I’ll be showing the method to publish your new WordPress plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Read more about the folder structure and the basics of the subversion repository.

For this tutorial I’ll be using Versions 2 that is available on their website.

Write your plugin

First of all: write, complete and debug your plugin. There is a lot of documentation in the WordPress Codex where you can find you to do so and there are also dozens of great tutorials on the web available.

Add your plugin to the Plugin Directory

After your plugin is ready you add your plugin to the Plugin Directory by sending the form on WordPress.org. You’ll receive an email when your new plugin is accepted.

Actions explained

Just a few basic actions that are necessary for your to release your plugin in the plugin directory.

Checkout

Get all the files from your subversion account. You’ll download all the files and the file structure of your repository.

Commit

Upload all the new and modified files.

Update

Get only the updated files and folders

Set the server settings

After downloading Versions 2 just open the application and press the upper Repository button.

Enter all the fields that are requierd. Note, these are only the WordPress server settings.

The location is the url to the WordPress subversion server. You’ll find this url in the email that you’ve received when your plugin has been accepted. The username is automatically been placed after the http:// when you enter your username in the specified field. Enter your password en hit the Create button.

Your repository will be verified and if everything is alright the repository is added to the toolbar on the left of the interface.

Set up local settings

Just select the bookmak and the main folder in the right column of the interface and press Checkout (The third icon on the left upper corner).

Browse to a local folder that you’d like to store your plugin. You do not need to create a subfolder, Versions will do this automatically. Press Checkout and Versions will copy the file structure from the WordPress server to your local machine.

In my case I’ll use the folder:

Desktop/10002 WordPress plugins/

In this case it’s a existing plugin so there are some folders in the directories but that isn’t interfering this tutorial.

Update or release your plugin

Before we go any further, please be aware of the subverion folder structure. I’ve published an article about this. Read this and you’ll understand what I’m going to do now.

Copy the files to the local folders

Just copy overwrite the plugin files to the local branche folder you’ve selected before you’ve pushed the checkout button so in my example it’s

Desktop/10002 WordPress plugins/wordpress-easy-todo/branche/

Create a new folder in the tags for the version you would like to share.

Desktop/10002 WordPress plugins/wordpress-easy-todo/tags/1.1.5/

Do the versions magic

Go to the Versions application and you’ll see the folder wordpress-easy-todo whith several files with questionmarks or edit icons in the left column.

• Select the files with a questionmark and press the Add button on the upper right.
• Check if all the files are correct and if you do not have any overload in the folders. If so, mark them as deleted with the Delete button on the upper right.
  do not remove these files with finder, you’ll be ruin your repository bookmark and have to create a new one.

I’m going to update my plugin so I’ll have to add the folder 1.1.5.

The question mark for folder 1.1.5 is now changed into a plus icon.

Now move the folder of the previous version to the branches folder. Do not change the name so it stays a good version identifier in the future.

After you hit the OK button the folder will be moved to the branches folder after we’ve commited all the changes we’ve made.

Commit changes

Select all the changed files and folders. The question mark identifier for the trunk folder is only mentioning that there are files in it with changes.

Hit the Commit button on the left upper corner. Describe what the changes are and press the commit button.

The files are commited to the server and after that everything has to look like this

The WordPress server updates every 15 minutes so grab a cup of coffee or a beer and try to install your new plugin via your WordPress admin panel.

Notes

Be sure you only add files and folders via the Finder interface. Please do not delete or move files and folders because this will ruin your plugin structure. You’ll get an error and in that case you have to remove the subversion bookmark from the Versions interface.

If your plugin isn’t updated you’ll have to check the status of all the files. When there are no icon’s shown in the left column of Version everything will be alright but be sure the tags folder only contains the folder of your latest version!

Words are not enough to describe this plugin so just take a look at the WordPress Easy Archive plugin page!

Check the updated page for the cvLinkSelect class!

I’m searching for a easy way to style the select elements to a custum layout just like the Select Box Factory or something like that. Also I’m going to figure out if this class is usefull with a multiple select box. Anyway, I’m finished with this for the moment!

Therefore, I’m going to tell you something about the file structure of subversion so you can easily maintain your plugin on the subversion repository.

There are three folders that will help separate development versions from stable versions.

Branches
This is where the previous versions are stored. For example: you are maybe working on version 1.2 in Trunk but you could have a subdirectory for the development of version 1.1 in branches. This is done to restore bugs or security reasons.

Tags
When the plugin is ready for release, copy the files into a sub-directory in the tags folder. The name of the sub-directory is the version name.

Trunk
This is where the files for your latest version are stored. This is most likely the bleeding edge version of your plugin.

