I stumbled across an abandoned plugin called WP Ads which was, for want of a better word, rubbish. What it was though was suitably basic to give me a good starting point. So after removing all of the donate buttons and bad coding practise I added a widget and a shortcode to power it. I made it capable of supporting multiple advert zones and even category support so that it will only show certain adverts in different categories.

How to use

It adds a settings page beneath the WordPress admin settings menu. You get a list of adverts and then a list of zones. Clicking add new will give you an idiot proof data entry page where you just fill in a few simple fields and you’re done. Zone creation and naming is done on the fly by adding a name of your choice into the zone field. Any and all adverts must have a zone name and the widget essentially picks up all of those by the same name and rotates them.

You do need to know a bit of basic HTML if you wanted to use links and images although if you are using adsense or some adverts from affiliate window or some other system they generally provide you with a block of HTML to paste into the box for it to work.

I am happy to extend this plugin if anyone has any ideas to make it any better. My intention for it is to keep is very simple and perhaps streamline the interface and data storage a bit. Any and all comments welcome.

Download here: SB Ads (7.76 kB)

Each WooCommerce installation will have the reviews tabs added to individual product pages. As I understand it it uses the WordPress comment system to hold review information (so says one forum, i’ve not bothered to check it out). I noted that people are wanting to know how to turn this functionality off as reviews don’t really apply to all products in all shops. Adding this code to your theme functions.php file will remove the reviews tab. If you want it back then just remove the lines.. simples.

remove_action( 'woocommerce_product_tabs', 'woocommerce_product_reviews_tab', 30);
remove_action( 'woocommerce_product_tab_panels', 'woocommerce_product_reviews_panel', 30);

Woocommerce, by default, doesn’t work from a shortcode (it can do but not by default), instead it will show the shop page content using it’s own template system. It will look for arguments/parameters attached to the shortcode in order to augment the number of columns on any product listing page. I know I know, I just said that we aren’t using a shortcode but it’s looking for one anyway? Almost.. here is the solution:

global $woocommerce_loop;
$woocommerce_loop['columns'] = 3;

There we have it, two lines. Either a sign of my genius or incompetence. I suspect the latter but for the moment I am fairly proud of this achievement. Essentially $woocommerce_loop contains the settings for the product page and by default the columns argument isn’t set leaving it up to the shortcode to populate (if used) or to fall back to it’s standard setting.. 4!

So after hours of trawling through code trying to find a WordPress Filter I can hook onto, I thought I would try this little gem (added to my theme functions.php) and magically it worked. This post can now hopefully help the next person to have to deal with this or indeed for someone to point out my stupidity and show me how it should have been done.

I found the fabulous Wootique theme that is offered as the general purpose theme from WooThemes contains a featured products flipper at the top as an option. It looks great and works with WooCommerce already so why not just make that autocycle? So I did…

Wootique Featured product flipper

The following block of Javascript/jQuery will cause the slider to cycle on every two seconds and when it gets to the end it will reverse direction and start in the opposite direction. Rinse and repeat…

I also added some code to detect when your mouse is hovering over the slider to pause it so it doesn’t carry on sliding whilst you are reading or studying one of the product images.

I shall make the entire thing into a plugin at some point but for now this works beautifully with Wootique or any Woo Theme with the same flipper at the top.

The Code

var hoverpause = 0;

jQuery(document).ready(function () {
    sb_timed_cycle('next');

    jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-container').hover(
	function () { hoverpause = 1; },
	function () { hoverpause = 0; }
    );
});

function sb_timed_cycle(direction) {
    setTimeout( function() {
	if (!hoverpause) {
	    if (direction == 'next') {
		if (jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-next').attr('disabled') != 'disabled') {
		    jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-next').click();
		} else {
		    direction = 'prev';
		    jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-prev').click();
		}
	    } else {
		if (jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-prev').attr('disabled') != 'disabled') {
		    jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-prev').click();
		} else {
		    direction = 'next';
		    jQuery('#featured-products .jcarousel-next').click();
		}
	    }
	}
	sb_timed_cycle(direction);
    }, 2000 );
}

Using my example of a single membership level and to not add the complexities of payment at this stage we simply need to be able to show one kind of content to some people and another to others. Well that’s easy.. why not use the WordPress user system? Logged out people see a site from one angle and logged in see others. What could be more simple.

