New WordPress Plugin: CMS-Like Admin Menu

Want to run a simple website using WordPress Pages as a CMS, but don’t want (or need) the Post functionality? Want to do the same thing, but have Posts secondary to pages? This is the plugin for you. This plugin rewrites the Admin menu links for Write and Manage to default to using Pages instead of posts, while leaving the ability to deal with posts intact.

You can find more information (and the download) on the CMS-Like Admin Menu page.

CTC – 1,000 Downloads and Counting!

Many thanks to the WordPress community for pushing my humble little widget/plugin past the 1,000 downloads mark since I added it to the official WordPress plugins browser. As of this morning, it has been downloaded 1,002 times since November 28th. YOU GUYS ROCK! 🙂

CTC – Version 3.0 Released!

I’m proud to announce the third major revision of my configurable tag cloud widget has been released this afternoon. The biggest change (and one of the most requested) is the ability to use the plugin without using widgets. It’s been a long time coming, and now it’s here. the other big addition is the ability to show the number of posts for a tag after the tag itself (similar to the archive and categories options).

As always, you can find more information and the download link on the CTC page.

CTC Update

Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up on the status of CTC. I’m still working on it when I can, but I gotta pay the bills. I’m hoping for a 3.0 release just after the first of the year. The big new feature in 3.0 is going to be (hopefully) implementing the tag cloud as a normal WordPress plugin, so it can be used by those who don’t use widgets.

In a bit of better news, I finally got confirmation for my entry at the WordPress Plugins browser, so you will be notified in the plugins menu when I update CTC…it’s something that a lot of people have asked for, and I’m happy to give it to you guys (and girls 🙂 ).

So yeah, that’s where I am. More news as it develops. As always, feel free to post comments on the CTC page.

Design Vitality WordPress Theme Competition

So I decided to enter Design Vitality’s WP theme competition. Even if I don’t win any of the prizes (and they’re some doozies…first prize is $1,000 and second is your choice of an iPhone or a Wii), it still gets my name a little farther out into the world.

The winners are chosen by votes at the contest website, which is linked below, so give me some vote love if you like my entry. My theme is called “Blue Shift”. Voting opens on or around November 30, but he’s got a lot of good info on his site for designers.

Go here to vote: WordPress Theme Design Competition

CTC – Bugfix Version 2.51 Released

I posted a quickie update this morning to address the tag count function not working correctly. Turns out in doing some code cleanup, I inadvertently left one of the variable names that holds the count using the old name. It has been fixed, and you should get what you’re looking for.

As always, you can find the most recent version (and comments) on the CTC page.

CTC Widget – Version 2.5

Just a quickie update to fix a bug, and add a simple new feature.

Adding what has been the most-requested ability since color, there is now a div wrapped around the cloud so you can style it via CSS (with some exceptions, check the page for info). The bug was the result of me learning php as I go…if you left either of the font size fields blank in the config form, you’d end up with “divide by zero” errors in your output. This has been fixed.

I also made it possible to leave comments on the CTC page, so all comments regarding the widget will now be in one place (I’ll be moving all the old comments over, so the thread will be intact).

That being said, I’d like to start building a wish list for ver. 3.0 (and beyond). Please leave me a comment with what you’d like to see the plugin do in future versions. Already on the books are getting rid of the black default color and adding regular WordPress plugin (i.e., not relying on the widgets code) functionality.

More info on the CTC Page

WP 2.3 Configurable Tag Cloud Widget – Version 2 Released!

After a few days of hacking, I’m proud to present version 2.0 of my configurable tag cloud widget for WordPress 2.3. The big news in this release is you can now specify colors to form a gradient for your tag links.

Screenshot from my testing blog showing a gradient from #c0c0c0 to #000000:
tags screenshot

The other big change is I have gone from using the WordPress-native tag cloud generation code to using functions internal to the widget. I had to go this route in order to add the color features, but it opens up the code for adding other features.

One more note to mention. I have removed the “array” format option from the config. I don’t think it would be of very much use in the widget, but if someone can explain how and why it should/can be used, I’d be much obliged. I left the code for it in the widget file, so if you need it, you can edit the file to uncomment it (it’s on line 217 in tag-cloud.php).

As always, you can find the latest release of the plugin here.

WordPress 2.3 Tag Cloud Widget

I’ve been testing the new version of WordPress since the first beta (that’s part of the reason the new site design hasn’t gone live yet). It’s pretty sweet, but in testing, I found the tag cloud widget that comes with WP 2.3 lacking in configuration options (as in, there are none). So I set about to fix that. I hacked up my own tag cloud widget that lets me configure the tag cloud to fit my theme.

If you would like to take a look at it for yourself, head on over to the Configurable Tag Cloud page. Feel free to leave any comments on the widget on this post.