Help To Win The Coolest WordPress Competition!

Posted in: WPengineer Misc

Wordpress Coolest Blog Competition

Yes, our blog is cool enough!

WPengineer participates on the contest for the coolest WordPress Competition.wpwebhost.com is searching for the best blog that is writing about WordPress. Since we are talking quite a bit about WordPress on our blog we thought we give a shot and join the competition.

Big prices are on the table, if we can grab one of them we are happy to give them to our readers in a WPengineer competition. 🙂

  • 1st Prize Winner: $500 Cash (via PayPal) + The Unlimited Video Theme Pack from Press75.com worth $295 + 6 Months WooThemes Club Single User Subscription for from WooThemes worth $250 + WP Freedom Plan Life Time Hosting Sponsorship worth $100/year.
  • 2nd Prize Winner: $250 Cash (via PayPal) + Developer License for Content Press WordPress Premium Template from WTM worth $249 + Personal License for Themes of Your Choice from Zidalgo worth $75 + WP Freedom Plan Life Time Hosting Sponsorship worth $100/year.
  • 3rd and 4th Prize Winners: $125 Cash (via PayPal) + 1 Year WP Freedom Plan worth $100

The Contest will end on November 15th, 2008 and the WP WebHost team will select 20 entries from the submissions and post it after the deadline. And, the public will vote for the winners.

To participate on this competition, this post has to have at least 5 comments. So please leave a comment, so we can enter the contest. Maybe you can tell us why we deserve to win a prize 😉

Add WordPress Dashboard Widgets

Posted in: WordPress Hacks

Finally WordPress 2.7 is coming along with widgets in the dashboard area, so it will be possible to adjust your dashboard as you like.

For Plugin or theme authors it's even more interesting, since they can give the users additional value to their Plugins. They can offer information from their Plugin directly on the dashboard. The user can decide if he likes to display them or not.

It's easy to integrate and can be controlled like Meta Boxes (explained in detail). The following example shows how you can integrate a widget in a dashboard.
Continue reading …

WordPress FTP Data With Constant

Posted in: WordPress Hacks

Since version 2.5 it's possible to update your Plugins automatically. It's necessary to input your FTP information before you update your Plugin.

It is very popular and an easy process, but I like to upload the newest version via my FTP client. How sure is the use of your FTP login information in your WordPress Admin? If you like to use another way, you can just put a definition of constants in your wp-config.php. Continue reading …

OpenSearch – Search Field For Mozilla And Internet Explorer With WordPress

Posted in: WordPress Tutorials

Nowadays search field in your browser improved quite a bit, even IE supports OpenSearch format. But what is so great about OpenSearch and how easy it is to use with your WordPress installation has two aspects: WordPress comes already with OpenSearch and it's easy configurable with XML.

in IE 7

You just have to put a link in your theme and a xml file on your server to let the browser know that your blog supports the search field. So go ahead and improve your Plugin with little work and no use of a Plugin.

The following code should explain it. Adjust the syntax and link to the favicon and xml-file.

After you uploaded both files (favicon.ico und os.xml) add a link into the header.php of your theme. You can use the code one by one if you put os.xml in your root. After that it's possible to integrate your blog in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The declaration of each XML tag is well documented on the OpenSearch website.

for the head area in your template - header.php:

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/os.xml" />

XML file:

Copy code, adjust and save as os.xml, then upload on your server.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
	<ShortName>bueltge.de [by:ltge.de]</ShortName>
	<Description>Use bueltge.de to search on blog.</Description>
	<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://bueltge.de/?s={searchTerms}"></Url>
	<Contact>info@bueltge.de</Contact>
	<LongName>bueltge.de [by:ltge.de] Weblog Search</LongName>
	<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://bueltge.de/favicon.ico</Image>
	<Tags>Weblog WordPress Webdevelopment</Tags>
	<Url type="application/atom+xml" template="http://bueltge.de/?q={searchTerms}&pw={startPage?}&format=atom"/>
	<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://bueltge.de/?q={searchTerms}&pw={startPage?}&format=rss"/>
	<Url type="text/html" template="http://bueltge.de/?q={searchTerms}&pw={startPage?}"/>
	<Query role="example" searchTerms="blog"/>
	<Developer>Frank Bueltge</Developer>
	<Attribution>
	    Search data Copyright 2007, bueltge.de [by:ltge.de], All Rights Reserved
	</Attribution>
	<SyndicationRight>open</SyndicationRight>
	<AdultContent>false</AdultContent>
	<Language>de-DE</Language>
	<OutputEncoding>UTF-8</OutputEncoding>
	<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
</OpenSearchDescription>