I’ve completed the first draft of the Post Levels 2 plugin that I’m using here.
Post Levels is a WordPress plugin that permits the administrator to hide private posts from users with insufficient access. This is performed by assigning a post level to each post, and a user level to each user, and a post is hidden if the user level is less than the post level. Originally authored by Felipe Fortes.
This version has been tested with WordPress 2.6.1 and 2.7 without any conflicts.
A while back I signed up for a DISQUS account to comment on Fortes’ discussion thread about his Post Levels plugin. Now that I’ve spent a couple of days beating my head against a wall to understand what it was that he did and try to work out comments for the code that hopefully even painfully ignorant contributors (like myself) can use to start to grasp what’s going on in the code… I decided to start a DISQUS thread.
All comments to this post will be integrated with DISQUS.
Back are the hidden posts and post levels. I’m aggressively pursuing the post level code as my own these days, doing my best to wrap my head around what the author did when writing this plugin, and more importantly, preparing myself to take over it’s continued development (since the original author has apparently stopped work on it.)
But what to hidden posts mean? It means that if you subscribe via RSS or don’t log in, you won’t see the hidden posts. And if you do log in, you’ll only see the posts you have access to.
Don’t worry, if you’re a friend and you’ve already registered, your account has access to the hidden posts. If you’re not registered, you should consider registering. If you’ve already registered, but need to know how to reset your password:
http://www.datarave.net/forums/profile.php?mode=sendpassword
Next I’m planning on moving to 2.7 and seeing how all of my plugins interact.
Makes 8 servings
1 cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 3 lemons
4 large eggs
3/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 4 to 5 lemons)
2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons (10-1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
1 fully-baked 9-inch tart shell
Getting ready: Have an instant-read thermometer, a strainer and a blender (first choice) or food processor at hand. Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a saucepan.
Put the sugar and zest in a large heatproof bowl that can be set over the pan of simmering water. Off heat, rub the sugar and zest together between your fingers until the sugar is moist, grainy and very aromatic. Whisk in the eggs, followed by the lemon juice.
Set the bowl over the pan, and start stirring with the whisk as soon as the mixture feels tepid to the touch. You want to cook the cream until it reaches 180 degrees F. As you whisk — and you must whisk constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling — you’ll see that the cream will start out light and foamy, then the bubbles will get bigger, and then, as the cream is getting closer to 180 degrees F, it will start to thicken and the whisk will leave tracks. (See my blog post about getting the cream up to temperature.) Heads up at this point — the tracks mean the cream is almost ready. Don’t stop whisking and don’t stop checking the temperature. And have patience — depending on how much water you’ve got under the cream and how much heat you’re giving the cream, getting to temp can take as long as 10 minutes.
As soon as it reaches 180 degrees F, remove the cream from the heat and strain it into the container of a blender (or food processor); discard the zest. Let the cream rest at room temperature, stirring occasionally, until it cools to 140 degrees F, about 10 minutes.
Turn the blender to high (or turn on the food processor) and, with the machine going, add about 5 pieces of butter at a time. Scrape down the sides of the container as needed while you’re incorporating the butter. Once the butter is in, keep the machine going — to get the perfect light, airy texture of lemon-cream dreams, you must continue to beat the cream for another 3 minutes. If your machine protests and gets a bit too hot, work in 1-minute intervals, giving the machine a little rest between beats.
Pour the cream into a container, press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal and chill the cream for at least 4 hours or overnight. When you are ready to construct the tart, just whisk the cream to loosen it and spoon it into the tart shell.
Serving: The tart should be served cold, because it is a particular pleasure to have the cold cream melt in your mouth. Fruit coulis is nice with the tart, but not necessary, ditto a little crème fraiche. I know it sounds odd to offer something as rich as crème fraiche with something as rich as this tart, but it works — because the lemon cream is so light and so intensely citric, it doesn’t taste or feel rich, a situation that is potentially dangerous and positively delightful.
Storing: While you can make the lemon cream ahead (it will keep in the frige for 4 days and in the freezer for up to 2 months), once the tart is constructed, it’s best to eat it the day it is made.
I love legos, and apparently some of the NXT toys are Rube Goldberg cool.
Found an excellent post at Smashing Magazine about setting up Catagory specific feeds, I especially like two points in the post. For those who are interested primarily in reading only the stuff on my Blog that is Nortel related for example, this technique is pretty cool. I’ll have to incorporate this in to my theme.
8. Use Category-Specific RSS Feeds
The problem. Many blogs talk about a lot of different topics: design, programming, blogging tips, etc. Have you ever come across a blog in which you have enjoyed only one category of posts? If so, you should definitely consider offering one feed per category to your own readers.
The solution. Let’s say you’d like to be able to subscribe only to TheGridSystem’s tools section. The category URL is:
http://www.thegridsystem.org/categories/tools/To get an RSS feed for this category, you simply have to add /feed to the end of the URL:
http://www.thegridsystem.org/categories/tools/feedPretty easy, isn’t it? But pretty useful, too, in my opinion.
9. List RSS Feeds by Category
The problem. If you like the previous hack, you will probably also want to be able to display the names of all your category feeds in a list to your readers.
The solution.
Edit any of your theme files, where you want to list your categories and their accompanying feeds.
Paste the following code:
Save the file. You categories will now be displayed, along with their RSS feeds!
Code explanation. This hack uses only the good old wp_list_categories() function, with two parameters. The first is feed_image, which allows us to specify the URL to be displayed as a feed image. The second parameter is feed, which is used to specify the feed format.
Follow me on Twitter 