The removal of jQuery-migrate from WordPress 5.5 broke a couple of my sites. Using the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin helps you to survive the issue. But it just hides the underlying problems in the same way that WordPress core had been doing up until now.
SB Children block – my first Single Block plugin
The SB Children bock plugin, which delivers a WordPress block called Children is now available in the WordPress Block Directory.
Horizontally scrolling tables on narrow devices
I’ve been looking at how to enable horizontal scrolling on tables created by the [bw_table] shortcode, when the device width is narrow. I want to be able to do it using CSS, without JavaScript. I also want to be able to style the table in the native Gutenberg blocks.
Having looked at a couple of solutions, I believe I’ll be able to achieve it having the table nested in a Group block, and providing the CSS styling using my CSS block.
oik-clone v2.0.0-beta-20200616 – cloning new content made easier
Today, after many months of procrastination, I’ve implemented a small change to my oik-clone plugin that should significantly improve my publishing process. oik-clone now has the ability to automatically re-clone content with newly added (uncloned) featured images.
The primary purpose is to ensure that the target system has the correct ID for the featured image.
| Original process | New process |
|---|---|
| Create the content. | Same |
| Upload and attach the featured image. | Same |
| View the content. | Same |
| In the output of the [clone] shortcode select the post and the child attachment to clone. Click on clone | Same. |
| Edit the content – check the SEO meta description, correct a typo or something, update the taxonomies then update. | No need to edit. You’re done. |
| View the content again. | |
| Clone the content again. |
Clone/cloned output before cloning
Post without a featured image. Note: post ID 50 was extracted from the github shortcode. It’s a red herring I’ve learnt to live with.
Clone/cloned output after cloning
How to hide a WordPress Multi Site site
Using a plugin called network-privacy you can hide a WordPress Multi Site site so that it’s only accessible to a particular type of user.
You can use this if you want to create a staging / development site within a WordPress Multi Site network.
How to remove /blog/ from WordPress Multi Site permalink structure
If you’ve ever converted a single installation of WordPress into a WordPress Multi Site ( WPMS ) network using subdirectories, you’ll have noticed that the prefix for blog permalinks for the primary site changes from https://example.com/
to https://example.com/blog/
If you are concerned that this new permalink structure will cause problems in the future then you may choose to remove the blog/ part.
It is possible to remove this prefix
- Login as a Super Admin
- Go to Network Admin -> Sites
- Choose the Main site and click on Edit.
- Choose the Settings tab
- Find the Permalink Structure text field.
- Remove the
/blogtext, leaving/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ - Scroll to the bottom and Save Changes.
Why would you want to do this?
- So that permalinks for blog posts remain unchanged.
- Because you think it would be better for SEO.
- To prevent broken links.
Caveats
Some people say that making this change is not recommended. The reason for adding the blog/ prefix is to prevent conflicts with URLs in other sites in the network.
If you do this on the main site of your network, you must make sure that none of your posts, categories, tags, or custom post types and taxonomies have a slug equal to the slug of a subsite.
I did this on a local install, creating a subsite called 2020. Then I forgot about it, updated to WordPress 5.5-beta3 and thought the hack had stopped working. I’m going to have to fiddle with the new sub-site’s name now.
WordPress is old
WordPress was first released on 27th May 2003. It reached 17 years old on 27th May 2020. It’s rather popular you know. Here are a few of WordPress’s significant events from 2003 to the current day.
Dynamic content block in oik-blocks v0.4.0-beta-20200209
I’m away on vacation very soon. I’ve taken the opportunity to release another beta version of my oik-blocks plugin with a new block called Dynamic content block ( oik/content-block ).
This block implements 11 of my dynamic content shortcodes delivered by the oik base plugin, hence the prefix. When it’s ready for production then I’ll deliver the block in oik v4.1.0.
oik v4.0.0 finally released
It’s been nearly 9 years since I first released my oik plugin to wordpress.org
Today, after many months of procrastination I finally released another update. oik v4.0.0 now embraces the block editor.
Well, it delivers a number of blocks; 6 in total, though wordpress.org only detected 5.
Total downloads on wordpress.org reached 400,000
Today I noticed that my total downloads from wordpress.org has reached 400,000.