Austin Matzko's Blog » plugins

New Plugin: WordPress Appearance Date

filosofo — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:55:57 +0000

I created this plugin because I needed a way to show posts earlier than their scheduled publish date. The client wanted posts to be scheduled for March, with everything that entails: March dates, appearing the March archives, etc., except appearing a week earlier.

WP Appearance Date lets you set arbitrary dates for your posts to appear, whether early or late.

New Plugin: WP Delayed Email

filosofo — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:03:30 +0000

I needed a way to send an email in the future, so I came up with WP Delayed Email. Activate the plugin, and you can call wp_delayed_mail() just like you would wp_mail(), except that you pass a timestamp argument for the time you want the email to be sent.

New WordPress Plugin: Custom Image Sizes

filosofo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:29:22 +0000

I make a lot of WordPress themes, and frequently clients want to associate a particular size of image with a post. You can do this easily with WordPress by using add_image_size() to define an image and then by calling wp_get_attachment_image() later to print the markup for that image.

So for example, if I have an attachment image of ID number 123, I might do something like the following:


add_image_size( 'my-custom-size', 220, 180, true );
...
echo wp_get_attachment_image( 123, 'my-custom-size' );

Here, add_image_size() defines the custom thumbnail (in this example the arguments tell add_image_size() to make it 220 pixels wide, 180 high, and cropped), and

echo wp_get_attachment_image()

prints the markup of the image itself, element and everything.

The Problem

This works great; WordPress even creates thumbnails in this size from now on. The problem is that it doesn’t apply to pre-existing thumbnails. And if people change their minds about what sizes they want their thumbnails to be (clients sometimes change their minds) you’re stuck with existing thumbnails of the wrong size.

In addition, if you call wp_get_attachment_image( 123, 'my-custom-size' ); and that size doesn’t exist, WordPress just scales down the larger-sized original image, which might cause some performance issues.

Solution: Custom Image Sizes

My solution is the Custom Image Sizes plugin. You activate it, and if you call wp_get_attachment_image() and related functions for an attachment that doesn’t have that size, WordPress will create it on demand.

As a bonus, if you pass a width and height of the desired image to wp_get_attachment_image() (and related functions), you can create any size image. So for example I could create a thumbnail 50 pixels wide by 40 high of attachment 123 with the following code, where '50x40' is '[width]x[height]':



echo wp_get_attachment_image( 123, '50x40' );

Download
You can download the Custom Image Sizes plugin here.



Filosofo’s WordPress Gravatar Plugin
filosofo — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:50:24 +0000
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, recently acquired Gravatar.  In case you don’t know, gravatars—or “globally recognized avatars”—are images that you can associate with an email address, so a picture of your choice can appear alongside your comments on many others’ blogs.
Gravatar already provides a simple WordPress plugin,  but it suffers from a common plugin problem: if you add its “gravatar” function to your comments template, you either have to wrap it in a function_exists check, or you’ll get a fatal error when you deactivate the plugin.
My gravatar plugin lets you use WordPress’s action hook callback system, so it just disappears when the plugin is deactivated.
How it works:


If you just want to display a commenter’s gravatar image, just add



 do_action('gravatar') ?>

 
 to the appropriate place in your WordPress comments.php template.  By default, it will generate a gravatar image.


But you can customize it as much as you want, by passing an array of arguments to the ‘gravatar’ action hook.  On my blog I’ve done the following:


 do_action('gravatar', array('div_class' => 'gravatar', 'return' => 'div', 'default' => get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . '/images/default_gravatar.png', 'rating' => 'PG')) ?>

 
That tells the plugin to wrap the gravatar image in a div with a class of “gravatar”, using a default gravatar image located in my theme’s images directory, and returning only PG-rated gravatars.
Here is a complete list of arguments you can pass to the gravatar hook:

alt: Text for the alt attribute of the gravatar image.
border, b: An argument you can pass to the gravatar server, the “border” is a hex color to be generated around the gravatar image.
comment_author_email: The email on which to base the gravatar.  By default, the plugin gets this from the comment’s author email.
default, d: The default image to use if no gravatar is available.
div_class: A class for the div element surrounding the gravatar, if you’ve set “return” to “div.”
echo: Whether to echo the result (true by default).  If you wanted to assign the gravatar image URL to a variable named $path, you would do the following:



 $path = apply_filters('gravatar', array('echo' => false, 'return' => '')); ?>

 

gravatar_id, g: The gravatar id.  Usually this is generated from the commenter’s email, but if you want you can pass it directly.
img_class: A class for the gravatar img element.
rating, r: The rating of allowed gravatar images, as explained at the gravatar website.  Optinos are G, PG, R, and X.
return: What to return.  By default, this is an image element (“img”).  You can also select “div” for a div element around an image, or just return the path to the image with “return” set to “”.
pattern: Any string containing %s; the plugin will return that string, replacing %s with the gravatar image path.
 For example, setting “pattern” to  would return the gravatar image in a span element.
size, s: The size of the gravatar image, in pixels.  Currently it can range between 1 and 80.



Download
Filosofo Gravatar Plugin 1.5 | March 15, 2007


filosofo-gravatars.zip
filosofo-gravatars.tar.gz


If you have problems, questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment below or open a ticket in my support forum.

		
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