I’m trying to find out what is the best WordPress Twitter plugin? The ones promising I find I try out on this site, which is why I’m all of  a sudden is posting a lot ;) Twitter Tools, Simple Twitter Connect, WP to Twitter…

Please feel free to send me suggestions for WordPress plugins – that you think I should try or that you think I should create ;) I’m working on several promising plugins at the moment but they will probably be posted on my companys website first.

Well, the first plugin didn’t post anything to Twitter. But it might be because I already had a Twitter-plugin enabled (or is there a delay for Tweets?). Perhaps they are using the same API-classes or something. I’m giving it a go again.

I’m evaluating a lot of WordPress-plugins at the moment and they might get tested on this blog – so you know why I might behave weird for some time ;) This is work I’m doing for a client of mine, but you have to give the plugins a go before you install them, right? The first ones are a bunch of social plugins… it will be interesting to see if they deliver.

Today I made an easy upgrade to WordPress 3.0.1, automatic and thanks to my great webhost (swedish webhost Binero.se) I can get around the FTP-account form in WordPress. I just set some constants for method and permissions in wp-config.php:

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define( 'FS_METHOD', 'direct' );
define( 'FS_CHMOD_DIR', 0755 );
define( 'FS_CHMOD_FILE', 0644 );

How easy this made my life, since I tend to lot of Worpress blogs. If you want to learn some great configuration tips for your wordpressblog check out this article on digwp, theres a lot to do then just easy updates.

The WordPress Random Post Box plugin is updated to work in WordPress 3.0. You can download the new version 1.0.3 from the plugin directory.

The problem and solution
It was a simple fix but hard to find. As mentioned by Fabian Anderwald (thanks Fabian) files not loaded within wordpress framework now needs to include the file wp-load.php instead of wp-blog-header.php, a change in WordPress that might be a problem for all integrating WordPress in other applications. This also affected my ajax-call in Random Post Box plugin. So, if you are a developer and run in to the same proble change this:

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require('./wp-blog-header.php');

To this:

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require('./wp-load.php');

There was also a warning generated from an array, a bug which also had an easy fix.

The original post about the plugin »

I have made the first submit to WordPress plugin database with my Random Post Box plugin. It’s nice to see that they are using Subversion, my favorite versioning-system :)

If you want to see an example of the plugin in use, check out below the first post on Retrocamera.net.

Download Random Post Box from WordPress.org
See the plugin in use on Retrocamera.net (the little box below the first post).

Random Post Box is a WordPress plugin. It will let you place a box (div) anywhere on your blog, with templatetag or shortcode, and load random posts with an interval and fade effect. It uses jQuery (Ajax) which means that the content is loaded without loading the rest of the page. The timing can be controlled in the Admin Options-panel.

The template tag is <?php random_post_box(); ?>. You can also use the shortcode [random-post-box] in a page or post.

Features

• Insert placeholder with template tag
• Insert placeholder with shortcode
• Set time for displaying the post
• Set times for fade in and fade out affect
• Exclude or include posts by category
• Exclude posts by age (in days)
• Use title only
• Use post excerpt or bodycontent
• Strip tags from body
• Show/hide post metadata
• Prepared for translation

Installation

The installation is like mosts plugins:

1. Download and extract the files
2. Upload `random-post-box` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Place `<?php random_post_box(); ?>` in your templates, or [random-post-box] in a page or post.

The install doesn’t touch the database much, it just adds one option post.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an option to display several posts?
Not at the moment, but it might be included in future versions. It’s not recommended to use the
template tag several times on the same page.

How can I style the box?
The box is a div with id “random-post-box”, and the markup inside is quite similar to the
default theme.

The box changes size when loading a new post
You need to set the size to something static with CSS, or use some means to control the size. Use the id “random-post-box” as described
in the previous answer.

This is the first, very ruff version of this theme. I choose to call it an alpha version. But you are still free to download it :)

Ose-theme