blogs – Behind the Scenes

Big News for Tripawds Bloggers!

Basic Tripawds Blogs will always be free. Jerry wouldn’t have it any other way.

In order to do this, however, we have updated our Supporter framework to offer three levels of support with even more enhanced features to those who wish to help keep this community online with an ongoing PayPal subscription. Please review the updated Tripawds Supporter account feature comparison for complete details or consider upgrading your blog now.

Act Now to Save on Supporter Upgrades

We are offering a discount to the first five lucky Tripawds Bloggers who upgrade their account! Use coupon code TRISUPP25OFF to receive 25% off your first payment of any Tripawds Supporter level! This coupon code can only be used five times so upgrade your blog now and save!

A Few Things All Tripawd Bloggers Should Know

If you have not yet upgraded your blog, you may notice some new content being inserted into your posts and pages. (See links at the top and bottom of this post.) Consider upgrading your blog to immediately remove these ads and Support links.

Supporters can remove ads from other favorite Tripawds blogs from their Dashboard -> Supporter Status -> Disable Ads.

There are now three Supporter levels to choose from for showing your appreciation of this community and enabling enhanced features on your blog.

Certain plugins are now only available for Supporter II blogs. If you are a current Supporter, do not deactivate these plugins or you may need to upgrade to get them back.

Premium Themes are now only activated for Supporter III blogs. If you had previously activated a premium theme, do not change it or you will need to upgrade to switch back.

If you are a subscriber and had the Supporter Badge displaying in your blog, you will need to replace it with your current level badge by dragging the Supporter Widget back to your sidebar from the Appearance -> Widgets tab in your dashboard.

You can upgrade, modify or view the current status of your Tripawds subscription anytime from the Supporter tab in your dashboard.

What do you get for your money?

Most importantly, Tripawds Supporters gain the satisfaction of knowing that they help us maintain the largest online community for three legged dogs and their people. Below is a comparison of all account features. Please visit the Supporter Upgrade page and select your site to see additional monthly or quarterly payment options and pricing.

Tripawds Blogs	Free	Supporter	Supporter II	Supporter III
Banner Ads on Blog
Disable Ads on Other Tripawds Blogs		(5)	(10)	(25)
Basic Comment Spam Protection
Subscriptions to Blog Comments
Enhanced Spam Protection
Simple Contact Form Creation
Enhanced Video Embedding
Search Engine Optimization
Blog Statistics & Shortlinks
Premium Blog Theme Selection
Personal Tech Support
Upload Space	25 MB	100 MB	250 MB	1 GB
Cost	FREE	$25 / year	$49 / year	$129 / year
–

Did we mention the coupon? Act now to save 25% off your first payment of any Tripawds Supporter level with code: TRISUPP25OFF (Only 5 coupons available!)

How did we do it?

The Tripawds Supporter framework is powered by the simple to use yet massively configurable Pro Sites plugin from WPMU Dev. After network-activating this multisite plugin, we were able to easily create the Supporter options and associated account features above by enabling different modules and assigning certain plugins and themes to each Pro Site level.

We created these Supporter levels to automatically remove ads and enable enhanced blogging features for sites with recurring PayPal subscription plans. Many other payment gateways are also available. A few options we chose not to apply include the ability to:

Prohibit or limit publishing of posts and/or pages for selected Pro Site levels.
Provide “unfiltered_html” permission to specific user types for selected levels.
Restrict XML-RPC and Atom Publishing to selected Pro Sites.
Only allow blog access for paid sites.
Limit BuddyPress group creation and messaging to users of a Pro Site.

Pro Sites includes far too many features for me to list here. The multiple Supporter levels, ease of use, coupon codes and robust statistics were reason enough for us to upgrade. Check out the Pro Sites plugin in action to see how you might use it for your multisite network!

How Tripawds Got Their Feed Back

Tripawds bloggers may have wondered where their dashboard notice announcing the most recent Tripawds News blog post went a few weeks ago. If not, they’re certain to notice the new announcement listing the five most recent posts from all the Tripawds Featured Blogs.