At this stage you might be wondering how this could be possible and to make it look good. Well easy really given a couple of hours and some basic PHP knowledge. You would only really need to change a few things:

• Navigation
• Widgets (optional)
• Page template(s)

Navigation

The top menu on each site will do what it says on the tin, it will show pages of your choosing (using the WordPress menus system which is built into most themes these days). So let’s just show one menu to logged out and another to logged in? Open up header.php of your theme and find the call to wp_nav_menu then duplicate the line adding it into a block of logic as follows:

get_currentuserinfo();
global $current_user;

if ($current_user->ID) {
	wp_nav_menu(....... //logged in menu code
} else {
	wp_nav_menu(....... //logged out menu code
}

You would need to have defined the logged out menu in your functions.php file but that’s just a case of copying and pasting a line of code or even easier.. just pasting this in:

register_nav_menus(array(
	'logged_out_header'=>'Header Navigation (Logged Out)'
));

Of course you don’t need to do any of this. You could just do it by adding only public pages to the menu or putting all of the pages there and either showing a no access type message or redirecting those pages that users aren’t allowed to see.

Widgets

If your site uses widgets then it will have a register_sidebar declaration in functions.php somewhere. Use the same logic block as above to simply show a different sidebar to logged out users. This can be done in sidebar.php (and any others you might have defined) on a block that looks like this:

dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_name');

As follows:

get_currentuserinfo();
global $current_user;

if ($current_user->ID) {
	dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_name');
} else {
	dynamic_sidebar('logged_out_sidebar_name');
}

Or in the individual template pages themselves on code that looks like this:

get_sidebar();

as follows:

get_currentuserinfo();
global $current_user;

if ($current_user->ID) {
	get_sidebar();
} else {
	get_sidebar('logged_out'); //this will call sidebar-logged_out.php instead of sidebar.php
}

Once again this is optional, you could just only put public widgets on there or use the redirect method that I shall show you in the next section.

Page Template(s)

Themes will use page.php when viewing a WordPress ‘page’ (as opposed to post, custom post type of taxonomy etc..) so we could edit this to include a redirection if a user hasn’t got access. Most likely you would actually create a new template and select it for those pages which are for members only. Or the reverse.. default the site to members only and then select explicitly the pages which are public. Either way add the following code right at the top of the file:

get_currentuserinfo();
global $current_user;

if (!$current_user->ID) {
	wp_redirect(site_url()); //redirect back to homepage
}

If you don’t know how to create a new custom template then simply duplicate page.php and call it something like page-protected.php then at the top of the file add the following code to make WordPress register is as a selectable template:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Protected Page
*/
?>

Improving the code/implementing it

All of this copying and pasting of the current user code to determine if someone is logged in seems a bit long winded so the sensible thing would be to add something to your functions.php file in your theme that does it and returns true or false depending on logged in status. Try this code:

function sb_user_logged_in() {
$return = false;
get_currentuserinfo();
global $current_user;

if ($current_user->ID) {
	$return = true;
}

return $return;

Then you can just use:

if (sb_user_logged_in()) { ...

By this stage I can almost hear you roaring “why not use is_user_logged_in()?”.. well you could do but then if you wanted to improve on the protection or change it from logged in to a different role for instance you would then have to find every instance of the logic in your code and change it. Using the centralised method I describe you would just need to change the logic in one place. And yes you could just use is_user_logged_in() in the central function.. it’s just my preference to do it the long winded way

More

I shall work on a new post to show you how to add a ‘no access’ type message or include the use of shortcodes to restrict access although you would really then want to be using one of the many very good plugins out there to do it.

