Archive for the Web Development Category
Right, I’ve got two new tasty features in the development version.
- Have your main blog on a subdomain (e.g. http://blog.mydomain.com/)
- Tag filters, go to a tag page on a subdomain and see only those posts that are on that subdomain.
You can download the development version here.
To use the subdomain blog feature you’ll need to enter your blog domain (e.g. mydomain.com) in the WP Subdomains Settings page.
In theory, though not tested, you should even be able to have your main blog on a completely different domain to your subdomain pages. However I’m not sure why you’d want to.
To use the Tag filters you can turn them on (or off) on the WP Subdomains Settings page.
There have also been some code improvements with this version.
If you find any issues with it please post comments on this post, send me a message through the contact page, or add a bug on the launchpad bug tracker.
Just released 0.6.5, the jump in version number is nothing to get excited by, there are very minor code changes. Just some fixes so people using wordpress 2.7 don’t need to comment code out and also some speed increases.
The biggest change is the move to hosting on wordpress.org. This means to upgrade just pop into your wordpress plugin admin section and it should give you the option to upgrade from there.
If you’re new to the plugin or want to see the code before you upgrade then you can find it here.
I hope to be a lot more active on this now, and want to quickly say thanks to Steven Wichers who sent me some useful code that should lead to more speed improvements in the next version.
Just to update you all.
This project is still alive but I’ve been quite out of reach recently as I’ve been traveling around Malaysia and putting my recreation before projects.
I’ve got a bunch of people to reply to and should do it by next week as towards the end of this week we get a bit of a rest for a few days and I’ll get a chance to get back to WP Subdomains.
Sorry for people waiting for specific features. I’m still planning on implementing as much as possible (including eventual support for WPMU), but right now I’m just too busy enjoying myself.
In the meantime, if anyone finds any bugs please either use the Contact form on this site or submit them to the Project’s Launchpad bug tracker.
Update: forgot to mention, one of my goals for the next version is to get it hosted on the wordpress site so updates can be done from the Wordpress Admin panel.
I’ve managed to work out all the issues with Wordpress 2.8.
This version should also spell an end to sql query and memory issues people might have seen in previous versions as I’ve replaced the use of get_posts() with custom sql.
Nothing much more to say other than please let me know if you find any issues with it. Now I’m off to bed 
Download: WP Subdomains 0.6.2
Everytime I fix one thing something else breaks.
Now for some reason rewrite rule filters aren’t being executed which means certain permalink settings wont work.
I’m hoping to get this sorted tonight, but it may be tomorrow as I was up very early to catch a bus from Singapore to Melaka this morning and then spent most of the afternoon wandering around in greater than 30 degree heat.
Anyway, fingers crossed I’ll run out of issues soon and be able to make a fully working release.
A quick update.
There was a fairly key change in Wordpress 2.8 to when wordpress creates the default Taxonomies. It now does it at a time after when my plugin first needs them. It would be nice to just change my plugin to do it’s work after this. However, the part of the plugin that needs to change themes depending on the subdomain needs to run early because of the way wordpress has been written.
I have created a ticket on the wordpress bug tracker explaining my problem and asking if the way they first initiate the themes can be delayed at all (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10160). I’m not sure what the outcome will be of this, I haven’t looked into it enough to know how vital it is that the themes are initiated at that precise point.
My backup option is that I’m going to have to come up with some custom SQL to get around the problem for now. I should be releasing this fixed version of the plugin tomorrow.
I will keep my fingers crossed that my feature request is accepted and then I can go back to using the nice wordpress API.
Check back in the next 24 hours for a Wordpress 2.8 compatible version of the plugin.
Thanks to everyone who informed me about the plugin not working with Wordpress 2.8.
Clearly this is quite serious. Luckily I’ve just finished my teaching job and I will look at this problem this weekend and try my best to have it fixed for Monday.
Also now I’ve finished working for the next 4 months updates to this plugin should continue again.
Thanks for hanging in there.
All quiet on the western front recently. I started a new freelance web development job in April and have been quite busy with that and my teaching job, so development on Wordpress Subdomains has ground to a halt.
I hope to get back on it sometime this week. I’ve decided that 0.6.2 will be mainly fixing bugs and other minor issues. New features will come in 0.7.0 which will probably be the next release after 0.6.2.
One thing has come to my attention is that the use of the wordpress get_posts function was a big mistake. Using less custom SQL and more wordpress API calls seemed like the right thing to do. Unfortunately they didn’t have a function that gave me exactly what I wanted and get_posts is basically overkill. My use of it has caused memory problems and increased SQL queries quite a bit. I suspect a lot of the extra sql calls are actually caused by other plugins that make use of the filters whenever posts are fetched. They think I’m using the get_posts to fetch posts to generate a page, not that I’m fetching posts to make use of their data. I’ve already run into this problem with one plugin which I pointed out to the developer and now has a fix in it’s development trunk. I can’t investigate every plugin, so I’m just going to have to go back to using custom SQL and drop my use of get_posts. If you’re experiencing problems due to this then search for WPS_CUSTOM_GET_POSTIDS in the readme file.
Another problem is that attachments to posts end up being linked back to the main domain even if clicked on in a subdomain. I’ve had a request that these be kept on the subdomain you’re on. I think I’ll make this an option as it may lead to duplicate content (which may cause SEO issues).
I’ll try and get these two pieces fixed in the next week and see if there are any other things that need fixing out there. Please let me know if you can think of anything.
It was supposed to be out Friday, but thanks to internet problems it’s two days late. However, the internet issues gave me a chance to fix the IE bug.
Here’s the low down on what’s changed:
Added Features
- Add options
- Keeping Pages on the subdomain, changed to an option for SEO reasons
- Removing archive status from Subdomain root pages
- Added wps_on_main_index custom field to make tied pages still appear on your main blog
- Useful if you have the subdomain indexes noindexed for SEO purposes
Bugs Fixed
- Now creates links for all subdomain pages not just five
- Fixed a daft problem that only put the first layer of sub pages of a subdomain page on that subdomain. Oops
- Fixed a problem regarding comments on 1st tier posts using /%category%/%postname% permalink
- Fixed a problem with filtering posts by category in the admin section
- Included an option to use a custom SQL query if you run into memory issues from large numbers of posts
- Fixed bug with IE and editing Category options
Download: WP Subdomains 0.6.1
Best to read the NOTES section of the Readme. Especially if you had memory issues with past versions.
I’ll try and improve the Readme in the next version.
I know I’ve said this before, but this time I promise.
After two release candidates I think it’s finally a mostly bug free release.
I’ve had almost 70 downloads of the RC2 and other than the two known bugs (ie7 and memory issues with many posts) I’ve not had others reported.
I will provide a user switch to solve the memory issue for those suffering from it. This will use a custom SQL query to fetch the required data in a much less memory intensive way than the built in wordpress function. I’m still hoping for a solution in the form of a wordpress function as this would be a much better way of doing things. WIth the switch the user will be able to just tell the plugin to use the custom SQL rather than wordpress plugin if they see php memory problems.
Once I post the release I’ll put up a list of possible features for the 0.6.2 (0.7.0?) release and see what other ideas people have. One main feature at the moment is for those who want their main blog to be on a subdomain itself. This should be fairly straight forward to do. Another is adding the proper form to edit the page options so you’re not dealing with custom fields any more. Also fixing the ie7 problems with the category configuration.
I’ll keep you posted. Once again sorry for the very long delay.