With the WordPress 3.1.2 update, the “Dashboard Feed” option mysteriously disappeared, leaving site administrators no way to show recent posts in the dashboard of all blogs across the network. It left me wondering what the heck happened! I posted in the WordPress forums about our Missing Recent Posts Feed in User Dashboard, asking if anyone else noticed or had an answer as to why it was gone. Silence.

About a week later, one member finally confirmed the issue and came up with a fix. The solution, however, required hacking the functions.php file which would not work for this community since Tripawds members can choose from more than 130 blog themes. Thanks to our Supporter plugin from WPMU Dev, Tripawds Supporters have access to even more premium themes.

How to Show Recent Posts from RSS Feed in User Dashboard

Piet from WordPress Tips quickly developed this plugin to show the latest posts from the main site of a multisite install in the user dashboard of all sub-sites across the network. By default the widget displays the three most recent posts from the main site. While no configuration is required for those happy with these settings, the plugin can easily be modified.

Multisite Dashboard Feed Widget Configuration Options:

Edit msrss.php to add the feed of your choice. (Default: blog_id=1)
Edit msrss.php to change the number of posts displayed (Default: 3).
Edit msdbfeed.php to change the widget’s title. (Default: Recent Updates)
See installation instructions for complete details.

We took things a step further by adding the extra information and links shown below the recent posts, as shown in our screenshot above. We also created a created a custom feed for multiple blogs to use in the widget.

How to Create a Recent Featured Posts Feed

Tripawds uses the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin from WPMU Dev to generate our feed for recent posts from all member blogs. This convenient plugin includes a Recent Global Posts Feed Widget for showing our global posts feed as a sidebar widget.

Tripawds Recent Featured Posts

When we wanted to only show posts from certain blogs in Piet’s Dashboard Feed Widget, however, I turned to the WPMU Dev Forums for support. As usual, masonjames had a quick answer for creating our Featured Blogs feed. Following his suggestions, here’s how I did it:

Download the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin.
Save a copy and rename the file “recent-featured-posts-feed.php”
Edit line 3 to change the plugin name (Plugin Name: Recent Featured Posts Feed)

Next, I added the specific blogs we wanted to include in the feed by editing line 58 as follows:

$query = $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM " . $wpdb->base_prefix . "site_posts WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND site_id = %d AND blog_public = '1' AND post_type = %s ORDER BY post_published_gmt DESC LIMIT %d", $current_site->id, $posttype, $number);

This is the key part where you will need to replace the blog IDs for sites you want included in the feed:

WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND

Upload the file to wp-content/ and check your new feed. It’s that simple. All thanks to our WPMU Dev Premium subscription!

Download WordPress Guide To Easy Blogging

We considered posting this in the Tripawds Downloads blog, but it has much more to do with blogs than it is about three legged dogs.

Download Free WordPress Editors Guide

While we provide Tripawds bloggers with helpful WordPress tutorial videos, and do our best to answer any technical questions about blogging in the Tech Support forum, we want to provide more information for those who want it. That’s why we’re making this comprehensive guide detailing How To Publish a WordPress Blog available as a free PDF download.

This comprehensive WordPress How To Guide covers everything you need to know about writing posts and pages, customizing your blog layout, moderating comments and much, much more. And did we mention it is absolutely free? This is just another value added service we are able to offer thanks to our WPMU Dev Membership.

How to Search All Tripawds Blogs

One of the new features we added during the recent News Blog makeover, was the ability to search all Tripawds Blogs.

Previously, members and guests of the Tripawds community could only search individual blogs, one at a time. Now all posts are indexed and searchable from Jerry’s Site-wide Search page in his Tripawds News blog.

This helpful functionality is now possible thanks to our Global Site Search plugin from WPMU Dev.

The plugin is not new, we’ve been testing it for a while. But it is now compatible with our SimplePress forums! It will not return search results from forum topics, but it no longer breaks the forum hierarchy, so we were happy to deploy it to make searching the Tripawds Blogs easier for everyone.

