Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 and PHP5.2

Breadcrumb NavXT has maintained PHP5.2 compatibility ever since WordPress dropped PHP4 support about four years ago. However, the time has come to move past PHP5.2 and on to newer versions of the language.

Due to new features in the upgraded adminKit library, Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 requires language features that are not available in PHP5.2. To complicate matters further, PHP5.2 is no longer available in the package manager for the Linux distribution I run on my testbed server. Thus, even if I wanted to maintain PHP5.2 compatibility, I have no easy means to test for it.

Lastly, PHP5.2 is no longer maintained by the PHP authors (PHP5.3 has the same issue). Therefore, Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 requires PHP5.3 or newer and it is very likely that Breadcrumb NavXT 5.3 will require PHP5.4.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT Extensions and the EU VAT Rules

The European Union’s current VAT rules unjustly discriminate against small businesses that rely on the sale of electronically delivered products. Said rules require applying VAT to purchases based off of the current location of the customer. If said customer is in the EU, the appropriate local EU VAT must be collected.

Unfortunately, compliance is nowhere near trivial. Hence, sales to customers that appear to be in the EU are blocked. While embargoes on ‘friendly’ regions are silly, in this instance, no other practical solution exists.

Should complying with the VAT requirements become less burdensome, sale to persons located within the EU will be made possible. Until that time, if you are stuck in the European Union, please consider contacting your politicians and request they rectify the EU VAT mess.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress Compatibility

Notice: This topic is being revisited in August/September 2020, with a new guide that is more applicable to how Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress work as of that date. Below is the original article which remains for historical purposes.

While developing Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2, I spent some time investigating the compatibility issues between Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress. Within Breadcrumb NavXT, every attempt is made to use the WordPress API, when possible, to maximize the compatibility with other plugins such as bbPress. However, this is not always enough, and the findings of this investigation are presented in this article.

Continue reading

Update 1 to Breadcrumb NavXT Premium Extensions

The current three premium extensions to Breadcrumb NavXT, Breadcrumb NavXT WPML Extensions, Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic, and Breadcrumb NavXT Title Trixx, have received their first update. In the initial release there was a deficiency in the user interface for activating the license key for receiving plugin updates.

The defect forced users to enter their license key, then save the settings, and then activate the license key. Any deviations caused the license to not activate. This has been corrected in the latest release of Breadcrumb NavXT WPML Extensions, Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic, and Breadcrumb NavXT Title Trixx.

Users with valid and activated license keys should receive an update notification within the WordPress dashboard and be able to use the update mechanism to update (just like with any plugin in the WordPress.org repository).

Visit the Breadcrumb NavXT Premium Extension Store to check out all of the updated premium extensions.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Trimming Breadcrumb Title Lengths With CSS

Update 2015/1/24: Added CSS for Schema.org BreadcrumbList format that Breadcrumb NavXT 5.3.0+ uses.

While Breadcrumb NavXT has a setting for specifying the maximum length of a breadcrumb title, this feature has shortcomings. Namely, it does not handle HTML elements gracefully. This has been looked into in the past and is not an easy thing to fix. Additionally, from a semantical point of view, the breadcrumb trail markup should never be truncated. Thus, it is recommended that you do not use the “Max Title Length” setting. In fact, this setting will be deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2, and removed in 5.3.

CSS offers a better solution, which will not leave you with garbled and/or truncated HTML tags, should they exist in your tile. This guide will show a way of keeping your breadcrumbs to a reasonable length without using the “Max Title Length” setting.

Continue reading