I will be using the default theme WordPress comes with to show you have to do this.  Below is the important code you should focus on:

With WordPress 2.7, you would edit the wp_list_comments(); function to look like wp_list_comments('type=comment'); and just after line 8 (‹/ol›) put:

That bit of code will echo out all the pings, so your final code should look like:

Ah, but there is a problem, what if you don't have any comments but you have pings/trackback or visa-versa? You should now be able to wrap each H3+OL combiniation in code like:

And that's it, your Pingback and Comments are now separate. Have a look at the final code below and let me know if I missed anything or if you have any questions.

Update: In regards to Chris' question, there is a way to separate out your comments count; after some research you can use the get_comments_number filter, you just need to create function and put it in your functions.php file.

If you don't already have a functions.php file in your theme, just add one.

Have you ever needed to see what a theme looks like with your content but you did not want to have to recreate your whole site on a testing server and import all your data?  Well, Theme Test Drive to the rescue.

You simply download the plugin, unzip it, upload it to your WordPress install, install the plugin and then select the theme you want to test.  This will allow you to go through your site as if it were live and see how it looks and works.

Now, have you ever need to make some changes to your current theme but did not want to shut down your site and you did not want your visitors to see a busted site?  Well, Theme Test Drive to the rescue again.

Follow the steps above, but instead of installing a new theme, just duplicate your current theme via your ftp of choice.  Once you have the duplicate theme, go into the dup and make a change to the style.css file and change the "Theme Name" - I just renamed the theme to have a 2 at the end of the name.

Reupload that style.css file and in the select menu under the Design -> Theme Test Drive page select your newly named theme and click enable at the bottom.

After that, just work off of the duplicate theme till you have everything looking the way you want and just either copy over all the changes to the old theme folder or change your default theme to the duplicate.

Complete install instructions, support and download can be found on the plugins site.

As promised, here is the advance notice that WordPress 2.7 is coming to WordPress.com, and will go live on Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 8pm Eastern Time. That’s 5pm Thursday in California, 1am Friday in London (UTC), 8am Friday in Jakarta, noon on Friday in Sydney…find your time here. Some people like to learn how to use new things by jumping right in and exploring, while others like to read the manual first to get the lay of the land. This post is a written version of the 2.7 interface tour/feature review I have been doing at WordCamps, and will tell you what’s new in the administration interface of WordPress 2.7. There are a lot of new features, so fair warning: this post is pretty long. If you’re more of the jump-in-and-play kind of person, you can skip this post for now, but you might want to remember it’s here just in case you get confused when 2.7 arrives at WordPress.com in two days.

2.7 Gets Here in Two Days!

If you don't feel like reading that post let me bring over another very important note:

A note on browser capabilities: WordPress 2.7 makes extensive use of JavaScript to create the user experience outlined here. If you have JavaScript turned off in your browser, some features may not be available or may work a bit differently than described here. In addition, using a recent standards-compliant browser will ensure that you have an optimal experience. Older browsers that are not supported by their manufacturers any longer may not look as expected; we recommend Firefox 3, Google Chrome, and Safari 3.

What does this mean, it means that WordPress will become much easier to use and manage... for people using better browsers. I am not sure why IE7 is not in that list, I've tested it in IE7 with zero issues.

Be sure to upgrade as quick as possible as to not miss out on the beauty that is WP2.7.

Please Back Up Your WordPress Install Before Upgrading

Ideals

I firmly believe that a site should still be functional, 508 compliant and still look good when styles and JavaScript are turned off. With this in mind we will be doing some "progressive enhancements" and since there is going to very little that won't work in all browsers I won't go into my rant about PE.

Structure

We will be using Definition lists; why definition lists? Because they are semantically correct for this situation. Have a look at two really good articles from Css-tricks.com and Maxdesign.com which go into detail on why you should use definition lists.

Below is the structure we will be dealing with, notice that we only have the DL/DT/DD structure and now wrapping DIV or any other extra mark up:

With PE in mind, we will use JavaScript to add in any additional mark up we will need to achieve the scroller look.

Current Progress

The content from our current progress is from a dump I did of my own site using WordPress' loop.

Styling

In our next layer of PE will are going to add in some style simple based off of the current structure minus the JavaScript.

