Some notes on this new version:

1. You can now style the buttons using your own style sheet. To change the default look (which is a little different than previous versions) and create your own, copy the pppcode-styles.css file from the plugin folder and add it to the theme root folder (keep the original in the plugin folder). Then change the styles as you need.
2. There is now an option to have an “Add to Cart” button when creating buttons. Selecting it makes that button (and any others that use the add to cart buttons) function using the PayPal shopping cart method.
3. A new shortcode was added to create a “View Cart” button in a post/page or widget text box (use [pppviewcart] to make the button display) – this is only needed when using the Add To Cart buttons – as you need a way to checkout.
4. When assigning buttons to the PromoCodes, there is now a more simplistic jQuery feature when adding or editing the promocode.
5. You can now add PayPal buttons to text Widgets in a sidebar (old bug issue fixed).
6. Added a collapsible help section (still adding items)
7. Updated the version check to let you know when there is a new version (eventually I will move this to the WP Repository and eliminate this).

You can get the latest version here or from the WordPress plugin update. New users can also search plugins for “quick page post” to install the plugin directly from WordPress.

But with a few cups of coffee and a late night, I finally decided to finish it and get it out there since it seems that everyone must have read the same SEO article about putting rel=”nofollow” attributes in link tags to keep the search engines from following the links. I’ve received a slew of comments and just as many emails from people asking for that and a few other things. So here it is – the newly revised Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin.

Here’s what’s new:

1. I’ve added an option to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the redirect.
2. I’ve added an option to have the redirect link open in a new window.
3. I’ve added an option to show the redirect URL in the link instead of the original URL that the original page permalink links to.
4. And last but not least, I cleaned up the custom fields to use what I call, “hidden meta data” so that they are not cluttering up the Custom Field box.

Check out the plugin page to see more. Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions.

For everyone else – should you upgrade? As I always say, it’s better to upgrade then to wait and find out that you were hit with a security problem. So upgrade at your earliest convenience, and do it before that little old lady that you thought was no threat, reads all those trashy posts you wrote about her – thinking she would never read them because you threw them in the trash! If you set your Trash functionality to off, (see Take Out The New Years Trash), then don’t worry about it – she will never get to read them anyway.

The user has mentioned that they had a great plugin that stopped working for them when they moved their site to e new host. They were not sure if it was causing a problem with my plugin or not so I offered to take a look at it to see if I could figure out the problem and see if it really was causing a problem with the site.

After a few minutes, I figured out the cause of the issue. The plugin had not taken into account that this specific WordPress install had the core files in a different location than the root folder. The plugin was assuming that all WP installs are in the root – and now a days, that is not so much the case.

I fixed the plugin for him and mentioned he might want to let the creator know what was happening. Within minutes, the plugin creator contacted me to see what I had done to fix it. Turns out, he had been trying to figure out a few problems with the very things I adjusted to make it work. Since I had recently tackled the same problem, it was an easy fix. And after a few emails back and forth, the developed fixed his plugin. The best thing is, he took my suggestions and ran with them, coming up with some great solutions to so very common bugs in many plugins.

Normally I wouldn’t go that far out of my way for some other person’s plugin, but in this case there were three things that drove me to help:

1. The original person who contacted me REALLY loved the plugin. They were upset it was not working any longer.
2. The plugin WAS really a great plugin. I didn’t want to see it fall to the wayside and get bad feedback for a few small issues.
3. The plugin creator was extremely eager to get the plugin fixed. He didn’t throw a fit or give me any attitude for the fix I provided and he was genuinely interested in my feedback to help make it better.

That is the perfect combination. And an already great plugin just got better!

