I’ve released v2.2.0 of my most popular plugin Contextual Related Posts today. It also marks an important moment in its development, as the plugin is almost completely rebranded and now available via WebberZone, a platform that will eventually host all my major WordPress projects. Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0 has several new features, some enhancements to existing features and some bug fixes. Existing users can upgrade the plugin via their Updates screen in the WordPress admin area. Two main features are the ability to turnoff related posts on a post by post basis as well as specify a set of manual related posts which are given a higher priority over the…
Better Search v2.0
Better Search just got massively better with v2.0.0. If you’ve been using WordPress’ default search engine then you’ll know by now that WordPress doesn’t give you relevant search results for your search terms. You’ll get posts that contain the search term ordered by date. Better Search completely replaces the inbuilt WordPress search engine by a contextual based search fetching you more relevant search results. For v2.0.0, I spent a lot of time completely cleaning up all the code, fixing a lot of bugs and adding in a tonne of new features. The biggest addition to the plugin is several new and many improved filters and actions that will allow developers…
CRP Taxonomy Tools v1.1.0
I pushed through a small, but important, update to Contextual Related Posts Taxonomy Tools, which is an addon to Contextual Related Posts. I’ve also developed this as an example for other developers to create addons to Contextual Related Posts. CRP Taxonomy Tools allows you to restrict the related posts generated by Contextual Related Posts to the same category and tag. At least, it used to until now. Support for Custom Taxonomies v1.1.0 now adds support to custom taxonomies as well. This is especially useful to custom post types where the quality of the related post may not be the most ideal set. e.g. if you’re running a movie review blog and you…
Top 10 – Popular Posts for WordPress v2.1.0
Following on the heels of Contextual Related Posts v2.1.0 from last week, I’ve released Top 10 – Popular Posts for WordPress v2.1.0 with several bug fixes and many new features. If you’re using this plugin and looking for support, please do not post a comment below, but instead create a new thread in the WordPress.org support forum or create a new issue in Github. Fix blog_id 0 errors Top v2.0 introduced a bug where in some cases, hits on some posts were recorded in the database with an ID of 0. Also new installs didn’t have their database properly set up for this. v2.1.0 fixes both these issues. Additionally, I’ve added a new…
Contextual Related Posts v2.1.0
After the major release of Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks working on v2.1.0 which brings together several bug fixes, some optimisation and many new features. If you’re using this plugin and looking for support, please do not post a comment below, but instead create a new thread in the WordPress.org support forum or create a new issue in Github. If you’re just upgraded the plugin, remember to clear the cache and even better, reset the plugin settings. Remember to save any custom CSS code that you might be using. No more Timthumb I blogged about removing timthumb from my…
Happy New Year 2015!
A happy new year to all the readers of my blog. May 2015 be a successful and happy year bringing you and your family good health and a lot of happiness! 2014 – Year in Review A year ago, I posted my 2013 year in review. Back then I set some personal goals and I must admit that I managed to miss most of them! (Note to self: Revisit year in review posts during the year). However, I am glad that I managed to keep at least a few of them and progressed on several of them. Although we didn’t visit the US and Canada this year due to a sudden change in plans, Ashwina and I…
Top 10 Popular Posts for WordPress v2.0.1
It’s been nearly 6 years since I released v1.0 of Top 10. What started as a simple plugin to track your popular posts and display your top posts has evolved into one of the most popular “popular posts” plugins for WordPress used on thousands of blogs today! Versions between 1.0 and 1.9.10 have added support for thumbnails, custom post types, custom styles and more. Today I unveil the latest, the greatest and the best version of Top 10 – The Popular Posts plugin for WordPress. v2.0.1 brings long pending support for WordPress multisite, better site compatibility and tracking, a cleaner admin interface and support for addons as well as some…
I am waiting for Christmas, are you?
Back in September I took my core leave… well over two weeks of which I spent an entire week coding 2.x of Contextual Related Posts. Having released the new version of Contextual Related Posts, we set out on a nice holiday across the Republic of Ireland. While it’s supposed to be part of post that is pending (and hopefully, will be written about), for now I put up a few photographs on a revived WordPress.com blog. Ever since I got back to London back in September, I’ve spent most of my time working non stop on my day job. It’s that time of the year! Plugin development has continued, although…
My WordPress plugins will be TimThumb free
Contextual Related Posts, Top 10 and Where did they go from here have come inbuilt with TimThumb to resize images for a long time now. However, TimThumb has had a fair share of exploits that have affected a lot of websites and although I’ve maintained the latest version of TimThumb consistently within the plugins, it required me to be on the lookout constantly for updates to TimThumb. Ben has supported the development of TimThumb over the years, but announced that he has stopped supporting or maintaining it. This means that eventually, I’m going to drop TimThumb from my WordPress plugins. Contextual Related Posts v2.0 comes inbuilt with complete support for WordPress thumbnails In the next version, you’ll…
Contextual Related Posts 2.0
Last week I released a major update to Contextual Related Posts. Given the size of the update, I’ve tagged the latest version as 2.0, heralding a new direction in the further development of this plugin. v2.x brings multi-site support, WordPress thumbnails and a more powerful API. It also has several minor bug fixes and cleaner code. Multi-site support One feature that has been missing from Contextual Related Posts has been multisite support, mainly in terms of a Network Activate feature. With the Network Activate feature enabled, a multi-site admin can choose if he wants to activate Contextual Related Posts across all sites in the network or let users activate the plugin…
