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.

I was recently confronted with the problem of having a single html form with three different submit buttons, each button submitting the form data to a different php script. This is obviously impossible with html alone, as a form can only have one 'action' attribute, which dictates the URL of the file that the form's data is submitted to.

I searched around on the web for an easy way to implement this and found various examples. One of the best examples I found was on CoderLab's blog: Multiple submit buttons on a multiple blog which uses javascript to apply a different action attribute to the form depending on which button is pressed. Each button in the form has it's own onClick function like so:

<form name="myForm" id="myForm">
Search: <input type="text" id="wrdSearch"/>
<input type="button" name="google" id="google" value="Google" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
<input type="button" name="msn" id="msn" value="MSN" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
<input type="button" name="yahoo" id="yahoo" value="Yahoo" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
</form>

(Visit the page to see the javascript that goes with it: http://blog.coderlab.us/2005/10/04/multiple-submit-buttons-in-a-form/)

As I already had jQuery installed on the site, and the CoderLab script would still need some modification to serve my specific purpose, I decided to see if I could find a simpler way to achieve a similar result using jQuery. The form on my site was a lot more complex, with many fields etc. So what I really needed was a script that would submit all the form data to each of the 3 php scripts depending on which submit button was clicked.

Firstly, I stripped the onClick functions out of the form and removed the name attributes from the buttons too, like so:

<form id="myForm" method="post">
Search: <input type="text" name="search"/>
<input type="button" id="button1" value="Submit to script 1" />
<input type="button" id="button2" value="Submit to script 2" />
<input type="button" id="button3" value="Submit to script 3" />
</form>

I then wrote the following jQuery script to change the form's action attribute accordingly and submit it when each button is pressed:

$(document).ready(function(){

$("#button1").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_1.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

$("#button2").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_2.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

$("#button3").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_3.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

});

The script should work on any browser that is compatible with jQuery (see here: http://docs.jquery.com/Browser_Compatibility)

For more information on installing and using jQuery visit the website: http://jquery.com/

The WP Background Tile Plugin for WordPress applies a tiled background image to your blog.  It is as simple as this:

• Create a background image
• Upload it
• Apply it as the background via the WP Background Tile options page

Applying a repeat pattern to the background of a webpage is easily done using css:

body {background-image: url(example.jpg);}

However, if you're not into writing code, or don't know where to insert the css into your wordpress theme, then you will find this plugin much easier. It can also be an easy way of testing out lots of background images before deciding on one you are happy with.

INSTALLATION:

1. Download the plugin from the link at the bottom of this page
2. Upload the wp-background-tile folder to your wp-content/plugins folder.
3. Activate the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress.

USAGE:

1. Upload your background image via 'Media => Add New' in Wordpress (or via FTP)
2. Go to 'Settings => WP Background Tile' in WordPress
3. Paste or type in the URL of your background image (explained in more detail below)
4. Press 'Submit'

CREATING A BACKGROUND TILE:

A background tile is an image which is repeated in both directions over the background of a webpage. Look closely at the background of my site and you will notice the green background is not a matte colour, but a subtle texture. Right click on the background of my site and choose 'View Background Image' (Firefox) or 'Save Background As' (IE) and have a look at the image. You will notice that it is small (16 x 16 pixels), as you don't need much of the pattern to make it tile. Stripes and other geometric patterns can work well for a subtle effect.

Tip: Check out the free online Stripe Generator tool, it's a really easy way to create striped background tiles.

Background tiles can also be used for larger images such as a logo repeat. An example of this is www.mrdupes.com. To achieve this type of result using photoshop the 'offset' filter can be very useful.

GETTING THE URL OF A FILE YOU HAVE UPLOADED WITH WORDPRESS:

1. Go to 'Posts => Add New'
2. Click on the 'Add Media' button (a little star type icon next to 'Upload/Insert')
3. Click on the 'Media Library' tab
4. Click on the word 'Show' next to the file you want the url for
5. Under 'Link URL' click on the button 'File URL'
6. The file url should now be in the 'Link URL' text box so you can copy it.

DOWNLOAD PLUGIN:

I've been receiving a bit of spam on my blog lately obviously none of it gets through, but its still annoying having to delete it all. So, I have decided to take measures against it by implementing a few changes on my blog. I have installed the Captcha! plugin which now requires users to manually enter the text they see in the picture before their comment is submitted. I have also activated the Askimet plugin which flags comments as spam based on the askimet database.

Whilst looking at the different ways to fight spam I found this article: The Solution to Blog Spamming, which I found very useful.

This article is intended to address issues involving the use of add_post_meta and delete_post_meta in WordPress plugin design. These functions can be used to add or delete custom fields for a post, useful for plugin design as the value for the custom field can be entered via a form in the write page. The add_post_meta code would look something like this:

Read on…