If you would like to use the plugin, it is called “Where did they go for here” by Ajay D’Souza. This plugin will show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on the page. You can find it on his site at http://ajaydsouza.com/wordpress/plugins/where-did-they-go-from-here/ or on the WP Repository at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/where-did-they-go-from-here/

Many of the fixes are cosmetic, so the urgency to upgrade it not as essential as it would be if there were security holes, but it is always a good practice to upgrade sooner than later. WordPress is tested by many developers and users throughout the community before it is released, and although there may be minor bugs here and there, the stable releases are pretty sound. Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.

With the release of WordPress 2.9 comes one of the best additions to the core functionality, the TRASH function. Basically an “un-delete” option, the WordPress Trash function makes it almost impossible to accidentally delete a page, post or comment.

By default, anything ‘thrown’ into the trash will be deleted automatically after 30 days. You can also manually delete anything in the trash by clicking the ‘permanently delete’ link from inside the trash bin, so to speak.

Fortunately, WordPress has add the ability to change the number of days you want to store the trash before automatic deletion. This can be a very good thing for several reasons.

First, should you decide you want to use the trash as a ‘storage bin’ of sorts, to get rid of some older pages or posts that you don’t have live on the site, but want to keep for possible future use should you need too, and not have them clutter up your page, post or comment list.

Second, it makes it useful for those that really do what to get rid of those unwanted items but feel a little hesitant to just delete them and have them disappear immediately into nowhere land, just to realize you probably really didn’t want to delete it in the first place because you needed something out of one of them – it can give them a few extra days to see if they really DID need anything.

As I used to always tell my clients, turn it to a draft instead of deleting it right away (in the case of pages or posts). Then, if you find you really didn’t need it after a week, delete it. If you did need it, then you have it, because once you delete it, it is gone forever! Well, the trash function eliminates that. Trash it, then if you need it, restore it. If not, it will delete on its own after a period of time.

Third, adjusting the days and item is in the trash can make it useful to those that do not want a trash feature. Although, in honesty, I am not sure exactly why you wouldn’t want a little extra reassurance that you won’t ever accidentally delete something – but I guess people are as different as rocks, they all look like rocks on the surface, but inside some contain the most beautiful things – while others have just more dense rock. But – the option is there should you chose it.

The ONLY bad thing about this in my opinion, is that WordPress didn’t make this an option in the settings – exactly why, I’m not sure. They didn’t even make it so the function is ‘hook-able’, so that a plugin could be created to give the option to the user. Instead, you have to do a little work to change them and for a non-programmer, this can be a bit of a daunting task.

I decided to show anyone interested, how to do change the number of days the trash is stored. Not everyone will be able to make this adjustment, but those of you that can, it may be helpful. Maybe WordPress will add this as an option in the near future.

• First and foremost, you  will need to have access to your Root WordPress Directory via some sort of FTP method or File Manager (via your hosts control panel). There is no getting around that.  And READ the rest of these steps BEFORE you start any of them. It is better to know what you’re getting into before you are in the middle of it and realize you can’t do it.
• Next, you will be editing the wp-config.php file which is in the root WordPress Folder. So once you locate that, download a copy of it, or open it in your File Manager editor.
• MAKE A COPY of the file. Do NOT edit in it directly unless you know that you won’t screw it up. That way, should anything go wrong, you can just re-upload or re-activate the original and no harm done. If you don’t make a copy of the file, don’t blame me when you screw up your site – because I told you so.
• When you have the copy of the file, open it up. It’s not a very large file, but it holds all the information for your database connection and some other settings. You need to find the part right after it says define ('WPLANG', '');
• Add this line after that:

  define('EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 30 );

• The 30 is the number of days that the trash is saved before automatically emptying it. Change the 30 to whatever number you want – if you want to keep the trash for six months, enter 180, if you only want it to save for a week, enter 7. Should you decide you do not want the Trash function at all, enter 0.
• Check to make sure you did not enter any stray characters. Also check to make sure your single quotes around the EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS are straight up single quotes. If you have a ‘curly’ quote or any other ‘magic’ type quote, change it to a single quote (right next to the ENTER key). Then, save the file.
• Upload the file back to the correct folder (for FTP) or save it if using a File Manager.

