I own a copy of a script called DLGuard, which allows me to digitally protect my products and membership sites quickly and easily, as well as sell products through one of any number of affiliate networks and payment processors, like ClickBank, Paypal, and more!

So, I decided to create a Wordpress plugin that links DLGuard and Wordpress together, seamlessly (well, you have to change the DLGuard membership template, but other than that, it’s seamless)

Current Version: 1.1 (Dec 4, 2008)

Download: Download DLG Membership Plugin Here (Via the WP Extend SVN)

Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.7

Installation Instructions:

1. Upload
2. Activate
3. Go to Settings > DLGuard Membership Bridge
4. If you didn’t install DLGuard into the /dlg directory under your root directory, add your DLGuard Install Path (if you’re not sure what that is, there are some examples immediately under the field)If you don’t enter the correct path, the plugin will tell you after you click Save - give it another try, or email your hosting company and ask what the physical path is to the directory where you installed DLGuard
5. Then add any DLGuard Membership Groups to allow access to in the second field. Separate multiple groups by a comma
6. Check the “Enable DLGuard On This Blog!” box, and click save

Since you’re logged in already as an administrator, the system won’t force you to log in through DLGuard. If you ever get logged out of Wordpress, simply go to your wp-login.php where you installed your blog but add ?adminlogin=1 to the end of the url (http://www.example.com/wp-login.php?adminlogin=1 or http://www.example.com/blog/wp-login.php?adminlogin=1, for example) - That will allow you to log in as an admin,

After you’ve set it up correctly, fire up another browser, and try to access your blog. You should see the DLGuard login screen now. If you want to change this to match your blog, follow the steps inside DLGuard (basically, edit the templates/memberships/login_template.html file to fit your blog)

Known Bugs:
None

There are still a few bugs that remain, and I’ll be taking care of those as soon as I can.

WPCR was also finally approved for the Wordpress Extend database, so it’s up on there now, too!

Check it out here

Download: Download The Google Toolbar Plugin Here

Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.0+ (It’s just a plugin, so it should work on older versions as well)

Installation and Usage: View The Install PDF File

Of Note: This is an old plugin, and isn’t widget-ready yet, so you’ll have to add some template tags to make it work. I’ll try to take care of that when I can.

Known Bugs:
None

Requirements:
Wordpress: 2.5+
mySQL: 5+ (Maybe 4.1.1+? - not tested yet)

Current Version: 1.4

Download: Download WP Comment Remix Here (From the WP Extend SVN)

Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.5.x

Plugin Competition:
I entered this plugin in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition. If you like it, please vote for it here!

History:

Not much to say here, I was reading the archives at Lorelle on Wordpress, and came across her post, titled: Wanted: Wordpress Plugins For Me - I read through the post, and what she was looking for, and thought “She’s right - the WP comment system could use an upgrade”

And thus, WP Comment Remix was born

Features/Benefits:

WP Comment Remix adds a plethora of new options and features to Wordpress. These include:

For the readers
WP Comment Remix adds a number of great features that you can turn on or off, but they include:

Reply Link
You can add a Reply link to each comment, which, when clicked, adds “@OriginalPoster”, and links it to the anchor of that comment. For instance, if Steve left comment #23, and you click the reply link for that comment, WP Comment Remix automatically adds:

<a href=”#comment-23″>@Steve</a> -

to the reply box.

Quote Link
Clicking the Quote link has a similar action to the Reply link, but it adds the entire comment in a blockquote tag, including “<a href=”#comment-23″>Originally posted by Steve</a>”

Comment Ordering
You can choose how you want to order the comments for your readers - By Author name or Date, and Ascending or Descending

Separate or Remove Trackbacks
You can choose to separate the Trackbacks from the comments and move them to the bottom of the list, or remove them completely

Comment Tags
Comment tags allow your readers (and you) to find comments more easily, instead of having to read through potentially hundreds of comments in a single post to find something specific

In the admin area
WP Comment Remix also adds some awesome admin functionality for comments.

