What’s new in 1.9.8 ?
May 7, 2008 by submarine
- Now the icons are more “SEO friendly” : the description of the ALT attribute of the icon is the category name
- Two new parameters are available :
align : in order to align the icon when necessary (left, right…),
border : if true, the result will be a border around the icon. If false (by default) no border around it. - A little modification was made in the widget by Jean-Christophe Marie
- If you use a plugin to set category to pages (like page category plus), you can use put_cat_icons() to display icon(s) next to the name of the page in the sidebar.
- Better integration in WordPress : in order to have only one location of Category Icons in WordPress 2.3 and 2.5, it’s now located under the Manage menu
- The ‘Manage’ tab is now replaced by ‘Icons’
- An information is displayed if there’s a new version of the plugin (it can be disabled)
- There’s no more link Select and remove. Instead, there is a checkbox to select the icon(s) to be removed. Now, to edit icons, you must click on the category name, like in WordPress 2.5. So the plugin takes the ‘look & feel’ of WordPress 2.5
- The problem with no select or remove links should be fixed : I use another way to check the user role. (Ivan tested levels to check the role)
- The plugin displays informations in the footer in WordPress 2.5.X :
- current version of Category Icons plugin
- links to the following pages : FAQ, troubleshoot, and contact page
- name of the translator which is linked to his website if he provided an url. (The translator just have to enter these informations in the .po file, under the string translator_name and translator_url) - The category_icons.pot file is updated. The languages are not up to date (except Danish & French), but I’m sure the translators will do their best. (@Translators : I need your help, please. I promise to add strings as less as possible.
) - The language files are now in a subfolder named languages
- A new language is available : Danish, thank to Henrik Schack, and a language file is missing : dutch, but not for too long, as Vincent promised me the file
- Detects if the default upload folder is readable
- The icons are searched recursively
- Minors corrections of the code (no influence on the behaviour of the plugin)
- The widget has now the ‘look & feel’ of WordPress 2.5 and the localization should work correctly now
- The widget has now the same version as the plugin, because of a weird behaviour of WordPress server update information
- The RSS feeds can display the category icons (thanks to Bruce for the idea) :
After installing the new 1.9.8 I had to revert back to 1.8.6. Unfortunately the “SEO friendly” change is not SEO friendly - it could get sites penalised for keyword stuffing. It is not a good idea to have alt tags used like that.
Also, 1.8.6 outputs valid xhtml. After upgrading to the new version I was getting validation errors.
For anyone with a site that validates xhtml 1.0 Strict, the addition of borders is also bad news as this breaks xhtml validation.
I am using WP 2.5.1 and I love your plugin. But the changes in 1.9.8 are no good for me.
Ok, Damien.
What can I do to do well ? I can help you on the borders stuff : I’m working on it : there’ll be no border attribute at all unless you explicitly use the border parameter. But what can I do for the alt attribute ? Do you want me to leave them empty ? If you search for “Category icons spacer” in google, you’ll see that there’re a lot of results… Can you help me on this, Damien ?
I edited 1.8.6 by removing the spacer functions (which are not needed in the script as spacing is handled better with css) and by changing the alt to an empty alt.
The alt tag should describe the image itself but should really only be used if there is meaningful information in the image. Its not needed in your script and replacing it with an empty alt is semantically correct.
If it was my script I wouldn’t add borders at all - again, this is much better off being handled through css.
If you wanted to show people how they could style their caticons all you really need to do is add a comment in the readme to tell everyone what the selector class names are.
I love your script submarine. It does exactly what I want and it saved me from having to write one myself
With 1.8.6 it took 2 seconds to have it validating on my site, which uses xhtml 1.0 Strict. I just don’t have time to dive into 1.9.8/1.9.9, but if you need any help on this, I will have some more time after next week. Just send me an email to this email address.
Excellent update to an excellent plugin.
I’m having a bit of problem when it comes to use get_cat_icon with search results.
The category icons display just fine when I perform a general search, like:
http://www.mywebsite.com/?s=testing
But in a couple sections on a site I’m developing I have custom search fields that search only within the category you’re browsing, like:
http://www.mywebsite.com/category/one/?s=test
http://www.mywebsite.com/category/two/?s=test2
etc…
That’s where the get_cat_icon results in nothing. No category icons are displayed.
I’m not sure why this wouldn’t work and whether it’s an issue with your plugin or WordPress.
I forgot to mention, I realize that when searching with a category in the URL, your plugin will use the image for that specific category. Even if posts within the category search result page are from other categories, it’ll try to use the same one for them all.
So, I wonder if there’s a way to modify the plugin or get_cat_icon to know better?
Any help or a workaround would be appreciated, submarine. Thanks
@Travis
You’re right, Travis. I’m working on this. It’s almost done & I hope it’ll be available in the next release of the plugin.
That’s great! I’m delaying my site launch until the next release.
Subscribed to your RSS so I can jump on it.
Thanks submarine