You should now have your trash settings set the way you want them. Remember – you’re in control!
Happy Trashing!

Ok, so my plugin that was not quite born – but it was in the third trimester. Or at least it felt like it.

Several months ago I started development of a plugin that I had affectionately been calling “Embeddeo”. It was the perfect name with the perfect premise – it was going to revolutionize (in my mind, anyway) the embedding of Video into WordPress Posts and Pages – and it would be not be a premium plugin, but a Free for all plugin. I thought long and hard about how it would work. I spent many hours of research on it to make it the best. And in the Eleventh Hour, WordPress beat me to the punch – they added a new method to embed video that eliminated many of the problems users had been facing. Damn.

Granted, my baby was going to have a live video preview on the admin edit screens – so the second you added the video code, you could see if it was the correct one or not. And my baby was going to be compatible with 10 or so of the most popular video embedding sources out there – YouTube, Revver, Vimeo and Hulu – just to name a few. And my baby was going to not only let you embed one video, but a entire users RSS Feed worth (where supported).

But when it came time for delivery, I found out the hard way – it wasn’t my child. It was WordPress’ child.

In the long run, I am quite glad they beat me to the punch – so to speak. It saves me time and money on support and further development. And like I always say, “If WordPress does it natively, why the heck do you need a plugin?”

At the end of the day, when the ‘kids’ are screaming, they can go home with their parents and I can get peace and quiet!

Thanks WordPress, and I really, truly do mean that!

WOW. I sat back in my chair and just stared at the screen for a few minutes, probably with a dazed look on my face.  Why on earth would anyone ever want that many plugins, let alone need that many plugins? No wonder they were having problems. No wonder the site was taking “eons” to load, as they put it. Ok. Now I had seen it all – at least this week.

Well, that turned out to be not so, in the seen-it-all department that is. Just minutes later I was blown away again when I realized that not only did they have a ton of plugins, but they had many that did EXACTLY the same thing! And I mean EXACTLY! So, I started marking down similar plugins. After the tally, there were 12 plugins that provided Google Analytics, 8 that provided other site stats (that makes 20 statistical plugins), 4 thumbnail plugins, 7 social networking plugins, 8 related posts type plugins, 3 WordPress update plugins, 2 Plugin Updater plugins, 3 theme preview plugins, and a slew of others including 6 SEO plugins. WHEW!

My first question is, “Why?”

My second question is, “Why?”

My third question is, “Why?”

Of course, the answer I expected was something like, “I could not find one that did ALL that I wanted”, but instead the response was just as shocking as seeing all those plugins – “I don’t know.”

So in this case, I let them plead ignorance, or just a plain lack of understanding of what a plugin is used for. But I am sure, without a doubt, that there are many, many others out there with an over abundance of plugins installed. My record before this example was 68! I thought that was a lot, but at least the site owner knew what all of them were for, and provided a somewhat reasonable explanation of why there were so many. Not knowing why you installed a plugin, or even what a plugin does, is just plain insanity!

When you install plugins, the key question you should ask yourself is, “Why do I need it?”

If you can actually answer that question honestly, and confidently, then maybe you do need it.

Installing a plugin just because you can, is ridiculous – and here’s why:

1. Each and every plugin you add to WordPress has to be loaded and executed when WordPress loads a page or post. Granted, not all plugins need to execute all the code every time, but WordPress has to read through the code to see what is supposed to be used and what is not. That can slow down your site, and in some cases, DRASTICALLY!
2. Every time you add a new plugin, you increase the chance that something will go wrong with your site. Not all plugin creators are well versed in the WordPress API, and may not be using the best coding methods to make the plugin compatible with other plugins. Plugins can break other plugins. Plugins can break your site. Keep that in mind.
3. How many Statistics do you need to know about your site? Almost EVERY statistics plugin that collects site data requires some overhead resources. Why add the extra loading time, extra database calls and extra overhead to your site? Personally, all I use is Google Analytics. It contains enough data for me to know everything important about the site that I want to know. Everything else is overkill.
4. How many plugins that do the same thing do you need to have? If you have to use 6 SEO plugins, then you are doing something wrong! If you are already using one that adjusts the page title, why do you need another one that adjusts the title? They just end up fighting with each other and could end up causing a coding conflict. Not to mention that THEY ARE DOING THE SAME THING – so why use two. That would be like drinking a glass of Coke, then drinking a glass of Pepsi – just to make sure you were drinking cola. Get the point?
5. And last but not least – Why use a plugin for something that WordPress does natively? WordPress is always changing. Upgrading. Expanding. They do listen to what people want and implement a lot of the changes or requests that are offered – if they think they are beneficial as a whole. The minute WordPress adds a new feature that you have installed a plugin for – ditch the plugin! Let WordPress handle it. The only exception would be if the plugin provides an enhanced version of that feature – then you can keep it around. But a WordPress Auto Upgrader, or Plugin Upgrader or Theme tester are obsolete. WordPress does all that now – so ditch the plugins.

To go back to the client case at hand, when I was finished optimizing their site, they had 8 plugins. Eight. The site functioned the same with one noticeable user-end difference – it loaded a lot quicker. I left 1 Google Analytics plugin, 1 SEO plugin, 1 thumbnail plugin, 1 social network plugin and 4 other plugins that added some features they needed for the site to function properly. That’s it. Nothing else. So scale back those plugins – and if you don’t really understand what something does, don’t install it. If you don’t know why you have a plugin installed, deactivate it and see if you really need it. And if you have multiple plugins that do the SAME thing, decide which one you like best and deactivate the others. Your users will be grateful!

When you install a new plugin, or even a theme for that matter, you put your trust 100% in the programmer. You open your world up to whatever they decide is the right way to do things or what they think it is that you really need to be able to do. Now I trust a lot of people, but I don’t trust anyone 100%! The human race as a whole can be very… well, I’ll stop there. I just don’t trust anyone 100%. I don’t even trust myself 100% most of the time (maybe 98.7% on a good day).

Before you go recommending a good therapist, let me explain my reasoning just a little. Not enough to scare the hell out of you so never add another plugin in your life, but just enough to make you think twice before just hitting the Install and Active button.

Plugins (and for the sake of the rest of the article, themes are included in this) are programming code. A programmer sat down at his/her computer and typed up a super, duper, handy, dandy  plugin for the world to use. That is great! Plugins can be very helpful. But what if that programmer doesn’t really know what they are doing? Or “they know just enough to be dangerous” – a good term that I always thought was pretty accurate. They know how to do some things and know how to copy and paste code to do the things they don’t. But where did they get the code that they copy and pasted? Who wrote it? Was it off some snip-it of a page that talked about hacking a server – or was it posted by a guy (or girl) who hates WordPress and is gonna show the world? Who knows. That is how sometimes even the most good-intentioned programmer goes wrong. If you don’t know the programmer who is releasing the code, how much do you trust that the person he/she got “some” of his/her code from? Did he/she actually know what they were doing? Who the heck knows – and that is scary! I don’t know them from Adam, and you want me to trust them with MY site? Hell no!

Scary when you really think about it, I know.  To show just how scary, I’ll share a little story that happened to me – not too very long ago:

I had been using a certain plugin for some time that helps to do something helpful for client’s sites (I’ll leave out the name to protect the innocent). Generally what I do when I add a new install of WP to a server, is add all the plugins and themes to the correct folders, and then upload everything to the server all at once. Then what I do is install them only if I need them – and I delete the ones that I don’t need for that specific site. Well I knew that this plugin had been upgraded recently, so I brought up the ol’ Google site and typed in my search – picked the first one on the list without much thought – and downloaded the plugin – then added it to my WP install files which I uploaded to the client server.

