I’ve been using WordPress 2.7 for a while now and have comprehensively tested my WordPress plugins on it. In this post, I release the results of my testing: Four plugins work fine (albeit with a non version specific bug found in one of them). One plugin seems to have problems with WordPress 2.7.

Plugins That Work With WordPress 2.7

The following WordPress plugins appear to work fine with WordPress 2.7:

• DualFeeds
• FeedEntryHeader
• LocalCurrency
• KeywordLuv

However, during testing I discovered a bug with LocalCurrency, which I’ll explain in more detail below. This bug is not specific to WordPress 2.7 and has always existed in the plugin. If you haven’t noticed it yet, you’re unlikely to.

Plugin Which Has Problems With WordPress 2.7

Unfortunately, the IFrameWidgets plugin has a problem, which appears to be related to WordPress 2.7. In fact, I suspect that this problem has existed since WordPress 2.5, but only occurs on certain browsers.

The problem is that widgets running in the IFrame widget do not appear. This seems to be related to the JavaScript no longer being able to find the height of the IFrame (the plugin hides the IFrame until it’s fully loaded, then automatically resizes it based on it’s contents).

I’m not certain of all scenarios when it will occur, but I’ve managed to make it happen with the BlogCatalog widget using Firefox 2.0.0.20. For me, there’s no problem in Firefox 3, Google Chrome and IE6.

Kirk M from Just Thinkin’, who reported the problem, seems to be having a more serious problem with the Google Friend Connect Members widget: he gets the problem with Firefox 3.0.5, Shiretoko builds, Chrome and IE 7.0.

It may be that there are two problems: a general problem which only occurs with FireFox 2 and a more specific problem with the Google Friend Connect Members widget.

I suspect the general problem occurs because the way widgets work changed back in WordPress 2.5: IFrameWidgets uses the number of the widget in the plugin logic. Prior to WordPress 2.5, you were only allow a maximum of 9 widgets, so the plugin was using the numbers 1 to 9. In versions after 2.5, there is no maximum number of widgets and the plugin is using numbers such as 320138091. It may be that FireFox 2 can’t handle numbers this large?

I am continuing investigations and hope to identify a fix soon. You can follow this issue in the comments on the IFrameWidgets page and I’ll announce the fix in a post – so subscribe to my feed if you want to know when it’s released.

LocalCurrency Bug

As mentioned above, LocalCurrency has a bug which has always existed within the plugin. The plugin works fine within a single post or page, but doesn’t always work on pages with multiple posts (ie the home page or category pages).

The plugin has been designed to work on pages with multiple posts, but it doesn’t always load the JavaScript that allows it to make the call to Yahoo! Finance. To optimise performance, the JavaScript is only loaded when the plugin finds the <–LCSTART–> tag in the post.

This is fine for single posts / pages. It’s also fine for pages with multiple posts IF the tag is in the first post on the page. However, if the fist post doesn’t have any currency to be converted (ie no <–LCSTART–> tag), then the JavaScript isn’t loaded.

I’ll be fixing this problem sometime in the near future. I’ll probably add an option to allow the blog owner to decide whether they want to convert currency on multiple post pages. If chosen, the plugin will load the JavaScript without checking the posts for the tag, circumventing the problem.

Final Thoughts

Anytime there is a WordPress upgrade, there is a chance that one of my plugins will break. This means I have to do extensive testing with each WordPress release. This takes a lot of time, but fortunately, there are normally no problems to fix.

For the WordPress 2.7 release, I did find a couple of problems – but I’ll get them fixed as soon as I can.

It’s been a while since I last posted, because I’ve been tied up with some other projects. My focus is now returning to this blog, but before I get into anything of substance, there’s some housekeeping I need to take care of.

If you subscribe to the feed of one of my WordPress plugin categories, please be warned that these feeds will be removed in 7 days time. The feeds in question are the following:

If you want news about my WordPress plugins, please subscribe to the following feed:

http://www.scratch99.com/category/my-wordpress-plugins/feed

This feed will contain news and tips relating to ALL my WordPress plugins.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to the feed relating to the tag (rather than category) for each plugin. These will probably have all the news relating to each plugin, but may also contain other posts that mention the plugin in passing. These feeds are as follows:

• DualFeeds Tag Feed
• IFrameWidgets Tag Feed
• FeedEntryHeader Tag Feed
• LocalCurrency Tag Feed
• KeywordLuv Tag Feed

I’ve taken this move for two reasons:

1. I’m consolidating my categories, because I have too many of them. This will merge 5 categories into one general category for my WordPress plugins.
2. I normally stick to one category per post, but I often have news relating to more than one plugin. This will allow such news to reach everyone who needs it.

