Development News

News and updates about the development of Dao By Design projects, as well as various other projects around the Web.

ToTop Link 1.2 & 1.3 for WordPress

ToTop Link 1.2 for WordPress is out.

This simple plugin gives WordPress-powered sites an easy way to add a “return to top” link to their pages. You can see it in action here, simply scroll down the page a bit and you’ll see a “return to top” link appear.

New in v1.2: You can now completely customize the positioning of the link/graphic. All the pre-sets (top-left, bottom-right, etc.) are still there, but now you can also define your own …

SEOSimple now for Joomla 2.5

SEOSimple BoxJust a quick update to say SEOSimple 2.1 has been released, and now has a Joomla 2.5 version.

I’ve also added an option that allows you to define whether you wish your category description to be used as the category page’s meta description. Optionally, you can use the content of the top-most article in the category listing. If set to “category description”, and no category description is available, it will default to the top-most article’s content (which was what occurred …

New WP Plugin: ToTop Link

I’m pleased to announce the release of our latest WordPress plugin, ToTop Link.

This simple plugin gives WordPress-powered sites an easy way to add a “return to top” link to their pages. Rather than explain how it works, simply scroll down the page here and you’ll see the link image appear in the top right corner.

Settings allow you easily to adjust the positioning and style to best fit your site. As always, it’s the first version, so all …

Drupal and WordPress founders interviewed together

A bit of a landmark co-interview with opensource CMS luminaries Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) and Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal) at SchipulCon 2011 in Houston, Texas. Bear with the initial audio — the irony of tech stuff going wrong is not lost on me either.…

SEOSimple Joomla plugin – now for J1.5 J1.6 and J1.7!

SEOSimple BoxAfter almost exactly two years of no updates, I’m quite happy to announce the release of SEOSimple 2.0 — now compatible with Joomla 1.6 and Joomla 1.7 as well as Joomla 1.5 .

That’s not all — I’ve finally fixed a number of small bugs that have been growing dust on my todo list – including fixing the K2 compatibility issue and the occurrence of an “uninitialized strong offset” error.

I’ve also added a couple new features, namely an expanded

Adding a little honey to WordPress’ Contact Form 7 Plugin

I’ve just released a new WordPress plugin that adds honeypot functionality to the popular (and frankly, awesome) Contact Form 7 plugin for WordPress.

Built out of self-necessity, the Contact Form 7 Honeypot plugin simply gives CF7 users an additional “honeypot” element to use when building their forms. A honeypot, for those unaware, is a spam trap that attempts to prevent spam bots from clogging up forms with their junk.

This is a non-intrusive method of spam stopping that, in contrast …

Dao By Design Launches China Blog Network

In early 2008 Dao By Design added a feature to its China-expat focused community site — Lost Laowai — which allowed bloggers focused on China to connect with one another. In the time since the feature has become increasingly popular and outgrew its position as a periphery feature on another site. So, we did the only thing we could: redesigned it, repackaged it, and relaunched it on its own domain.

As such, we’re extremely proud to present the China Blog

Dao By (new) Design — our shiny new look

New Dao By Design siteI’m way (way) behind on announcing the new look and identity of Dao By Design, but cobblers’ kids and their shoes, eh?

So, welcome to the new look of Dao By Design. Slicker, more organized (or will be when we get everything in its place), more useful and generally just much much better.

Previously the site utilized Joomla for the main CMS and WordPress for the blog. With the CMS-focused improvements that WordPress development has brought over the last two …

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Released

And doesn’t it look fantastic.

WordPress 3.0 has some features that have been in high demand for some time, and that theme developers have had to muddle their way around when using WordPress as a project’s CMS. Namely:

  • Custom backgrounds & headers (no more custom fields and php wizardry needed)
  • Shortlinks (our tweets thank you)
  • Menus (I can’t tell you how exited I am to retire the rather massive PHP function I use to do this now)
  • Custom Post types

SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.4

SEOSimple BoxI need first apologize for the length of time between updates. I have no excuse other than an insane work schedule. I, initially at least, was also trying to hold off releasing a new version until I had some significant bugs to fix or features to add. Perhaps it’s a testament to the simpleness of the plugin, but bugs are few and far between.

That said, an encoding bug has been the bane of the plugin’s existence and desperately needed …

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