I was recently designing a portfolio/showcase site for our company and I fancied the new Custom Post Types function which enables you to expand the post types from post and page to as many post types as you would imagine. Say portfolio, movies, gallery, etc…

The post type I wanted to create was portfolio and I came up with the code below:

<?php
// aditional post types
function rms2_post_type_portfolio() {

register_post_type( 'folio', array(	'label' => __( 'Portfolio' ),
'singular_label' => __( 'Portfolio Item ' ),
'public' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'supports' => array('title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt', 'custom-fields')
));

register_taxonomy_for_object_type('post_tag', 'folio');
}
add_action('init', 'rms2_post_type_portfolio');
?>

The arguments and parameters supported are described here on WP Engineer. I will only add the following arguments and parameters which are not discussed on WP Engineer.

• title: shows the title bar in the  edit page. The title bar will not appear in the add new/edit page if you leave this parameter.
• editor: enables the post editor in the add new/edit page. The editor will disappear if you leave this parameter.
• author: enables the author meta-box so you can choose to set the post author to another user.

Also you can add 'page-attributes' parameter in the supported parameters if you want to use custom templates for your custom post type.

Enjoy.

WordPress Update Nag

The following snippet lets only the administrators know the fact that there is a newer version of WordPress. Copy and pate the code below into your active theme’s functions.php.

function hide_update_notice() {
	if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_users' ) ) :
	remove_action( 'admin_notices', 'update_nag', 3 );
	endif;
}
add_action( 'admin_notices', 'hide_update_notice', 1 );

This will check if the current user can edit other users’ profiles, if it returns true, then the user is administrator and the update nag will be shown, but if the currently logged in user cannot edit the other people’s profiles it will not bother notifying them any WordPress version updates.

Have a great day and happy new year!

The P.S. was reading as:

P.S. Version 3.0 will have a new default theme, better upgrades, dynamic image resizing, and more. See you next year!

Well,so the guys at WordPress decided the old poor Kubrick? May be the theme-framework revolution has effected the WordPress core, and that would be a good news.

If the WordPress team don’t decide to code their own theme, I would like to see one of the following theme frameworks as the successor of Kubrick.

• Hybrid theme by Justin Tadlock;
• Thematic by Ian Stewart; and
• WP Framework by Ptah Dunbar.

Can’t wait the WP3.0 cool features and the new default theme.

I installed everything Perl required (including the DBI and the DBD::mysql thing) to run a Perl based app on XAMPP, however MovableType is so weird that it still says DBD::mysql is missing, attempt to reload DBD/mysql.pm failed and such crap… but I swear I had all that stuff, updated and genuinely running… weird!

Then, I remembered SQLite. mt-check.cgi says its installed.

DBD::SQLite

Your server has DBD::SQLite installed (version 1.25).

How to install MovableType Pro on XAMPP running on Windows XP

Download and install XAMPP. The version I am currently using is XAMPP 1.7.2 (the latest). The good news is that the guys at Apache Friends decided to include the Perl Add-On in the basic package of XAMPP so you don’t need to install Perl Add-On separately.

I am not going to tell you how to install XAMPP, you will find a lot of documentation about it if you google it.

I installed mine at C:\web-server\.

Now, download MovableType Pro 4 from the MT website. I downloaded the free blogger version, which costs you nothing!

Your downloaded MT package should be something similar to MT-4.32-en.tar.gz, the version and language may be different.

Extract your downloaded MT package into a temporary folder. There is something called the Perl shebang at the top of every Perl script, and it tells the web server where to find the Perl executable. This way it knows how to run the code following that shebang. The Perl shebang is written as #!/usr/bin/perl.

By default all the .CGI files in your extracted package use the Linux based shebang. We need to correct this. Using Notepad (or other plain text editor), open every .CGI file and at the top of the file change #!/usr/bin/perl -w to #!C:/web-server/perl/bin/perl -w, use the forward-slash (/), not the backward-slash (\). Remember to use your exact path to Perl.exe.

