Much of the competition will remain the same but I would like to give authors the chance to strut their stuff and get their code together and published and advertised for everyone to make a good determination.

In the first competition, I participated and submitted two of my plugins, CA-Credits and CA-ColorPicker. But silly me, I didn’t know that I have to re-submit those plugins at the end of competition. Oh well, nevermind

Anyway, I may take part again in the next competition, but honestly, I don’t have any idea right now. I think there are already a Wordpress plugin for everything. Any ideas from you, guys?

I’ve been using WP ContactForm for a while and I’m very happy with it. It’s simple, easy to install, and more important, it does the job. But upon modifying my site’s structure, I found that now I need a Subject field in the contact form. This will also be the subject for the email sent to the sender (in this case: me).

By default, you can only have one subject for all the contact form you have. This is configured through the admin interface. But I want my visitors to be able to specify the subject line themself. Or at least, I can easily define what the default subject for each form.

For example, in this site I have three contact forms. One for the Contact Us page, one for the Submit/Correct Story page, and the last one for the Advertise/Partnership page. I want the first form to have “Contact Us” subject by default, the second form with “Submit/Correct Story”, and the third with “Advertise/Partnership”. Since the plugin unable to do that, I’ve made a little modification to it

This is how the form looks like after modification.

Basically, I just add the Subject field in the contact form. This plugin will look for “subject” parameter in the URL. If found, it will be used as the subject. You can check all the three pages above for the live demo.

If interested, you can download the modified plugin here.

Note that it is based on WP-ContactForm v1.2. I just found out that v1.3 already out after I modified the plugin. Maybe I’ll modify that new version later.

Have fun

The updated version, v0.3, also fix the random keyword method (I just notice that it wasn’t really random before).

Go to my WordPress Plugin page to quickly download the new version or to [CA] Chitika’s official page for more detail information about the new feature (see Usage section).

And for those who don’t know what [CA] Chitika is, it’s my Wordpress plugin to easily attach Chitika eMiniMalls ad on blog post. You can read the detail of the plugin here.

I’ve modified the official page a little bit and added a Tips/Tricks section. You can find out how to use the plugin to display Chitika’s ad on your theme there.

For download and detail information, jump to [CA] Chitika plugin’s official page.

How It Works

Since the plugin is still in the early stage, I only focus on how to make it works. To add the Chitika’s code on your post, you simply use this tag:

<!--chitika(width,height)-->

so for example, if you want to display the banner layout (468 x 60), you’ll write:

<!--chitika(468,60)-->

The plugin will automatically substitute the tag with the corresponding Chitika eMiniMalls ad code. Note that you can only use the supported ad layout dimension.

Plugin also supports the targetted query/keyword (ch_query code). It can be based on four variables: tag parameter, custom field, post title, and default query. Even you can let Chitika decide the best keyword for your post, it’s not recommended if you’re using AdSense, since it againsts the AdSense TOS (contextual ads). More about targetting query/keyword on the Usage section below.

No admin interface yet, but I might add it in the future.

Requirement

Since this is a WordPress plugin, of course you need WordPress Currently tested under version 1.5.2. The plugin doesn’t use any Wordpress built-in functions, so it should work with other version as well.

Installation

1-Click Install: available using Wordpress Plugin Manager. Click here for the entry on the database.

Manual Install:

• Download the latest version.
• Extract the file.
• Modify the variable (see Usage section).
• Upload ca_chitika.php into your Plugins directory
• Activate the plugin from admin panel.

Live Demo / Screenshot

Check my post here. Or see below for the screenshot of the post.

Usage

First, change the $chitika_client on the plugin file (ca_chitika.php) with your Chitika’s user id.

As I already mention above, the basic usage is, if you want to display Chitika’s ad, you have to add the following tag inside your post.

<!--chitika(width,height)-->

so for example, if you want to display the banner layout (468 x 60), you’ll write:

<!--chitika(468,60)-->

Now, to target the query/keyword:

1. Direct Tag Parameter.
   This is the highest priority. If the plugin found the keyword parameter, it will automatically use it and ignore the other setting. Simply add the query/keyword list as the third parameter on the Chitika’s tag. To enter multiple keyword (the plugin will randomly choose one of them), separate it with comma.
   For example:
   • Single query/keyword.

     <!--chitika(468,60,"digital camera")-->

   • Multiple query/keyword.

