Justin Tadlock » WordPress Plugins

Custom Classes: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:39:33 +0000

For a recent project, I needed a way to add custom post and body classes on a per-post basis. Sure, I could have used a category or tag to style each post, but I hate creating custom categories and tags for the purposes of styling a post. So, I created a small plugin to let me add custom classes for individual posts.

How the plugin works

The plugin adds a custom meta box on the edit post screen for any public post type called “Classes” as shown in the following screenshot.

The meta box allows you to enter a custom class for a post (used by the post_class() function) or a custom body class (used by the body_class() function).

The following screenshot shows what your class will look like in the source code on a single post.

All you have to do is style your posts via CSS using the custom classes you’ve addded.

Download the plugin

You can download the latest version from the WordPress plugin repository: Custom Classes Plugin. I hope you enjoy it and find some use for it in your projects.

Please do not ask support questions in the comments below. If you’re in need of plugin support, head over to the Theme Hybrid support forums, which is where I handle support for all my plugins and themes.

Prevent Password Reset WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:36:15 +0000

Recently, I needed to build some functionality into a site that disabled the ability to reset the passwords of certain site administrators via the “lost password” form. However, I wanted to leave this option open for other users in case they needed to reset their password after forgetting it.

Thus, the Prevent Password Reset plugin was born.

How the plugin works

Prevent Password Reset is an extremely simple plugin. It adds a checkbox to the “Personal Options” section of each user’s profile page in the WordPress admin as shown in the following screenshot. Anyone who can edit the user’s profile can select this option for the user.

Once this option is selected for a user, their password cannot be reset via the “lost password” form. The following screenshot shows what happens when someone attempts to reset the password for a user with password preventing enabled.

Download the plugin

You can download the latest version from the WordPress plugin repository: Prevent Password Reset Plugin. I hope you enjoy it and can get some type of use out of it.

Members plugin beta testing

Justin Tadlock — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:44:27 +0000

Note that this plugin is out of beta testing. Thank you to everyone that helped squash bugs for the 0.2 release. You can get the latest version of the plugin from the plugin repository.

Late 2009 was the last time the Members plugin received a proper update. During that time, I’ve had a few offers to help add specific functionality to the plugin, which held back several updates. Unfortunately, none of those offers panned out like I’d hoped.

That’s no excuse for not bringing you updates, so I’ve been working diligently on updating the plugin to work better with WordPress 3.1 and 3.2. I haven’t added a ton of new features. The main focus has been on making the current features work better and making the admin easier to use.

I do vow to keep this plugin more regularly updated from here on out.

Beta testing

Before downloading the test version of this plugin, there’s a couple of things to keep in mind:

Please only use this on a test installation of WordPress. It’s not quite ready for live use yet.
The documentation is a bit out of date, but it will be updated in the official release.

I would love to get some feedback on how it works for you. Bonus points if you’re using an old version of the plugin on your test site and can tell me how the “Content Permissions” feature works with your older restricted posts.

Other than that, tell me about anything and everything that’s confusing or just doesn’t work.

Download the beta version

You can download the latest copy in zip format or get the trunk copy from my repository:

Download
http://svn.locallylost.com/plugins/members/trunk

Thank you to everyone that can take a few minutes and give this a test run.

A WordPress forum plugin using custom post types

Justin Tadlock — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:27:46 +0000

I’ve been promising a real-world example of what’s possible with custom post types for a while. But, I didn’t want to put together yet-another-long-technically-detailed post. I wanted to give you something that would open your mind to the possibilities.

And, there’s loads of possibilities.

I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of building a forum plugin, so I decided to get behind the project completely and make it happen. What started out as a simple project quickly turned into something that a lot of people have been wanting — a forum plugin that fully integrates itself within WordPress.

Post types for the plugin

The plugin uses three post types for handling the structure:

Forums: This is your top level, which holds everything else.
Topics: Children of forums and use the topic tags taxonomy.
Replies: These are the individual posts made within a topic.

I had originally taken a different route of using a forum taxonomy, topic post type, and reply comment type. However, using that structure had major limitations.

