Dogberry Patch

In my attempts to use version 2.0 of WordPress one of my greatest frustrations has been that many times when I go back and edit a post the edit function does not pull up the version I just saved but instead a cached copy from before my changes.

When I first noticed this I went searching for a fix but could not find where anyone had posted having the same problem. I have been meaning to go look again and if I didn’t find anything then to post a message at WordPress asking for some help.

Just today I noticed a new plugin available, Cache-Flush, which adds an item to the Admin|Options menu allowing you to manually flush the cache. His site does not say much about the plugin except that “it will allow you to manually flush the default WordPress cache”.

So now when I see that a cached copy without changes has been loaded I can just open the options menu and flush the cache. I hope WordPress gets this fixed in the next update – I am guessing that they left out the call to flush the cache for the single post when you ask to edit the post.

Another good use of this plugin is that the cache is stored in the wp-content directory. I routinely back this directory up since it has my themes, plugins (with mods), images, etc. Now I can flush the cache before I make the backup since there is no reason to backup the cache. Again, wish they had put the cache in a different directory but, hey, I was not asked.

As I have mentioned before I have been looking for a good way to store address book information in WordPress so that it can be used as a CMS. The Structured Blogging plugin is probably the way it should be done. It allows you to create forms for data input and structure the output.

The problem is that XML is completely foreign to me. To use this plugin I would need to spend quite a bit of time designing the input forms and designing the output. At this point I decided it is not worth the time when I can just enter the data free form.

If I ever need to set up a standard structure for book reviews or something similar though, this may be worth the effort. The plugin comes with quite a few input forms for reviews, events, lists, audio, video, people, and groups.

The Geo plugin lets you to attach GPS coordinates to any post you choose. With these coordinates in the post you then use the built in function to display a drop down menu allowing the reader to choose to display maps or other geographic data. You can look at this Geocaching post to see how it works.

Right now the following are built in to the plugin:

• Google Maps – Obvious
• TopoZone – Topographical map with X marking the spot
• Acme Mapper – a front-end for Terraserver, a large geographical database, with improvements
• GeoCache – Geocaches near the location
• GeoURL – GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory.
• SideBit – Another GeoURL site
• Degree Confluence Project – Documents the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world.
• FindU – weather, position, telemetry, and message data. The primary source of data is an amateur radio systems
• MapQuest – Another Map
• MapTech – Topographical map without the X mark

Continue reading »

I have just installed the PostLocation plugin which should allow me to do two things.

1. Keep Address info in WordPress within custom fields
2. Map the data

I really want a way to keep address info in WordPress since at the office we use it as our Content Management System (CMS) and, therefore, have a lot of posts that are formatted:

Name
Address City, State Zip

• phone numbers
• email address
• website

I would really like a ‘form’ I could fill out and then have the data be formated in WordPress.
If this post works I should have the address info of my office at the top of this post and a dropdown allowing you to map it too.

Wish me luck!

Update: Well no luck. Ran into a couple of errors.

• add_options_page had to change the end of the function call to include basename:
  • 5, basename(__FILE__), 'postlocation.php');
• I could not get City, State, or Zip to output. I looked at it but decided not to use the function for now so no solution.
• The post_id is not put into the post_meta SQL database. I had to fix this with the geo plugin also but didn’t get around to finding out how I did that.

I will watch to see if the function gets updated. Until then I will continure to look for a good way to use WordPress as a CMS with address information.

I just installed Smart Update Pinger which replaces WordPress’ built-in update ping functionality. WordPress sends a ping to the update services every time you hit the ‘save’ button. This plugin only pings the services once so that edits of existing posts are “silent”.

Why would you care?

When you edit an older post and ping a service, the service either shows your blog’s URL or the latest post’s URL. Never the edited post’s—unless it is the latest, of course. This is misleading and could even get you banned for pingspamming unless you’re careful.

I hope it gets updated to run on WordPress 2.0 real soon.