New ‘In Need Of Reply’ notifier
WPCR adds a button, similar to the “Awaiting Moderation” button that shows up on the right hand side of the Comments menu link. The new button tells you how many comments are in need of a reply, and when clicked, takes you to a list of those comments

New Links In Comment Admin Area
WPCR adds new links to each comment display: Edit, Reply, Quote, and Mark Replied

• Edit does exactly that: sends you to the edit comment page.
• Reply and Quote function much like the Reply and Quote links in the public comment area, except instead of sending you to the post page to enter your comment, WPCR simply pops up an ajax reply box where you can make your reply, then save it - all without leaving the page
• Mark Replied tells WPCR that you’re not going to reply to that comment. This makes it easy to hide comments in the “In need of reply” list if you’re not going to reply to them 

Added AJAX functionality on the Manage Posts page
Now you can click on the comments image on the Manage Posts page and the comments for that post will drop down in the same window, so you can edit them right there!

Widgets
WP Comment Remix also adds 4 powerful new widgets. All of the widgets enable you to set a display template, and use similar tokens to control that template.

Recent Comments Remix
The recent comments remix widget allows you to control the look and feel of the display of recent comments. Also included is the ability to add gravatars to each recent comment displayed

Recent Trackbacks Remix
We pulled the trackbacks from the recent comments control, and put them into their own widget, so you can effectively feature both on your sidebar.

Most Active Discussions
This widget displays the most active discussions (posts with the highest comment counts) so you can wear your most popular posts like a badge of honor

Most Active Commenters
Looking for a way to honor frequent commenters? Look no further. The most active commenters widget allows you to display your blog’s top commenters proudly, as well as give them some love by linking their name to their site

Tokens
Each of the widgets is template-enabled, which means you can easily tell the widget how you want things displayed. You simply enter HTML, with one or more of the tokens below in it:

Tokens available for Recent Comments and Recent Trackbacks

• %ct - Comment title
• %cd - Comment date
• %cid - Comment ID
• %g - Gravatar
• %pt - Post title
• %pu - Post url (the permalink)
• %au - Author url
• %an - Author name

Tokens available for Most Active Discussions

• %pd - Post date
• %pt - Post title
• %pu - Post url (the permalink)
• %c - Count

Tokens available for Most Active Commenters

• %g - Gravatar
• %au - Author url
• %an - Author name
• %c - Count

Template Examples:
You use the tokens in place of data in the widget templates. For example, if you typed

<a href=’%au’>%an</a> - %c Comments

into the Most Active Commenters widget template field, it would display something like this for each commenter:

<a href=’http://pressography.com’>Jason DeVelvis</a> - 10 Comments

Installation Instructions:

1. Upload
2. Activate
3. Go to Settings > Comment Remix and choose which features you want

Then you’re done!

Video Walkthrough
(My apologies for the poor video quality, I didn’t realize viddler would eat the video like that… I’ll get a better version up soon)

Credits
A big thank you goes to Ozh, who wrote the Absolute Comments plugin

I used some of the ideas (and a bit of code) from that plugin for the edit-comments page links & ajax reply capabilities. Make sure you check out Ozh’s site for some phenominal WP plugins!

The filterCommentsNumber, stripTrackbacks and stripComments functions in the Trackback sorter code are from Ronald Huereca’s Managing Trackbacks and Pingbacks in Your WordPress Theme post on WeblogToolsCollection.com

Known Bugs:
None

Plugin Competition:
I entered this plugin in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition. If you like it, please vote for it here!

It also removes the Wordpress Developer News and WP Planet News that many consider to be “Dashboard Spam” and lets you see exactly what you want to see on your dashboard.

With Widgetized Admin Dashboard, you can now edit your dashboard just like you edit sidebars!
Current Version: 1.6 (May 30, 2008)

Download: Download Widgetized Admin Dashboard Here (Via the WP Extend SVN)

Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.5

History:

Well, for a long time, I’ve been trying to find a way to create a dashboard with content that I can control. I even went as far as creating a completely new dashboard that utilized Widgets in 2.3.x, but it was never good enough to release. (Read: There were tons of bugs)

But, with the release of 2.5, the WP Dashboard saw a great upgrade to “widgets” - except for the fact that you couldn’t move them, change their size, or really do much at all. So really the only upgrade was that now you didn’t have to wait on the Developer and Planet news to load before you could click a link. Good progress, but why not go that one step further and let people edit the widgets like they can with sidebar widgets? The code is already there!

So I started coding my widgetized dashboard from the ground up, utilizing 2.5’s new dashboard, and now have a viable, editable, quality dashboard. I stocked it with RSS feeds that I frequent, and now I’m good to go.

Installation Instructions:

1. Upload
2. Activate
3. Go to Design > Widgets and choose the “WordPress Dashboard” sidebar option from the drop down
4. Add widgets to your heart’s content!