Next, create a folder inside C:\web-server\cgi-bin, I called mine mt. Then copy all the files inside the extracted MT package except mt-static folder and paste them in C:\web-server\cgi-bin\mt\, then copy mt-static folder and its contents to C:\web-server\htdocs\.

Create another folder called sqlite-db under C:\web-server, then create an empty file called mt-database.db under C:\web-server\sqlite-db\, this will be the SQLite database file of your MovableType installation.

Open the MovableType configuration file (mt-config.cgi-original) found at C:\web-server\cgi-bin\mt\mt-config.cgi-original. Save the file as mt-config.cgi, and make the changes below:

CGIPath    http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/
StaticWebPath    http://localhost/mt-static

Since we are going to use SQLite we don’t need the MySQL and PostgreSQL properties in our configuration file. Either delete or comment the following lines:

##### MYSQL #####
ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database DATABASE_NAME
DBUser DATABASE_USERNAME
DBPassword DATABASE_PASSWORD
DBHost localhost

##### POSTGRESQL #####
ObjectDriver DBI::postgres
Database DATABASE_NAME
DBUser DATABASE_USERNAME
DBPassword DATABASE_PASSWORD
DBHost localhost

Now, make the following changes to the SQLite settings:

ObjectDriver DBI::sqlite
Database C:/web-server/sqlite-db/mt-database.db

Note the forward-slash used for the database path.

Go to http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/mt-check.cgi, we don’t care if DBD::mysql and DBD::SQLite2 were reported missing, only make sure that the other requirements are OK.

If everything went well, visit http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi and install MT on your machine.

Enjoy…

Finally

You have seen how difficult its to install MovableType on development environment. There is no Famous 5-minute Install, there are nothing WordPressy, but you are curious, aren’t you? Go, explore the world…

It was more than 80 days since I last post here, time waits for no man.

The good thing is, I was able to upgrade to the latest versions of WordPress as they’re released. This WordPress thing is fantastic and it enables you to upgrade within a single click. Thanks to the team behind this useful tool and thanks to all the WordPress community.

Now, I will restart updating the blog regularly as well as I will start some undecided online project.

By the way, I was writing this using Windows Live Writer!

Likewise, every PHP newbie would ask the same frustrating question and would want a description of the mystery behind the error.

Here, I will show you a quick tip to turn your test environment into a study center. Follow the steps below and enjoy your time with PHP.

Hint: I assume you are using XAMPP (the all-in-one suite of Apache, mySQL and PHP) running on Windows machine.

Preparation

Download and install XAMPP on your computer.

Visit the PHP manual download page, and select one of the downloads under the ‘Many HTML files’ column. There are many languages to choose from but the English version is the most accurate.

Extract the downloaded archive. Inside the extracted archive you should find a folder named ‘html’. Copy that folder —and its contents— into the following directory:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\

After successfully copying the folder into the XAMPP installation directory, rename your copied folder to ‘phpmanual’. It should be something like this:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\phpmanual

Installation

Well, we placed the PHP manual above the DocumentRoot, just in an out-of-web-reach directory, the reason is that there may be multiple domains or hostnames maintained on the machine via VirtualHost containers, so we need to make the manual work on every domain or hostname on the machine.

Open the XAMPP configuration file:

C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\apache\conf\extra\httpd-xampp.conf

…then insert these lines in it:

Alias /phpmanual "C:/<your-xampp-installation-path>/phpmanual/"
<Directory "C:/<your-xampp-installation-path>/phpmanual">
    AllowOverride AuthConfig
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Just make sure to change C:/<your-xampp-installation-path> to your XAMPP installation drive and path, respectively.

Configuration

Next, open your PHP.INI file found at: C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\PHP\php.ini and find the following line:

;html_errors = Off

Uncomment the above directive, then turn it on like this:

html_errors = On

Find these two lines:

;docref_root = "/phpmanual/"
;docref_ext = .html

Uncomment the above two directives, they should match the code below:

docref_root = "/phpmanual/"
docref_ext = .html

Save your changes and close the file.

—

Restart Apache.

