herb miller

WordPress plugin specialist

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.
Original process vs New process for cloning new content

See bobbingwide/oik-clone#50.

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 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 /blog text, 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.

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Categories: WordPress

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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.

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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.

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Total downloads on wordpress.org reached 400,000

I’ve been slowly working through my plugins on wordpress.org, updating them so that they no longer display the “This plugin’s old and may not work message”. Today, I noticed that the total downloads of my plugins on wordpress.org has reached 400,000. [Read more…]

Categories: WordPress

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oik-clone v2.0.0 – reconciliation with push, pull and import

What has cloning ever done for us?

Asked by: Fuzzy Duck, Ducky Fuzz and the other one

Coming up to five years ago I published my requirements for cloning content between sites. One of the planned enhancements was to support pull cloning. ie. Pulling updated content back from a slave server to the local system, providing the same content cloning functionality as for push cloning, including attachments.

I’m going on holiday to New Zealand fairly soon. I won’t be taking my laptop. I want to be able to import any changes I make on my websites back to my development machine.

Back in June 2019, when I first started writing this post, I developed a batch interface to support push, pull and reconciliation. Then I got sidelined with Do Not Clone logic to cater for posts that get cloned both between subdomains and local and slave servers.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve written a new Slave tab for the oik options > Clone admin page. I think I’ve nearly cracked it. It even seems to work for attachments. I can Import, Pull, Push and Clone content, including re-usable blocks.

Now I’m going to find out if it really does work. Fingers crossed. I’ve packaged a new version of the plugin as v2.0.0-beta-20200127. I don’t think I need to install the plugin on my servers since the changes apply to my local development. But I might as well.

Wish me luck! PS. I will be taking backups before I do anything too drastic.

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UK tides Northney

Tide Times & Heights for Northney on 11th April 2021
00:32 - High Tide ( 4.65m )
05:12 - Low Tide ( 0.52m )
12:39 - High Tide ( 4.49m )
17:31 - Low Tide ( 0.36m )

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Acronyms

Acronyms are great when they come in letters 3.
There’s easy one’s like ICL, IBM, BBC
My job means that I learn new ones …SEM, SEO
there surely ain’t a TLA
that I don’t think I know.

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Categories: PoemsTags: ,

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Tide times from tidetimes.co.uk

Tide Times & Heights for Northney onSunday, 11 April 2021
Low Tide:05:12 ( 0.50m )
High Tide:12:39 ( 4.50m )
Low Tide:17:31 ( 0.40m )
High Tide:00:55 ( 4.70m )

Tide times from tidetimes.org.uk

Tide Times & Heights for Northney on 11th April 2021
00:32 - High Tide ( 4.65m )
05:12 - Low Tide ( 0.52m )
12:39 - High Tide ( 4.49m )
17:31 - Low Tide ( 0.36m )

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