The benefits of using three post types are numerous. Here are some examples:

Forums can have metadata (custom fields) and media attachments added to them to allow a lot of cool stuff (forum thumbnails, for example).
You get pretty permalinks using a reply post type (forums/topic-name/page/2).
Replies can also have their own media attachments (user-uploaded images).
Capabilities/permissions are handled a lot better with post types.
Can set up custom post statuses such as “closed” and use the current statuses like “private.”
Works well with plugins that allow you to edit from the front end of the site.

This is not to say there aren’t issues with this method. There’s a lot of custom work work that needed to be done, which isn’t surprising considering I’m using custom post types.

I can’t take all the credit for this idea of using three post types. John James Jacoby convinced me this was the best route to go.

Taxonomies for the plugin

The only taxonomy used by default is the topic tag taxonomy. It allows users to assign tags to specific topics.

The great thing about the plugin though is that you can build custom taxonomies on top of it. You can give forums, topics, and replies their own taxonomies if you wanted. Since we’re using custom post types for those things, the possibilities are endless.

Integration with WordPress

Obviously, we want our forum plugin to work well with WordPress. Some of the current problems users of other forum software are facing when integrating are:

Separate user login pages (and separate user database tables in some cases).
Separate roles and permissions setups.
Using multiple themes to get the same design across the site.
Not being able to use WordPress plugins within the forum.
Having to figure out how “deep integration” works just to use things like menus and widgets.

My plugin seeks to solve those issues and use the tools available in WordPress.

Lightweight

I’m not a fan of adding every fancy gizmo and gadget in the world to a forum. I like to keep things simple and extend it with other plugins when I need a new feature. I also don’t want 20 theme templates when I can use a handful.

The biggest goal I have is to keep this thing as lightweight as possible. There are over 10,000 plugins for WordPress that will allow this plugin to be extended.

What about the bbPress plugin?

While this is outside the scope of what I’d planned on writing about, I know questions about bbPress will crop up. I’ll try to address those.

It’s true that bbPress will be becoming a plugin in the future and work has already started on it. I’m happy that there’s at least something happening. I love bbPress and have been using it for years, but I can’t wait around six or seven months again to see where the project is headed. I’m not saying bbPress isn’t going anywhere, but I had to make the decision to move forward on my own after the last disappointment.

I’d love to be involved in the bbPress plugin project at some point, but my priorities right now don’t mesh well with it. It’d also be great if the ideas used in my plugin or any of its code gets used in the bbPress plugin.

One thing I will promise to plugin users is that I’ll try to make it as easy as possible to switch between either plugin if that’s what they choose to do.

Demo and testing

The plugin isn’t ready for a public release right now. There’s tons of work still ahead. But, testing does need to be done on a large enough scale for me to make this a solid plugin.

I’ve put the plugin on one of my own sites for live testing. If you have any interest in this plugin at all or just want to help test, please register for my forums at Pop Critics.

My Snippets: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:10:49 +0000

One of my favorite plugins has always been Widget Logic, which allows you to display/hide widgets based on context. The biggest limitation of that plugin to me is that I had to go to my Widgets screen in my WordPress admin every time I wanted to add a new widget for a single post or page.

What I wanted was something that allowed me to control widget content from the post editor, so I wouldn’t have to worry about setting my widgets. This gave me the idea for the My Snippets plugin.

What this plugin does is add an extra meta box on the post editor that allows you to input custom content. This content is then displayed using the Snippet widget in any widget area you choose.

How the plugin works

First, you’d add the Snippet widget to the widget area of your choosing. You’ll need that to display your custom snippets.

When writing a post (or page), you’ll have an extra meta box labeled Snippet Post Settings. In this box, you can add text, HTML, and shortcodes.

Here’s an example of adding a video snippet:

Here’s the output of the snippet, which will only be displayed on the singular view of the post/page I added it to:

Don’t be fooled by the example though. You can add pretty much anything in your snippet meta box, so feel free to go wild.

Download the plugin

Before using the plugin, please take a moment to read through the readme.html file included with the plugin download.

Version: 0.1
Requires: WordPress 2.8+
Support: Support forums
Download (from WP.org)

Please don’t use my contact page or the comments section below to ask support questions. Use my support forums at Theme Hybrid, which is where I handle all support questions for my WordPress projects.

