If your site has multiple navigational levels then it’s sometimes useful to include a sidebar widget that displays an easy way for the user to select child or sibling pages. WordPress’ wp_list_pages function allows us to create this functionality.

Displaying only Sibling Pages with wp_list_pages

Suppose your have a navigation similar to the structure below:

• music
  • rap
  • rock
  • reggae

• sports
  • golf
  • tennis
  • hockey

Suppose the user is on the “Sports” page. You’d want the sidebar widget to display the subpage items for that section like so:

• golf
• tennis
• hockey

Now the user clicks on “Golf” and they are no longer on the “Sports” page, it is now the parent page. The sidebar will then display sibling pages and exclude the page the currently is on:

• tennis
• hockey

How to Achieve this with Code

There may be a few different ways to achieve this with code, but this is the method that I found works best for my needs:

<?php
    //GET CHILD PAGES IF THERE ARE ANY
    $children = get_pages('child_of='.$post->ID);
 
    //GET PARENT PAGE IF THERE IS ONE
    $parent = $post->post_parent;
 
    //DO WE HAVE SIBLINGS?
    $siblings =  get_pages('child_of='.$parent);
 
    if( count($children) != 0) {
       $args = array(
         'depth' => 1,
         'title_li' => '',
         'child_of' => $post->ID
       );
 
    } elseif($parent != 0) {
        $args = array(
             'depth' => 1,
             'title_li' => '',
             'exclude' => $post->ID,
             'child_of' => $parent
           );
    }
    //Show pages if this page has more than one sibling 
    // and if it has children 
    if(count($siblings) > 1 && !is_null($args))   
    {?>
    <div class="widget subpages">
    <h3 class="widgettitle">Also in this Section</h3>
         <ul class="pages-list">
         <?php wp_list_pages($args);  ?>
         </ul>
     </div>
    <?php } ?>

What’s going on here? First we are checking to see if the current page has any child pages using the get_pages function. Next, we check to see if the current page has a parent. If the parent page does have children then we display the child pages for that section by declaring separate arguments using the ‘child_of’ this post ID parameter.

If the current page does not have any children then it’s time to query the post parent’s page list. We can’t forget to use the ‘exclude’ parameter to make sure the current page the user on is not displayed as well in the page list.

To Wrap it Up

As you can see this can be a helpful widget and it’s easy to setup and style. I haven’t tested the code above with more than just 2-levels of pages. Let me know if it works for you!

How to Fix the Search

After searching the Internets I found a few fixes. Here’s one on the WordPress forums that seemed the most promising. This led me to the code below which, after being added to your theme’s functions.php file, will bring prevent the user from going to homepage and rather display the search results page.

Add to your theme’s functions.php file

add_filter( 'request', 'my_request_filter' );
function my_request_filter( $query_vars ) {
    if( isset( $_GET['s'] ) && empty( $_GET['s'] ) ) {
        $query_vars['s'] = " ";
    }
    return $query_vars;
}

A Few Notes

Blank search results seems to only happen when you have your homepage set to a static page in WordPress rather than the default settings. I haven’t seen any mentions of other configurations causing this on the web.

WordPress DEVs are Aware of the Issue

Here’s a WP Trac ticket opened at WordPress that says as of 2-months ago a fix for this is slated for future WP version 3.3

How to disable WordPress Post Revisions

Do you prefer a Plugin or Code?

Code Method:

Disabling the WordPress’ Revision Management feature is simple:

Open your wp-config.php file in the root directory of your WordPress installation.

Add this snippet of code at the top of the file (or bottom):

//disable WP Post Revisions
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

false, 0: do not store any revisions (except the one autosave per post)

Plugin Method

There’s a number of plugins that will keep you away from the code and safely deleting your revisions:

Revision Control is the most popular WP Revision management plugin. There’s also No Revisions which is less popular but gets the job done

How to Delete Existing Post Revision from Database

MySQL Query Method

For Advanced Users: Open up phpMyAdmin (SQL Pro) or what-have-you and run the follow query. If you like to

DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = 'revision'

*Disclaimer: Perform a db backup prior to running any queries to delete from your database

Plugin Method

The following plugins do the trick just fine (and perhaps “Better”):

Better Delete Revision

Delete-Revision

Why is WP_POST_REVISIONS enabled by Default?

While I cannot find an official explanation, my consensus is that many users find this feature an easy way to backup your posts and revert. WordPress is providing piece-of-mind, saving users from data loss. This feature is not available on many other popular CMS platforms.

I hope this article helps my fellow WordPress Community Memebers!

jFlow Plus is a compact slider (~4kb minified) with multiple effects and configurations that is cross-browser compatible and actively developed on by the open source community.

Click to view the jFlow Demo

Why Should You jFlow?

There are many sliders on the Internet to chose from, so why this one? Good question. First, let’s start with simplicity. A lot of jQuery slider plugins take an experienced developer to setup, not jFlow. We’ve got a superb demo for your to reference, download and implement. Novice web developers can get this puppy up and running in no time. What else you ask? Here’s a brief summary:

• Simple to setup
• Cross-browser Compatible
• Compatible with latest version of jQuery
• Open Source and Community Supported
• Actively Developed
• Good Documentation and Support
• and many more…

Help with Your jFlow

Planning on using jFlow for your next WordPress site? Great! Here’s a few tips to get your started quickly:

• Visit the Demo
• Start with the demo CSS and style to your liking
• If you’re stuck, read the documentation
• Start with the basic functionality and then modify to suit your needs

Remove the Paragraph Tags: Add this to your theme’s function.php file:

This simple filter will remove the wpautop function from running on the term description. Simply add this snippet to the bottom of your theme’s function.php file and save.

remove_filter('term_description','wpautop');

Before:

<p>My Category Description</p>

After:

My Category Description

Here’s a link to the WP forum thread revealing this simple and effective filter: WP Forum Thread

Sign Up for an Invite

Google is limiting the roll out of this new service to an untold number of webmasters. Using this sign up form you can request access to Page Speed Service and will be invited by Google to use this brand new service.

