Linked Pages Version 0.2.3 has just been released. This version adds a menu facility which uses the current posts ‘link field’ content to find pages that are also linked to the parent page (allowing a more menu like operation from the widget). The configuration of this feature is available on the widget control panel in the ‘Search For Similar’ section.

As usual, it’s available from the WordPress plugin directory, comments/questions can be left here and the somewhat sparse wiki is available here.

Seems my collection of plug-ins is growing…. enter Linked Pages. This was created in response to a user request, but more on that later when he’s finished his site.

Linked Pages allows you to create page pickers in the post editor which can link a post to a parent using custom fields. These links can then be displayed using the widget contained in the plug-in.

At the moment, it is primarily designed for use with custom post types (these make it easy to select pages for the pickers) and each page can only be linked to one parent of a particular post type using a given custom field. As time allows, I plan on extending it to provide more functionality (like being able to establish multiple links and an improved widget with more options).

As an example usage, lets say you’re a mad football fan… you create a post type ‘Football Clubs’ and one called ‘Players’. Using Linked Pages, you can link players to their club and have a list of players for that club displayed in your sidebar in seconds.

The wiki is a little incomplete (by that I mean there is a holding page) so I’ll be adding to that as time allows. As usuals, comments etc. can be left here.

Quick update on ACFW Version 1.0… I’ve not stopped development, but unfortunately it does take a back seat when I’m busy and I’ve been really busy lately. Most of the backend is done, including the configuration conversion which handles the pre 1.0 configuration and should handle updates to the configuration gracefully in the future.

All that’s left to do is actually create the tables and forms that are going to be used to manage the configuration. I can’t remember what I’ve posted about features, but it includes it’s own RSS feed reader that looks at the ACFW RSS feed produce by my blog, so you’ll get the latest news about ACFW right there in your WordPress admin pages, along with links to my wiki etc. for easy access to the latest documentation.

By popular demand I have released a slightly modified version of ACFW (in the form of version 0.99) which processes shortcodes that are contained in the generated content. The latest version can of course be downloaded from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

This is a minor bug fix release that addresses an issue when using the content generator that resulted in the linefeeds being mishandled and displayed as ‘n’.

Thanks to Deena for letting me know about this issue.

The latest version, as always, can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory.

Time for another update on the progress of version 1.0.0.

The widget renderer is now largely complete, that is, the configuration converter has successfully converted the old pre 1.0.0 configuration on my test system and is rendering all my test widgets as expected. Some further modification is required to handle the customised HTML wrapping features, but that’s a minor job replacing some hard coded HTML with variable references.

The first admin page is finished. This is the plugin home page in the WordPress control panel. It provides some configuration statistics, the credits and copyright notices, some key version information and a news feed direct from my blog for all things ACFW, so it will be easier for me to post updates and know that the widgets users can keep up to date with whats going on. Checkout the screenshot below.

The next stage is to create the pages that will be used to manage the various elements (blocks, groups, wrappers and list separators), the two widget control panels that will be used to manage block and group widgets when they are added to sidebars and finally, implement the remaining renderers for the group widget and the various shortcodes and theme functions that are going to be provided.

That’s it for now.

Well, seems like only earlier today that I was announcing that I’m working on ACFW Version 1.0 and here I am posting an update.

First up, I’ve added a dedicated ACFW RSS feed to the site (I’ve tested with Firefox and IE and it is accessible using their built in RSS feed tools). I am looking to include an RSS feed display on the widget’s home page in the admin control panel so I can send messages to users about work in progress, updates, possible features etc.

After much thought about structure and optimisations, I took another look and thought I could do better, so I’ve restructured the configuration storage mechanism and the overall structure of the code to try and minimise database access and the amount of code loaded for each request and fixed up one or two issues I was having with compatibility.

On the subject of compatibility, I’m concious that I’ve been developing solely for my supported platform which is PHP 5. WordPress however can run on PHP 4, so where appropriate, I’m implementing PHP 4 and PHP 5 specific code (this is mainly centered around classes and the improved class model provided by PHP 5+). WordPress compatibility is something else I’m going to be looking at, possibly setting up a test bed system that provides various different versions of WordPress starting with version 2.5 (as this is the current minimum version). At the moment though, the widget is limited to WordPress 2.8+ as it uses one or two things that were added in 2.8.

So that’s it for now, I’ll post some more as appropriate.

Now I’m holiday for a while, I’m catching up on some of the jobs I’ve been meaning to do. One of those is the next major release of my Advanced Custom Field Widget for WordPress.

This is a complete rewrite of the widget, not just further modifications to the base code that began life as Scott Wallick’s ‘Custom Field Widget’ just over two years ago. In that time, there have been many additions and as a result, many ideas that have been festering in my head for far too long.

So, what can you expect from ACFW Version 1.0.0?

• Dedicated admin pages – Instead of the ever expanding widget control panel, ACFW is getting it’s own management pages. The widget control panel will of course still be present, but it will merely piece together a widget instance from the other elements.
• HTML configuration – The widget as it stands uses various items of hard coded HTML, and will, when using the shortcode and/or theme function, be lacking some key HTML elements. This is changing to allow you greater control over the generated HTML.
• Reusable elements – Instead of having to specify common things (such as the new HTML configuration or the list item separators) each time they are used, the new widget will provide tools to manage these and then simply select the required item.

However, the biggest change by far is the restructuring of the configuration data. At present, each widget instance has it’s own configuration data. In most cases this is fine as the widget will only occur once, but in some cases (when using the widget index functionality for example), re-entering the same configuration for each instance can be a real drag. To improve things, the concept of Widgets, Blocks and Groups is being introduced.

• Widgets – A widget is, as the name suggests, a single sidebar widget. This references either a block or a group.
• Blocks – A block is a single instance of the data required to generate the content. Blocks can be used by widgets, the shortcode and the theme function.
• Groups – A group is simply a list of member blocks. When a group is requested, the widget will pick one of the member blocks at random.

I’ve been getting ever more concerned about the speed of the widget, it doesn’t have to do a lot, but shifting large blocks of configuration around every time the widget is generated (amongst other things) is not the best use of CPU time (even if there is an abundance of clock cycles these days), especially if, like me, you have a lot of different widget instances. As a result, I’m spending some time trying to optimise the widget to reduce the processing time… caching the configuration is one such step. Gone is the virtual sidebar previously needed if you wanted to use the shortcode or theme functions without having to display the widget. Now all you need do is setup a block and use that (or a group if you wish).

And don’t worry your existing configuration… whilst I’m not prepared to offer a guarantee that it will be 100% correct, I have a fairly complicated setup on my development machine and that’s converted 100% without any issues, so suffice to say I’m fairly confident.

That’s about all I can say right now, so stay tuned for further updates, which will hopefully be the release announcement.

Version 0.97 of ACFW has been released. This is a fix for the plugin directory issue that has prevented new versions being recognised by the directory and consequently users blogs.

Download the latest version from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Many thanks to Ronald van der Zwan for his Dutch translation of ACFW which was released today as version 0.96.

You can download the latest version of ACFW from the WordPress Plugin Directory. You may also want to check out my wiki pages about ACFW, especially if you haven’t upgraded for a while (0.92 was a major re-engineering effort in preparation for version 1.0).