Members: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:38:54 +0000

The Members plugin is a user, role, and content management plugin. Its purpose is to make WordPress a more powerful CMS by giving you fine-grain control over the users of your site.

I created this plugin because I wasn’t satisfied with the current user, role, and permissions plugins available. Yes, some of them are good, but nothing fit what I had in mind perfectly. Some offered few features. Some worked completely outside of the WordPress role and capability system. Others lacked an appropriate license.

This plugin is still a long way away from my goals, but it’ll get there eventually.

What does the plugin do?

Members has what I call “components.” Instead of normal plugin settings, you get a components-selection page that allows you to choose only the features that you want to use.

The current components are (more will come in future versions):

Edit Roles: Edit your user roles and their capabilities.
New Roles: Create new roles for use on your site.
Content Permissions: Adds a meta box on your write post/page editor that allows you to restrict content to specific roles.
Widgets: Adds a login form widget and user-listing widget that you can use in any widget area on your site.
Shortcodes: Creates shortcodes that you can use to restrict or allow access to certain parts of your posts and pages (or any other shortcode-capable area).
Template Tags: New functions for use within your WordPress theme for various things.
Private Blog: Allows you to create a private blog that can only be accessed by users that are logged in (redirects them to the login page).

Screenshots of the plugin

I’ve uploaded a few screenshots so you can see what part of the plugin looks like:

Ideas for future versions

Version 0.1 has been all about role and capability management, but that’s just the beginning. Version 0.2 will be about user management.

But, it’s not all about my ideas. I’ll be working through many of the ideas presented in my original post on this plugin. I’m also open to any new ideas you might have.

Download the plugin

Before using this plugin, please read the readme.html file included in the plugin download. It will guide you through everything you need to know about using it.

Support: Support forums
Download (from WP.org)

Beta test my upcoming user, role, and content management plugin

Justin Tadlock — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:34:24 +0000

On July 16, I sent out a message to my Twitter followers that I was building a user management plugin for WordPress. At the time, I had been playing around with several plugins that offer similar functionality, but nothing really satisfied me. I just wanted a nice interface that didn’t get in the way of the things I normally do with WordPress.

I had no idea how popular the idea would be, even warranting itself a blog post, a forum topic, and loads of emails and replies on Twitter. So, I thought it’d be best to get the feel of the community and see what everyone’s thoughts were.

Many were in the same boat as me — not quite satisfied.

I don’t mean to build my plugin up too much though. There’s an extremely long road ahead if I’m going to implement as many features as we all want. The first release is about building a solid foundation for future development. I want to get the essentials down first. Then, I can start building new things in.

What does this plugin do?

First and foremost, it’s a role management plugin. This is the foundation of everything. It will allow you to control each of your site’s roles and their accompanying capabilities.

But, it’s not only a role management plugin. It has a components-based system that allows you to only use the components you wish to use. The current components are:

Edit Roles: Edit your user roles and their capabilities.
New Roles: Create new roles for use on your site.
Content Permissions: Adds a meta box on your write post/page editor that allows you to restrict content to specific roles.
Widgets: Adds a login form widget and user-listing widget that you can use in any widget area on your site.
Shortcodes: Creates shortcodes that you can use to restrict or allow access to certain parts of your posts and pages (or any other shortcode-capable area).
Template Tags: New functions for use within your WordPress theme for various things.
Private Blog: Allows you to create a private blog that can only be accessed by users that are logged in (redirects them to the login page).

This is just the beginning though. You’ve given me loads of ideas in my original post on this, and I plan on implementing as much as possible in later versions.

What I need from you all

Testing. Testing. Testing. And, feedback, of course.

This is one of the larger projects I’ve worked on, so a lot of the stuff is new terrain, even for me. With enough feedback and testing, this can be a great project for the WordPress community.

I know many of you will have ideas about new things to be added, but let’s try to hold those ideas until later. What you see here will be in version 0.1 of the plugin, but new things will come in later versions. Right now, I want to focus on making sure the current components work.