I regret any inconvenience this may cause, but hopefully it will result in a better site.

I’m finally releasing version 1.01 of the IFrameWidgets WordPress plugin. The only change is that is has been re-written so that it will work with WordPress 2.5, which changed the way widgets worked.

If you are on WordPress 2.5 and above, use Version 1.01 of IFrameWidgets. If you are on an older version of WordPress, use version 1.0 of IFrameWidgets.

IFrameWidgets can stop slow loading JavaScript widgets from breaking your page. Widgets remain hidden until completely loaded, then appear in whole. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space on your sidebar. If they load slowly, or hang, they won’t stop the rest of your page from loading.

Thanks To EagleHawk

A BIG Thanks to Eaglehawk from Flight of The Eaglehawk for alerting me to the problem and for beta testing the new version.

Where Do I Get It?

IFrameWidgets v1.01 can be downloaded from the IFrameWidgets plugin home page. Further information about the plugin and it’s features, including installation / upgrade instructions, is also available on the plugin home page.

I’m pleased to release IFrameWidgets v1.0, a WordPress plugin that can stop slow loading JavaScript widgets from breaking your page.

Widgets remain hidden until completely loaded, then appear in whole. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space on your sidebar. If they load slowly, or hang, they won’t stop the rest of your page from loading.

If You’re On A Beta Version

IFrameWidgets has been in beta for a long time. The last beta version (v0.14) version was released almost two months ago and no problems have been reported with it, so I have promoted it to v1.0 and I’m ‘releasing it’.

There are no changes from v0.14, apart from the version number and date.

The Problem – Slow JavaScript Widgets

We all love adding JavaScript widgets to our sidebars. Widgets for social networks, advertising, traffic exchange, weather conditions, etc…

The problem is sometimes these widgets can be very slow – or they may not load at all. When this happens, it can break your page. Items after the slow widget don’t load, they wait until the widget finally loads or gives up.

How IFrameWidgets Helps

The plugin creates WordPress sidebar widgets (not to be confused with the JavaScript widgets themselves) that run in an IFrame. These are similar to the standard Text widgets, but with the output created in an IFrame.

IFrames load in parallel to the rest of the page. If slow loading JavaScript widgets are placed in an IFrame, they won’t stop the rest of the page loading if they load slowly or hang.

IFrameWidgets also hides the widgets until they are completely loaded, then displays them. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space.

Requirements

Should work on any WordPress version / theme with support for WordPress widgets. I am planning a non WordPress widget version in future.

Where Do I Get It?

IFrameWidgets v1.0 can be downloaded from the IFrameWidgets plugin home page. Further information about the plugin and it’s features, including installation / upgrade instructions, is also available on the plugin home page.

It’s been almost two weeks since my last post. Here, I explain why and run through some of the other things that have been happening behind the scenes here at More Than Scratch The Surface.

Real Life

The last week and a half has been written off by a virus affecting several family members. Ultimately, it wasn’t serious, but there were moments when it seemed it might be and we had the chance to experience the Chinese hospital system. The less said the better, but it wasn’t pleasant. Thankfully, things are slowly returning to normal now.

As much as I love blogging, there are times when you realise it’s not that important.

Ratings Gone

I’ve had the WP-PostRatings plugin installed from day one, but I uninstalled it recently. I really like the idea of it: If someone doesn’t have time to comment, then they can let me know what they think just by clicking on the appropriate star.

The problem is that very few people actually use it. On average, there were two ratings made for every three posts. Of the ratings made, more than 85% were 5 out of 5. That’s very nice, but ultimately it’s not providing any real value (beyond the pretty yellow stars!). So, it’s gone.

Thanks to Josh from the Make Money Blog, RT from Untwisted Vortex and K from Shankri-la for leaving the majority of the ratings that were made.

Tags Here

I wasn’t using tags, but of course they are now part of the WordPress core (from 2.3 onwards). I’ve now gone back through all my old posts and added tags to them.

