Author: Keith Solomon

CMS-Like Admin Menu – Version 2.0 Released.

In case you haven’t noticed the update notification on your WordPress plugins screen, I released an updated version this morning. No functional changes have been made (or needed), but the plugin in now 100% compatible with WordPress 2.7. You can get the updated version either via the automatic update function, or you can head over to the plugin page to grab a copy manually.

You may also notice that there are now two download options on the plugin page. This is because version 2.0 is only for WordPress versions 2.7 and above. The menu item numbers changed in 2.7, so the new version of the plugin won’t work correctly on WordPress 2.6 or earlier. If you’re still running version 1.0 of the plugin on an older version of WordPress, there’s no need to update, as you already have the newest version that will work for you (though, I highly recommend you upgrade WordPress as soon as possible to take advantage of the new features and security enhancements).

As always, please feel free to leave any comments on the plugin page.

Question for the WP theme devs in the audience

I mentioned this on twitter, but I wanted to get it out here too…if you use TextMate to do your theme development, would you use a bundle that contains a variety of functions for your functions.php file? I’ve got quite the collection set up that I use regularly, and I am thinking of releasing it for download. Any comments are appreciated, leave them either here, or send me a @reply on twitter.

News, Updates, etc.

Ok, first things first. I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7…have you?

For the most part, my plugins still work work without need for an upgrade, with the exception of my CMS plugin. It needs some adjustment to account for the new menu system in 2.7. It’ll still work as intended, it just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the new menu design. Right now I’m not sure when I’ll get a fix pushed out for it, but if you use the plugin, you should get an upgrade notification when I release the upgrade.

And while we’re on the subject of plugins, I’ve almost come to the conclusion that version 4.5 of CTC is the last one that will be released. It does more than I ever intended it to do as it stands, and it works without issue. I’m still going to try to get the tag exclusion feature to work, and that will probably incur a version bump, but as of now I have no timeline on when this might take place.

EDIT (12.16.08): The download links for my plugins are now working again. The download manager I use wasn’t quite ready for WP 2.7, but it has been upgraded, and is now functioning correctly.

New WordPress Theme — News Portal

I finally found a few minutes to put the finishing touches on an open-source theme conversion I’ve been working on for a while. I have posted the theme for download here. Take a look, and let me know what you think.

WordCast Mugshot Contest Swag – Part 1

(Note: edited at 7:32pm to clean up my inadvertent foul language…who decided the “I” key should be next to the “O” key!? 🙂 )

Today I received the first part of the goodies I won by entering the WordCast Mugshot contest. I got a Lijit t-shirt and 3 stickers. Now I’m just waiting on a WordPress t-shirt and coffee mug, and a book.

Quick PopcornHour Firmware Tip

When upgrading the firmware on your PopcornHour A-100 Network Media Tank, you might end up with a hung machine before any operations take place. You’ll know this has happened because your TV screen will go black as soon as you start the process. If this happens to you, there’s a simple solution…remove your custom theme. You don’t have to delete it, just renaming the theme folder form _theme_ to theme and rebooting the A-100 is enough to get you in the firmware updating business. Once you’ve updated, you can safely re-apply your theme and be back in business.

WordPress Plugins Upgrade Tip

Got a WordPress-powered blog that’s been around a while (since 2.1 or thereabouts)? Is your Admin panel telling you that you have plugins that need to be updated, but when you try, you end up downloading the WordPress Widgets plugin? Fear not, there is a (possibly) easy solution. Check your plugins folder for a “widgets” folder.

I was updating the plugins on my development server this morning when I ran into this issue. The fix was simple; I just moved everything in the widgets folder up to the plugins folder, and like magic, the upgrade notifications went away. So if you’re having this issue, give this tip a shot.

Linux, SwissCenter, and the PopcornHour A-100

So I’ve been using the awesome SwissCenter media streaming server with my PopcornHour A-100 for a while now. Over the weekend, Windows XP decided it didn’t want to run on my file server any longer (yeah, I know… 🙂 ). In it’s place I installed Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron”. After migrating my SwissCenter settings over to the new Linux install, everything worked, except SwissCenter no longer showed up on the Sources page on the A-100.

After a few hours of searching and a post to the SwissCenter forums, I got a reply from the SwissCenter team pointing me at the broadcast.pl script that comes with SwissCenter. Out of the box, things were promising, as I could see the A-100 talking to the broadcast script, but still no link on the sources screen. After another few hours of testing (and a good nights’ sleep), I found the problem.

You can read more about the script and my fix, and download my broadcast script package over at the SwissCenter UPnP/SSDP Broadcast Script for PopcornHour A-100 page. If you have any questions, please leave a comment either on this post, or on the download page.