When you select “Wordpress Dashboard” 4 new widgets will show up at the bottom of the widget list, all starting with “Dashboard: ”

3 are the same admin widgets that come with WP - Recent Comments, Incoming Links, and Plugins.

The fourth, RSS, is a modified version of the sidebar RSS widget - it does the same thing, but includes some new options, like height, width, and a drop down that includes some popular RSS feeds from blogs about Wordpress.

Known Bugs:
None

Or, if you’re lazy like me, you might even just say screw it and use the defaults from then on, if you even chose to upgrade in the first place.

Not any more.

I just stumbled across this: (Yes, I know it’s a year old, but I just found it today, so here you go!) How To Protect CSS Mods For Any Wordpress Theme

Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a simple, yet effective, way to customize a distributed theme to your liking, and not have to worry about your mods when the author makes any changes.

Now, Google has announced that they’re going to start using that data, when available, in their search algorithms. My guess is that right away, it will be used to return the social links when you click “Similar Results” for a site that has this meta data. Chances are, if you like Matt Mullenweg’s blog, you’ll like the blogs by the rest of the wordpress team. And Google will weight those blogs higher because they’re linked to Matt’s.

But that leads me to this problem - as of 2/4/08, Matt has 8 links in his sidebar. 4 aren’t Wordpress related (though a couple are business-esque and one is Joyent’s blog) and the other 4 are matt.wordpress.com (Matt on Not-Wordpress - his personal blog, though he does talk a bit about Wordpress on it), wordpress.com, wordpress.org, and bbPress. If I search for “Wordpress” in Google, the chances of Google finding a relevant page on one of the first four are slim - I checked the front page of all of the links, and found nothing, there could be older posts, though.  And the last 4 aren’t really blogs - but I suppose depending on what I was searching for, I could find it in one of those.

And then there’s this: None of the sidebar links on Matt’s blog have XFN Relationship Meta Data! (again, as of 2/4/08) So, am I to believe that this is such a good idea that is big enough to get Google to take advantage of it, but not good enough that one of the creators isn’t even using it? Good luck getting much of anything out of this, Google…

(Note: I’m not bashing Matt for putting what he wants to put in his sidebar. He could have the dancing baby from Ally McBeal there for all I care But it just seems strange to me that Google is so interested in this meta data, and one of the creators isn’t even using it on his blog… Something is missing here)

I was going to wait until I had perfected it, but Small Potato’s DIY Hover Menu post got me off my butt - so here’s my CSS-Only Hover Menu Tutorial:

First, I want to thank Wolfgang from 1234.info for putting his CSS-only menu code in the public domain. I used that as the basis for my menus, and I then separated the design and layout sections as best I could, and added a 3rd-nth level ability for added functionality.

Instructions

Step 1:

Copy this CSS code and paste it into your .css file, or <style></style> section of your site

Ok, now that you have the CSS in place, it’s time to create your menu.

Step 2: The dropnav class element. Create a div with the dropnav class where you want the menu to show up.

Step 3: The Navigation Items. Inside the dropnav div, you can add menu items like this:

Step 4: Submenus. When you want to give one of your menu items a submenu, all you have to do is add another menu item inside the list item of the parent item. But since IE6 is pure evil, we have to do some IE6-specific coding, too. So, the menu item in step 3 becomes this:

If you notice, before the </a> of the parent menu item (Page Name) we pasted in the sub-menu code, from <!–[if IE 7]> to the final <![endif]–>

And actually, we pasted that code OVER the </a>, since the submenu code already has the necessary </a> in it because of IE6/IE7 differences.

Step 5: You can also do 3rd-nth level menus the exact same way we did the 2nd level menus in step 3, with a few changes to the CSS. The CSS code in step 1 is actually set up for 3 levels, but 4th-nth levels need some changes:

To add new levels, you just need to add another chunk of CSS to your CSS code need to add the following to your CSS:

Non-IE6 Hovering CSS
For each level you want to add, just add another “ul li:hover” after the .dropnav

For example:

IE6 Hovering CSS
For each level you want to add, you need another chunk of positioning code under *IE6 Hovering* and copy/paste another “ul li a:hover” after the .dropnav

For Example:

Step 6: Changing the width of the submenus:

First:
Do a find/replace for 10em, and set it to whatever you want (make sure it’s in em for this to work)

