We developed a site that has really rich subpages (child pages) but the parent page is mostly a blank placeholder that directs people to the subpages. Instead of merely leaving a blank parent page, we wanted to give a preview of the content on each of the subpages. I found the code for how to do it in this post, Display title & excerpt of child pages.  

get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_parent = ".$post->ID." AND post_type = 'page' ORDER BY menu_order", 'OBJECT'); ?>

This post was originally published at How to list subpages with a title and excerpt in WordPress on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Over at illuminea, we’ve been migrating WordPress sites for years. So we thought we’d seen it all when it came to WordPress migration. And yet, recently we encountered an issue that we had never dealt with before, that puts a snag in the ease with which you can move WordPress sites: data serialization.

One of the reasons we love WordPress is because it’s so future-proof. What I mean by that is that once you have created a WordPress site, you aren’t stuck where you are for the following reasons:

• Content is separate from form so at any point you can completely redesign your site while retaining content and link structure. This is important to ensure you don’t lose traffic from search engines and inbound links.
• As long as the WordPress software continues to be developed, it will continue to support modern web technologies so users are not left with an archaic system that, for example, adores IE7 but doesn’t know what HTML5 is.
• Your site is portable. You need to move a site to another server, or even another domain name? No problem. A few steps related to find-and-replace, exporting and importing the database, and setting up global 301 redirects (if you’ve changed domains) and you’re there.

All the above is true, except the data portability point. It’s not quite as true as I thought it was.

Data serialization and its impact on data portability

(I am a big newbie when it comes to data serialization, so the following is based on what I’ve managed to learn over the while and could very well be inaccurate/wrong.)

It seems that developers use data serialization in order to improve performance or efficiency in a database. Instead of creating a new table for data, or storing data in a table which could end up having wasteful empty fields, you can keep all the data in an array in one field. This leads to saved space and simplified SQL statements. Serialized data is stored and recovered using PHP’s serialize() and unserialize() functions. Terri Swallow explains how using serialized data for her multi-user plugin helped save her from creating hundreds of new options for every new user created.

Here’s an example of serialized data from Andrew Nacin:

But there are serious drawbacks to using serialized data. One problem is that you can’t run a MySQL query on serialized data. The data would have to be pulled out of the table via PHP, unserialized, and then searched using PHP instead of MySQL (thanks to Catch My Fame for explaining this). So let’s say you are storing user data in serialized format, but you want to find out how many of your users are from Australia, you can’t get that info easily.

A serious problem, in my opinion, is the impact serialization has on data portability. It makes it near-impossible to port a WordPress site from one domain to another without losing data. Another possible, yet unlikely issue, is if you need to port data from WordPress into another programming language – admittedly a rare occurrence, but a possible one that needs to be considered.

There are developers out there who are very frustrated by the use of serialized data:

An anonymous comment left on the PHP manual entry for serialize():

Please! please! please! DO NOT serialize data and place it into your database. Serialize can be used that way, but that’s missing the point of a relational database and the datatypes inherent in your database engine. Doing this makes data in your database non-portable, difficult to read, and can complicate queries. If you want your application to be portable to other languages, like let’s say you find that you want to use Java for some portion of your app that it makes sense to use Java in, serialization will become a pain in the buttocks. You should always be able to query and modify data in the database without using a third party intermediary tool to manipulate data to be inserted…That’s not to say serialize() is useless. It’s not…Just don’t abuse serialize because the next guy who comes along will have a maintenance or migration nightmare.

Alexander Scammon: “WordPress does a silly thing.  It has serialized data inside its database.”

Serialized data usage that can have a serious impact on WordPress portability:

• Some widget data (though for some reason we’ve never had issues retaining widgets via a database dump)
• Some theme settings
• Plugin data

It was related to serialized plugin data that we had our first encounter with data serialization. We had installed a plugin to help a client manage a technical issue on their site without having to get too technical. They entered hundreds of entries in the plugin, but upon moving the site from development to production, the data disappeared. By that point, there was no way to recover it unfortunately, but we had definitely learned a painful, important lesson.

So what do we do?

Some suggestions:

1. Theme and plugin developers: please seriously consider whether the benefits of serializing your data outweigh the potential future problems it could cause.
2. Theme and plugin developers: if you must use serialized data, please try to make sure there’s some way to export and import the data. Even a simple .csv export is better than nothing.
3. WordPress users: try to ascertain before using a theme or plugin whether the data is stored in a serialized format.

But let’s say you find yourself with a database that includes serialized data. Here are some tools created by generous souls that might be able to help you port your data without losing it:

Peach – an online utility that aims to deal with the fact that WordPress stores URLs in serialized format, which makes it hard to move a site from one domain to another, or from staging to production. To use this tool (which works best in Chrome) ou drag-and-drop an .sql file into the square in the middle of the page, and set a new domain.

WordPress Search and Replace Tool – this script can also handle multiply nested serializations and multi-byte Unicode changes, which is important now that internationalized domain names are allowed. The code will work for any platform that stores PHP serialized arrays in a MySQL database (Drupal, Joomla, etc.). You must delete the script from your server once you’re finished with it.

fix_serialization.php – Not much description provided with this tool, but Alex Scammon provides instructions in his comment below.