Some specific things I’m looking for:

Is anything too hard to understand?
Does something not work the way you expect it to?
Do you recieve any error messages?
Each component and each component’s options need to be tested.
Testing on various browsers definitely needs to be done.
Needs to be tested on the WordPress 2.8 branch and the current trunk.

Some questions:

How should restricted pages (Content Permissions component) be handled? Remove from page lists if user isn’t allowed to view them?
Will someone check to make sure content isn’t showing in feeds (Content Permissions component) unless it’s supposed to?
Is there anything else you’d like to see done with the current widgets (Widgets component)?

I’m hoping to officially launch this plugin in another week or two (depending on what bugs are found).

How to use the plugin

I’ve written a fairly comprehensive guide, which is included within the plugin download. It is the readme.html file.

If you have questions about usage, please refer to that guide first. Also, I encourage you to read my guide on users, roles, and capabilities in Wordpress. It’ll give you a better understanding of how things work.

Beta test the plugin

Please do not use this plugin on a live site. It is for test environments only. If you use it on a live site and it breaks that site, you are responsible for fixing it.

Sorry for such a stern warning, but I’ve locked myself out of my test install on more than one occasion while developing this plugin. Let’s make sure it works before using it on live sites, okay?

Download Version 0.1 Beta 1

Help me name the plugin

I’m currently calling it the Members plugin because I haven’t given a name to it yet. If you have ideas about what to call it, feel free to let me know.

The plugin is supposed to be a complete user, role, and content management plugin. While it’s not quite there yet, I hope that it’ll become the “must-install” plugin for all multi-user WordPress sites in the future.

Developing a user management plugin

Justin Tadlock — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:51:02 +0000

If you run a multi-user site with WordPress, I probably don’t have to tell you that managing that site sucks. You’ve probably went through the handful of plugins available and have hacked together bits and pieces of code just to keep your site afloat.

After looking around and playing with some different plugins, I didn’t find anything that suited my goals. Of course, I decided I’d just make the plugin myself.

I posted about the plugin on Twitter a few days ago and was surprised at the responses I received. It seems many of you are looking for the same things. So, I’m going to ask for your help with this project.

The goal of this plugin is to be a complete management system for users, roles, and permissions. I want it to fit in with your administration panel and feel like it has always been there. It needs to work completely within the bounds of WordPress too. I’ve seen some plugins that don’t take advantage of WordPress’s roles and capabilities system.

In this post, I’ll list some of the things I’ve been working on and show you how they’re developing. Then, I’ll let you share your ideas.

The plugin components

Since this will be a massive plugin with loads of different features once it’s finished, I thought it’d be best to build a components system. Basically, what I’m doing is separating each feature into a unique component. Each can be turned on or off by the site administrator.

It’s a sort of use-only-what-you-need system. It’ll also allow me to more easily extend the plugin in the future with additional components. Plus, it’s easier to keep the plugin organized this way.

Plugin components settings

Role management

I think a lot of people will be excited about being able to manage user roles with an easy-to-use interface. This component will allow you to give users with specific roles only the capabilities you want them to have.

Management of each role's capabilities

In addition to being able to manage roles, you’ll be able to create them. The New Roles page will allow you to create new roles and attach specific capabilities to those roles that can later be managed through the Manage Roles panel.

Create new roles for your WordPress blog

User capabilities

This feature will no longer be a part of the plugin. WordPress is changing the the user/role/capability system. Users will only be able to have a single role and no additional capabilities. Thanks to James Collins for his comment on this.

Typically, a user gets a certain role. That user can then only do the things allowed within the scope of that role. What happens when you want an editor of your blog to have more control but not be an administrator?

You grant (or deny) that user additional capabilities from his or her profile screen. This allows the user to work outside of their role’s capabilities if you want them to.

Capabilities management for individual users

Other components

The above components are what I’ve spent the most time working on thus far, which is why they’ve been highlighted. I also have a few other features I’d like to add before releasing this plugin in any form:

Content Permissions
Adds an additional meta box for the post/page editor that allows you to grant permissions for who can read the content based on the the user’s capabilities or role.
Login Widget
Creates a widget that you can place in any widget area for users to log in from the front of your site by entering their username and password.
Shortcodes
Provides a set of shortcodes that may be used to restrict or provide access to certain areas of your site from within the post editor (like the shortcodes I posted in Using shortcodes to show members-only content).
Template Tags
Provides additional template tags for use within your WordPress theme for restricting or providing access to certain content.