It wasn’t until about a day later when I realized what I had done – but at that point is was too late! The very second I activated it, the site froze up. Not only did it freeze up, but it erased the database, erased many core WordPress files and proceeded to delete all the contents of the wp-content folder!

Ok, I said, what the F#&%^*!  I then proceeded to log into the site via FTP and found out that the beautifully crafted, very helpful plugin had also reset the folder permissions for the root, so I could not even get into the site to make any changes! Long story somewhat short, I had to wipe the whole thing and start over. Me. Someone who does this for a living. Burned – and left with an even lower trust level in the rest of the world than previously – if that is even possible.

Yes, that really did happen! And yes, I was really p-d off! I can assure you that it will not happen again. I check ALL plugins I install before I add them, and I now test all new plugins on a Development site before I add them to a live site. It goes to show that even those who know what they are doing can get caught in the trap.

Now, I am not saying that this will happen to everyone. But anyone who goes searching around the web looking for that ‘perfect’ plugin or installs dozens of plugins just to see how they work or what they do, will be burned eventually – if they don’t take certain precautions. Here is a simple checklist of items that could help save your site – and your sanity. Keep in mind that ALL plugins and themes are “Use at your own risk“! If you truly understand that, then continue on:

1. Before you think about adding a plugin or theme – BACK UP YOUR DATABASE! Yes, BACK UP YOUR DATABASE! Oh, and did I mention, BACK UP YOUR DATABASE? And don’t just back it up, DOWNLOAD the backup as well. If malicious code wipes your content folder – that backup gets wiped as well – so download it or email it to yourself. A good Backup plugin for WordPress is WP DB Backup – it has been downloaded almost 400,000 times, has a good ranking and I personally have used it on over 100 sites – including my own.
2. Whenever possible, download plugins only from WordPress.org. You have a less likely chance of having problems because the plugins have already been downloaded and tested by others.
3. If you get them from WordPress.org (or the Add Plugin option in the admin area), look for plugins with a high rating. That means others have used it, and ranked it. Word to the wise – if it has a 100% ranking and it is only ranked by 1 person, that is PROBABLY the plugin creator. I rank my own with 5 stars – so I immediately assume ALL others do the same. The only difference being, I know I can trust myself enough to rank it that way.
4. If you know how to program – LOOK AT THE CODE! You can sometimes easily spot malicious attempts at killing your site or stealing your information – or opening a security hole that sucks everything through it including your monitor and keyboard.
5. If you don’t know how to program and you want to be extra careful, scan the plugin files with an Anti-Virus or Anti-Malware software first. It won’t hurt.
6. If you have a development site, test the plugin there first. If not, do a little research on the web – search Google for the plugin name and see if there are complaints about it anywhere and what they are. If the only complaint you find is that a user hates the color scheme, then you can be pretty sure you’re safe – but if there are 10 complaints about it crashing their site – stay away!
7. If you have to install a plugin from the web and not WordPress.org, at least make sure you can read the site language before you download the plugin. If not – who knows what you are getting! I can’t tell you how many times… you get the point – I hope.

If you get to that point and you have activated the plugin – then this SHOULD be common sense – but you would be surprised. If the plugin requires that you enter PERSONAL information such as PayPal login AND password (username is sometimes required for many plugins – and is usually ok), or Credit Card data or ANYTHING you feel uncomfortable providing, then DO NOT USE IT!  If you can verify 100% without a doubt that the information is not being sent to some third party person sitting in a lounge chair in Bermuda using your credit card to buy drinks, then go ahead, use it – otherwise, DON’T! Just delete it and move on.

Remember – plugins can be a good thing if you take precautions to make sure they are legitimate. Otherwise, you might as well turn the keys to your new car over to the 18 year old mail man – just in case he ever needs to move your car to deliver the mail while your out of town for two months. Use COMMON SENSE!