Wow, the time has just flown by!!! Sorry for the lack of recent code and wordpress goodness.

Firstly, I am glad to see that my WP Post Columns Plugin is still going strong!!! Although it has not been updated since 2009 it seems that it is still working (for most people at least) and the comments keep flooding in!

Many of my WordPress plugins, themes and code tutorials are now unfortunately un-supported. But they are still free, and many people add solutions and answers as well as questions in the comments. I am still working with WordPress every day, but can no longer spare the time to provide free support for free plugins and tutorials.

I have had quite a few comments from people saying that they find it hard to read white text on a black background. Some of these comments have been so strongly worded that I was unable to publish them on the site! If you really can't stand it then you could always try getting firebug addon for firefox and changing the colours however you want (yellow text on a pink background looks quite good). I probably won't be changing my theme in the near future. Also, it's probably a good idea not to get into server administration like linux / apache stuff if you don't like light text on a dark background...

Some new wordpress tutorials and goodies coming soon I promise!

Get your hands on the new Street Fighter 2 widget. You can grab the widget code and embed it on your website, or even your myspace or facebook profile. This flash remake of the game is a very accurate copy of the arcade original featuring all the characters and bonus levels. If you just want to play the game on a website please follow this link:

Play Street Fighter online

I have been working for some months now to develop an e-commerce module for Admin76,  the CMS which is currently exclusive to 76 Creative. The e-commerce module, called Cart76, utilises many of the nice features of Admin76 such as drag n drop functionality, advanced image gallery management, etc. It is now in it's final stages of development, so if you are interested in running your self-managed site on the Admin76 platform, or if you require a self-managed online store please contact 76 Creative for more info.

While working on a WordPress site recently I came up against a problem that had never occurred to me before. The client wanted each post excerpt on the homepage to include an image which when clicked would link to the main post (permalink) itself. The built in functions of wordpress when inserting an image allow you to link to either the 'File URL' (i.e. the full size version of the image) or to the 'Post URL' which is actually an attachment page in wordpress which displays the image, but does not include the text of the actual post itself. However, without either editing the html of each post (not an option for this client) or inserting the image without a link, and then adding the permalink to the image (too long winded) there was no simple way to create the image links in the way they wanted them.

My solution to this was to create a very basic hack which would allow them to use the 'Post URL' link when inserting images, but instead of linking to the attachment page, the link would automatically be updated to link to the post's permalink itself.

Here is the basic php function that you would need to insert into your theme's functions.php file:

function lose_attachment($content){
return preg_replace('/<a(.*?)href="(.*?)\/attachment\/(.*?)"/i', '<a$1href="$2"', $content);
}

add_filter('the_excerpt', 'lose_attachment',2);

This will remove the 'attachment/name-of-image-file' part from the URL making it link to the post's permalink itself.  I hope someone out there finds this useful!

I have been working on a couple of Flash games recently for my new arcade site zapgamez.com. The first of these games is Zombie Killer Gorefest 3, which is now previewing on Zap Gamez. You can play the game here:
http://www.zapgamez.com/games/action/zombie-killer-gorefest-3

The official release text for the game is as follows:

Currently exclusive to ZapGamez.com, Zombie Killer Gorefest 3 is a point and click shoot 'em up where you have to defeat the zombie hordes in 3 chilling action-packed levels. Inspired by 70's and 80's Horror and B-Movie genres, this game includes it's fair share of blood and gore, so is therefore not appropriate for younger players.

I created the game in actionscript 2, possibly one of my last as2 projects before I move over to as3 fully. The graphics and animation are a more prominent part of the game than the scripted aspects which are fairly basic hitTest functions.

The game will probably stay exclusive to Zap for the next couple of weeks before I release it through MochiAds distribution. If you are interested in getting the game for your site when it is released please subscribe to my RSS feed and I will announce the release here on my blog in the near future.

Screenshots from the new Loopy Pursuits Arcade Site.

I have recently entered the world of Arade Website webmastering and, being the WordPress geek I clearly am, have chosen WP as the management sytem to drive my arcade sites. I have developed two new plugins WP Games Embed (released) and WP Mochi (so far unreleased) and launched my first arcade site Zap Gamez.

In the past I have had a fair few jobs designing custom / bespoke themes for WordPress blogs and for sites that use WP more as a CMS. These jobs are where most of my plugins originate from, adding custom features to sites when no existing plugin is available to achieve the same functionality.

My most recent custom theme is for the arcade site Loopy Pursuits, for which the games content is also driven by my two plugins WP Games Embed & WP Mochi. The theme is incredibly simple - no sidebar or nav bar as such, 3 basic layouts - Home page, Category/Tag/Search results page & single page view where the game itself is displayed. Apart from the formatting of the comments there is nothing about the theme which suggests it is wordpress. No 'recent posts','blogroll' or 'tag cloud' or any other content that could be associated with standard WP blog design.

The theme incorporates google advertising interspersed with the content. My approach to google advertising with arcade sites is to use predominantly image ads as gaming is very visual, and image ads seem to sit better within a very image based site layout. I also use the standard approach of identifying key placements for ads, sometimes referred to as 'Hot Spots', which are normally adjacent to key areas of the page, such as navigation, main content (i.e. the game), etc.

During the development of Loopy Pursuits the WP Mochi Plugin has come a lot closer to releaseability. It still lacks an options page which it would definitely need, but it now incorporates the Mochi Leaderboard (score board) using the Mochi Publisher Bridge, it also now has the ability to add entire directories of games automatically too!