How To Search All Blogs

With more than 500 blogs and counting, it is now easier than ever to find what your looking for in the Tripawds WordPress multisite community.

Search All Blogs: Visit the Tripawds Site Search page to easily search all blogs at once. Results will be displayed with the post title, link, excerpt, author’s name, and the members user avatar. Please visit WPMU Dev for complete details about the Global Site Search WordPress multisite plugin.

Search the News Blog: In the sidebar of the Tripawds News blog you will find a search box that returns keyword results only from all of Jerry’s posts and pages.

Search the Tripawds Forums: Use the Tripawds Discussion Forums search function to find keywords, topic titles, or tags from more than 3,700 topics and nearly 50,000 posts (as of this writing).

Search Individual Blogs: If a Tripawds blog you’re reading does not have a search box in the sidebar, type the following into your browser to search all posts on that blog…

http://blogname.tripawds.com/?s=keyword

Substitute “blogname” with the subdomain of the blog you’re searching, and “keyword” with whatever you’re searching for. To search for multiple keywords, separate them with a plus symbol like this…

http://blogname.tripawds.com/?s=multiple+keywords

Here’s an example: http://killbarney.tripawds.com/?s=jerry+video

Any questions?

Stay tuned for details about how to search for Tripawds blogs and members – two more new features we recently implemented thanks to our WPMU Dev Premium membership.

Add ChipIn Widget To Tripawds Blogs

Let’s talk about widgets. Specifically, the 2010 Tripawds Campaign widget popping up all over the Tripawds community recently.

Tripawds is a user supported community, but we hate having to ask the community for support to keep this site up and running. So, the sooner we can reach our campaign goal, the sooner we can remove this annoying widget:

And here’s how you can help. In fact, here’s how you can add any widget to your Tripawds Blog sidebar. But let’s take a step back …

We are always happy to see new members join and create their own Tripawds Blog. But we are always surprised to see some of those same new blogs still have their default sidebars months later. We recommend all new bloggers view their blog and follow the helpful links provided in the default sidebars for doing things like changing the custom header, uploading user and blog avatars, and yes… updating the sidebars and widgets!

All blog themes available to Tripawds Bloggers include at least one sidebar. Widgets are sections that can be added to these sidebars from the Appearance menu of your blog dashboard. Standard widgets include a calendar for archived posts; lists for post categories, blog pages, or favorite links (your blogroll); recent posts and comments; meta information; or any arbitrary text.

NOTE: Keep the Meta widget in your sidebar for easy access to your blog dashboard. If you remove it, you can always visit your dashboard at yourblog.tripawds.com/wp-admin

Simply drag the widget you want to the preferred location in your desired sidebar, and “drop” it. Configure any available settings, click save and visit your blog to see the changes.

The text widget is the one we’ll be using in our example here. Follow the instructions below to help show your support for the 2010 Tripawds Community Campaign by adding the ChipIn widget to your sidebar.

How To Add Chip In Widget to Blog Sidebar

Copy the ChipIn embed code by clicking the “copy” link in the widget above.
Visit your blog Dashboard -> Appearance -> Widgets tab.
Expand the sidebar where you want to add the widget (If it is not already visible).
Drag the Text widget to the desired location of your sidebar. (A dotted line will represent where it will appear.)
Release the widget and an expanded field will appear.
Add a title to your new widget. (i.e.; Help Support Tripawds!)
Paste the entire ChipIn code you copied into the content area of the new widget.
Click Save, and view your blog to see the changes.

You should notice the new sidebar widget in your blog, just like in the right sidebar of this blog. (NOTE: If widget is missing here, the campaign must be over!) Don’t forget to remove the widget when we reach our campaign goal so we can stop begging for help. Thank you for yor continued support.

Any questions? Ask with a comment below or in the Tripawds Tech Support forum so we can share the answer with the community. If you’re wondering what the heck ChpIn is, click the “about” link in the widget or check out the Tripawds ChipIn Page for complete details.