Testing

Now, lets see if our effort is working properly. Create a PHP file with the following code inside it:

<?php 

include 'a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php';

?>

Save the file as test-manual.php in C:\<your-xampp-installation-path>\htdocs\, then visit the following URL in your browser:

If everything was correct, you should receive an error like the following one:

Warning: include(a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php) [function.include.html]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\web-server\htdocs\localhost\test-manual.php on line 3

Warning: include() [function.include.html]: Failed opening 'a-php-file-that-does-not-exist.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\web-server\php\pear\') in C:\web-server\htdocs\localhost\test-manual.php on line 3

function.include.html should be hyperlinked and when you click it you should see a page describing the error, otherwise, there is something wrong with your configuration.

Warning

Never use this feature for production boxes. This feature was intended to support your development since it makes it easy to look-up an error or function description. However it should never be used on live websites (e.g. systems connected to the Internet).

One visitor emailed me recently asking me if I could tell her how I managed to display recent, related or random posts in my sidebar.

Well, I don’t use either a plugin or SQL statements for this part.

As you may know, I used the conditional tags to check the current page and to execute the right part of the code.

The Code in Pieces

I divided the code into three pieces, so you can understand it easily.

Recent Posts

<div class="widget">
<h2>Recent Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=3'); foreach($posts as $post) { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

The above code picks the latest three posts. You can change the number of posts displayed by changing number in get_posts('numberposts=3'); to whatever you like.

Related Posts by Category

<div class="widget">
<h2>Related Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=3&category='.$category->cat_ID.'&exclude='.$current_post);
foreach($posts as $post) {
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title() ?>"><?php the_title() ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

We used get_posts('numberposts=3&category='.$category->cat_ID.'&exclude='.$current_post); to make all the business easier. $category->cat_ID pulls the current post’s category, exclude='.$current_post makes sure to exclude the current post from the related ones.

You may use related posts by tag also — WP Recipes

Random Posts

<div class="widget">
<h2>Random Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts('orderby=rand&numberposts=3'); foreach($posts as $post) { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?><br />
<span><?php the_excerpt(); ?><br /><em>&mdash;Posted on <?php the_time('n/j/Y') ?></em></span></a>
</li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

Our code uses orderby=rand. So WordPress will pick 3 random posts from the database every time our site loads.

Final Thoughts

The above codes can be merged together and displayed on the sidebar using the conditional tags.

If you have enjoyed this post or have any questions or recommendations, please share your information in the comments section.

Problem

I was working on PHP/MySQL based small project which is all about students’ registration system, where the students can register themselves then they’ll be able to receive school transcripts and such stuff by email.

When I finished the project I tested the application to see if it was working properly but I got a problem with PHP’s mail() function, which was not sending any email messages out.

I was feeling frustrated for a while before coming up with the solution below.

Solution

To make our locally hosted web applications talk to any SMTP server including those on the Internet, we will configure that by using the PHP’s configuration file called php.ini which can be found in the following locations (assuming you are using XAMPP installed in drive C:/):

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\php\php.ini
C:\<xampp-installation-path>\php\php5.ini
C:\<xampp-installation-path>\apache\bin\php.ini

Okay, that was locating the configuration files; let’s move to the next steps.

Method 1:

- Open php.ini file and uncomment the php_smtp.dll extension. This is required when sending emails to a remote server.

- Scroll down and find the following lines:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
;SMTP = localhost
;smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
;sendmail_from = me@example.com

- From the lines above, uncomment SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from
directives, then add SMTP server, SMTP port number and your preferred email address to SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from directives respectively, your final code should be similar to the one below:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
SMTP = mail.server.com
smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
sendmail_from = something@server.com

- Replace mail.server.com and something@server.com with correct values. The defualt SMTP port number is “25″, therefore, you have 99% chance of not changing this.

- Restart your server.

Everything should work properly now. If not, double check your changes again. If you think you made everything correct, but there is nothing working, try method 2 instead.

NB: You should be aware that once you assign an email address to sendmail_from PHP will force all the senders’ emails to that address.