If you are interested in getting a custom design for your WordPress blog, or if you want an arcade website set up, or if you are trying to do something different / unusual with WordPress please feel free to get in touch. I would be happy to provide a quote for any such jobs. I have been working with WordPress since version 1.2 and have set up many WP blogs in that time, I have never used a theme by someone else, custom built is the only way for me!

I have recently been working on a highly versatile premium theme for WordPress which is due for release soon. As part of the project I wanted to test how the theme (and WordPress itself) could work with sites of various different genres. My intention was that the theme would be configurable enough via it's Options Menu that it could easily be styled to suit corporate sites such as recruitment, blue chip company, technology site  & product portfolio, media sites such as magazine, news, image & video gallery and also youth oriented sites such as music / band website,  games website.

The theme also features simple integration for banners and advertising,  so creating a couple of  'working example' sites was not only a good way of testing the theme's versatility but also a potential source of a few extra quid!

I had been wanting to do a games & videos website for a while, and I had built the theme's default settings around a 'corporate magazine' look & feel, so I decided the games site would be a great way to test the theme. Here is my wordpress games arcade site so far:  Zap Gamez

I decided to look around and see what articles I could find about creating a games arcade website with wordpress, or if there was a plugin that allowed you to easily insert games into your WordPress blog. I found this article by Emanuele Feronato:

• Creation of a Flash arcade site using WordPress

It describes a method of populating your WordPress blog with games via a feed from MochiAds (A source of free games for websites) using custom fields. However, for my site I wanted to be able to integrate games from various free content suppliers and host games on my own server as well as embedding games hosted by content suppliers. What I really wanted was a plugin that could embed games into posts or pages using shortcodes.

THE PLUGIN

The prototype plugin I have built includes the following features:

4 Different views:

1. Grid view - a grid of thumbnail images linking to each game (can be restricted to a single category or parent category)
2. Category view - this view includes a medium sized image and a written description of the game
3. Single page view - the page where you play the game itself
4. Featured Game view - a page with a list of featured games

Different embedding modes:

1. iFrame embedding - embed iFrame content using code provided by free games sites, or use this method to display games from your own server where an html file has been provided with the free game download.
2. Flash embedding - embed Flash content using embed codes provided by other sites, or embed flash games directly from your own site. You can even upload them easily using the wordpress 'Add Media' tool.

The beta version of the WP Game Embed plugin can be found here.

It's great that the wordpress plugins search is now working. What a massive step forward! Thanks wordpress!!

Since the plugin search was fixed it has become much more apparent how many plugins there are which are actually renamed / re-branded copies of other plugins. As plugins are released under the GPL public license there is nothing to stop these so called plugin developers from being able to do this.

This is a real problem as it is important that plugin developers who are creating original, useful plugins continue to do so. If they feel that their work is going to be taken and copied, and that they are going to end up having to share some of the credit with one of these 'plugin leeches', they may feel less inclined to make the plugin publicly available.

My suggestion is that wordpress monitor the originality of new plugins more closely when they are submitted by the developer, a good way to do this would be to allow plugin developers to 'flag' plugins which they feel are too similar to their own plugin or are a direct rip-off of their plugin.

Also, if developers have made minor changes or improvements to someone elses plugin they should be encouraged to work with the original plugin's developer to improve the existing plugin and take a share of the credit with the original developer. This will help to increase the  quality rather than quantity of plugins. A good way to implement this could be to list these offshoots or alternative versions on the original plugins page with an explanation of how they differ from the original.

After releasing my WordPress theme Simplistix into the wild a few weeks ago I have been very happy, and somewhat surprised by it's popularity. It has received hundreds of downloads from my site and over 700 downloads from wordpress.org in the last 12 days. I knew that there was a niche for simple, text based blog themes as I had seen a few sites such as www.plaintxt.org that are entirely devoted to these type of themes. But, with all the sophisticated and complex wordpress themes on offer, Simplistix feels like quite a humble little theme — perhaps that's part of it's charm.

Anyway, seeing the download stats made me feel curious about who was using the theme. I had already seen it being used on a couple of blogs because, as with most wordpress projects, I had received some suggestions, ideas, support requests and constructive criticisms from members of the wordpress community. I did a bit of further research on google and instantly found loads more bloggers using my theme. The main thing that struck me was the diversity of subject matter that these blogs covered – science, computer programming, economics, movies, music, art, fashion and many more. It was also nice to see instances where people had modified the theme, adding in their own site headers, sidebar widgets, google advertising, etc.

I felt so inspired by seeing all these sites using Simplistix as their theme that I decided to write this post featuring some of my favourites. So here they are:

TOP PICKS

www.flyhypersonic.com – The seatbelt sign is illuminated
www.thewherewithal.org – Blogging about credit, debt, money, economy, theory
nicolasulloa.com/blog – Music, Animation, Graphic Arts and Illustration
www.ianthewebsite.com – If you could be any blog, what blog would you be?
2chicksblogging.com – Blogging for Change Training since 2008
feedingme.com
blog.nakedsteve.com – Oh hey is that a monome?

THE BEST OF THE REST

phoward.com/blog
ponasniekas.nespalvotas.lt
www.bigtechcenter.info
www.bletherskite.com
blog.xieer.com
www.bestmusiccenter.info
www.businesstechnologytimes.com/wordpress
likeitreallymatters.com
hasibul.info/blog

I am planning an update to the theme in the near future where I will add an options menu which will allow you to control colours, fonts etc.