Specifying a Preferred Category Hierarchy

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

As part of the best practises for organizing your WordPress site so that Breadcrumb NavXT’s output is what you expect, having a post be a member of multiple category hierarchies is something you should not do. While it still isn’t something you should do, there is a way to specify which category hierarchy is more important for a specific post.

The idea is that the order of the categories being returned by get_the_terms() can be modifed so that the more important category hierarchy is output first. This takes advantage of Breadcrumb NavXT’s behaviour of choosing the first category (term) hierarchy it finds for a post.

This is where Order Bender comes in. Order Bender gives you a nice post meta box to select the primary category for a post, and will modify the output order of get_the_terms() accordingly. Simple as that.

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]

HP ProLiant MicroServer Screw Location

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware

After unpacking my ProLiant MicroServer (it will replace Atomtux as the Atom 330 just isn’t cutting it anymore speed wise), I was expecting to see a packet of screws for the hard drive bays (has a 4x cold swappable 3.5″ SATA HDD bays). Alas, there was no packet. After a little searching, I found the screws, along with a wrench for them. They are attached to the door covering the hard drive caddies.

There are 16 screws attached to the door for hard drives, and 4 for an optical drive (to be placed in the 5.25″ bay). Yes, there are 4 extra hard drive screws (one bay comes populated with a 250GB Seagate hard drive).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Make Firefox Use Dolphin for “Open Containing Folder”

Posted by in Guides

In KDE 4, Konqueror has been replaced for the most part by Dolphin for all folder/directory viewing. However, by default Firefox will end up opening Konqueror if you right click on a downloaded item and select “Open Containing Folder”. It would be nice if Firefox would open the containing folder for downloads in Dolphin. There is a simple way of achieving this, and no command line work is required!

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Setting a Parent for a Post

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

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

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

WordCamp NYC 2012 Slides

Posted by in Events > WordCamp

I gave my presentation, The Power of Custom Post Types twice this weekend. First, at the regularly scheduled location and time slot, where we packed the room (had to turn people away). And then, an encore presentation today in a slightly larger room with still a great crowd (despite a few technical glitches). Those looking for the slides have two options, either a PDF export of the slides or the original PPT (ends up being more portable than other formats).

Grab the PDF version.

Grab the PPT version.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

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