Current Progress

In this phase we really did not do anything special, I just styled it as I would have normally. You can add more pop to it if you feel. Do note however, that at line 28 I am using a selector that IE6 does not support and since the extra padding for that element is a nice to have and really does not hold the user of IE6 back I felt it was ok to add that in there.

JavaScript

Now we start with the real fun, using JavaScript - in this instance, jQuery as our framework of choice, but you can just as easily use MooTools or DoJo - to add in some WOW factor. Here the plan is to wrap the DL in a DIV, add some classes to some elements, set up some events, and animations.

What we have in the example just below is some additional styles and elements.

Current Progress

Finally we have to set up the events and animation; what events do we need to set up and why? We need to bind the mouseenter and mouseleave event because if we want to be able to read what is being shown we need to be able to put our mouse over the content and have it stop any animations that are running so we can read it.

First thing we will need to do is to find out the total height of the grouped content is. The grouped content in this case is the DT/DD/DD/DD combination. We will be using the outerHeight() method to get the total height (padding/margin/height). To get that grouped content we will be using a combination of .children() and .slice().

Final

Final

Closing

So with the final product we have a decent footprint to stylize to your likings. Feel free to stylize it, add new functionality, new animation - some easin/easeout effects would look nice. Think outside of the box, just make sure it degrades nicely.

So in PhotoXhibit's case, I did the following:

And I get:

WordPress 2.7 will be release sometime soon and with it comes a new feature call "favorite actions," it's a drop down menu that is sort of a quick launch to your most used actions. Right now it only contains "Add New Post", "Add New Page" and "Manage Comments". Like with most features in WordPress, you can easily add to via the "add_filter" function link so:

The new function that builds out that drop down menu is called "favorite_actions" and is located in the "/wp-admin/includes/template.php" file.  The default menu structure array is below:

The first part of the array "post-new.php" is of course the page it will be going to, the second page is an array with the text that would be shown in the menu and the permission.  Have a look-see at roles and capabilities on the WordPress site for more information about permission.

Although I don't see a way to add favorite actions on the fly there is a way to add some via a plugin.  In my PhotoXhibit plugin I will be using the following code to add menu options for adding a new gallery and for managing galleries.

Notice how I am adding to the $action array, I am using the array_merge which does exactly what it says, it merges the two arrays.

A Plugin

Below is a basic plugin template that you can use to add your own menu items to the favorite menu.

Final thoughts

Although the new "favoriate_actions" function is nice and the favorite menu does what it needs to do, I am a bit nervous that plugin developers will not give their users the option to add to it and just force it upon them.  Which may not be an issue but what if you twenty plugins that all force their items in to the favorite list?  Or what if a plugin developer clears out the initial action array and puts in only their plugin URI?  It can get to be a bit hairy.

I would also say that this new feature can become quite powerful and useful.  What if someone comes up with a plugin, or WordPress institutes a feature, that tracks the pages you use most often and adds those pages to the list.  Or what about a plugin that attaches itself to the option area and has a checkbox for every admin page/action and you can click to add all the favs you want?  Any takers?

Feel free to check it out at Image Browser Extenders page and download it from the WordPress extend site.

Some screen shots to hold you over:

With this plugin adding functionality has become a simple as clicking a few check boxes, no need to fuss with code.  Go ahead and check out the plugins page or download it from WordPress.org.

One of which was the ability to update the files you posted, you can edit the titles and captions, you can event delete the file but you can't upload a new version of the file. You would need to delete and repost the file which is a process not easily communicated to a customer or a wife using WordPress. So I create the Attachment Manager to fill that void. What it gives you is the ability to re-upload a new version of a photo or a pdf or what ever you are trying to update without cause a bunch of hardships.

You can grab yourself a copy over at http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....-extender/ and checkout http://benjaminsterling.com/wo.....-extender/ for instructions and feedback.

Below is the code that I used, basically I need to grab all posts from a particular category, in this case category 3, and I also needed the posts to be between today's date and this date last year. Some help came from this post here.

Well, here it is:

Table of contents for What I learned while building a WordPress Plugin

1. Things I’ve Learned While building a WordPress Plugin

After building my first few WordPress plugins I learned quite a few things that I just could not find good information on. So what I will be doing over a couple or so posts is explaining what the problem/issue was that I had and show you how I went about resolving the problem/issue.

How do I add a sub menu for my plugins admin and what is a "unique identifier"?