WP Migrate DB – this is a plugin that exports your database as a MySQL data dump, does a find and replace on URLs and file paths, then allows you to save it to your computer.  It even takes into account serialized data and updates the string length values. (thanks Matt Wiebe)

After trying these tools, we wrote an update on data serialization.

This post was originally published at Data portability and data serialization in WordPress on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Darren Hoyt, that brilliant WordPress developer and designer, explains how you can publish RSS feed headlines on your WordPress blog with a built-in WordPress function instead of using a plugin.

As Darren says, this code snippet is not intended for scrapers; it’s for people who have more than one blog, or are part of a blogging network, and would like to have their readers exposed to their other blog material.

The necessary code is what pulls all the Planet WordPress feeds into your WordPress dashboard. Darren took that code from wp-admin/index-extra.php and rewrote it into a snippet which you can insert into your theme files:

<?php

require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss-functions.php');

// here's where to insert the feed address

$rss = @fetch_rss('http://www.darrensmusicnews.com/feed/');

if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {

?>

<ul>

<?php

// here's (5) where to set the number of headlines

$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 5);

foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {

?>

<li>

<a href='<?php echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']); ?>'>

<?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?>

</a>

</li>

<?php } ?>

</ul>

<?php } ?>

Obviously, you have to change the feed address on the fourth line to yours. You can also select how many items from the feed should appear.

In the comments, Darren says that you can publish multiple lists of feeds by copying the snippet with several different RSS feeds. If you want to aggregate a bunch of feeds into one single feed that you’ll republish on your blog, he recommends the Easy Blog Networking for WordPress Blogs plugin, which combines a bunch of feeds and republishes them in one list, or Yahoo Pipes.

Another Option from the WordPress Codex 

Scot Hacker brings another variation for displaying RSS feeds on a site: the WordPress function fetch_rss. On the WordPress Codex, you can see an example for displaying a list of links for an existing RSS feed, limiting the selection to the most recent 5 items:

<h2><?php _e('Headlines from AP News'); ?></h2>
<?php // Get RSS Feed(s)
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss('http://example.com/rss/feed/goes/here');
$maxitems = 5;
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>

<ul>
<?php if (empty($items)) echo '<li>No items</li>';
else
foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>
<li><a href='<?php echo $item['link']; ?>'
title='<?php echo $item['title']; ?>'>
<?php echo $item['title']; ?>
</a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

This post was originally published at Publish RSS feeds on your WordPress site without plugins on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Hell Yeah Dude has a great rundown of different types of content you can add to your WordPress blog, and plugins for doing so: flickr, Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, de.licio.us and more.

12 automatic ways to increase the content on your WordPress powered Web site » Hell Yeah Dude! – A Web site for young & inspiring minds

This post was originally published at Hell Yeah Dude’s list of ways to supplement your WordPress content on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Some crazy academics have written a very academic paper (PDF) on how you can use the same system to figure out where to put sensors in the water to detect contaminants, and make sure we catch all the good stories in the blogosphere. Oh goody!

Basically, all you have to do is exploit submodularity to develop an efficient algorithm that scales to large problems, achieving near optimal placements, while being 700 times faster than a simple greedy algorithm [we hate greedy algorithms]. Also, you need to derive online bounds on the quality of the placements obtained by any algorithm. Their algorithms and bounds also handle cases here nodes (sensor locations, blogs) have different costs.

Or, you could just subscribe to TechCrunch, BoingBoing, Read/WriteWeb, and Seth Godin’s Blog. I’ll have to think about. All that algorithm stuff is so tempting.

This post was originally published at Surfing the blogosphere is just like, oh I don’t know, detecting contaminants in water on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Answers.com is a free online service that provides definitions and encyclopedic-entries on millions of topics. (It is also an Israeli company – I had to add that ). The company has now partnered with Automattic, the guys behind WordPress, with a new plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs, and with an integrated service on WordPress.com blogs.

The plugin will add a button to the toolbar that, when clicked, creates an automatic link from a word to its entry on Answers.com. Here’s the explanation from the press release:

To use the new feature, WordPress.com bloggers will press the AnswerLinks(TM) icon (http://www.answers.com/main/wordpress_howto.jsp) on the WordPress editing toolbar to trigger an application that will suggest terms for automatic linking. Typical suggestions will include names, technical terms or obscure language that may not be familiar to some readers. Only words confirmed by the author will be linked to definitions, assuring full editorial control.

I can see how this could be useful; often when I’m writing about topics that I know many people aren’t familiar with, I’ll link key words to their entry on Wikipedia. This may be a faster way to provide that type of helpful information to users.

This is also a nice development for Answers.com, who recently bought dictionary.com for a bazillion dollars in cash (ok, it’s more like $100 million, which in my world is a bazillion), a move whose wisdom was questioned by many. I don’t know if this new partnership will spell success for Answers, but it’s a move in what seems to be the right direction.

This post was originally published at New Answers.com WordPress plugin creates quick links to definitions on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Ramit over at I Will Teach You To Be Rich reminds us that when all is said and done, a blog’s success depends on the merit of its content, and not on the quality of its design, stats programs, or all the SEO stuff you do to optimize your site. These things help, but they won’t make or break it for you.

I hate bloggers who waste their time on stats>>

This post was originally published at The secret to a successful blog: writing good content on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.