Here’s an image of the Page Speed Dashboard:

Below is a screenshot of the Rewrite options panel:

How it Works

Once you get to start using the Page Speed Service you will log into your Google APIs console, provite the domain of your website, verify ownership, set up the reference domain and change your site’s DNS CNAME.

That’s an earful, but Google makes the process pretty simple and it looks like they have pretty good documentation.

Where’s Your Invite?

I’m still waiting for my invite, I’ll update here when I get one.

Problem: No Vote or Rating Expirations

Out of the box, you are allowed to restrict voting by IP logging or cookies as see in the image below:

These setting are not exactly what we need, since there’s no option to expire votes we will need to do a little bit more. First, uncheck the options “Use logged data (IP) to prevent duplicate voting.” and “Use cookies to prevent duplicate voting.” like so:

No with these current options users will be able to rate and vote non-stop. Once could very easily rig up a macro and mess up some ratings. Obviously we don’t want this so let’s use cookies to prevent this from happening.

Solution: Use jQuery and Cookies to Restrict Voting

Have you heard of the jQuery Cookies plugin? It’s really good and lightweight.

Download the Cookies plugin and Insert it in your head

Download the jQuery Cookies plugin; once that’s done insert it into the head of your website:

Code the Function to Restrict Voting 24-Hours

Now that we have our Cookies plugin (along with jQuery of course) ready for use on our website we can code out a function to only allow people to vote once per day. Here’s the function I’m using:

jQuery(function () {
    //if our cookie is present display you have voted text
    if (jQuery.cookie('vote_cookie') == null) {
        //when gd star rating is clicked do function to set cookie
        jQuery('.gdt-starrating').click(function () {
            //set cookie 			
            jQuery.cookie('vote_cookie', 'closed', {
                expires: 1,
                path: '/',
                domain: 'yourdomain.com'
            });
        });
        //else the cookie is already set	
    } else {
        //fade out the ratings and display voted message
        jQuery('.gdt-starrating').fadeOut("fast", function () {
            //append voted message
        });
        //append voted message to parent container
        jQuery('.gdthumb').append('<p class="vote_msg">Thanks for Voting. Come back tomorrow!</p>');
        //slide down the vote message
        jQuery('.vote_msg').slideDown("fast");
    };
});

Check out my line-by-line notes above and leave a comment below if you have any code-related questions. For the cookie’s lifetime or “expires” parameter: You can define the lifetime of the cookie using a number which will be interpreted as days from time of creation. If left out, the cookie is a session cookie.

Please note: Depending on the GD Star Rating Template you are using, your jQuery selector could be different. Also, this method is not fool-proof. Users will still be able to clear their browser’s cookies and vote.

Live Working Demo

Update: Sorry the working update has been taken down :[ Please use the comment section below to post your questions.

To take a look at the GD Star Rating voting restriction in action check out the projects page over at The Modern Gypsies’ website.

Future Development

The best way to accomplish the voting restriction would be to do it via server-side with PHP and hooking into the function of the plugin itself. Fortunatly, for my needs this was not necessary but it may be for others with higher traffic and to ensure rating integrity.

Hopefully the plugin author will include this as an option in upcoming releases of the GD Star Rating plugin.

Using the Click and setTimeout Methods to Open Links

Using a bit of jQuery and JavaScript’s methods we can achieve a simple timer to open links.

See it in Action

Want to check it out? Click HERE and watch as the link opens after 3-seconds.

jQuery(function() {
   jQuery('.myselector').click(function() {	
      setTimeout(function() {
	window.open("http://wordimpressed.com");
      }, 1000 /* time to delay */ );
   });
});

Code Explanation

What the code above is doing is utilizing jQuery .click() method to fire off a function once the link or button with the class “.myselector”. Once this function fires the setTimeout method then calls a function after a specified number of milliseconds.

You may find that the number of seconds can vary depending on the user’s computer processing power and how busy the client (browser) is during at the time the function fires. Regardless, the this method should meet the needs of most developers for opening new browser windows after a specified time.

Using the jQuery .delay() Method for Animations and Effects

The code below will not open link in new windows, but it is useful for delaying jQuery animations and effects:

$("button").click(function() {
      $("div.first").slideUp(300).delay(800).fadeIn(400);
});

See it in Action

Click here to slide up the picture below after 3-seconds.

Code Explanation

The .delay() method is great for timing animations and additional methods to a certain time. In this example we use the .delay() method to delay the .slideUp() method on our demo image for a specified number of milliseconds.

Enable Facebook Sidebar Chat

Once you log into Facebook, go to your “News Feed” and ensure your browser is maximized. If you have a large enough monitor you should see the sidebar Chat grayed out with the following invite message:

Once you click the “Try it now” button you will immediately be able to message your friends that you interact with the most.

Still lost? Check out the Facebook’s Using the Sidebar for useful help information.