Although there are developer notes on the WordPress.org repository, we’ve decided to maintain a page here where we can possibly show a broader range of information in the future, depending on the take-up of the plugin.

Template tags

Spots provides 2 template tags for developers named icit_spot and icit_get_spot.

icit_spot

This template tag echos out a spot:

icit_spot( $id_or_name, $template );

It takes the following parameters:

• $id_or_name: Required. A numeric ID or the name of a spot as a string.
• $template: Optional. A string used in a call to get_template_part()

icit_get_spot

This template tag performs the same function, but it allows the developer to specify wether to echo the result, or return it as a variable:

icit_get_spot( $id_or_name, $template, $echo );

It takes the following extra parameter:

• $echo: Optional. Defaults to false. A boolean to indicate whether to echo the spot content or just return it.

Basic Usage

You can use spots to replace boilerplate text in your themes. If you have areas in your themes where typically you would hard code the text you could use the following code:

if ( function_exists( 'icit_spot' ) )
    icit_spot( 'Copyright' );

The above code would output the contents of a spot titled ‘Copyright’. If the spot does not exist it will be created as a draft. Spots in draft mode are only visible to logged in users with editing capabilities.

Templates

The plugin will initially look for a file in your theme using the get_template_part() function. If you have a file called spot.php in your theme that will be the default template for all spots. The icit_spot() function can take a second parameter for the template part to use for example:

if ( function_exists( 'icit_spot' ) )
    icit_spot( 'Copyright', 'copyright' );

The above code will make the plugin look in your theme folder for a file called spot-copyright.php to use for the output. If not available it will fall back to spot.php and if that is not available it will simply output the spot contents.

Use templates when you want to display a featured image from a spot or if you require some additional/alternative markup for the spot. Spots are just like posts, so in the templates you retrieve the contents of the spot using the_content() just as would in the loop.

Basic spot template example:

<div class="spot">
    <?php the_content(); ?>
</div> 

Spot template with featured image:

<div class="spot-with-image">
    <?php
    if ( has_post_thumbnail() )
        the_post_thumbnail( 'medium' );
    the_content(); ?>
</div> 

Additional

There are many filters and hooks available to get even more out of spots, so drop by the plugin homepage or use the forums if there is something you need to do with spots but aren’t sure how.

In the past, coding for this was a pain – you either needed to add an options page on your theme leaving your users with an HTML content area or deal with the weight of adding WYSIWYG support, or you’d just hard code these elements.

interconnect/it Spots solves this.  By adding a new content type to WordPress and using the familiar WP interface, you can now quickly and easily make these Spots into content managed elements.

A simple template call is all you need to instantiate a Spot:

if ( function_exists('icit_spot') ) {
 icit_spot('Copyright');
 }

This will then create a Spot which the user can edit using the familiar WP WYSIWYG tools.  If another theme comes along that requires the same Spot, then the content is already there and ready.

This is all built as part of the interconnect/it principle of “Content Manage Everything.” We hate hardcoding, and we’re sure most of you do.  But sometimes it happens because there’s only so much time available in a project.  With interconnect/it Spots you’ll be able to handle these items quickly and elegantly.

It’s Not a Developer Tool Only!

Spots also comes with its own widget, allowing you to assign your spots to any widget space available.  The widget even has its own WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly tweak your Spots widgets without leaving the widget admin page.

Let's do this!

OK, Sounds Great, Now Give Me Some Examples!

So, let’s say you’re using the 2011 theme and you want to add a Copyright notice to your sidebar.  Easy-peasy.  Simple install Spots, activate it, then go to Appearances | Widgets.

From there you will drag the Spot widget into your sidebar space.

Now, if you’ve already created your Spot you can simply select the spot you want and away you’re done. But if you haven’t already created your Spot the widget will offer to let you go and create a new Spot.

The Spots Widget

Here you’ll find yourself at a familiar WP editor.  Simply give it a sensible title and then put in what you like.  You want an image there?  Go for it.  You want special symbols?  The editor will help you.  Here we’ll call the spot Copyright, and we’ll input the content saying “This site is copyright 2011.”  Then hit Publish, just as you would for a post.

