How to Display Twitter Count in Plain Text

24. September 2009 in WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , ,

Many people will use Twitter counter badge from TwitterCounter.com to show twitter count in their website or blog, but twitter counter badges from TwitterCounter.com didn’t come with color personalization, sometimes it can’t match the color of the theme, so I don’t like to use it.

If you want to display Twitter count in plain text, you can follow the below steps.

1. Add the following code to functions.php.

function string_getInsertedString($long_string,$short_string,$is_html=false){
  if($short_string>=strlen($long_string))return false;
  $insertion_length=strlen($long_string)-strlen($short_string);
  for($i=0;$i<strlen($short_string);++$i){
    if($long_string[$i]!=$short_string[$i])break;
  }
  $inserted_string=substr($long_string,$i,$insertion_length);
  if($is_html && $inserted_string[$insertion_length-1]=='<'){
    $inserted_string='<'.substr($inserted_string,0,$insertion_length-1);
  }
  return $inserted_string;
}

function DOMElement_getOuterHTML($document,$element){
  $html=$document->saveHTML();
  $element->parentNode->removeChild($element);
  $html2=$document->saveHTML();
  return string_getInsertedString($html,$html2,true);
}

function getFollowers($username){
  $x = file_get_contents("http://twitter.com/".$username);
  $doc = new DomDocument;
  @$doc->loadHTML($x);
  $ele = $doc->getElementById('follower_count');
  $innerHTML=preg_replace('/^<[^>]*>(.*)<[^>]*>$/',"\\1",DOMElement_getOuterHTML($doc,$ele));
  return $innerHTML;
}

2. Copy and paste the following short code to anywhere on your theme files, remember replace your twitter username.

<?php echo getFollowers("yourtwitterusername")." followers"; ?>

How to Seperate Comments and Trackbacks

18. September 2009 in WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , ,

Most wordpress themes combine comments with trackbacks, if you want to separate comments and trackbacks so that it will looks more organized, then you can follow the below step by step guide.

Step 1

Open comments.php and look for

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

Paste after

<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type == 'comment') { ?>

Step 2

Scroll down a bit and look for

<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

Paste before

<?php } else { $trackback = true; } /* End of is_comment statement */ ?>

Step 3

Look for

<?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

Paste before

<?php if ($trackback == true) { ?>
<h3>Trackbacks</h3>
<ol>
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
<li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
<?php } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>
<?php } ?>

How to Display Categories in Drop-Down Box

18. September 2009 in WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , ,

Personally, I prefer to display my blog categories without in drop down box, but if you really have many categories on your blog, perhaps you can display categories in drop-down box so that your blog will looks more neat.

Below is the simple code to display categories:-

<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name'); ?>
</ul>

To display categories in drop-down box, use the following code.

<form action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/" method="get">
<?php
$select = wp_dropdown_categories('show_option_none=Select category&show_count=1&orderby=name&echo=0');
$select = preg_replace("#<select([^>]*)>#", "<select$1 onchange='return this.form.submit()'>", $select); echo $select; ?>
<noscript><input type="submit" value="View" /></noscript>
</form>

How to Exclude Certain Categories

18. September 2009 in WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

There are 2 ways to exclude certain categories from your blog, one is use wordpress plugin named Advanced Category Excluder. This plugin was born because there was a no other real alternative to enable content sparationd and some CMS like functionalities in WordPress. The main goal was, to enhance WordPress’s functionalities, to hide some unwanted categories, from defined parts of the blog.

The alternative way is without plugin, you can add the below code inside the loop then it will work.

<?php
if ( have_posts() ) : query_posts($query_string .'&cat=-1,-2'); while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>

How to Highlight Author’s Comments

18. September 2009 in WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

There are 2 ways to highlight author’s comments, one is use highlight author comments wordpress plugin, another idea is without wordpress plugin. If you don’t want to use wordpress plugin to highlight author’s comment, you can follow the below few simple steps.

First, you need to open styles.css and add the following into this file.

.authorstyle { background-color: #B3FFCC !important; }

Second, open comments.php, find and locate the following code.

<li <?php echo $oddcomment; ?>id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"></li>

And then replace with

<li class="<?php if ($comment->user_id == 1) $oddcomment = "authorstyle"; echo $oddcomment; ?>"></li>

Please note that you must change 1 to the user id of the author. Thanks to Matt Cutts for this tutorial.

How to Add Avatar to Your Comments

17. September 2009 in WordPress Tips | 0 Comments
Tags: , , ,

The default wordpress themes are came with avatar support. In case you have use some other free or premium wordpress themes with no avatar support, then you can adding the following simple and short coding to your comment.

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), '80'); ?>

get_the_author_email outputs the post author’s email and the “80” is the size of the avatar image in pixels, you can change the size of the avatar according to your needs. Is it looks simple? @@

Page 2 of 3123