Ok, creating a submenu is not very hard and WordPress docs does an ok job of explaining it. But when you are building your plugin using a class structure it is not very clear what you should do.

Lets assume that you have a class called "myClass" and a function with in it that is called "adminMenu." Let's also assume that this class is also on the same file that is your main plugin file that has the version information on it. Your typical php4 based class would look like (php5 based classes have __construct instead of calling myClass and some other minor differences):

At line three we add an action that points to the "adminMenu" function and let me clarify what I have found happens with "array(&$this, 'adminMenu')". WordPress will take "array(&$this, 'adminMenu')" and make it into myClass::adminMenu() and execute it like that - the &this is a reference to myClass.

At line 8 we have the main link that gets put at the top next to "Plugins," "Comments" and so on. You will notice the __FILE__ constant, this allows WordPress to set that menu item to reference the plugins main file. You also see array(&$this, 'adminSubPage1') will execute as myClass::adminSubPage1() (this function is not shown).

At line 11 we create our first submenu for our plugin which also points to the adminSubPage1 function, which is needed I found. If you don't have a submenu item that points to the same "page" as the main menu item, the submenu items will not show up.

At line 12 we create our second submenu item that points to the adminSubPage2 function (also not shown). You will notice a three differences between the two submenus, two being the Names and the function they point to, and the third is the mc_adminSubPage2 which is our unique identifier. This will give us a url the looks something like admin.php?page=mc_adminSubPage2.

Nothing real fancy with this one, just wanted show how to create your plugin menu items while using a Object Oriented approach. Feel free to let me know if there is an easier way or if I am all around incorrect. Next post will be about loading of jQuery and your other JavaScript without messing up the Prototype code that WordPress and other WP plugins use.

Why the name change, "Benjamin Sterling Galleries" was just so darn catchy? Ummm... it wasn't! BSG was originally built for my wife and after showing it to a few friends, who in turn showed to a few of their friends, the feedback and suggestions that were given kinda forced me to add to it. First I added the ability to communicate with Picasa, then to Flickr, the Default WordPress image/file manager, and now to SmugMug as well as the newly build Album Manger with multiple upload, multiple thumbnail support. As well as many other new features that I really can't list, I just could not leave it with such an egotistical, no descriptive name. So now we have PhotoXhibit, isn't that nicer?

I can ramble on forever, but this is not the time so go and download, test and give me feedback.

The download link
Please to leave feedback and report bugs

I am working on documentation and some screen casts, but if you are good with words and would like to help with docs, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Well, that's it, go... go, test away, let me know what you think.

What are Quicktags you say? Well, they are a bunch of little trolls that run around tagging things, they are really a bunch of fun once you learn to stay out of their way. They like Pepsi I find; tried to sneak Coke past them one day and ouch, never do that again.

Well, that's it...

Ok, I'm kidding, there are no Quicktag trolls running around, just my baby girl pulling the dogs tail and grabbing the cat. But I do have a fix for those how prefer to work in code view.

WordPress has a file located at "wp-incudes\js\quicktags.js" that controls the buttons and it is pretty simple to implements. Go to the "wp-incudes\js\" folder, open up "quicktags.js" in your favorite editor and add the following to just before line 36:

Look for:

Add:

Save it, upload it and test it. Now you should have an H1 button just before the B (bold) button. Pretty simple.

You are free to add as many tags as you want and below is the partial list of what I have on my system:

The "Benjamin Sterling Galleries" plugin has been renamed and recoded with a ton of new features. The new URL is http://benjaminsterling.com/photoxhibit/ and although support will still be given for this version (1.6.2) I would suggest you checking out PhotoXhibit

Comments for this post are closed, please go to PhotoXhibit for support.

What is it?

A godsend plugin for anyone who wants to add a photogallery to their website using WordPress and jQuery.

Download (current count: 1,810)

Download Benjamin Sterling Galleries Version 1.6.2

• Download zip version

Features

• Pull in photos / images, thumbnail and large size, from just about everywhere
  • from flickr via rss or their json api
  • from picasa via rss
  • from a local folder
  • from photos / images already in the WordPress database
• Ulilizes the jQuery JavaScript framework's power and a ever growing list of great photogallery plugins
• Drag and drop reordering of gallery images
• Change functionality of your photogallery with few clicks of the mouse
• Combine photos from multiple accounts and services
• Embed your gallery in posts or anywhere on your site
• Galleries are 508 compliant and will degrade nicely when JavaScripts are turned off
• Preview your gallery on the fly

Resources

• Demo/Dev install (test/test)
  • WordPress 2.3
• Support
• Timeline
• jQuery Gallery Plugins Used
  • jqGalView
  • jqGalViewII
  • jqGalScroll
  • cycle

History

While wordpress does have a ton of image / photo galleries, I felt that none of them really gave you control over everything in an easy unobtrusive way. Not to say this this plugin is the is all be all, but it will get there.

