Media Categories 1.5 Released

Last week I finally released Media Categories 1.5, but I neglected to write a post about it. Most of the UI issues have been resolved with the Media Modal, however due tot time constraints I could only ensure the plugins compatibility as far  back as WordPress 3.3. It doesn’t break the site earlier than that, but selected taxonomy terms dont save properly. As of now, I have no plans to extend support to 3.2.x or before.

I do intend however on adding a few more features that I think are missing from WordPress 3.5 as soon as I have the time. The most obvious of which I will also try to get committed to core. Said enhancements include:

• Fixing the counter on the right of the attachment table – its supposed to indicate the number of media items per category but it does not count accurately.
• Adding a taxonomy filter to the attachments page – for most post types with a taxonomy enabled, the post types admin page shows a ‘View all categories’ drop down. This is missing from media in WordPress 3.5. I would also try to work some similar filtering ability into the Media Modal.
• There seem to still be some UI issues in the Media Modal when multiple taxonomies are assigned to a post type.
• I may create an admin interface in the settings area to allow admins to simply check from a list of checkboxes, which taxonomies (of all available taxonomies) they would like to enable for media.
• I may also include some simple functions for retrieving attachments by taxonomy. Although these would essentially be a simple wrappers of WP_Query or one of its wrapper functions, I believe it would serve as an example to developers on how to get started.

Take a look at how great attachments with taxonomies look in WordPress 3.5 by downloading Media Categories 1.5. Look out for some of these improvements I mentioned above in the next version, Media Categories 1.6.

One additional note: At some point in the near future I will update the plugins pages on this site,… I promise. However, please understand that the pages on this site are meant to contain the same information as the WordPress plugin repository does, mostly in the ‘Other Notes’ tab.

Media Categories 1.5 Beta 2

I have solved the UI problem in the modal that was holding up the release of Media Categories 1.5. However due to an additional bug reported to me on GitHub Issues, I did not get a chance to test the plugin in earlier version of WordPress.

The bug reported was due to an oversight on my part – in my rush to get this out the door, I had hardcoded much of the Javascript and CSS to work specifically for the ‘category’ taxonomy which I meant to go back later and fix – but I forgot. The Media Categories plugin has, since its inception, been intended to be used with any desired taxonomy. Thanks to GitHub user “stvwlf” for the bug report.

I believe Media Categories 1.5 should be fully functional for WordPress 3.5 at this point, but I wont release until I get a chance to test all aspects of it are backward compatible. If you would like to download Media Categories 1.5 Beta 2 ( zip / tar.gz ) now you can get by downloading the version specific tag in GitHub or you can get whatever is the most recent right off the master branch.

Media Categories 1.4 – Limitless Taxonomy

Yesterday a co-worker expressed a need to use the Media Categories plugin with not just a custom taxonomy, but with multiple taxonomies. So I spent last night at the office until around 9:45PM working on Media Categories 1.4.

Not to get bogged down in overly technical talk here, since I know that a lot of the users of this plugin are not developers. The main change in this release is that the class is instantiated as an object rather than called statically. All (except a few) references within the class have been changed from static references to objective references.

If you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, thats ok. All it means is that developers can new create any number of instances of Media Categories checkboxes, for any number of taxonomies.

Example

Lets say you already use Media Categories for the “Category” taxonomy, but now find yourself needing to apply a new custom taxonomy – lets call it ‘genre’. All a developer needs to do is create a new object, and pass ‘genre’ as the parameter.

$genre = new Media_Categories('genre');

Thats it! As long as that taxonomy exists, and has all the proper “labels” set up, Media Categories 1.4 will add a second metabox to media with all the proper labels for pluralization and context.

Filtering a Taxonomy

Since the release of Media Categories 1.3, which was less than a month ago – developers have been able to change the taxonomy being applied to media by making use of the `mc_taxonomy` filter. This is still the case, but theres to it now that there might be any number of taxonomies applied to attachments.

If you simply return ‘your_taxonomy’ to the filter without any conditions, you will over ride all instances of Media Categories in use – so to avoid that, developers need to check the value of the current taxonomy before modifying it.

add_filter('mc_taxonomy', 'custom_taxonomy_metabox');
function custom_taxonomy_metabox($taxonomy){

if($taxonomy == 'category'){

$taxonomy = 'custom_taxonomy';

}

return $taxonomy;
}
Thats all, nothing too bad - just be sure to conditionally check for the specific taxonomy you want to replace.
Please let me know how this works for everyone. Enjoy!

Media Categories 1.3

On the heals of release of Media Categories 1.2, which added Gallery Shortcode support, I’m releasing Media Categories 1.3 which allows developers to change which taxonomy is being used. If you’re not a developer, this update won’t be of much use to you, as you won’t be able to write the necessary code to change the taxonomy. Thats not the case if you happen to be a developer making use of this plugin.

Developers can use the new ‘mc_taxonomy’ filter to change the taxonomy very easily. Take a look here, as I use this filter to change the plugin so that it used the Tags taxonomy rather than Categories.

add_filter('mc_taxonomy', 'mc_filter_taxonomy');
function mc_filter_taxonomy(){
return 'post_tag';
}

Of course, your free to use any Taxonomy, including Custom Taxonomies. So that sort of means this plugin is no longer really ‘Media Categories’, but rather ‘Media Taxonomies’ would be more appropriate.

Please report any bugs you find with this. There are plenty if ways that people configure their custom taxonomies and some bugs may crop up under certain circumstances. If they do, please report it here or in the WordPress plugin directory  forum for this plugin.

As a final note, I’d like to point out that just like the Gallery Shortcode feature in Media Categories 1.2, this new feature in 1.3 was suggested by a developer in the WordPress Plugin Directory forum for this plugin. I value the feedback I get from other developers and users, and so far I’ve received pretty much all positive, constructive feedback. Thanks to all.

Enjoy.

Plugin Update: Category Template Hierarchy 1.3.2.1

Download Category Template Hierarchy Version 1.3.2.1 from the WordPress Plugin Repository

This plugin has seen a flurry of bug fixes and updates since 1.3 was released and we’re now on version 1.3.2.1. I am really sorry for having so many updates back-to-back.

Everything since 1.3 is bug fixes, here is a summery of what was fixed.

• `category.php` templates were not being loaded (somewhere down the line I must have removed it by mistake)
• In cases where the current category was neither parent nor child, the plugin would fail to load anything from the hierarchy other
• Lastly, I screwed up a commit, and the changes for 1.3.2 didn’t go out, hence 1.3.2.1

Download Category Template Hierarchy Version 1.3.2.1 from the WordPress Plugin Repository