Simple Series WordPress Plugin

I’ve written a new WordPress plugin specifically designed to let you simply and easily create a series of related posts.  You can download Simple Series here.

What does “Simple Series” do?

Simple Series uses a WordPress shortcode to associate your posts together.  All you have to do is use the same shortcode in all of the posts you want to associate together and the plugin does the rest.  It will automatically find all of the posts with the same shortcode, organize them by publication date, and put them together in a professional and easy to read format.  If you wish to change the format, you can just add your own custom CSS to your theme.

How does “Simple Series” work?

Easy!  Just add the shortcode to each of the posts you want to put in the series.  Inside the shortcode you will need to specify the title for the series.  Like so:

This Is My Series Title
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  1. Simple Series WordPress Plugin

What if I add more posts later?

No problem!  The “Simple Series” plugin will always update the series lists in each of your posts whenever you publish a new post.  The newest post will always be added to the series in chronological order, by publication date.  You can see an example of what it looks like here in my own DrawBot series.

I have more questions!

Cool!  Please leave a comment to this post or send me an e-mail!

Posts about Simple Series (with a list created by this very plugin!)
← i find i want to add more posts in some random series, just so i can use my new pluginMy first published WordPress plugin! Simple Series! →
  1. A nifty little WordPress plugin...
  2. i find i want to add more posts in some random series, just so i can use my new plugin
  3. Simple Series WordPress Plugin
  4. My first published WordPress plugin! Simple Series!
  5. This is a test of the Simple Series post system... This is only a test
  6. Now Simple Series will also add the series list to RSS feeds too!
  7. ZOMG! Simple Series is going viral!
  8. Simple Series with SEO! after just one day
  9. Anti-Virals
  10. Simple Series - Half-Life; Market Research
  11. Plugin Considerations

A nifty little WordPress plugin…

The idea for this little plugin has been rattling around in my head for a little while now.  It clocks in at less than 60 lines of code, including comments, and makes it easy to create a “series” for posts.

As I’ve been blogging about my (mis)adventures in building a DrawBot, I’ve been updating each post to contain a link back to all of the prior posts in the series.  However, if someone were to find one of the first posts – they wouldn’t see a link to a later post.  That is, unless I update all the posts.  That’s not really much of an option, since I’ve racked up 23 posts in less than 19 days. 12

This plugin is actually super simple.  Here’s what it does:

  1. Add a “post meta” tag for the current post with the same key as whatever you want to name the post series
  2. Query the database for all posts with the same post meta key as the one for the current post
  3. Output an ordered chronological list of all posts in with the same post meta key as the one for the current post

The simplicity of this plugin are actually some of it’s strongest features.  Unlike a lot of other series plugins out there, it doesn’t create any unnecessary tables in your WordPress database.  There are no settings to mess with, no CSS to fiddle with, no ugly standard formatting to overcome.

The only downside I can perceive is that if you delete the shortcode from a plugin, it will still leave the post-meta attached to the post and the post will still appear in the series.  If you leave the shortcode in and don’t specify a series title, it will delete the post-meta.  I suppose I could include a little button in the interface to delete the post from the series, but really, it’s just not going to be used that often.

Anyhow, this is something that I’ve wanted to have for a long time – I just hadn’t gotten around to building it yet.

Posts about Simple Series (with a list created by this very plugin!)
← i find i want to add more posts in some random series, just so i can use my new plugin →
  1. A nifty little WordPress plugin...
  2. i find i want to add more posts in some random series, just so i can use my new plugin
  3. Simple Series WordPress Plugin
  4. My first published WordPress plugin! Simple Series!
  5. This is a test of the Simple Series post system... This is only a test
  6. Now Simple Series will also add the series list to RSS feeds too!
  7. ZOMG! Simple Series is going viral!
  8. Simple Series with SEO! after just one day
  9. Anti-Virals
  10. Simple Series - Half-Life; Market Research
  11. Plugin Considerations
  1. I’ve got a lot to say. [↩]
  2. And, actually, that’s just 23 posts on this one topic.  I’ve probably blogged an equal amount over on the MakerBot blog, with a few totally random additional posts here. [↩]

PayPal payments and micropayments

So, PayPal has a micropayment system as well as a regular payment system.  The micropayment fee is 5% + $0.05 while the normal fee is 2.9% + $0.30.  For payments below $12.00, it makes sense to use the micropayments system and the normal system above that level.