Method 2:

This method is more easier than the steps described in method 1. We’ll use fake Sendmail Program for Windows (sendmail.exe) which is a simple windows console application that emulates sendmail's "-t" option to deliver emails piped via stdin. sendmail.exe is bundled with XAMPP so you don’t need to install it unless you are using hand made server.

- In method 1 we have enabled SMTP, smtp_port and sendmail_from directives, please make sure that these directives are commented out since we don’t need them anymore. Then scroll down and find the following two lines in your php.ini file:

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
sendmail_path = "C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.exe -t"

- Make sure that the sendmail_path directive is not commented out, and the path is correct, then save php.ini and close it.

Edit Sendmail Configuration File (sendmail.ini):

The fake Sendmail program is found in the following location:

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.exe

…and its configuration file is found here:

C:\<xampp-installation-path>\sendmail\sendmail.ini

Okey. That was that. Let’s configure it, so it will work the way we wanted.

- Open sendmail.ini file and use the following settings:

[sendmail]

; you must change mail.mydomain.com to your smtp server,
smtp_server=mail.mydomain.com

; smtp port (normally 25)
smtp_port=25

- Replace mail.mydomain.com with a valid SMTP server and assign port number (usually 25) to smtp_port.

Your SMTP server may require an authentication. If this is the case, scroll down the file and find the following lines:

; if your smtp server requires authentication, modify the following two lines

auth_username=username
auth_password=drowssap

- Modify the above two directives. Add your SMTP server’s username and password.

Some SMTP servers use POP3. If yours is one of those servers, then you need further modifications.

; if your smtp server uses pop3 before smtp authentication, modify the
; following three lines

pop3_server=mail.mydomain.com
pop3_username=username
pop3_password=drowssap

- Change the values of the above three directives to fit your needs and save your file. Then restart your server and try to send a test message to your email address.

If everything is correct, you can send emails to any server now. The following snippet is a header of message sent from my localhost server:

Return-path:
Envelope-to: jmehmett@host.com
Delivery-date: Sun, 15 Jun 2009 17:18:55 +0200
Received: from [192.168.3.134] (helo=mehmett)
     by host.server.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.62)
     (envelope-from )
     id 1MFrTy-000CQx-OY
     for jmehmett@host.com; Sun, 15 Jun 2009 17:18:55 +0200
To: jmehmett@host.com
Subject: Taste email from localhost
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2009 19:18:39 +0400
From: J Mehmett
Message-ID:
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.4]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

That was easy, huh?

Final Thoughts

This is a simple mail configuration. I tested it using the SMTP settings of my host and it worked properly.

Gmail users may check Brett Shaffer’s solution, alternatively, AOL users may see KahWee’s solution.

If you have enjoyed with this post don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments section.

There is an announcement post on the official Development Blog with an eye-catching introduction video.

Features, Tips and Tricks

1. A full list of more than 180 new features, improvements, changes and upgrades. —WP Codex
2. Build A WordPress 2.8 Widget With The New Widget API —WPEngineer
3. The Improved WordPress Widget API —WP Codex
4. The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
5. Tutorial: WordPress 2.8 Widget API —Jesse Altman
6. Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
7. Tag description in WordPress 2.8 —Justin Tadlock
8. Loading Javascript in Footer in WordPress 2.8 —Lester Chan
9. WordPress 2.8 and the body_class() Function —Nathan Rice
10. Authentication in WordPress 2.8 —Will Norris
11. Handling Plugins Options in WordPress 2.8 with register_setting() —Planet Ozh
12. WordPress 2.8 – XML-RPC and AtomPub Changes —Joseph Scott
13. List of Plugins Compatible with WordPress 2.8 —WP Codex
14. WordPress Proxysupport —WPEngineer
15. Escaping API updates for WordPress 2.8 —Mark Jaquith
16. Displaying Author Meta Information in Wordpress 2.8 —Zach Dunn
17. the_author_meta() in WordPress Codex —WP Codex

I know there are tons of talks around the new version but these are the only findings I discovered during the development releases of WordPress 2.8.

If you have suggestions and/or some other posts I missed in this collection, please feel free to contribute them in the comments.

I hope you enjoyed with this post.