Deep Thoughts by Robert Felty

I would like to announce 2 new versions of my popular postie plugin for wordpress, which gives users advanced options for posting to their blog via e- mail.

The first new version is 1.2.2, which has some minor bug fixes and improvements over 1.2.1. I will continue to release several more 1.2 releases over the coming weeks with bug fixes.

The second new version is 1.3.testing, which is, as the name implies, under testing. The main new feature for the 1.3 line will be the use of wordpress’s built-in attachment uploading, and image handling. This may sound trivial at first, but it actually makes a big difference. Postie has been around since 2004. Over the last 5 years, wordpress has changed dramatically. Postie has gone through several different active maintainers, and several periods of neglect. During the times of neglect, postie got sorely out of date. I am working on bringing it back up to par with wordpress.

For example, Wordpress 2.5 introduced the gallery feature, which makes it very simply to make a nice thumbnail gallery of images in a post simply by using the shortcode . However, this depends on having a link between attachments and the post. Postie currently does not do this. In fact, postie <=1.2 uses its own custom upload directories, instead of the default wordpress directories. This makes postie more difficult to install and configure, and confusing to many users. Starting with 1.3.testing, this is no longer the case. Now postie uploads files into the default wordpress uploads directory (or whatever custom directory you have specified), and it links attachments to the post, which means you can use the gallery feature.

Postie used to have a bunch of different options for image handling, and did the image handling all itself, using either GD or imagemagick. Many users got confused by the imagemagick option. Starting with 1.3.testing, postie now lets wordpress handle resizing images — the same way it does when you would use the web-based post editor. This should simplify options dramatically, and hopefully cause much less confusion.

Also in the works, though not fully documented yet, will be the ability for postie to check multiple inboxes. This could be handy if for example, you have a multi-author blog, and you want some people’s posts to automatically be posted, while others be posted in draft form, and require approval.

I very much appreciate all the feedback I get from postie users in the postie forum, including feature requests, bug reports, praise and donations. I hope that the adventurous amongst you will take the time to download 1.3.testing and let me know what you think. As it is a testing version, I will be updating it on a fairly regular basis. Once I get some feedback from users, I will release an alpha version, and then a stable version in the next month or two.

Finally, I should mention that I posted this via postie, as well as this cooking post which shows off the gallery feature of wordpress.

A few days ago I was in the mood for trying a new recipe. I saw a recipe in Very Vegetarian for White bean Ravioli with caramelized onion sauce which sounded good, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of making ravioli (not on a weeknight at least). So I got inspired by the recipe instead, and created my own. I used:

• 2 large yellow onions, diced
• 3 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 lb fresh champignon mushrooms, sliced
• 1 can great northern beans, drained and pureed
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tsp. dried thyme
• 1 tsp. dried rosemary,/li>
• 2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp. white pepper
• 1 tsp. black pepper
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil

I caramelized the onions in the olive oil, starting on high heat, and gradually turning it down as they got more brown, then added the garlic and mushrooms, cooking until most of the liquid from the mushrooms was evaporated. Then I added in the wine, vinegar, vegetable broth, and spices, and cooked off some of the wine. Finally, I added the pureed beans and soymilk, and continued cooking the sauce until it thickened up. I was quite satisified with the results, and Clare said she would eat it again. I think next time I will skip the soymilk and the vinegar.

Posole - a hearty Mexican soup made with hominy

A few weeks ago I tried making posole, from a recipe I found in The Very Vegetarian. The key ingredient is hominy, which is whole corn kernels which have been left to dry on the cob, then processed with lye. Processing it with lye makes it much easier to digest. The American Indians figured this out a long time ago. Thanks!

I was pretty satisfied with the posole over all, though I think I might have used a bit too much water. I like my soups to be thick.

Wordpress 2.8 should be released any day now (it was supposed to be released in April, but I am fine with waiting a few more days). Frequently there are some changes from version to version which affect plugin developers. I decided to try out the development version a few weeks ago, and found that they had drastically changed the widgets API. If you were using the suggested functions such as register_sidebar_widget instead of wp_register_sidebar_widget, you should be fine. However, under the old API, the only way to get multiple instances of a widget was to use the wp_register_sidebar_widget function, which I have been using in my plugins for the past year or so.

Wordpress 2.8 has a new Widget API which creates a generic widget class. It is now much easier to get multiple instances of widgets, though it did take a fair amount of code rewriting for me. If you are starting a new widget plugin though, you will definitely be happy (especially once it is well documented). I figured out the new API by looking at the default-widgets.php file, and also reading a few tutorials here and here.

I now have alpha versions of each of my collapsing plugins available. If you are already testing out WP 2.8, or when you upgrade, please check them out. To download them, visit the appropriate plugin page on wordpress.org, and click on the “other versions” link, then try out the alpha version. They are alpha, so there is likely to be bugs. I appreciate your patience.

Finally, I have to say that wordpress 2.8 has some very nice features besides the new widget API. Above all, it is much faster, both on the administrator side and on the blog side, mostly due to better loading of javascript.