Here’s the rub – you can only set up your PayPal account for one or the other.  I’m working on a WordPress PayPal plugin, but I’d like to have that plugin work with micropayments without forcing all of my other PayPal transactions to go through that fee structure.  Oh well.

WordPress Plugin Writing Resources

WordPress is easily my favorite open source software project.  I love it for it’s functionality, flexibility, and extensibility.  When it comes to writing a plugin, these are my favorite resources.  Don’t write a plugin without them!

  1. WordPress.org Codex for Writing a Plugin
    1. If you’re just getting started, this is the place to begin
  2. WordPress.org Codex Plugin API
    1. a great overview of the WordPress plugin API
  3. WordPress Action Reference
    • When WordPress displays a post, page, or the administrative pages it has to run through a number of functions and actions.  Your plugin will need to be activated at one of these points, and it is very helpful to know the order in which things happen.
  4. WordPress Filter Reference
    • The WordPress filter reference is a list of WordPress filters.  Each one will be able to deliver a little piece of the website for your to manipulate in your plugins.
  5. WordPress PHP Cross-Reference
    • The WordPress codex is pretty good – but it is not comprehensive.  If you want to know how some of the more obscure functions, variables, or constants work, you’ll just need to dive into the source code itself.  PHPXRef is, hands down, the best way to do this.  It let’s you search and read the the source code from their website.
  6. Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins
    • This is quite possibly the best blog post about writing WordPress plugins.  Applying these guidelines will make you a better WordPress developer and your plugins faster, more efficient, and more awesome. :)
  7. How to Design and Style Your WordPress Plugin Admin Panel
    • In a lot of ways, a program is only as good as its user interface.  Build a good friendly and powerful interface and people will use your program.  Build a bad one and no one will use it, no matter how awesome it is.  This one blog post gives numerous little ways to make your WordPress plugin administrative interface look better.

Thingiverse formatting plugin

Schmarty’s Thingiverse embed plugin is pretty sweet. I believe it has been updated so that calling the relevant shortcode looks much more like a Thingiverse link to a particular thing.

Since I’m in a procrastinating mood, I began to wonder if it would be possible to make this plugin even easier to use. There are probably a lot more efficient ways to do this, but it is easy to turn a list of Thingiverse thing links into a set of Thingiverse Embed shortcodes.

http://www. -> ""
.com/  -> " "
:  -> =
\r\n  -> ]\r\n[

I suppose all of this over-engineering is really only suited to me and probably would never save more time than it would take to actually just type out the links like any normal person.

Still got it

I just helped my wife start her own blog.  She wanted to include a license for some of things she’ll be publishing, so I whipped up a little WordPress plugin that will insert some creative commons license language with a small shortcode.  Although I haven’t tinkered with one of my plugins for a while now (five or six months?) I uploaded the plugin, activated it, and it “just worked.”  That’s a good feeling – writing a piece of code and having it work straight off with no bugs.

I wish I could say the same for my 3D design skills. 1

  1. Wakka wakka! [↩]

100% Chance of AWESOME

I rather enjoy writing WordPress plugins.  It started writing them out of necessity, but I’ve ended up writing several for frivolous reasons and fun.  One of my favorites is based upon the hard work of Rasmus.  Basically, it turns

“[wordpress_shortcode data='Totally awesome=99|Merely awesome=1']”

into

Which translates, as the title would suggest, into a 100% chance of awesome.

I dusted off this plugin (probably written about a year ago) because of the numbers associated with the MakerBot poll I recently ran.  I find it very helpful to view such data graphically.  Hopefully you will too.

Sketchup STL Importer Plugins

As I’ve mentioned before, I do all of my 3D modeling in Sketchup.  It’s not open source, but it is free.1

Well, I’ve been monitoring the Capolight Electronics Blog lately – and it’s a good thing too.  Besides having some seriously amazing information about the thermal properties of plastic, he’s just posted about some useful importing/exporting plugins for Sketchup.  As easy as Sketchup is to use, it’s just not very good at exporting to STL.  I haven’t tried these plugins out – but I’m hopeful they will do the job.

If you try them out, please let me know how it goes!

  1. I suppose it’s really a “freemium” business model… [↩]