Once you’ve saved your spot, return to the widget administration page, go to the widget and from the dropdown select the spot you’ve just created.

The full Spot widget showing the editor.

Hit Save.  And once you do, you’ll notice something else.  The widget now features a WYSIWYG editor.  This means that you can quickly and easily edit your spot right there, without breaking your widget admin workflow.

If you now visit your site, you’ll see that the Copyright notice is where you’ve placed it.

Why Not Just Use the Text Widget?

A good question!  The text widget is great.  Simple, quick, and easy to use.  But it’s HTML only.  And that means that a user who has access to administer widgets can, by virtue of a bit of bad HTML code render the site completely broken.  They can do this using the editor, of course, but it’s *much* harder to do so.

The editor also means you can easily insert media.

A Spot widget, with an image in it.

Let’s take an example using the above.  Imagine we’re using the default WP 2011 theme, and the user decides to put a big image in his post.  What happens?  Well, it’s not a problem – most well-written themes (and we accept that many aren’t) will sort this out.  But what’s nice is that if you’re using a suitable shadowbox plugin the full size image, if it’s linked to, will pop up.  Try it for yourselves.

I’m Happy In Code – What Can I Do?

Ah, well, it gets better for you.

Let’s take the 2011 theme again.  Say you wish to place an Awesomeness element in the footer instead of the line saying “Proudly Powered by WordPress.”  This is so easy, it’s daft.

First, you need to get the footer.php file for the theme.

Then, find the div: <div id=”site-generator”> and remove everything that goes in-between that and the closing </div>

Replace the code with the following:

<?php if ( function_exists('icit_spot') ) {
 icit_spot('Awesomeness');
 } ?>

What’s nice is that if you visit a page on the site and the Spot called ‘Awesomeness’ hasn’t been created, the plugin will create a blank Draft version of the Spot ready for completion.

All the user then needs to do is to go in and edit that Spot and hey presto, the footer now looks like this:

See that? VERY.

So Can I Try It?

Sure!  We released the production version of Spots at the beginning of October 2011 and it is now available directly from the WordPress back-end or for download from the WordPress Extend repository.

Get WordPress Spots from the WordPress.org Repository

Version two brought a smarter UI and better workflow

When you’re migrating WordPress (or any other platform using serialized PHP strings in the database) between domains, you must use a safe search and replace method that preserves the integrity of the serialized string lengths. A simple of a dump file for http://localhost to, for example, http://thenewdomain.com is problematic because the length of the string changes but the indexes for the serialized strings does not. Consequently settings are lost and widgets disappear. Not good.

This script can now also handle multiply nested serializations, which can happen in transient values in WP at times, and it can also handle multi-byte Unicode changes safely. This is important now that internationalised domain names are allowed.

It’s Not Only for WordPress

It’s worth mentioning that the code will work for any platform that stores PHP serialized arrays in a MySQL database. You can easily use this script on Drupal, Joomla and many other systems where you need to change items across a database without messing up your stored arrays.

Download Search Replace DB v 2.1.0

Installation & Use

To use the script, you should install it in the root folder of your WordPress  install (if you wish it to automatically pick up your wp-config) or anywhere else you fancy, but you won’t get the automatic config.  You should also, to protect yourself from automated scanners looking for this script, rename it first.  eg, you could name it as rrrrreplace.php – you’d then visit a url like http://example.com/rrrrreplace.php and follow the on-screen instructions from there.

What you absolutely, 100% certainly MUST do is to delete the script once you’ve finished.  If somebody chances on it they can do anything to your database – and that wouldn’t be nice, would it?

If you’re using the script with systems such as Drupal or Joomla, everything should work, but we haven’t added any code to pick up on your config.  You may also have issues with Drupal blobs, in which case you should head on over to GIT (see link below) to grab the development copy which has handling for this included – feedback would be helpful, thank you.

Contribute!

A lot of developers now use this plugin. If you feel you can add something, there is now an official Github repository for this script at https://github.com/interconnectit/Search-Replace-DB

Version 2.1.0 (released Dec 2011) Improvements

The latest version 2.1.0 introduced a number of key improvements:

1. Added charset support, helping in all sorts of places (thanks Sergey Biryukov!)
2. Added option to skip guid column for migrating already live sites
3. Removed use of deprecated functions.
4. Other bug & comment fixes

Changes being prepared for Version 2.2.0

1. Support for BLOBS/Objects to give Drupal compatibility
2. Minor tweaks and corrections

github Repo – DRUPAL devs please test master branch!

