Just a quick post to highlight the solution to a recent WordPress issue I had when trying to upgrade WordPress release using the “Upgrade Automatically” option. The error I was seeing was:
Incompatible Archive.: PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Unable to find End of Central Dir Record signature
Even for someone who may be technically minded this is a little unhelpful… but thankfully the solution (in my case at least) was to free up some space on my hosting account. So it seems that the cause of the issue (or at least one of the causes) is that there was not enough space available for the automatic WordPress upgrade to take place.
We are very pleased to announce our latest WordPress plugin, Responsive TwentyTen.
This plugin allows WordPress users who are using the default TwentyTen theme to convert their site to a ‘responsive’ one. Their site layout then becomes responsive based on the screen size of the device being used to display it and is ideal for those who wish to give an enhanced experience to users whi are on iPhones, Android powered smartphones or tablets (such as the iPad).
The guys over at MarketHeist recently put together an ace plugin to add real time stock and forex charts to your WordPress powered site. And with this they suggest using the Widgets on Pages plugin to be able to have data in a standard WordPress post or page instead of in a sidebar.
To help out folk wanting to acheive this they’ve put together a great YouTube tutorial on how to use it… so for all you guys out there wanting to see Widgets in Pages in action check it out.
We have just released the latest update to our Widgets on PagesWordPress plugin. The changes for this latest release are as follows;
Resolved potential conflict with other plugins. Thanks to Massa P for the tip-off.
Sidebars/Widgets can be added through the use of template tags in the theme code. This provides a very simple way to add extra sidebars to your WordPress theme.
Contextual help added (minimal but hopefully gives some direction).
Improved use of id and class attributes for more standard proof CSS implementation. NOTE: this may mean that current CSS to remove default bullet points now breaks. Please see our blog post on removing these bullet points.
Using the Template Tags
The latest 0.0.7 release allows the addition of widgets (through the addition of sidebars) to your WordPress theme via the addition of a simple template tag. If, for example, you have a Widgets on Pages sidebar named “wop_1″ then you can add the following code to your theme’s PHP code. Note of course that this code needs to be added at the correct position in the code. Further information on WordPress template tags can be found at WordPress.org.
We’ve had several people asking how they can style the wordpress widgets that are displayed in their posts and pages when using the Widgets on Pages plugin… so we thought we’d write up a set of tutorials on how to get what you want from the plugin. We start with our most requested style query…
UPDATE
As of version 0.0.10 which can be found on the WordPress plugin repository there is a simple checkbox on the Widgets on Pages option page to remove the bullets. If you’re running this version then you will not need to use the tutorial below… we have kept it here for the sake of learning.
Switching this option on adds a new CSS file link to the website header which basically just includes the content described in the below tutorial.
Removing the bullet points
The problem
When using the Widgets on Pages plugin to show a widgets outside of the normal sidebars defined by a wordpress theme the outputted widgets can appear with bullet points next to them.
Widgets on Pages with bullet point showing
The cause
WordPress outputs the widgets in a sidebar as an unordered list (HTML ul tag). A lot of themes have these unordered lists styled with the CSS list-style: disc or something similar (browsers can have this as their default too) which means these bullet points appear. The reason you don’t see these bullet points next to the widgets in the standard theme sidebars is that they have been styleddeliberately to remove these.
The solution
All we have to do is style the list using the CSS list-style property… simply add the following to the theme’s CSS file… et voila!
div.widgets_on_page li { list-style:none; background:none; }
Note: Pre 0.0.7 versions have an id of widgets_on_page rather than class
div#widgets_on_page ul { list-style:none; background:none; }
The latest version allows the user to name their Widgets on Pages sidebars and use these names in the posts and pages. This gives the user a much more explanatory route to adding WordPress widgets (via sidebars) into pages and posts on their blog and/or website.
Widgets on Pages option page
The new version also gives the user an extra helping hand in getting started in adding widgets into WordPress posts by showing the required shortcode (that bit of text that adds the sidebar to the post) in the sidebar’s description.
Setting up Widgets on Pages sidebar
We hope that you all find this plugin useful and again we appreciate all feedback including feature requests for future versions.
We have just released our 0.0.4 version of the Wigets on Pages WordPress plugin. This release has only one change but is one that covers the majority of the requests from our users… namely upping the limit of the number of sidebars that are available. In fact we didn’t just up the maximum number but we have scrapped it completely.
We decided to remove the maximum limit as it was obvious that peaople were using the plugin in many different ways that were different from how we perceived it being used. Some minimal javascipt validation has been added to try and ensure that the plugin doesn’t break even though the input value has been opened right up.
Please feel free to give us feedback on the plugin if you’re using it.
I recently had requests to update the Widgets on Pages wordpress plugin to allow for multiple sidebars to be defined. This was is certainly on our roadmap for the plugin but at present we just don’t have the time. So instead I’m gonna post some code which will let you adapt the plugin in it’s current state to cope with more. This is by no means the best way forward as ideally the number of widget areas should be dynamic… and that is the reason we are not updating the plugin ourselves to adopt this methodology.
UPDATE:: OK, so curse of the coder fell upon us… and we did make the update to the plugin to allow additional sidebars to be defined. The newest version of the plugin can be downloaded from WordPress.org.
The new version allows for up to 5 sidebars to be defined via the settings menu. There is one default widget area so this can be used out of the box. Each sidebar can be called independently via a shortcode by supplying an id=x argument to the shortcode.
Our newest WordPress plugin Widgets on Pages has just been released (and actually already improved and upgraded to 0.0.2). The plugin allows for a widget area (sidebar) to be populated and then shown inline in a the core content of a page or post.
This can be very useful if you need to, for example, display separate areas of content on the front page of your site… and all the time making sure the content is still manageable by normal wordpress content managers.
At present the plugin only supports one definable widget area that can be used (though it can be included in multiple pages and/or posts.
The WPEC Bulk Tools plugin has just been updated to version 0.0.3. The update (inc the 0.0.2 update) provide support for newer versions of WordPress and the WP eCommerce plugin as well as a new bulk file upload feature to set prices from a CSV file.