With this knowlegde I can build my own imaginary folder/file structure for a wordpress plugin:

• WordPress-YDD-Plugin
  • Branches
    • 1.0.0
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.css
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.php
      • etc.
    • 1.1.0
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.css
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.php
      • etc.
  • Tags
    • 1.0.0
    • 1.1.0
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.css
      • wordpress-ydd-plugin.php
      • etc.
  • Trunk
    • wordpress-ydd-plugin.css
    • wordpress-ydd-plugin.php
    • etc.

I’m searching for a good subversion client on Mac. Which one do you guys recommend?

In most cases you’ll get the data from a SQL database or something like that and in therefore it’s an array.

/* $arr = array from the database */
$arr = array(//array(id,name),
			 	array(15,'15 inch'),
				array(17,'17 inch'),
				array(19,'19 inch')
			);

Make sure that the you’ll only get the id and the name or another identifier. The total has to be two otherwise it don’t work.

To get the JSON request in the right format I’ve written a small function that will add the value and html key to the arrays.

/**
* Function to set the key for each value
* Requires: array(array())
* Returns: JSON format for cvLinkSelect class
*/
function json_cvLinkSelect($arr = array()){
	$json = array(); /* temporary array */

	foreach($arr as $ob){ /*walk trough the original array */
		$keys = array('value','html'); /*define the two keys */
		array_push($json,array_combine($keys,$ob)); /* push the new array to the temporary array, $json */
	}

	return json_encode($json); /* return the $json array */
}

The output will be:

[{"value":"hard","html":"Hard"},{"value":"soft","html":"Soft"}]

I’ve updated the zipfile with the working example if you guys need more info.

Enjoy!

Check it out!

It’s also possible to view the website in the normal layout.

Check out the great features on the iPhone or check all the screenshots on the plugin page!

I’ll use a SolidWorks file that I used for rendering the logo of Young Dutch Design.

Add a camera by right clicking on the Lights, Camera and Scene folder in the Feature Tree.

Set up the view you prefer and set the target point. This is the point the lens will focus on so I’ll manually select the first grey sphere. In the image below you’ll see a top view of the sphere’s.

Scroll to the bottom of all the options and turn on ‘Depth of Field’.

This is the most important part. Set the d value so that the solid blue rectangular surface is on the part that need the focus. Set the f value such that the surrounding components are quickly faded/off focus.

Hit the apply button on top and start rendering after you’ve set the scene and the appearances. If you need some info about this part read Rendering realistic chrome with SolidWorks.

This is my result! Be careful, don’t make the f value too small because it will look very unnatural.

Changes

• Maintain an empty element with a short discription and an empty value in your html page and the class will  not remove this one while you change the parent select box
• Set the value of the first select box to the empty option after page reload
• Comments added for developers and curious people
• Updated the example
• Removed some overhead in the class

Go the the original page of the cvLinkSelect class!

http://mysite.com/mypage/?myvar=test

rewriting to

http://mysite.com/mypage/test

After a long search on the WordPress forums and the whole internet I’ve found this topic: using an extra parameter in an URL but it wasn’t very sufficient in my opinion. So that’s why I’ll explain the use of multiple parameters in the url.

One $_GET variable

function add_mypage_var($public_query_vars) {
$public_query_vars[] = 'myvar1';
return $public_query_vars;
}

//add a rewrite rule
function do_rewrite_mypage() {
add_rewrite_rule('brands/([^/]+)/?$', 'index.php?pagename=mypage&myvar1=$matches[1]','top');
}

add_filter('query_vars', 'add_mypage_var');
add_action('init', 'do_rewrite_brands');

You can use this variable in a plugin like this:

$slug = get_query_var('myvar');

Multiple $_GET variables

There was just one thing that cost me a headache… I’d like to add multiple parameters to the url and this method I just described isn’t sufficient. I’ve checked the basic url rewrite trough mod_rewrite and this method needs several lines to declare all the possible amount of variables in the url. I’ve tried this method also for the url rewrites via WordPress and here we are: a simple working function:

function add_mypage_var($public_query_vars) {
	$public_query_vars[] = 'myvar1';
	$public_query_vars[] = 'myvar2';

	return $public_query_vars;
}

//add a rewrite rule
function do_rewrite_mypage() {
	add_rewrite_rule('brands/([^/]+)/?$', 'index.php?pagename=mypage&myvar1=$matches[1]&myvar2=$matches[2]','top');
	add_rewrite_rule('brands/([^/]+)/?$', 'index.php?pagename=mypage&myvar1=$matches[1]','top');
}

add_filter('query_vars', 'add_mypage_var');
add_action('init', 'do_rewrite_mypage');

You can check all the url rewrites that are used for your WordPress post.

function get_rewrite_urls(){
	global $wp_rewrite;

	return $wp_rewrite->wp_rewrite_rules(); /* Returns an array */
}

print_r(get_rewrite_urls());

And in some cases you’d like to remove all your custom rewrites. Just use this function:

function do_flush_gear(){
	global $wp_rewrite;

	$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();
}