Data Entry

Your clients can add their own slides to the system using a custom post type interface which the plugin adds automatically. There are literally three options per slide and two of them are optional! You need to add the URL of the slide, the caption if there is one and the link for the slide (again, if there is one). The idea being that you just add the slides and don’t spend the entire day wondering which transition looks best. I have gone for a simple fade between slides which seems to suit most people and a 3.5 second delay between transitions (control for this coming in the next version) which is long enough to read the slide but not long enough for them to get bored of the image or wonder if it’s one of those sliders you need to manually forward!

Adding the Slider

Simple… I added a shortcode for you [sb_slider], what more do you need? For those that want to add it to their template then they can do by using the PHP function call  as follows:

<?php
echo sb_sl_get_slider();
?>

I would recommend using this next version just in case you decide not to use the plugin and deactivate it. It will prevent you getting a fatal error.

<?php
if (function_exists('sb_sl_get_slider')) { echo sb_sl_get_slider(); }
?>

So there we have it. A nice basic slider which you can use time and time again for free (Nivo Slider themselves charge $15 for their WordPress plugin although I am sure it’s likely better.. nothing quite feels as good as ‘free’ now does it).

Download

Download it here and let me know what you think: SB Slider (11.88 kB)

Limitations

The obvious flaw is that you can only have one set of slides so if you wanted to have one slider on the homepage and one on the blog for instance it wouldn’t work yet. I plan to add categories to the plugin to make this possible at some point.

My latest issue has been the checkout fields system. I am told by one of their staff that it’s due a rewrite in future versions however for those using older versions… You might notice that it’s not the simplest system in the world. Don’t get me wrong it’s my shopping cart of choice but I think there are a few areas where a little work could polish it up nicely. Checkout fields define what questions are asked of the buyer on the checkout page. Default values include their billing and shipping address but it’s not uncommon to want to add fields of our own to that like newsletter signup for instance. A project I am working on at the moment has a pickup point field present which we want to add to the user or admin emails. The ‘shortcodes’ provided are limited but luckily the filter ‘wpsc_transaction_result_message’ (and a couple of others) allows us to hook into it and run our own code as follows:

add_filter('wpsc_transaction_result_message', 'sb_transaction_results_custom_fields');
add_filter('wpsc_transaction_result_report', 'sb_transaction_results_custom_fields');
add_filter('wpsc_transaction_result_message_html', 'sb_transaction_results_custom_fields_html');

function sb_transaction_results_custom_fields_html($message) {
return sb_transaction_results_custom_fields($message, true);
}

function sb_transaction_results_custom_fields($message, $html=false) {
$values = array();

foreach ($_SESSION['wpsc_checkout_saved_values'] as $key=>$value) {
if ($value) {
if (is_array($value)) {
$value = implode(', ', $value);
}

$values[] = $key . ': ' . $value;
}
}

$message = str_replace('%custom_fields%', implode(($html ? '<br />':"\n"), $values), $message);

return $message;
}

These functions will replace the new shortcode %custom_fields% with the entire contents of the checkout form. It’s not pretty in this form which is why we should use the ID and then reference the field name in the database when making it into a plugin. I might do at some point but for now it’s a handy little bit of reference code for people to work with. I am happy to explain more if anyone if interested.

Running the following code will, in effect, delete the contents of that directory and all things using that directory in a reading capacity (working with the logs as opposed to writing their own) should speed up.

sudo rm -f /private/var/log/asl/*.asl

Note that this is non recoverable, hence my suggestion you take a backup first. Hope it helps someone else like it did me!

Some users were reporting issues with the email coming through as ignoring the HTTP headers and including all of them within the email itself. A big mess indeed. Now it uses the wp_mail command so it can be hooked into by other plugins. Also because of this function usage it means that I don’t need to write the headers manually.. WordPress does all that for you. It should now be a lot more compatible with the various mail clients.

Download it here: SB Mail Attachment Widget (2.7 kB)