The built-in tag functionality is very basic, so most people end up using one or more plugins to supplement it. I looked at quite a few plugins and decided to use Simple Tags, which is very popular and seems to include all the functionality you could possibly need.

I’ve added a tag cloud to the sidebar, but I’m not sure if it will stay. At the moment, the wordpress plugins tag is a lot larger than any of the other tags, which makes it look a little strange.

The main benefit of tags is that I now have a related posts feature. I know there are other ways of doing this, but it makes sense to do it via tags.

Theme

With the removal of the ratings and the addition of tags, I took the opportunity to tweak the theme a little. This shows mainly on the home page and can be seen underneath each entry (the area with Tags and Posted In).

Plugin News

I have been talking about ‘releasing’ the IFrameWidgets plugin for a while now, but it keeps getting put off. By ‘release’, I mean promote the 0.14 beta release to version 1.0 and start promoting it on plugin lists etc. There will be no difference to 0.14. As Christmas is just about here, I may hold off until the new year (for maximum exposure).

IFrameWidgets only works with widgetised themes. I am planning to add functionality allowing IFrames in other places, such as the post body and theme files (such a single.php or sidebar.php). I am not yet sure if this will be part of IFrameWidgets or a new plugin.

I will release a new version of the DualFeeds plugin in the coming days. This will only have a very minor change: in the current version (1.1), the sidebar image and the RSS icons at the end of the post are missing the alt attribute, which breaks the validation of pages using these images.

Alexa Milestone

More Than Scratch The Surface recently broke through the Alexa 100K mark. The site is only a little over 6 months old and I don’t post nearly enough, so it’s quite satisfying. Thanks to all those who’ve stumbled my posts!

The Final Word

There’s more going on, but the other things deserve a post on their own. Hopefully these will appear in the near future!

When I first started blogging, I wouldn’t have written a post about receiving an award from another blog. Back then, my plan was just to write original content. I saw memes, linkfests and awards as a distraction from that.

I still am a little biased against awards, but I’ve softened my stance now that I’ve won one!

I recently picked up the High Flying Eagle Award from Eaglehawk for the IFrameWidgets plugin helping improve the way his site loaded. Thank you Eaglehawk!

I probably won’t post awards in future, at least not in a separate post, but this one is a little special because it was given in appreciation for the IFrameWidgets plugin.

While I was writing this post, I realised that I was presented with another award a couple of months ago, by K-IntheHouse, but didn’t realise it at the time. Sorry K!! A belated thanks for the I Love Your Blog Award. I love your blog too.

Now, I’m very conscious that my recent posts haven’t had much original content, but stick with me, I’ll be back on track soon.

This is the first update / roundup style post on More Than Scratch The Surface. I originally thought I’d stick to articles, but I can now see the need to write about things that aren’t worth a full post. Expect to see these occasionally.

Plugins

I spent most of last week on the IFrameWidgets plugin. There were quite a few issues, but now there’s only one left: the site who makes the widget won’t know which page the widget was called from. This is fully explained on the plugin’s home page. I’m waiting a little while to see what the fallout of this is (if any) before I start to actively push it. I learnt a few HTML / Javascript tricks while sorting out the issues, so expect some posts on these soon.

The new version of the DualFeeds plugin should have been released six weeks ago, but I just haven’t gotten around to finishing the documentation yet. I’ve been busy, but that’s terrible! I did fix an obscure bug (only present when switching feeds and for some versions of php) over the weekend. Thanks to Dmitry from www.sportreport.ru for helping me sort this out. Anyway, expect this to be released towards the end of next week.

Alexa Milestone

A couple of stumbles from K-IntheHouse and Andy Beard helped push this site through the 150K barrier at Alexa recently. I’ve been surprised how easily I’ve moved up the rankings, but I’m anticipating that it will be harder from now on, as I’m in the same area as a lot of other great blogs.

Stormy Weather

Google storms, Blogrush storms. There’s a lot going on in the blogosphere. I’m an interested reader of it all, but there’s been no impact on me personally.

My blog is newish, so I don’t have any toolbar PR yet to lose. As Josh points out it seems that only toolbar PR is affected, not the SERPs. Let hope that’s true. I suspect it’s all part of Google’s bigger plans for PR, whatever they are (and we’d all love to know). It would be good to see Google being more open about what’s going on, but I’m not holding my breath!

