Use an Icon/Image for the Home Breadcrumb

Posted by in Guides

This is a really easy one. However, as I’ve been asked about it several times in the past few weeks, I’m going to post about it.

One way of using an image rather than just text for the home breadcrumb was covered in the Vista-Like Breadcrumbs for WordPress article back in 2009. However, that guide is more or less an advanced topic, and directly accesses the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class, something that is currently not recommended.

Since at least Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0, the settings page allows you to use valid HTML in some fields. In the future this will be more obvious due to settings page tweaks as it is not exactly obvious that this is possible. There are really only three steps to changing from text to an image for the home breadcrumb:

  1. Go to the Breadcrumb NavXT settings page (under Settings > Breadcrumb NavXT).
  2. On the “General” tab, look for the “Home Template” option.
  3. Replace the text value of the “Home Template” option with the valid HTML for your image. e.g.
    <img src="http://YOUR_URL/YOUR_HOME_IMAGE" alt="Home"/> where YOUR_URL is the URL for your website, and YOUR_HOME_IMAGE is the name of the image, including file extension.

That’s it, and it also works for the “Blog Breadcrumb” and “Mainsite Breadcrumb” in setups that have these breadcrumb types.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Road to Breadcrumb NavXT 3.9.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Yes, there will be a 3.9.0 release of Breadcrumb NavXT, it will be coming later this month. Due a feature added in it, WordPress 3.1 will be required. It is not following the release wave cadence as this version was going to be skipped. The only new feature slated for this release is support for custom post type archives which were introduced in WordPress 3.1.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Worldwide WordPress 5k with the MSPWUG

Posted by in General

[wpt-activity]

Today, a few members of the MSP WordPress user group got together to participate in the Automattic Worldwide WordPress 5k run/walk/jog (and maybe I arrived a little late). The planning was a little last minute, and all week the forecast had it raining today. So we were quite lucky to actually get a group of 5 to participate and have it only feel like a humid summer morning with a gusting wind from south.

Above is the route I ran (run #3 for the season). Starting at the band shell, I ran around lake Harriet, counter clockwise (like anyone who has ran around a track would). Since, the loop around lake Harriet is only about 2.8 miles, I continued past the band shell for another .15 miles before heading back to the band shell.

I noticed two things about running around the lake. First off, it is rather flat around lake Harriet, which is a bit of a change from the somewhat hilly area I live in. I’d provide elevation numbers from my Forerunner 305, however, I noticed it is horribly inaccurate (on run #2 this year it had me climbing in elevation when I was actually going down hill).  The second is there are far more people running/walking around the lakes in Minneapolis than just about anywhere out in the suburbs.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

The “Settings not Saved” Error

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

A major cause of the “Settings not Saved” error has already been fixed. This closes off the ability to get into the problem. Code that detects a site with that problem and fixes it still needs to be written. Originally, 3.8.2 was going to be released last Friday. It was bumped to this Monday, and now I’m “punting” to sometime around the end of the month.

An intermediate solution for users affected by this issue is to perform a settings reset:

  1. Navigate to the Breadcrumb NavXT settings page (Under Settings > Breadcrumb NavXT).
  2. Click on the “Import/Export/Reset” tab next to the “Help” tab in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
  3. On the dropdown press the “Reset” button.

After completing these steps you should be able to save your settings without receiving the “Settings not Saved” error.

Note that this error is not something new to Breadcrumb NavXT 3.8.0, it is only made apparent due to the message introduced in 3.8.0. The absolute root cause of this is the activation action is not being fired for the method of installing plugins used by affected users (something that may be indirectly fixed in WP 3.2).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT 3.8.1

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

This is the first bug fix release for the 3.8 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. There are two fixes contained in this release. Root pages for custom post types should work again. Additionally, a known cause of the “these settings were not saved” messages has been resolved. Those affected by either of these two issues should update immediately.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]