WordPress 3.3 is coming soon and I couldn’t be anymore excited for it.

Here are a few of the key highlights:

• Overhauled Menu System (now using floating menus)
• Overhauled Media Uploader (finally!!)
• Admin Tool Tips (this is great to help guide users)
• A Cleaned-up Admin Toolbar

Here is what the new Media Uploader looks like.

Overall, I’m very impressed with what the WordPress team has put out and they are on-track for continuing to build the best open-source blogging and CMS platform available.

What do you love most about WordPress?

The next generation of WordPress has been released into the wild.

Here are a few highlights:

• Refreshed Administative UI – Admin redesign
• New Default Theme “Twenty Eleven” – Uses the latest Theme Features
• Full Screen Editor – Distraction free writing experience
• Extended Admin Bar – More useful links to control the site

One thing that was really focused on for this release, is speed. As you begin to use the interface more and more, you’ll notice how much faster the interface really is.

But one feature in particular that I’m very interested in, is the new Streams functionality. There is a much-needed upgrade to how updates and installs are handled for plugins and the overall WordPress installation.

PHP4 support was also dropped, in addition to making MySQL 5.0.15 a minimum requirement. This is a huge step to drop PHP4 support and can only help make the code better (not having to support legacy functions.)

Overall, I’m very pleased with this release and am eagerly looking forward to the next release of WordPress.

Click here for full details on WordPress 3.2

I ran into this issue while trying to get the page’s top level parent, no matter who deep the child page was.

Here is the example structure: Parent -> Child -> GrandChild.

And here is the code which lets you get at the Parent name or ID, when you’re on either Child or GrandChild.

You could throw this into your functions.php file if you want to use it in your theme:

function get_top_level_parent_title() {

global $post;
	if ( empty($post->post_parent) )
		{ the_title(); }
	else {
		$ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post->ID);
		end($ancestors);
			echo get_the_title($ancestors[0]);
	}
}

First use the global $post; to properly get the post data for the current page you’re on.

Secondly, ensure you’re on a page that is not the parent, which is:
if ( empty($post->post_parent))

Thirdly, run through the code after you know you’re on a Child or GrandChild page, using get_post_ancestors(). This function works like a charm. It returns all the pages above it. The function will then return an array, even if it’s just one value, that has the top level parent as the last value.

So then use end() to grab the last value in the array, which is the top level parent.

You’ll then have the ID of the top level parent and if you want to grab the title, use the code above and grab value of the (first and only) item in the array, using [0].

Questions or feedback, leave ‘em in the comments

WordPress 3.2 Beta 1 is out in the wild, so I decided to download svn trunk and see what it’s all about.

First glace, the admin interface is very different — but a good different.

The are new links in the admin bar, which I like. And from what I can tell, the default theme’s font type was changed. It’s actually using the Twenty Eleven theme now, instead of Twenty Ten (for obvious reasons.)

Here are the main items mentioned as part of this next major release:

• Performance improvements like you wouldn’t believe. What’s that mean? Things are faster!
• Distraction-free Writing. The visual editor’s full-screen composing experience has gotten a major overhaul, and is now available from HTML mode, too. More than ever, WordPress allows you to focus on what matters most — your content.
• Admin UI Refresh. The last major redesign of the WordPress admin was in 2008. This isn’t a major redesign, just a little facelift to keep us feeling young. WordPress turns 8 later this month, you know.
• New Default Theme. Introducing Twenty Eleven, based on the popular Duster theme. Rotating header images, post format support, and more.
• Browse Happy. WordPress is made to work with modern browsers. If you visit your Dashboard using an outdated web browser, we’ll let you know there’s a newer version available.
• Admin Bar. We’ve added more links to the admin bar to make it even more useful.

Faster? We all like faster

One thing that’s really been bugging me lately is the speed of the interface, so it’s really good to see the core devs are paying more attention to that.

Now I just wish they would fix all the deprecated functions that still exist in the interface. If you turn on WP_DEBUG, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Looks like they’ve even cleaned up all the deprecated function usage in previous builds of WordPress Awesome!

Click here to download the beta.

But all in all, I’m pleased with this next release and will upgrade as soon as it’s available.

There is still much to be desired within WordPress when it comes to dealing with parent and children pages. The core code is there, and it’s usable, but there’s not a lot “out of the box” to play with.

We’ve developed a bit of code to help make your life a little easier.

Adding the code below to your functions.php file will let you remove the other children pages while on the parent page.

add_filter('wp_list_pages_excludes', 'remove_others_children');
function remove_others_children($excludes = array()) {
  $all_pages = get_pages();
  $all_children = (array) get_page_children(true, $all_pages);
  foreach ( $all_children as $child )
    $excludes[] = $child->ID;

  if ( ! is_page() )
    return $excludes;

  global $post;

  $this_heirarchy = (array) $post->ancestors;
  $this_children = (array) get_page_children($post->ID, $all_pages);
  foreach ( $this_heirarchy as $ancestor )
    $this_children = array_merge($this_children, (array) get_page_children($ancestor, $all_pages));

  foreach ($this_children as $child)
    $this_heirarchy[] = $child->ID;

  return array_diff($excludes, $this_heirarchy);
}

Here are some examples of what it would like without the code, then with the code.

A huge thanks goes out to Matt Martz for working with us on helping get this code ready.

This tutorial will guide you step by step on how to setup your server so you can install new plugins and upgrade existing plugins using an SSH2 layer in PHP and WordPress.

What is WordPress?
WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

What is SSH[2]?
SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol allowing a secure channel to be established between a web server and a client’s local machine. Many web hosting companies now offer SSH for greater security.
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