Second:
Do a find/replace for 12em, and set it to whatever you set above, plus 2

Third:
Do a find/replace for 12.1 em, and set it to whatever you set above with .1 on the end

Example:
To changing the width to 8, you would replace 10em with 8em, 12em with 10em, and 12.1em with 10.1em

Step 7: Changing the height of the submenus

First:
Do a find/replace for 2em, and set it to what you want (make sure it’s in em for this to work)

Second:
Do a find/replace for 2.1em, and set it to whatever you set above with .1 on the end

Example:
If you want your menu to be 3em, you would replace 2em with 3em, and 2.1em with 3.1em

Example Source Code:

Download the source code for an example 4 tier menu system

Current Version: 1.0 (January 31st 2008)

Download: Download Premium Customizer Here

Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.3.2, but should work on 2+

History:

When I was writing the What Makes A Premium Theme Premium? post, I started thinking about the fact that most designs are not easy to customize if you’re not a designer, or if you don’t know HTML. Then, I thought I could make a plugin that would help make it easier for users to change the designs (colors, layout, anything)

I was also concerned about the simplicity factor here - I didn’t want to create a WYSIWYG editor, and I definitely didn’t want to make users learn how to use one of those, so I decided that I’d leave the customizability up to the designers.

What I came up with was a pseudo plugin/theme code that you don’t have to activate, but you do have to include in your theme directory.

The best part? Once it’s set up, it’s KILLER easy to use

Installation Instructions:

When you’re designing your theme, you’ll need to download Premium Customizer and put the premiumcustomizer.php file in your theme directory (the same directory as the functions.php file). Then, add the following lines to your functions.php file:

require_once('premiumcustomizer.php');
$themeName = "YourThemeNameHere"; //No spaces allowed
if ($_GET['activated'] == ‘true’) {
    //Add Theme Options Here
}

Once you do that, PC will be up and running, but won’t do much of anything yet.

Usage:

Now that you have PC installed, you need to add your customization variables to it. You do that by adding the following code under where it says “//Add Theme Options Here” in the code you just pasted into the functions.php file:

$newOption = array('Name'=>'[Option Name]‘,’Type’=>’[Input Type]‘,’Style’=>’[Styling]‘,[Option Choices]);
    addThemeOption(’optionName’, $newOption, ‘[Default Value]‘);

In the code above, you’ll have to replace the following things: (In all of these values, the [ and ] aren’t needed in your code, you should remove them)

[Option Name] = The name you want displayed in the options page to describe this option. (IE: Text Color)
[Input Type] = The type of input you want to use. Available options include: Text, Select, Checkbox, and TextArea
    - Text displays a textbox, Select displays a drop down box, CheckBox displays a checkbox, and TextArea displays a text area (for entering lots of text)
[Styling] = Any CSS you want to use to display the Input box. IE - for TextArea, you will want to set a height and width here, so the box isn’t tiny.
[Option Choices] = If the Input Type is set to Select, then you can keep adding array items here to fill the drop down with choices for your users
[Default Value] = The default value for this option (the value it’s automatically set to when the user first activates the theme)

Example 1:
$textColors = array('Name'=>'Text Color','Type'=>'Select','White'=>'white','Black'=>'black','Blue'=>'blue');
addThemeOption('textcolor', $textColors, 'blue');

Will display a drop down box on the options page like this: 

Example 2:
$Blogtitle = array('Name'=>'Titlebar Text','Type'=>'Text');
addThemeOption('title', $Blogtitle, 'Classic Blog');

Will display a text box on the options page like this:

Example 3:
$copyright = array('Name'=>'Copyright Info','Type'=>'textarea', 'Style'=>'height: 50px; width: 200px;');
addThemeOption('copyright', $copyright, 'Copyright © 2008 - Your Name');

Will display a text area on the options page like this: (I’m displaying the HTML here because of the limitations of the Wordpress WYSIWYG editor in displaying the textarea tag)<textarea style=”width: 200px; height: 50px”>Copyright © 2008 - Your Name</textarea>

Using The Options In Your Theme

When you have the options set up, now it’s time to use them in your theme! Using these values in your theme is very easy, but the usage will depend on what you need. Here are a few options:

(In all of the code below, [Option Name] should be replace with the name of the option you want to use - the [ and ] aren’t needed in your code)

Echo Text
    - You can easily display the text using the following code:

<?php echo getThemeOption('[Option Name]‘); ?>

This is great for the text, select, and textarea types

If Statements
    - You can use your option in an if statement using the following code:

<?php
if (getThemeOption('[Option Name]‘) == ’someValue’) {
    //Code for when the option is true goes here
}
?>

This is great for the checkbox and select option types.

