James Kelly

It would appear that I just ASSumed that the themed login and registration form plugin would work on WP2.0.1, which is unfortunate because it didn’t.  Luckily a user of 2.0.1 informed me of this oversight which has now been corrected.

More importantly, Eliyahu from Tsiyon Heights Messianic Radio thought it might be kind of cool to add in the ability to change the default WordPress registration email that goes to users.  So that’s what we did.

You can now (through the same options form) alter the email that goes out to new registrations, as well as the subject line, and even the email address that the new user registration email comes from.  I’ve added instructions inside the form on how to include the dynamic information.  Let me know if it needs to be cleared up, it was late when I wrote it.

Another thing that can be changed, but most likely won’t be, is the notification email that comes to you when a new user signs up.  I’ve kept mine the same, but it might be kind of nice for those of you who may have some kind of automated system set up.  One other alteration I made is that the from address on the notification that comes to you will now be the address of the new user, that way you can just reply.
Download the new plugin and read about the changes here.

I was, to say the least, shocked to find out that the Widget system produced by automattic.com didn’t include the ability to customize the navigation links provided by the wisdom of the WordPress developers.

This widget system comes with two widgets that override the Meta and Pages widgets provided by automattic.com to include options taking advantage of link manipulation regarding the Pages and Meta widgets.  The options follow:

• Pages
  • Sort - Allows you to sort pages by database column name.  Right now you have to look at and type in the database column name directly.  Perhaps in a future version I, or someone else, will set up a select list.
  • Order - A select list containg Asc for ascending or Desc for descending order.
  • Depth - A numerical value indicating to what depth you want to display for your page hierarchy.  Leave this blank for infinite.
  • Show Date - A select list that allows you to choose no date to display, the Post Date, or the Modified Date.
• Meta
  • Include Register Link - When checked displays the register link, not checked hides it.
  • Include Login Link - When checked displays the login/logout link, not checked hides it.
  • Include RSS - When checked displays the main post RSS link, not checked hides it.
  • Include Comment RSS - When checked displays the comments RSS link, not checked hides it.
  • Include WordPress Link - When checked displays the WordPress link, not checked hides it.

WidgetWorks is also a system allowing you to include new widgets in the WidgetWorks folder.  This “system”, such that it is, will likely be replaced by a more permanent solution in the future.  I recently became aware of Stewart’s Theme Widgets which is also a viable system.  Perhaps I’ll alter the overridden widgets to work with his system as well.

Of course, both systems will likely be deprecated completely once WordPress adds this capability to its core.

Ahh well…in the meantime, have fun and I hope these can be of use to someone.

It occurred to me after seeing the Themed Login Plugin in action on a few sites that maybe some people would want to know how to improve the appearance just a bit.

If you want to center your forms add the following line to your style.css file in your theme directory (or alternatively by using the theme editor under Presentation):

#login {margin:0 auto 0 auto;width:250px;}

If you want to display the links (at the bottom of the forms) all on one line instead of as a list of bullets add the following lines as well:

#login ul {margin:0;padding:0;}
#login ul li {display:inline;margin-left:10px;}

You should probably add these lines to the bottom of your style.css file.  I didn’t put any inline styling into play because I wanted to afford users maximum flexibility and many people (by many I mean me) don’t appreciate it when plugin authors start dinking around with their “look”.

I’ve also added the style options to the Themed Login Plugin page for permanence.

Hi folks, Wil over at Will’s Blog pointed out that if you went to the reset password form, entered nothing and hit submit, that the resulting (expected) error message would display, but nothing else after it would.  This is actually the same way that the normal form worked, but it definitely isn’t very user (or site) friendly.

So in short, now it displays your entire theme upon submission of a blank reset password form.  This is not what I would call a critical update, but do download the latest version when you get a few seconds.

Well, it was bound to happen.  An oversight on my part caused warnings to be thrown on some systems due to an array in one of the WP classes not existing as an array.

However, this lead me to think of a way to simplify the process of enabling this plugin so that it will work with less thought on the users part.  As soon as I get a spare moment, I’ll set it up.

Thanks again to Learn and Inform for finding and reporting this oversight.

Get the latest version of the Themed Login Plugin here.

It’s somewhat amazing to me that very little customization of the login, registration, and reset password forms is possible.  I decided to create a little plugin that would give me that ability, and have made the plugin available here for anyone else who would like this ability.

I’ve created many plugins, but this is the first that I’ve ever released to the general public.  With that in mind, there might be a few bugs (thus the 0.9 version), but I’m confident that there aren’t that many.  Most of the code was copied directly from the wp-login.php and wp-register.php pages.  If you find this plugin useful, let me know (of course feel free to post any comments you might have in the normal fashion as well).

I just discovered that I seem to not be the only one that is experiencing this desire.  A small movement has started on the wp-hackers list as of last night which indicates many others would like to see this behavior.  As such, hopefully I or other developers can sneak some kind of theme based system into the core login and registration pages making this plugin obsolete.

But until then, maybe this plugin can help someone else out.  You can see a sample of the end result by clicking on the login link on my site.  I should probably style it a little better, but for now it works great.

I’ve been using WordPress off and on for quite some time now.  I’ve absolutely been fascinated by the evolution of this piece of software.  Despite it’s critics, WordPress is (in my opinion) THE blogging/CMS software everyone should be using.  The extensibility, clean base install, and sheer speed of this software is second to none. 

That is why I’ve decided to give a go myself at contributing to this project.  This will be my first official open source contribution so there is a definite learning curve in determining how NOT to step on others toes.

Based on the research I’ve done to date there is a definite need for contributors both at the development level and at the content level.  There are many sections of the Wiki that need to be gone through and updated/corrected.

At any rate, should I inadvertantly botch something up in my ignorance, I apologize in advance.