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Adding Menus To The Admin Bar

Jeff Chandler — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:00:29 +0000

As part of their ongoing series, WPEngineer has published a cool post that explains how to add new menus to the admin bar coming in WordPress 3.1. In the example, Frank adds a Codex Search button to the admin bar which is pretty convenient! He covers the function add_menu() and it’s various parameters as well. In the comments of that post however, Latz brings up an interesting point.

Oh great, now every plugin will put a menu in the admin bar, Next stop: a plugin preventing others from cluttering the admin bar.

While it’s pretty funny to think about the admin bar containing menus for all sorts of different plugins, it’s a potential problem that users may have to deal with in the future. Hopefully, plugin authors are diligent with not adding a menu to their options page as part of the default package of a plugin. For certain plugins, the idea works well but not for all of them.

So while this is a neat little tutorial on how to add menus to the admin bar, are you worried that plugin developers may take this too far?

Flattered Or Ripped Off?

Jeff Chandler — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:26:48 +0000

WordPress fans are out in full force over the new admin interface presented in MovableType 5.1 which was released today. The controversy stems from how eerily similar the admin interface resembles the one that was introduced in WordPress 2.7. The similarities are easy to spot when you look at both interfaces side by side as evident by the post on BloggingPro.com.

No doubt about it, the interfaces look the same albeit with MT’s added touches. While many fans of WordPress are giving Six Apart an earful, I’ve taken a bit more relaxed approach. One of the things that people constantly refer to WordPress for is its publishing interface. Since this interface is loved by many, is it really any surprise that something similar to it would appear in other publishing platforms? Also, I highly doubt WordPress was the first to have the layout that it does now.

So with that in mind, if I were a core developer or someone involved with the UI for WordPress, I would be flattered to see another publishing system use a similar interface. To me, it’s further proof that the interface works.

What’s more interesting to me is that some folks have stated they like the MT version better than the WordPress one. I’m curious to hear from anyone who has used both interfaces to let me know why one is better than the other despite their similarity.

Distributed WordPress Admin Account Cracking

Jeff Chandler — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:37:45 +0000

Bojan Zdrnja has published a post on the SANS Internet Storm Center blog today highlighting a distributed WordPress admin account cracking script. The script was discovered by one of the sites readers on a virtual private server (VPS). The acquired script is written in PHP and performs brute force cracking attempts to WordPress admin accounts.

While this particular version is relatively simple, the power behind the script and the MySQL database allows the attacker to distribute the attacks not only by sites, but also by passwords tried as well.

The article goes into detail explaining how the script works and suggests the typical security precautions such as using strong passwords, changing the admin username and limiting the admin login page to only your IP address. Brute force attacks on WordPress are nothing new but it’s interesting to see this approach using a distributed technique.

Hat tip to WPVibe.

How Do You Do That?

James Dimick — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:55:08 +0000

Ever wanted to do something in WordPress but just wasn’t sure how? In my experience this happens quite often, mostly with people new to WordPress. But, even the experts run into trouble sometimes. Today I thought I’d start a series of posts which will aim to explain how to do certain things in WordPress. Hopefully this will cover anything from quick tips and simple little functions, all the way up to more complex custom code and the like. So, stick around and you just might learn something.

I think I’ll kick off the series with a couple simple ones…

Why isn’t this plugin working with my theme?

This is probably one of the most common issues I read about regarding WordPress. Sometimes even more experienced WPers can get this one wrong. Now, I’m not saying this is the solution to all problems between plugins and themes. Its just that this little bugger is often the culprit.

Try ensuring that your theme has wp_head() ?> somewhere inside the section of the document. Also, for that matter, make sure it has wp_footer() ?> somewhere in the foot of the document; Before the tag.

If your theme lacks these function calls many plugins that manipulate your theme will not be able to hook into the required areas. This can cause many headaches.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you may be better off having a coder buddy take a look at the theme for you. Or you can also contact the theme author, if the theme you use was created by someone else.
How come my URLs are yucky?

Or, “How come my URLs look like www.mysite.com?p=123 instead of www.mysite.com/my-sample-post/?”

This one is right up there with the previous question. I see it all the time. However, more and more web hosts these days support the “nice” URLs by default without requiring any extra effort. So, its just a matter of going into the WordPress control panel, changing your Permalink Settings and then saving. Unfortunately, we’re not all this lucky…

The first thing to try would be to contact your web host support and make sure they have whats known as mod_rewrite (or similar functionality) enabled on your account. If such functionality is not available on your web host, and you really need this feature, you may need to upgrade to a new host that does support it.