     <!--chitika(468,60,"digital camera,mobile phone,computer")-->

2. Custom Field.
   To use it, first change the value of $chitika_base on the plugin file (ca_chitika.php) to “tags”. Then on your post, add a custom field named Chitika and enter the value of the targetted query you want. To enter multiple query (the plugin will randomly choose one of them), separate it with comma.
3. Post Title
   Using your post title is the easiest way since you don’t have to think about the query yourself. And if your title already contain at least one targetted keyword, Chitika will use it and ignore the rest of the non-targetted keyword.
   To use it, you only need to change the value of $chitika_base on the plugin file (ca_chitika.php) to “title”.
4. Default Query/Keyword
   The default query/keyword will be used if: (1) you ask for it, (2) the custom field is empty, or (3) the post title is empty (which is almost impossible).
   To use it, change the value of $chitika_query on the plugin file (ca_chitika.php) with the value of the targetted query you want. To enter multiple query (the plugin will randomly choose one of them), separate it with comma. If you want to force the plugin to always use the default query, change the value of $chitika_base to an empty string “”.

Starting from v0.3, additional parameter has been added, nosearch.

<!-chitika(widht, height, keyword, nosearch)-->

nosearch parameter is used to hide or show Chitika’s Search tab. By default, nosearch is set to 1 (true). Since most of you are using Google AdSense together with Chitika, this is to comply with AdSense for Search TOS. If you’re not using AdSense for Search, use 0 (false) to display Chitika’s Search tab.

Tips/Tricks

• Display Chitika eMiniMalls ad on your theme using the plugin.
  If you want to use the plugin to display Chitika’s ad code on your WP theme, you can use the following PHP code:

  <?php chitika(width, height, keyword list); ?>

  For example:

  <?php chitika(468, 60, "notebook"); ?>

  will display a 468×60 Chitika’s ad with “notebook” as the keyword. You can ignore the keyword list parameter as well, and it will automatically use the default setting on the plugin file.

• Display Chitika eMiniMalls ad code on your theme using the plugin with target keyword based on your post category.
  Using the same technique as I did with Amazon’s Recommended Link query, you can also targetted the Chitika’s ad keyword based on your post category. Here’s the code:

  <?php chitika(468, 60, single_cat_title()); ?>

To Do

Future plan:

• Admin interface
• Quicktags button (done in v0.2)

Version History

v0.3 - October 11th, 2005

• Add nosearch parameter to comply with AdSense TOS
• Fix random keyword algorithm

v0.2 - October 3rd, 2005

• Add direct keyword targetting on the tag
• Add Quick Tags button

v0.1 - October 3rd, 2005

• Initial release

If you have your own webserver or your webhosting allows you to modify your own .htaccess file, it is a good idea to learn as much as you can about .htaccess. There are lot of things you can do with .htaccess, such as: password protecting directories, restricted access to certain directories, save bandwidth, and much more.

This article covers everything a beginner need to know about .htaccess. Starting with the describtion of .htaccess until several interesting trick to play around with .htaccess file. Definetely worth reading, even for those whose not beginner again.

[ Read Article ]

Apparently, Wordpress uses an outdated MagpieRSS as their build-in RSS support. The new version of MagpieRSS is v0.7, while Wordpress still use v0.51. Updating the MagpieRSS will fix the problem with CA-Terasi plugin.

I’ll include the new rss-functions.php into CA-Terasi distribution file and soon update CA-Terasi plugin page with this how-to fix.

And that’s why I made this plugin :d

The main purpose of Extended Categories Manager is to merge 2 categories as one (maybe give support to merge more than two categories in the future?). But I decided to extend its ability a little bit and give another extra features as well.

Features

• Merge categories.
• Quickly rename category and its fancy name

Requirement

Since this is a WordPress plugin, of course you need WordPress Currently tested under version 1.5.2.

Installation

1-Click Install: Not available yet.

Manual Install:

• Download the plugin (link below)
• Extract the file.
• Upload ca_extcat.php into your Plugins directory
• Activate the plugin from admin panel. Go to Manage page. A new sub-menu is now available, Extended Categories.

Usage

1. Quick Edit Category
   Choose the category you want to rename, enter the new name and the new fancy name (if necesarry). Hit Rename button. I’ll soon add the ability to automatically create the correct fancy name (depend on the new category name) upon renaming category.
2. Merge Categories
   Select the 1st category, then the 2nd category. Hit Merge button. The 1st category will be merged into the 2nd category.
   Note that after merging , the 1st category will be deleted from the Category list. Be careful.

Screenshot

To Do

Future plan:

• Automatically create fancy name based on the new category name.
• Tidy categories – clean up categories that are not being used (no post assigned to that category).
• Option whether you want to delete the source category from the Category list or not after merging 2 categories.
• Maybe, and I said maybe, a better batch categories editing than Batch Category plugin.

Version History

v0.1 - August 30, 2005 [ download ]

• Initial release

A sample of Hello World program using HTML language below:

<HTML>
<!-- Hello World in HTML -->
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Hello World!</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Hello World!
</BODY>
</HTML>

Hey, even Wordpress automatically post Hello World entry upon its installation.

[ Visit The Hello World Collection ]