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I’ve had several people ask me if it was possible to post and/or comment on individuals Facebook profiles or fan pages as their business name, and not their personal profile. My answer has always been the same… it can’t be done (directly, anyway). Some people used Facebook’s recent “@” feature work around, but that’s not ideal in some cases.

I was just poking around the interwebs and realized Facebook released a new feature last month that solves this problem. To post or comment under your Facebook fan page name simply:

• Login to your Facebook account which is an admin of your fan page
• Visit your fan page
• Click the link in the right sidebar that says: “Use Facebook as Your Page Name“

Kudos to Facebook for finally implementing this. Shame on me for just finding this out. Yes, I blog about old news.

Today Automattic announced they are releasing a plugin called Jetpack for WordPress.org self-hosted websites. This plugin will bring in many features which before today were only accessible on WordPress.com hosted blogs. Among some of these features are:

• WordPress.com Stats (Previously available via standalone plugin.)
• Twitter Widget (Already several 3rd party variations out there, but this is the same one available to WordPress.com blogs.)
• Gravatar Hovercards
• WP.me Shortlinks
• Sharedaddy (Again, most dot.org folks were using  AddToAny or some other variation.)
• LaTex (for the uber-geeky)
• After the Deadline (More grammar, spelling, styling assist.)
• Shortcode Embeds (For embedding videos and other media.)

From Automattic:

In this spirit, we have great news. We are now making the power of WordPress.com available to almost all WordPress blogs, regardless of where they are hosted.

With Jetpack, a new plugin from Automattic, people not on WordPress.com can now access features that depend on WordPress.com. Jetpack also provides convenience features that don’t use the cloud, but are now easier to install, or were unavailable as plugins before.

 

Matt Mullenweg explained the reasoning behind their decision to Open Source these features:

The dot.org users can get the best of WordPress.com without giving up control, which might be the future of open source in general. …If you’re on WordPress you’re part of the family, it shouldn’t matter if we host you or not.

Thanks Matt!

I’ll be testing out this plugin over the next couple days and will come back with some thoughts and opinions for those not already familiar with the Jetpack lineup.

If you’re like me, you like to try and keep everything in one place when developing for WordPress. That’s what initially attracted me to the WP Developer Assistant plugin. Download and install this plugin and have access to many great developers tools:

• Query your WP database without SSH or another browser based GUI tool (like phpMyAdmin).
• Upload themes, plugins, or other files without needing to switch over to your FTP client. (Great tool for when you’re not at your main workstation and find yourself without an FTP client.)
• Quick access a list of WP filters and hooks.
• Enable error mode for your admin users, while suppressing them for other users.
• Quick access to your PHP config info.
• Quick access to a full list of defined options and constants, with the ability to easily edit serialized content.

You’re not discovering anything new here, just brining it all under one roof. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Since WordPress 3.1 dropped yesterday I’ve had several people ask me about a (not-so) unusual memory error when trying to upgrade. WordPress 3+ packs a bit more under the hood compared to it’s 2.x predecessors, so if you’ve previously upgraded to one of the v3 dot releases then theres a chance you’ve come across this before.  The error will look something like this:

The quick way to attempt a fix is to add the following to your WordPress installations wp-config.php:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

I believe by default WordPress defines the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT variable as 32M, so in most cases this should quickly resolve your problem.  If you’re running WordPress Multi-User (or a very heavy WP site in general) then you might need a bit more, which might require some fine-tuning to your servers php.ini file to increase the servers PHP memory limit.  Most shared hosting doesn’t allow this so ask your hosting provider. If you have access to this file simply add or update the memory_limit variable to match or exceed that of WP_MEMORY_LIMIT.

If after you define the WP_MEMORY_LIMIT variable you’re still receiving this error then you might want to check out the TCP! Memory Usage plugin. This will give you some brief statistics on your servers and WordPress installation memory limits and usage, and indicate your memory requirements.

If you’re anything like me, you deeply cherish all the browser real estate you can muster. In the latest release of WordPress (v3.1) they added a new feature, an admin bar which displays on the front end of your WordPress install. If you’re a WordPress.com or Worpress Mu user you might be used to this, but for the WordPress.org (self-hosted) crowd this little nugget might catch you by surprise.

While the bar does add quick and useful access to some of the most frequented back-end options, it sticks out like a sore thumb and takes up space. Luckily it’s very easy to hide. Simply add the following lines of code to your themes functions.php file and voila! No more admin bar.

add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

If you don’t have access to the theme files, there’s a plugin to achieve the same result. You can download it from the WordPress plugin repository.

Insert obligatory kick off post here. I hope you enjoy my fraction of a dot.