If your host does support it and has it enabled on your account, but it still doesn’t work, you can check that WordPress is able to write to the .htaccess file (which is where all the “nice” URL magic happens).

For WordPress, on Unix-based systems, the htaccess file should be “CHMODed” to at least 666. On Windows-based systems the procedure is a bit different. It can be different depending on your particular setup so I won’t go into that.

Basically, as was the case with the previous question, you may need to seek help to figure this out. If you don’t have a code buddy, get one! They are really great to have around. Just make sure you buy them a nice gift for their trouble.
Can I have a link to login to WordPress somewhere in my theme?

Sure! It’s actually easier than you might think…

Some themes have a link for that already. But, there are also some that seem to lack this obvious and simple feature. You can easily add this to any theme yourself. No need for any programming knowledge. Simply add wp_loginout() ?> somewhere in your theme and you’re done. Easy right?

Another nice function along the same lines is wp_register() ?>, which will show a link to your registration page (if your settings allow users to register), or a link to the WordPress control panel if you are already logged in.

Do note though that by default the link will be output wrapped inside
tags. This is so you can include the link in a list of other links, like a “meta” section. If, however, that is not how you want it to be output you can use the function like . That will simply output the link and nothing else.

An example of how to customize that is something like ', '
') ?>, which will output the link wrapped in its own paragraph. Just change the opening and closing tags in the function to make it output how you want. Dead simple!

That’s all for now… I hope it helps!

Do you have a question about WordPress? Want to see it answered here on Weblog Tools Collection? If so, please send us an E-Mail or drop a comment here. Your question just might be featured in the series!

For The Love Of 2.3

Jeff Chandler — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:58:06 +0000

James Dimick, author of the Easy Admin Color Schemes plugin for WordPress has released a color scheme based exclusively on WordPress 2.3. Now, when you install this plugin, the default color scheme selected is called “For the Love of 2.3” which will take the new WordPress and make it look like the old. Something many WordPressers have wanted since the release of 2.5. However, James mentions that:

It isn’t a completely faithful recreation but I think it’s pretty darn close.

The scheme was created purely from CSS with no modifications to the core code. So while you might not be able to make WordPress 2.5 look similar to the way WordPress 2.3 did in terms of the user interface, you can at least slap on old faithful for that nostalgic look.

Create Your Own Admin Color Scheme

Jeff Chandler — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:31:42 +0000

Here at WeblogToolsCollection.com, we have already discussed how you can change the color scheme in the WordPress 2.5 administration panel from Classic to Fresh. We have also highlighted an awesome plugin that was written by Kaspars which gives users up to 8 different color schemes to choose from. However, what if you want to create your own color scheme? Thanks to a plugin written by James Dimick called Easy Admin Color Schemes, users can now create their own flavor of the WordPress 2.5 back end.

After downloading and installing the plugin, you can access it by browsing to SETTINGS-COLOR SCHEMES. There are three color schemes to start you off, Classic, Fresh and Washedout. The plugin does not allow you to delete nor edit the Classic and Fresh color schemes. This makes sense as you wouldn’t want to screw up a default skin only to have to reinstall WordPress to fix the issue. However, you can edit the Washedout color scheme which introduces you to the plugins functionality.

The plugin starts off by giving you the chance to name your color scheme. Next, give your color scheme four primary colors. If you don’t know of a six digit color code, there is a small arrow to the right of the text field that will open up a color picker. Opening the color picker and then selecting a color will automatically place the corresponding color code into the text field.

Once you have your four primary colors in order, the next step which is the longest of them all is to go through all of the CSS specific code and change the color code values to something else you prefer. There at least 10 different CSS files which make up the styling of the administration panel. There are more if you want to include support for RIGHT TO LEFT text. This plugin takes all of those CSS files and puts them in one place for you to edit, which makes things so much easier. Also, for those who have javascript enabled in their browser, you can view a live preview of what the changes will look like on an active WordPress administration page. Very handy as it cuts down on the browser refreshes.

One thing that I think this plugin is missing is an easy way for users to share their creations. If a download or save link could be added to the color schemes which would automatically package the necessary files together which could then be saved to my desktop for distribution, this would make the plugin a home run.

If you are looking at adding some spice to your WordPress back end, give this plugin a try. I don’t think it could be any easier than this plugin. The only problem with creating a color scheme is figuring out where each CSS class or DIV is defined. That’s where FireBug comes in.

Good luck and if you happen to create a color scheme using this plugin, be sure to say so in the comments.