What are your ideas?

I’ve given you a bit of what I have in mind for the initial release, but I’m not the only person that’ll be using this plugin. If you run a multi-user site, now’s the time to chime in. Tell me what you hate about the current system. Tell me what you’d like to see.

If you’re confused about anything in the post, feel free to ask me about it. I’ll try my best to explain.

Time frame? I hope to have some sort of beta out within the next week or two (I’ll definitely need some beta testers), but that depends on a lot of different factors. In short, it’ll be ready when it’s ready.

Sliding Panel: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:09:26 +0000

Ever since I redesigned Theme Hybrid back in April, I’ve gotten numerous requests for the code so that others could do something similar.

Typically, I’d point people to the Web Kreation article on integrating a sliding panel into WordPress. Unfortunately, this proved to be a tough task for the average end user. Not to say anything bad about the great tutorial, but there are some problems with integrating it cleanly with WordPress. Without the ideas generated there, we wouldn’t have this plugin.

So, I decided to build a sliding panel from the ground up. I wanted something that would be easy for the average end user to implement. This plugin is a jQuery-based, fully-widgetized sliding panel for use on your WordPress-powered site.

What is a sliding panel?

Quite simply, it is a panel that can be opened and closed with a click of a mouse that will allow you to house additional content on your site without it getting in the way.

Here’s a view of it in its closed (normal) state:

Sliding panel in its closed state

Once a reader clicks on the Open button, the panel slides down the page, showing the content of the panel:

Sliding panel in its open state

What does the plugin do?

Sliding Panel comes with some neat features:

Uses widgets, so you can add any content to the panel you want.
Makes use of the jQuery packaged with WordPress to avoid plugin conflicts.
Auto-inserts itself into a few themes:
- Hybrid
- Thematic
- Prodigy (not yet released)
Provides the get_sliding_panel() template tag for use in other themes.

Download the plugin

This plugin will only work with WordPress 2.8+. If you’re using an older version, you’ll have to wait until you’ve updated.

Version: 0.1
Requires: WordPress 2.8+
Support: Support forums
Download (from WP.org)

Instructions on how to use the plugin are in the plugin’s readme.html file, which is included within the plugin download.

Series: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:00:30 +0000

If you follow this blog, you know how much I love the taxonomy system in WordPress. You especially know how much I love the new automated taxonomy system in version 2.8 of WordPress.

So, it only seems right that I introduce my first taxonomy-based plugin: Series.

Series allows you to string together posts by using the built-in taxonomy system in WordPress. I’ve packaged several extra goodies with this plugin such as widgets, shortcodes, and template tags to allow you to easily control how display data on your blog.

Right now, the plugin is still in its early stages, but I hope with the help of your ideas and feedback, it’ll become even greater.

Features of the Series plugin

Series extends the current taxonomy system by creating a new taxonomy called “series.” Here’s the current feature list:

Series: List Posts widget
Allows you to lists posts from a specific series and order them how you like.
Series: Related Posts widget
Lists posts related to the current post on single-post views (not displayed otherwise).
Shortcodes
Shortcodes to use within the post editor to display series-related things.
Template tags
Template tags to show things like a series RSS feed and to check whether a post is within a given series (and more, of course).
Automation
Much of the process is completely automated using WordPress 2.8′s new taxonomy system.
taxonomy-series.php templates
Example series archive templates for use with the WordPress Default theme and the Hybrid theme.

Here’s a screenshot of the available widgets for use:

Screenshot of the Series plugin widgets

Download the Series plugin

This plugin will only work with WordPress 2.8+. If you’re using an older version, you’ll have to wait until you’ve updated. I just wanted to go ahead and get the initial release out.

If you have ideas on how to make this a better plugin, feel free to share them.

Version: 0.1
Requires: WordPress 2.8+
Support: Support forums
Download (from WP.org)

Instructions on how to use the plugin are in the plugin’s readme.html file, which is included within the plugin download.