As I write this, our programmer Heather is putting the final touches on the newest Core Tweaks WordPress Setup plugin, and we expect to have the newest version 3.0 uploaded to WordPress.org within the hour.
I’m excited that it’s coming out before WordPress 3.0 does, and that we already know that it’s fully compatible when 3.0 does come out.
Structurally there aren’t a ton of differences, although a couple of the functions now use hooks, and are no longer theme specific, which is a plus.
However, there are some brand new feature additions, and some improved items too, like:
- You can reorder your static page menu pages and sub pages. WP-admin> Pages > My Page Order on the menu to drag and drop as needed.
- You can exclude any pages you wish from main navigation. WP-admin> Tools > Page Links menu item and check / uncheck as desired.
- A new page navigation widget was added. Look in the widget options for checkbox page selection to include or remove pages from the widget nav.
- Enhanced the RSS widget - WP-admin >Appearance > Widgets you’ll notice that we have enhanced it, allowing you to nofollow the links or to open them in a new window.
- There will be a static sitemap page automatically added, but there are additional options are under WP-admin>Settings > DDsitemapGen
- Post Teaser display options are available under WP-admin > Settings > Post Teaser
- Create privacy page at setup – All future edits will be done in the pages > edit screen as usual.
- Create contact page at setup – All future edits will be done in the pages > edit screen as usual.
- Add info to footer option for Privacy, admin login, site-map and copyright information
- Enable the Atom Publishing Protocol
- Enable the XML-RPC publishing protocols for WP, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger
As you can see, we’re evolving into a bit more of a site builder, by automating manual tasks, but of course it’s critical that we maintain 100% compatibility with WordPress, and that we have minimal conflict with any other plugins.
It’s been a painstaking process, and for a free plugin, I think it’s pretty damn remarkable, if I do say so myself.
If you’ve used it even once you’ve saved at least 20 minutes, and if you use it regularly, you might have saved countless hours or days.
The Programmer Behind the Plugin
Heather – a.k.a. Dzynit is the one that I asked “Cant we just make these steps into a plugin?” and over the past couple of years, she’s put in countless hours.
Sure we do pay her, but not nearly well enough, and she’s put in a ton of her own time too, making this as perfect as can be.
When you consider that if everyone of the 10,000 downloads from WordPress was used only ONCE, the number of man hours saved is at least 3500 hours. That’s a year of full time employment for 1 and a half people!
Heather is Getting Married
She lives in the rural countryside of Pennsylvania, U.S. where DSL is the best she can get!. She is getting married on July 4th, 2010, and I wanted to give her some props here, and I hope that you, some of the 10,000+ people that have used the plugin, might show her a little appreciation too…
Here are two ways to thank Heather (Dzynit) for working so hard…
Thanks again for all your hard work Heather, and I’m off to get you something from your wishlist right now…
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Hellllllp! Just update with COre Tweaks on a relatively new site and got this error all over arning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated; If you would like to pass it by reference, modify the declaration of do_action(). If you would like to enable call-time pass-by-reference, you can set allow_call_time_pass_reference to true in your INI file in /home/content/01/6099701/html/wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/wpsc-includes/cart.class.php on line 881
That’s coming from some conflict in the WP-ecomerce plugin and we do recommend that you have no other plugins active when you run the Core Tweaks process – After running it though, you should be able to re-activate WP-ecommerce and there’s not going to be any conflict…
OK, here’s the deal – It’s not broken – it’s a feature
That error is coming from WP-ecommerce but I suppose the fact that you know about it is “our fault”, because I insist that the error reporting be visible…
Core tweaks is actually “turning on” WP error reporting so any errors caused by any plugins that are otherwise hidden, you can then see.
As you can see from this chat we had just now, I’ve verified this, but if Dan or anyone from WP-ecom want t ocomment, i’ll be glad to post.
Heather – PC2 says (2:13 PM):
The error is coming from wp-ecom and is not related to any conflict with core tweaks. If you would let me turn off the error reporting, the other plugins errors wouldn’t show.
Heather – PC2 says (2:14 PM):
if I could turn that off – problem solved. Our plugin itself itself reports internally anyway (in red) when something doesn’t go completely right in the process.
Heather – PC2 says (2:14 PM):
he’s had that error all along, wp-ecom just intentionally hides them – so do most other plugins
Scott Hendison says (2:15 PM):
After he ckicks around admin, the error still won’t disappear?
Heather – PC2 says (2:15 PM):
Nope, not unless he turns core tweaks off
Heather – PC2 says (2:15 PM):
or gets wp-ecom to fix their error –
and it’s a dumb error too
PROMISED FEATURE REMOVAL:
In core Tweaks, we need an option to “turn off error reporting for other plugins” and we’ll git ‘er done concurrent with the first release that we let go after WordPress 3.0 comes out .
In the mean time, since i’m guessing a fix wont be coming soon from WP-ecom, just e-mail or DM me on Twitter @shendison and I’ll tell you how to get rid of the admin error.
Hi, I love your WP Core Tweak plugin, it really saves my time, thank you very much..
bu t my current problem is when I’m using the plugin, my hand-crafted custom excerpt won’t show up instead it pull the first 100 words or first paragraph from the article. I think it caused by the integrated Post Teaser plugin. I hope there would be a fix for that..
You can either use the wp-admin > Plugins > Editor or ftp to edit the file:
/wp-content/plugins/seo-automatic-wp-core-tweaks/sc-core-tweak.php
change line 78:
include(‘post-teaser.php’); //updated to version 4.0.1
to:
//include(‘post-teaser.php’); //updated to version 4.0.1
We do have this on the list to add a checkbox to turn the post teaser feature on/off for the next release.
Thanks,
Heather
I am trying to remove the WWSGD function from my blog. (What Would Seth Godin Do?)
I have changed the stuff in the WWSGD plugin admin then I deleted it completely.
If I remember right the Core Tweeks Plugin adds this function to its duties. I can’t do with out the Core Tweeks Plugin. Nothing else will place excerpts on my blog front page. I can’t find where the Core Tweeks Plugin is storing the data.
Any help would be appreciated.
Sorry for the delay, and we did answer by email last week – I hope you’ve realized by now that Core Tweaks does NOT add the WWSGD functions, and that would only have come from their plugin.
Sorry for the delay, and we did answer by email last week – I hope you’ve realized by now that Core Tweaks does NOT add the WWSGD functions, and that would only have come from their plugin.