WordPress Plugin Annoyances


February 7th, 2008

Creating a plugin for wordpress can be an extremely simple task, or altogether annoying.

I’ve recently been creating a plugin for “Featured” content on a new site that I’m pushing at the moment. Basically the plugin works like this :

  • Featured Posts belong to the “Featured” Category
  • Featured content can be controlled by the plugin menu in the WordPress Admin screen (updated by Editor or Administrator)
    • This is important as you dont want to have to sift through a list of 1000 posts to see which are marked as Featured or not – Even with the filter active this can be annoying
  • The Featured content can only be “Featured” if it is part of another category.
    • i.e Lets say the purpose was for books (Fiction and Non-Fiction). The Featured section might only cater for Fiction books. So the posts would be in Featured and Fiction categories. Simple.
  • The admin area can state the total amount of Featured posts.

The plugin then provides functions to the template to output the featured content.

One issue I had was using query_posts to select the posts that were not featured but in the chosen category (Fiction). The plugin function :
query_posts('category_name=Fiction&category_name=-Featured')
…just wouldnt work. I tried many variations of the query_post command along with category_name only to discover that wordpress does not facilitate anything more than basic requirements when using category_name. So, I retreat to using ‘cat’ instead. Boo! Now I have to query the database to get the ids of the categories I want to query on first. Not exactly efficient. Not to mention using more memory with additional variables to accommodate this etc.

Any other annoyances that you have encountered?

Categories: Programming, Website

2 Responses to “WordPress Plugin Annoyances”

  1. Nowadays, there are user-friendly websites that offers full fledge pleasure.
    There are some portals that allow you criminal case cheats
    to visit undiscovered locations and endless content have
    given consumers more choices when it concerns outsourcing game development venture.
    Is an elegant choice. Apple users can expect
    quality mobile sports at cost effective price. GameplayEvery time you wish your photo as wall paper.
    Even though this game surely has my criminal case cheats interest.

    Feel free to visit my web-site criminal case unlimited gold

  2. Smoking is a physical habit, not just a drug habit.

    The answer for this question is that electronic cigarettes
    are cheaper than the traditional tobacco cigarettes.
    The slimmer and also reduced styles make them very
    lighter than very mini designs.

"Thought leadership is how winners are differentiated in business."