While working on an update for the Absolute Privacy WordPress plugin, I decided to re-vamp how the plugin handles authentication. The current version of the plugin (1.3), uses a custom wp_authenticate function which bypasses the standard authentication found in pluggable.php. This has essentially been the standard method of using the functions contained in the pluggable file….

I am pleased to welcome you to the new design of JohnKolbert.com! This design has been a few weeks in the making, and the results–I think–are fantastic! I will write up a post in short order explaining all the details of the new design, but for now please let me know if you see anything…

I am happy to have finally released version 1.3 of Absolute Privacy. If you’ve ever wanted to make your WordPress powered website private (aka, family blogs, online journal, etc), Absolute Privacy makes it happen, complete with moderated registrations, RSS control, and lots more. Version 1.3 bring the following additions: added ability to control RSS feeds….

I am currently working on a personal project using the multisite capabilities of the alpha version of WordPress 3.0. When a new site is added to the WordPress network, a slew of new tables are added to the database, prefixed with the defined table prefix and the blog ID (eg: wp_2_). Note: This article is about…

The recent release of WordPress 2.9 brought a great new feature: the trash. Now users have a way to recover deleted posts and comments. By default, WordPress empties the trash every 30 days. If you’d like to change how often the trashed information is removed, simply open up wp-config.php and define the following constant: define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’,…

I am very excited to announce the official launch of MammothApps, a development studio specializing in advanced web applications and large-scale plugins built on the WordPress content management system (CMS). The former “John Kolbert WordPress Consulting” has lost its self-indulgent name and split to a completely separate entity. All of my development focus will now…

I just released v1.2 of my Absolute Privacy WordPress plugin. Absolute Privacy is a plugin which makes your blog only accessible to logged in users. It also lets users register themselves, choose a password, but have to be approved before being able to log in. This update was mainly to fix an XML-RPC authentication issue…

I just activated the new theme for my website. It’s a nice HTML template that I’ve converted to a WordPress theme. You’ll notice there is a much larger emphasis on services I offer and my portfolio. Please leave any feedback you have regarding the layout, broken links, etc. Here’s a few highlights of the changes…

While working on the redesign of my website I realized I was using a very inefficient method of displaying my latest Twitter post (“Tweet”). Currently I’m using a script I found online that uses two functions that are just over 20 lines of code total. Here I’ll show you how to use WordPress’ built in…

Last night I updated Smart Ads to version 2.2. This fixes an issue where posts that had ads disabled would randomly have ads become re-enabled. It also includes a changelog in the readme so automatic upraders can view the changes right from their dashboard. What’s Smart Ads, you ask? Smart Ads is an intelligent advertising…