We have rewritten the Simple CMS plugin for WordPress. The new version uses PHP to remove items from the administration menus and redirects the WordPress dashboard to the edit pages screen. There are still some remnants of the old blog post and commenting functionality of WordPress left after the plugin is installed, but the main menu area is clean of all links to those unneeded sections.
More information is available on the Simple CMS plugin page.
The simplified WordPress administration panel after installation of the Simple CMS plugin
Have you ever written a blog post which links to another post within the same blog in WordPress? Has it annoyed the heck out of you when it triggered it pingback to the other post?
If you answered yes to both of those questions, then install the excellent “No Self Ping plugin” by Michael D. Adams. It disables that annoying functionality from WordPress and keeps your comments uncluttered by irritating self-pings.
Alternatively, you can simply copy and paste the following code into your themes functions.php file:
function no_self_ping( &$links ) {
$home = get_option( 'home' );
foreach ( $links as $l => $link )
if ( 0 === strpos( $link, $home ) )
unset($links[$l]);
}
add_action( 'pre_ping', 'no_self_ping' );
We needed a pretty picture to beautify the page. So we 'borrowed' this image as it seemed like a good visual representation of the sound of a 'ping'.
The PixoPoint Theme Integrator has now been launched as a stable release.
We have fixed the following bugs since the last beta version:
- 1.0.6 – Stable release
- 1.0.5 beta – Folder permissions bug fixed (problem which afflicted most users)
- 1.0.4 beta – Fixed path error in admin panel code
- 1.0.3 beta – Fixed function name clash with PixoPoint menu animations plugin (copy and paste error)
There is also a minor bug in how the admin page adds new sections for removing code on updating which we will correct in a future release.
If you find any extra bugs, please post them in our support forum and if you would like assistance integrating your WordPress theme into another software, please contact us for pricing information.
The PixoPoint Theme Integrator plugin is now available in beta form. This new version has some major changes from the original alpha release.
For more information and download links, please visit the PixoPoint Theme Integrator page.
Admin page
The initial alpha versions of the plugin required manual editing of a configuration file within the plugin whereas this new one can be controlled directly from the WordPress admin page.
The administration page for the PixoPoint Theme Integrator
String removal
If there are any strings within parts of the code you have integrated with your other software which are not required, you may now remove them via the admin panel. This is useful for small snippets of unneeded code such as page specific meta tags.
Page or post specific
For various reasons, you may want to have the integrator fire on a specific page. This is often a good idea if you are unable to remove all the unnecessary code snippets via the admin page. If this option is left blank, it will operate on all pages.
Location of HTML
The admin page is now able to give you the exact PHP code necessary to load your code chunks into your other software.
Modifications needed for WordPress theme
The previous version required new HTML to be added to your theme, however this new version allows you to simply load the necessary code via functions (template tags) added to your theme.
PixoPoint Theme Integrator page
Vassilis from GreekBerry.com contacted us recently about utilizing our PixoPoint Theme Integrator to make their SMF forum match the design of their site.
As you can see below, their WordPress powered blog has a very attractive design.
However their forum was not so beautiful. It was sporting the basic default theme which came with the SMF forum software.
However, a quick visit to Dziner Studios and implementation of the PixoPoint Theme Integrator to grab the header and footer of the WordPress theme, along with a few minor changes here and there resulted in the stunning forum design you can see below.
The final design can be seen at:
GreekBerry.com and GreekBerry.com/forum
SMF widget
We also implemented the PixoPoint SMF Widget to show the latest forum posts in the WordPress sections of the site.
Interested in a similar integration?
If you are interested in a similar integration of your WordPress theme with another piece of software (this system works with pretty much any forum, wiki, gallery software etc) then please get in touch with us for pricing information or if you know some HTML/CSS, then download the PixoPoint Theme Integrator and you can do it yourself for free.
One of our Premium Support members requested a fix for their menu which was using the built-in WordPress wp_list_pages() function to display it’s menu contents. The menu was to include only five menu items, with dropdown menus. The contents of the dropdown menus was going to grow continuously as new pages were added to the site so they wanted the menu to automatically grow as the new pages were added, rather than having to manually add the pages into their menu over time. This is not possible with wp_list_pages() as the “include” parameter only includes the exact page IDs you specify rather than including their nested pages as well.
To get around this issue, we created a new function which allowed them to specify only the top level menu items that they wanted to display, the result of this is the PixoPoint List Nested Pages plugin. This was built with a specific use case in mind, but in case anyone else has a use for it, we have released as a WordPress plugin.
Visit the PixoPoint List Nested Pages plugin page for more information and to download the plugin.
We will not be providing any free support for this plugin. If you require assistance with it, please sign up for Premium Support and we will be happy to assist you in using it or custom building a new version designed to meet your requirements.