To see how you can use this tool to aid migrations, check out our article on WordPress migrations or visit the WP Tuts+ article that mentions this script.

If you are in any doubt whatsoever about how to use this standalone script, then please consider getting an expert in.  It’s a really powerful bit of code that if used badly can damage a WP install beyond repair.  If you want help, get in somebody like us, for example, or any of the other great guys listed over at CodePoet.

IMPORTANT: This code is supplied with no warranty or support implied. You use it entirely at your own risk. Currently it is supplied under the WTFPL but this will change to the GPL eventually. And when you’ve finished using the script, PLEASE delete it as it can pose a serious security risk to your site.

Download Search Replace DB v 2.1.0

Changelog:

// Version 2.1.0:
// – Changed to version 2.1.0
// * Following change by Sergey Biryukov – merged in and tested by Dave Coveney
// – Added Charset Support (tested with UTF-8, not tested on other charsets)
// * Following changes implemented by James Whitehead with thanks to all the commenters and feedback given!
// – Removed PHP warnings if you go to step 3+ without DB details.
// – Added options to skip changing the guid column. If there are other
// columns that need excluding you can add them to the $exclude_cols global
// array. May choose to add another option to the table select page to let
// you add to this array from the front end.
// – Minor tweak to label styling.
// – Added comments to each of the functions.
// – Removed a dead param from icit_srdb_replacer

// Version 2.0.0 – returned to using unserialize function to check if string is serialized or not
// – marked is_serialized_string function as deprecated
// – changed form order to improve usability and make use on multisites a bit less scary
// – changed to version 2, as really should have done when the UI was introduced
// – added a recursive array walker to deal with serialized strings being stored in serialized strings. Yes, really.
// – changes by James R Whitehead (kudos for recursive walker) and David Coveney 2011-08-26

// Version 1.0.2 – typos corrected, button text tweak – David Coveney / Robert O’Rourke
// Version 1.0.1 – styling and form added by James R Whitehead
// Version 1.0.0 – original version by David Coveney

To Be Done

Ensure UTF8 encoding is enforced (see comments). Added in v2.1.0
Self deletion or security system to prevent accidental security risks.
Release CLI version for use on non-WP sites, or for other purposes (already supports use on any MySQL DB.)
Change to GPL V3.
Eliminate warnings and remove deprecated function calls. Added in v2.1.0
Add facility to subscribe to interconnect/it Newsletter.

Download Search Replace DB v 2.1.0

Donations

We’ve been asked a lot in the comments box below about accepting donations. But you can’t believe what a headache that is from an accounting and tax perspective.

Consequently all we can say is that if you wish to you can buy a personal gift for the key developers from one of the wishlists below – especially given that it’s a spare time project. If others who have contributed wish to provide us their wishlist links then we’d be more than happy to add them.

David Coveney is the project lead.
James Whitehead added the nice UI.
Robert O’Rourke gave us the branding and has made tweaks.

So it’s a shame that they don’t work that well together. In this article I go through the following:

• Posting to WordPress.com from the iPhone
• Posting to a self hosted version of WordPress using the Mobile Admin plugin
• Posting to WordPress from the iPhone and including images with the post

The latter is a particularly vexing problem, and one to which I can’t solve for WordPress.com. However, it’s relatively easy for self-hosting, or profesionally managed WordPress site owners to get images into their website, from their iPhone. Or for that matter, many other platforms. But this post in particular is all about getting on with WordPress when using an iPhone. Mainly because my shockingly generous girlfriend got me one for Xmas, I’m poorly, and I don’t feel like doing any ‘proper’ work today.

So let’s begin…

WordPress.com and the iPhone

WordPress and WordPress.com both use, by default, the TinyMCE editor. And it’s not a bad little editor either. A little buggy at times, but it’s feature rich and simple to use. What it won’t do, at least as supplied by WordPress, is work with the iPhone. You’ll have to tap on the Code tab above the editor and just enter plain text. You can then publish just fine.

