I recently got a email from a plugin developer, with regards to him having compatibility issues with one of the plugins I had developed. It turned out that both our plugins used a popular library called PclZip for adding archiving features. Due to the compatibility issue, accessing his plugin would cause a fatal PHP error saying that the PclZip class cannot be re-declared, when both our plugins were activated. The compatibility issue arose because of two things; A mistake on his part while checking for existence of class objects in the code. A mistake on my part of using custom libraries, instead of using those provided by WordPress core. Here is a code snippet used to check for class existence. if(! function_exists(‘class_name’)) {    require_once(‘myclass.php’); } $object = new class_name(); The above code is wrong, since: Class names cannot be accessed as functions. The internal methods of a class are […]

If  you are using WordPress 2.6 and above you may have noticed a blurb above the plugins link with a number, many users are confused about this and have asked me about it, here is a simple explanation to all WordPress users who are confused about the blurb. The blurb on top of the plugins link indicates the number of plugins for which updates are available, making it easier for users to track updates without having to frequently visit the plugins page. You may not notice the blurb if the plugins you use are up-to-date. Hope this answers your question about the Blurb you have always been wondering about.