Switch
    - If you’re using the select drop down box, you can either echo the text out, or you could use the value in a “switch statement” if you need to know which value the user selected

<?php
switch (strtolower(getThemeOption('[Option Name]‘))) {
             Case ‘value1′:
                //What to do when the case is value1 goes here
                break;
             Case ‘value2′:
                //What to do when  the case is value2 goes here
                break;
             Case ‘value3′:
                //What to do when the case is value3 goes here
                break;
        }
?>

You can use this for any number of Case statements, just add another one to the end, like I did for value2 and value3. Make sure you include the “break;” line before going on to the next Case statement, though, or you’ll have some problems!

The True Power of Premium Customizer

There are a number of things you can do with the options. I’m going to try to keep an all-encompasing list of them here, so you can benefit from the thoughts and ideas of others when you’re opening your design up with these customizations.

1) Customizable text areas, headers, titles, footers, etc.
     - Some themes have text areas, headers, and titles that aren’t directly related to current blog options. You can include custom options that the user can edit in the theme options page, without having them edit your theme at all - Use Echo Text for this

2) Changes to CSS styles, without changing the .css file (This is the real power of Premium Customizer)
    - Use the If or Switch statements to allow the user to choose certain aspects of your design. For instance, text color, background color, sidebar widths, sidebar location/placement, nubmer of sidebars, etc

3) AdSense areas
    - Use the textarea to let the user enter his/her own AdSense code quickly and easily

Leave a comment with your own ideas/experiences, and I’ll try to add them here on a regular basis!

For Your Users:

Your users simply activate your theme, then edit the options on the “ThemeName Theme Options” page under the Presentation Tab (it only shows up when the theme is activated)

The Options page will include all of your variables for them to edit to their hearts’ content! 

Known Bugs:
None

I’ve been kicking around the idea for awhile now, and I’d like to throw my hat into the ring on the issue.

Here’s what I think should be standard across all Premium themes:

1. Quality and Sophistication - Premium themes should be just that - Premium. They should look better than their free counterparts. Granted, “better” is an individual interpretation, so “what is better?” is left up to the designer. (This doesn’t mean all premium themes have to be “Magazine” or “News” themes, nor do they have to make Wordpress function more like a CMS, either)
2. Full Documentation - Premium themes should come with an instruction document/manual, even if it’s simply “Upload to your /wp-content/themes/ folder, then log into your admin area and click on Presentation > Themes then click on the XXXXXXXX Theme.” Granted, most customers now would like screenshots, or video of how to do it, but I think that should be up to the designer. The good part is that once you have a manual about how to upload and turn on a theme, it can pretty much be used for any theme you create - free or premium. Then, if your premium theme has more customization options to it, the manual will only need those changes before you start selling it.
3. Full Support - If you’re selling a theme, you should be there to support it. That’s just good business. Get yourself a support desk to manage the tickets, or you can use your blog comments, like many designers and plugin coders do now, but support your theme. If someone has a question, no matter how stupid it may sound to you, ANSWER it! Bad support = less repeat customers = less money in your pocket. (Note: Better documentation will generally reduce the amount of support you’ll have to do)
4. More Customization Options - Premium themes should be customizable - people want options. Buying a theme sets you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium theme buyers should be able to easily customize the theme further, whether it be for the layout, colors, images, or all of the above.
5. Features - This one’s hard to standardize, because every theme is different. But in general, premium themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What does that mean? It depends on the theme in question. But some features could include: Javascript/DHTML, “Ajaxy” sections (dynamic, not necessarily AJAX), “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple options for the home page, etc.
6. No Errors - This should go without saying, but for the sake of completeness of this list, I’m including it. There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium theme.

If I’m missing anything here, or way off base, feel free to leave a comment to discuss. The community definitely needs some sort of “Standard” for Premium Themes, but then again, since there is no regulation for using the word, maybe we’re all just spitting into the wind?

Other Premium Theme Discussions:

http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/premium-wordpress-themes/
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/wordpress/premium-themes-plugins/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/11/premium-wordpress-themes-are-they-here-to-stay/
http://wphacks.com/best-premium-wordpress-themes-gallery/
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/01/12/what-makes-a-wordpress-theme-premium/