plugin uploader (Plugins > Add New > Upload)
  3. Upload the zip archive
  4. Activate and enjoy!

You can keep up with day to day development via the Post Parents’ GitHub Repository.

-John Havlik

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Breadcrumb NavXT 4.1.0

Holy improved custom post type support Batman! This release added a few new features and fixed several bugs custom post types work better in general (covering more usage scenarios). Several bug fixes revolved around archives, including restricting a mixed archive to a specific post type, empty term archive pages, and author archive pages when showing the page number (e.g. on page 2 of the author archives). The included widget was improved with a pretext option. Finally, the behavior of posts that are using a flat taxonomy in their breadcrumb trail but do not have a term assigned was modified to match the same case for hierarchical taxonomies.

On the localization side of the house, the textdomain was changed to facilitate better integration with GlotPress, which we now use for managing translation sets. Also, a big thanks to the translation team. This is the first release that we used GlotPress to coordinate translation sets. Another first is the high of 9 translations that are 90% complete or better (and are shipped with this release). You can check out the Breadcrumb NavXT translation project to see the status of the translation for your language. An improved sign up process for translating through this GlotPress install will be opening soon.

As always, you can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page. If you experience any issues with this version of Breadcrumb NavXT, please leave a comment on this post detailing the issue.

-John Havlik

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WP Lynx 0.5.0

What’s this, a new version of WP Lynx? Memorial day counts as “early summer” correct? Anyways, this version of WP Lynx includes the promised Open Graph support. By default it will take the og:image and og:description as the default thumbnail and print body. In addition, some tweaks were made to the core so that sites with newlines occurring in the middle of a tag are parsed correctly. Finally, a few bugs in the Lynx Print adding interface (Show/Hide link) were fixed.

-John Havlik

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Breadcrumb NavXT and WP Lynx Previews

Breadcrumb NavXT has hit a feature freeze for 4.1.0. The only things left to do for the next release is some documentation updates, regression testing, and updating translations. Tomorrow the translation team will be notified of the two week window to get their translations updated (only 4 new strings) before 4.1.0 is released.

Try the latest Breadcrumb NavXT testing release from the Breadcrumb NavXT SVN Trunk.

WP Lynx has also hit a feature freeze for 0.5.0. Open Graph support has been added and all that is left to do is figure out the cause of a few ugly bugs that seem to only appear on my testbed. Additionally, one extra warning message needs to be added to the lynx print adding screen when thumbnails are disabled. See the WP-Lynx 0.5.0 milestone issue list.

Try the latest WP Lynx testing release from the WP Lynx SVN Trunk.

Expect the release of Breadcrumb NavXT 4.1.0 during the last week of May. As for WP Lynx 0.5.0, expect that some time in the first week of June.

-John Havlik

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Road to Breadcrumb NavXT 4.1.0

After a brief hiatus, development of Breadcrumb NavXT has resumed. The next version, 4.1.0 will be released before the end of May. A major change from previous development cycles is that I am now developing primarily with Git as my version control system, synchronizing with SVN trunk only periodically (when things are quasi stable). I am also using GitHub’s milestone and issue tracking system for development. This move was prompted by my very positive experience using Aptana’s built in Git support on another project.

Development of features will be complete by the 23rd, and the tentative release date is the 31st. Translators will get a little over a week to update their translations (currently there are about 10 translation sets that are 90% or more complete).

Check in on 4.1.0 development progress on GitHub: Breacrumb NavXT 4.1.0 Milestone Issues

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

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