I haven’t signed up to Blogrush yet, so this is just based on what I’ve read. I will say in Blogrush’s defence that it is a public-beta, so people have to expect issues. However, it’s got to be said that the recent episode of making 10,000 blogs inactive has been handled very poorly. It would have been better to warn people that didn’t match the criteria and given them time to address it, rather than just pulling the plug on them.

I’ve worked in the software industry for 13 years and been responsible for releasing product and managing client communication. You can’t keep everyone happy, but right now Blogrush have way too many people unhappy with them. I think long-term they’ll probably sort out their issues, but they have alienated a lot of people which will make their job more difficult.

Guest Post

Something else I’ve been doing this week is writing a guest post for Snoskred’s Get Out Of Your Niche series. We’ll be moving back to Australia in six months, so I’ve written about what I’ll miss about China and what I’m looking forward to back in Australia. It should be appearing tomorrow on Snoskred’s site, so check it out if you’re interested.

Many people have been complaining about slow loading social widgets. You know the ones! I’ve written a WordPress plugin which may help, but there are some issues related to it and I’d like some advice. I have some specific people in mind, so I’ll ping them below.

UP TO DATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CURRENT STATUS OF THIS PLUGIN CAN BE FOUND AT THE IFRAMEWIDGETS PLUGIN HOME PAGE

What Does The Plugin Do?

The plugin creates IFrame widgets for WordPress. They are similar to Text Widgets, except output is created in an IFrame (in the sidebar). So, placing social widget code in an IFrame widget means it will appear in an IFrame.

The benefit of placing social widgets in an IFrame is that IFrames load in parallel to the rest of the page. If the social widget loads slowly or hangs, it won’t prevent the rest of the page from loading.

In addition to this, the plugin provides other features / benefits, including:

• Widgets remain hidden until they are completely loaded, then appear in whole. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space on your sidebar.
• Up to 9 IFrame widgets can be enabled, but you don’t have to use them for all your social widgets, just the ones you are having issues with.
• Should work for any external widget, not just social widgets.
• Caters for the BUMPzee widget php code (other php code won’t work).

Want to see it in action? You can, right here on my site. The BUMPzee, MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog widgets are all running in IFrame Widgets. Sounds great right? But there are some problems / issues.

Issues With Social Widgets In An IFrame

The following are some problems / issues with this approach:

1. The main problem is that links in the IFrame open in the IFrame. I’ve added target="_blank" to the IFrames which seems to fix the problem for the MyBlogLog widget but not the BUMPzee and BlogCatalog ones. Something in their widgets is overriding the IFrame. I’m looking into whether I can do something via javascript’s onClick event handler. This is a deal breaker for the BUMPzee and BlogCatalog widgets.
2. Social widgets need to tell their website who has been to your site. If they do this through cookies, there should be no problem. I can now confirm that BUMPzee, MyBlogLog & BlogCatalog widgets all work fine.
3. The social sites may not like people running the widgets in IFrames. I hadn’t considered this until I read Lucia’s post about Blogrush being unhappy with their widget being placed in the footer.
4. IFrames are not great for either SEO or accessibility. This should not be an issue, as we are dealing with external widgets rather than content. It may even help preserve PageRank as the search bots may not follow the links. Can any experts out there confirm this? And how will this impact on point 3 above?

Feedback Please!

I’d like some feedback on the above issues from anyone willing to leave a comment. In particular, there are some experts I’d like to hear from. I’m shooting pretty high, but I’ll ping them and see if they respond:

First up is Scott Jangro, BUMPzee creator. Scott, if you read this I’d love some feedback from the BUMPzee’s perspective, especially on points 1 and 3.

Next is Andy Beard, who is an expert in… well pretty much all of this. Andy, I know you’ll probably say that themes need to be designed correctly (ie sidebars before content), but I’m very interested in your views.

Third is John Reese. John, I’d be grateful for your thoughts on point 3. Would you be concerned by the Blogrush widget being in an IFrame (if it was placed higher on the page, which is your main concern about it being in the footer)?

I’d also like to hear from the following people who have had widget issues:

• Lucia at Big Bucks Blogger
• RT at Untwisted Vortex
• Chris at Blog Op

and anyone else with an opinion on this!

The Final Word

I’d really like feedback on this. I’ll probably release the plugin regardless, as it’s already written and I think it will have some use. However whether I push the social widget angle depends on your feedback (and whether I can solve the links opening in the IFrame issue).