WordPress Plugins

This page is dedicated to the WordPress plugins I have written. Please, contact me if if any of these plugins do not work for you. Suggestions for improvements also welcome.

Widgets

Recent Comments | Set-up | RSS Aggregator | List of links

Plugins

Recent Posts | Referral Tracker | Yellow Card | Move Comments

Recent comments

bdp-comments offers more functionality that the native “Recent Comments” widget that comes standard with Wordpress 2.2. The BDP Comments widget can include a comment snippet.

Version 1.1.0 for Wordpress 2.2 released on 19 May 2007: The plugin is here. It has been turned into a widget.

To use the plugin:

  1. Download it
  2. Unzip bdp-comments.php and place it in your plugins directory
  3. Activate it from the WordPress dashboard
  4. Add the widget to the sidebar (from the dashboard)
  5. If you don’t have a widget compatible theme, add code like this to your sidebar.php file and upload it to your theme directory

    <li><h2>Recent comments</h2>
    <ul>
    <?php bdp_comments(); ?>
    <li> <a href="http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#comments"> About </a> </li>
    </ul>

Set up

bdp-setup is a widget that identifies the current version of WordPress you are using followed by a list of all active plugins.

To use the plugin:

  1. Download — version 1.1.0 of 19 May 2007
  2. Unzip bdp-setup.php and place it in your plugins directory
  3. Activate it from the WordPress dashboard and ad the widget to the sidebar
  4. If you do not wish to use it as a widget, add code like this to your sidebar.php file and upload it to your theme directory

    <li><h2>Set up</h2>
    <ul>
    <?php bdp_setup(); ?>
    <li> <a href="http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#setup"> About </a> </li>
    </ul>

RSS Aggregator

The BDP RSS Aggregator is my most popular plugin. It captures RSS feeds for the sites you select and displays them on your web site. It does this without using cron. Instead, every time someone visits your site, that hit is used to poll the most out of date feed on your feed list. The Aggregator is fully configurable from the Wordpress dashboard. The BDP RSS Aggregator is a good way to follow what is happening on your friends’ blogs and on topical blogs of interest.

An example of the Aggregator at work can be seen here and here. As you can see from these examples, the feeds can be presented in quite different ways on your site.

Source code available here.

List of links widget

The BDP List Widget is a general purpose sidebar widget for a list of user-defined text and links. It could be used to create an index or directory for your blog. Up to 9 different lists can be created. Lists must have less than 15 elements.

Alpha Version 0.0.1 for Wordpress 2.2 released on 20 May 2007: The plugin is here.

Hyper-links can be provided as either WordPress post/page numbers or as a URL.

To install:

  • Upload the plugin to your plugins directory
  • Activate the plugin (Dashboard > Plugins)
  • Add the widget to your sidebar (Dashboard > Presentation > Widgets)
  • Configure the widget

Known glitches: doesn’t look so sweet with the Tiger or SpotMilk administration themes.

Yellow card

This plugin allows me to moderate comments on my blog. When I am logged in as the administrator, a “Card It!” button appears on every comment. I can click the button to issue a yellow card when someone breaches my comments policy. The yellow card prevents the post from being seen by others.

Issuing a card puts the author of the comment in the sin bin, with a tight daily comment limit. The first yellow card will impose a limit of six comments per day. The second yellow card will impose a limit of four comments per day. The third yellow card will impose a limit of two comments per day. A further breach of the comments policy will result in a red card. No comments can be posted while the red card is in force. All yellow cards will impose their limit for a period of seven days. The red card is active for 28 days.

It is possible to place a general daily limit for all blog users. This general limit is designed to encourage more considered comments.

To install:

  1. Download the plugin – latest version 0.0.7 available here. This version was released on 10 May 2007.
  2. Optional - and only for the adventurous - you may want to edit the key parameters for this plugin. If so, edit the constants immediately after the class definition in bdp-yc.php
  3. Upload the the bdp-yellow-card folder to your plugins directory
  4. Activate the plugin from the dashboard
    (Dashboard > Plugins)
  5. Enable the “Card it!” button from the dashboard and enter the URL for your comments policy. Set a general daily limit on all commentators if you wish
    (Dashboard > Comments > Yellow Card)
  6. To list active moderation cards, you will need code like this in your sidebar:

    <li>
    <h2>Active moderation cards</h2>
    <ul>
    <?php if(class_exists(BDPYC)) BDPYC::listActiveCards(); ?>
    <li><a href="http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#yellow">About BDP Yellow Card</a></li>
    </ul>
    </li>
  7. While not essential, this plugin will run faster if you use phpMyAdmin and add (ordinary) indexes to the following fields in the wp_comments table: comment_type, comment_author and comment_date

NOTE: designed for blogs where commentators must be logged in to comment. It requires your server to be running >= PHP version 5.0.4.

Move comments

This plugin is a tool for moving comments from one post or page to another.

To install:

  • Download the plugin – latest version 0.0.5 available here. This version was released on 5 May 2007.
  • Upload the bdp-move-comments folder to your plugins directory
  • Activate the plugin from the dashboard (Dashboard > Plugins)
  • Enable the “Move it!” button from the dashboard (Dashboard > Comments > Move Comments)

It requires your server to be running >= PHP version 5.0.4

Recent Posts

bdp-posts lists the most recent posts.

Version 0.0.1 released on 19 May 2007: The plugin is here.

To use the plugin:

  1. Download it
  2. Unzip bdp-posts.php and place it in your plugins directory
  3. Activate it from the WordPress dashboard
  4. Add code like this to your sidebar.php file and upload it to your theme directory

    <li><h2>Recent posts</h2>
    <ul>
    <?php bdp_posts(); ?>
    <li> <a href="http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#posts"> About </a> </li>
    </ul>

The default arguments for bdp_posts are: $listHowMany=’10′, $before=’<li>’, $after=’</li>’

Referral Tracker

The BDP Referral Tracker was my most popular plugin. I started work on it in late 2004. I no longer use it or maintain it. The plugin home page was here