I had the occasion yesterday to have a page with a section on it where it would output a very specific set of other pages, which would need to change dynamically. What I could have done is built a special page template for this page, and inside that template run a query_posts() to get these posts. But I wanted this page to remain editable from the admin. Besides, creating a special page template every time you need to do something like this is too cumbersome. WordPress is extensible enough to do better.

The first printing of the print version of our book is sold out. We are in the process of updating the book to add all the new stuff up to WordPress 2.9.1, as well as some new secret awesome bonus stuff. We’ve decided to hold off on the second printing until that is ready (next month). When it is done, everyone who has already purchased will of course be getting it as a free update.

David Hollander of SparkWeb Interactive sent us in a little code clip for inserting Google Maps into Posts/Pages by the use of shortcodes. Google actually has copy-and-pastable iframe code already in Google Maps that is really easy to snag, but David was having problems with the Visual text editor screwing up the code when saving the Post. With a short code, no problem.

In my WordPress Wishes post, I mentioned something I thought would be cool: the ability to “feature” or “bury” comments. This would be very simple, just a few extra links when viewing the comment moderation list in the Admin area.

The result would just be extra CSS class names applied when the comments list is output. Utkarsh Kukreti came to the rescue! Here is his announcement post and the plugin in the repository.

In the past I’ve been pretty pissy about the All-In-One SEO plugin from Michael Torbert automatically deactivating itself after updates. My reasoning:

1) If you update and forget to re-activate (somewhat hard to do since it reminds the shit out of you on every page of the admin), it could cause problems.

2) We are forced to see Michael’s large promotional/donation blocks up in our faces above where we can reactivate. I’m all for plugin authors making as much money as they can, but this seemed to me a bit too far.

3) I really like the plugin and use it on all my sites and wish it was closer to my version of perfect.

Happy New Year all! I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be an awesome year, with WordPress and otherwise. I thought I’d take the opportunity to wish-o-wish upon a star and toss out some things I think would be really cool to see happen in the exciting world of WordPress.

If you have been waiting to buy the book until the real print version is available, today is the day! The print version of Digging Into WordPress the book is now available here. We’ll probably talk more about the journey through the entire process of creating this book at a later date, but for now, let’s check out the book!

When someone comments on your site, cookies with the information the entered are saved to their computers. WordPress makes it easy to access that information. In fact, in your comments.php template they are ready-to-go PHP variables you can spit out anywhere you’d like. Let’s take a look.

Let’s say you want to have a special theme for your WordPress site for mobile users. You don’t want to use a pre-canned solution or anything third-party, you just want to create and design the theme yourself. So what you need to happen is for the site to detect mobile users and server up an alternate theme instead. Here is how I might do it.