If you’re only blogging from your phone you can turn off the visual rich editor in the WordPress Users | Your Profile tab in order to make this a simple one touch job. It may also save you the occassional Safari crashes that I experienced with the MCE editor running, even though I didn’t use it.

But… you probably aren’t limiting yourself to phone only blogging, and you probably like the editor. It lets you do nice things. But there’s also another problem… go down to the Upload part and you’ll notice that you can tap as much as you like on a “Choose File” button, but nothing will happen. So you can’t add images from your iPhone to your WordPress blog.

WordPress, the iPhone, and the Mobile Admin Plugin

If you’re a regular mobile blogger and you have your own, self-hosted or managed WordPress installation, then you have the option of plugins. And one of the handiest for WordPress is the Mobile Admin Plugin. You’ll need to follow the usual plugin steps – checking for compatibility, installation, and activation. But once you’ve followed the instructions it really does make using the iPhone (and for that matter, many other phones) on WordPress sites a cinch.

What’s great is that if you access the site admin using a normal PC, you still get the normal control panel.

Below are a couple of screenshots showing it in action:

Lovely isn’t it? And if you’re wondering why I’m not posting any of my own screenshots, it’s because I’ve not hacked my own iPhone in order to get the SSH access I’d need to take screenshots.

There’s only one downside, and I feel it’s a big one, to the whole Mobile Admin experience. It’s important to me as I’m a visual type and I like illustrations wherever possible – especially if I’m travelling and feel like showing some shots of where I’ve been. I’m also particularly keen to make it work as I had photoblogging to my WordPress site (Dave’s Geeky Play Area Blog) working just fine from a Nokia N95. Ok, that took some hacking too, but I’ve had photos… I want to continue with photos!

Posting Images to a WordPress Blog With Your iPhone

If you host your WordPress site yourself, you can do a lot… and get images from your iPhone directly to your site!

Now, the iPhone won’t tolerate MCE yet, and it won’t use the upload wizard in standard WordPress. So what’s to do? ftp tools don’t exist yet, so you can simply ftp your shots onto your site… which suggests that you’re stuck.

Well fear not. I’ve been casting around all afternoon and found the following works best. Basically, with WordPress you can set it up so that you can post to it by e-mail. This does require setting up either a cron job (something many hosting providers won’t do or allow) or it means hacking around so that the job fires off every now and then. Thing is, the standard WordPress wp-mail.php program doesn’t actually work all that well with images. In fact, it doesn’t work at all with anything other than text. So you’ll need something a little more…heavyweight.

But with WordPress there’s always a way. The plugin you need is called Postie, and this is what you have to do:

1. Install the Postie plugin
2. Read the instructions! Maybe do that before installing it?
3. Go to the Postie config page as instructed (it’ll show the readme first – just refresh), and set your image resize to something appropriate to your theme
4. Set up an e-mail account on your host that’s especially set up for receiving posts to your blog. Keep it a secret and make the password tricky too. Configure this information in Postie, bearing in mind the default port for e-mail is 110 (not defaulted into the form by the Postie plugin).
5. And then the easiest way to get an image to your site is from the iPhone image gallery press the little swoosh icon in the bottom left of the image viewer.
6. Tap Email Photo.
7. In the New Message box you should enter the To: e-mail address that you set up in step 4. You can also enter some text in the box. Press Send.
8. Now, the content won’t appear yet in your blog, but it’ll be waiting… all you need is to send a browser to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php or, if your WordPress is installed in its own directory: http://www.yourdomain.com/WordPressDirectory/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php
9. You can set up a cron job if you’re allowed, but it’s not my favourite way anyhow. I like to just have a favourite in my browser for mail posting which I click on whenever I need to update the site.

And that’s it! Ok, it took a bit to get there, and it’s not integral to WordPress so you can’t guarantee support on version changes, but… it’s one way forward, I’ve tested it, and it works well on WP 2.3.1. If you spot any mistakes, please comment!

If this post is popular I may well try and add some screenshots, photos and sample posts. I also plan to do a similar post soon on the Nokia N95 and WordPress.