Category Archives: Plugins

Related the WordPress plugins that I work on.

Order Bender 0.7.2

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Introducing Order Bender 0.7.2. This version fixes two bugs in the previous release, 0.7.0. These bugs relate to cases when a preferred term had not been selected for a post. Previously, it was possible to cause Breadcrumb NavXT to throw an error if a preferred category was not set due to improperly handling this case by the new code taking advantage of the new bcn_pick_post_term filter in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.4.0.

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 Order Bender’s GitHub Repository.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Order Bender 0.7.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Introducing Order Bender 0.7.0. This version adds code that takes advantage of new features in Breadcrumb NavT 5.4, allowing terms without parents to be the the preferred term for a post’s hierarchy as presented by Breadcrumb NavXT.

I know I said in the last release that Order Bender will make it into the official WordPress.org plugin repository so everyone will get update notifications. The truth is, it likely will not make it into the WordPress.org plugin repository. The Breadcrumb NavXT specific functionality introduced in this version will make its way into a Breadcrumb NavXT extension plugin. So, you’ll have to manually update (by first deleting and then re-installing).

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 Order Bender’s GitHub Repository.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

WP Lynx 1.1.2

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

What’s this? Another bugfix release for WP Lynx? That’s right, announcing the immediate availability of the second bug fix release for WP Lynx 1.1. Two bugs were squashed in this release.

In 1.1.1, one of two bugs afflicting the uninstaller was fixed. However, there was still another bug that caused uninstalls to not work, this has been fixed in 1.1.2. And, to ensure this doesn’t slip through the cracks again, unit tests for the uninstaller were generated for this release. Additionally, a bug that caused permission issues when saving settings was fixed in this release.

You can grab the latest WP Lynx on the WP Lynx WordPress.org plugin page.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.4.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Holy new filters Batman! Breadcrumb NavXT 5.4.0 features several new filters and many bug fixes. Several fixes focus on strings and translations, including the addition of translation context for some strings. Additionally, date format strings for date breadcrumbs are now translatable. Two potential sources for PHP errors/warnings were mitigated. Lastly, the “Your settings are out of date” message no longer appears on fresh installs of Breadcrumb NavXT.

New Filters

Three new filters were added to Breadcrumb NavXT for 5.4.0. These are: bcn_post_terms, bcn_pick_post_term, and bcn_add_post_type_arg.

bcn_post_terms

Previously, it was not easy to to control the number of terms, or what terms, were displayed when the hierarchy for a post was set to a flat taxonomy type. The bcn_post_terms filter provides a method for modifying what terms are displayed in this situation.

bcn_pick_post_term

For posts belonging to multiple terms from a hierarchical taxonomy, Breadcrumb NavXT has, since 3.0, picked the first term with a parent, or the last term if none of the terms have parents. While this is an efficient method of picking the term, it is not applicable for all use cases. In the past, it was not easy to override this decision. There are ways to influence the selection based on the rule outlined above. But, this was not precise. The bcn_pick_post_term filter allows complete control over what term is selected by Breadcrumb NavXT.

bcn_add_post_type_arg

Introduced in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.3.0, the post_type query argument was added to archive URLs when it was determined that the current post type was not the native type for that archive (e.g. for date archives and some taxonomy archives). While this behavior is correct, it may not be desired for every site. In 5.4.0 the bcn_add_post_type_arg filter was added to provide a way to override the decision Breadcrumb NavXT makes in regards to adding the post_type query argument to a URL. See How to Remove post_type From Breadcrumb NavXT URLs for an example of how to use this new filter.

As always, checkout the Breadcrumb NavXT Documentation’s Filter Reference for more details on these filters, and the other filters in Breadcrumb NavXT.

Translations

As explained in the Breadcrumb NavXT Translations Moving to Language Packs article, Breadcrumb NavXT has moved away from shipping translations with the plugin. This is the first release to ship without any included translations, all translations are available via language packs, or from the Breadcrumb NavXT Translation Project.

If you would like to contribute to translating Breadcrumb NavXT, please visit the Breadcrumb NavXT Translation Project. A big thanks to all of the translators that have contributed to the translations in the past and continue to contribute.

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

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

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Breadcrumb NavXT and BuddyPress Compatibility

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

While developing Breadcrumb NavXT 5.4, I spent some time investigating the compatibility issues between Breadcrumb NavXT and BuddyPress. Within Breadcrumb NavXT, every attempt is made to use the WordPress API, when possible, to maximize the compatibility with other plugins such as BuddyPress. However, this is not always enough, and the findings of this investigation are presented in this article.

What You Need

These are the plugins and versions used when performing the testing reported on within this article:

  • BuddyPress – At the time this article was written, 2.5.0 was the latest available version and was the version tested against.
  • Breadcrumb NavXT – Tested against a development release of 5.4.0.

What Works

Out of the box, group and user/member archives work in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.4.0.Unfortunately, the design of BuddyPress does not incorporate much of the standard WordPress content organization facilities. Hence, out of the box support for BuddyPress in Breadcrumb NavXT leaves much to be desired.

What Doesn’t Work

While user/member and group pages are detected correctly, the breadcrumb for the user and group archives/directory is missing. Additionally, none of the sub-components of the user/member and group pages are represented in the breadcrumb trail.

The Solution

Breadcrumb NavXT BuddyPress Extensions is a free, add on plugin for Breadcrumb NavXT that fixes many of the shortfalls in BuddyPress support. It will fill in the missing breadcrumb to the group and user/member archives/directories when on a group or user/member page. Additionally, it will fill in the correct breadcrumb trail when in a sub-component of a user/member or group page. It is a simple activate and you’re good to go plugin—no configuration required. For non-English language sites, note that you will need to use the included .POT file in the languages directory to create your own translation set to get ‘Members’ and ‘Groups’ to translate to your language.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]