In my hunt to find a good one for my wife and installing all the ones that I thought had what was needed, I found that none of them made it easy. My wife is a very smart woman, so when she gets frustrated with something it most likely not her. So after a few months of her beating me, I decided to build some jQuery gallery plugins which you can find on this site. This was able to keep her happy for a bit, but I had to go in and make changes everytime she wanted to add and image or take one out. After doing this a few times I decided to just put together a quick plugin that will take in the images via a picasa feed provided by her and let her do the changes her self.

After showing this plugin to a few other developers they suggested I should make it into a full fledge plugin and well, here it is.

Prerequisites

• WordPress 2.1 or higher
• A Flickr account and api key or
• A Picasa account or
• Images in a local directory or
• Images in your WordPress database

Aside

Although this plugin was test on a pc in IE6, IE7, FF2, and Opera 9.24 and on IIS6 PHP5, Apache PHP4 & PHP5 and feel comfortable that this plugin will work flawlessly, I am the creator of the plugin, thus, I am naturally going to use it the way it is supposed to be used and not have any issues. That is where you come in, any and all comments and concerns should be posted asap and I will build up a punch list of fixes. Also, if there are jQuery or even other Javascript libraries that have nice photo / image gallery plugins, let me know and I will see what I can do to add that into the mix.

Timeline

Here is a brief timeline of what I hope to accomplish and in what order. There is no exact date for each release, but the time between each release should not be more then two months.

• 1.2 current release
• 1.3
  • Add more Picasa interaction
    • interactions tbd
• 1.4
  • Add more control of the style for each jQuery photo gallery plugins
    • The thought is to possibly have all the styles embedded in the database
      and then have those styles transfer over when
      you create a gallery.
  • Add better control over parameters for jQuery photo gallery plugins
• 1.5
  • Add the ability to change the alt text for each image no matter where
    the image is from
    • The thought is to possibly have an edit icon appear when mousing over
      an image

Installation

If you have ever installed a plugin, then this will be pretty easy.

1. always back up your WordPress before making any modifications.
2. Extract the files. Place the benjamin-sterling-galleries directory into wp-content/plugins/
3. Login to the Site Admin and go to Plugins and active Benjamin Sterling Galleries
4. Then it can be configured from the BSG menu that you should now have on the top menu bar.

More Info

Let me try to explain what this plugin actually does; it builds image galleries or photo galleries. Wow, I know, that was descriptive. But since you look like you are still puzzled by how it actually works, I will go into a little more detail. Say you have a Picasa photo album with all these really nice photos that you want to add to your site either in a post or in the side bar. But, you don't want to use the "slideshow" feature that they provide. Well, with this plugin you simply use your rss feed link for your Picasa photo album and paste it into the lovely interface that is provided by the Benjamin Sterling Galleries plugin. Then you select what size thumbnails you want to preview and you click a button and wham, you have all your images/photos listed on the page. You double click on the ones you want to add to your gallery, you fill in some info, select the style of gallery you want and click another button and wham, you have a preview of the gallery that can be added to your WordPress. What? You have a Flickr account too? Well if you did not click the button to add you gallery yet, go a head and paste in the url to your Flickr rss feed and click the first button and there you go, a list of your Flickr photos. Double click on the ones you want and click build gallery and there you go, a photogallery with both your Flickr AND Picasa photos!

The other nice thing about this plugin is that you can re-order the images you want in your gallery. Simply click and drag the images you want to move around and put them wherever you want in the gallery.

Ok, with out rambling too much more, let me ask for your help. What do I need up with? Well, my instructions are very minimal, do I need more? I only have four photo / image gallery plugins installed, do I need more? If so, which ones do you like? And why? Is there a feature that is needed/that is missing? What is it?

The download link is below, please leave comments to help me make this plugin better.

Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....galleries/

My muse S.Sterling http://www.neurosesgalore.com