For those looking for a way to optimize your search results on your WordPress blog. You may want to check out the following plugin. Goolge Highlight

It will highlight or colorize the background of any letter or word that you search for. Head over to the site to see it, or do a search on this site and see it in action.

I want to update: I am going to follow up with at least three more great tricks and plugins you can use to help search you WordPress blog.

You may notice on some of our posts a gallery of images. We are using the built in WordPress up-loader, and when there are a few images we use the gallery insert button. But we are fans of jQuery and are using Thickbox.

As you know the basic gallery insert with attach the gallery images and link them to an image attachment page. Instead we installed the Gallery Plus plugin by Justin Hawkwood.

This plugin alone will add the ability under the Settings — options to add a “title” attribute in the <a> link and a rel attribute of “lightbox”.

Now I do have some site’s with lightbox installed, and I am a fan of the script, but I didn’t want to use the Scriptaculous script. And I do know that there is a Lightbox script based on jQuery.

Anyway… since I am using the Thickbox script on this site, the plugin needed a little tweaking:

There are two files contained in the download: gallery-plus.php & options.php, both with need to be edited. Lets start with the options.php:

Find.

update_option('gallery_plus_overlay', $_POST['gallery_plus_overlay']);

Add the 2nd line below, like this.

update_option('gallery_plus_overlay', $_POST['gallery_plus_overlay']);
update_option('gallery_plus_overlay2', $_POST['gallery_plus_overlay2']);


Next Find.

$gallery_plus_overlay = stripslashes(get_option('gallery_plus_overlay'));

Add the 2nd line below, like this.

$gallery_plus_overlay = stripslashes(get_option('gallery_plus_overlay'));
$gallery_plus_overlay2 = stripslashes(get_option('gallery_plus_overlay2'));

This is where it gets tricky. Find these next lines.

<tr valign="baseline">
<th scope="row"><?php _e('"rel" value in &lt;a&gt; tag:') ?></th>
<td><select name="gallery_plus_overlay">
<option value="none"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay == 'none') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>none</option>
<option value="lightbox"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay == 'lightbox') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>lightbox</option>
</select> Specify which, if any, javscript image overlay package to use. THIS PLUGIN DOES NOT INSTALL ANY OVERLAY PACKAGES.<br /><em>Note: Only applies when <strong>Link type</strong> is set to "image".</em>
</td></tr>

And Add these lines above.

<tr valign="baseline">
<th scope="row"><?php _e('Insert "class=..." Attribute In Link:') ?></th>
<td><select name="gallery_plus_overlay2">
<option value="none"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay2 == 'none') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>NONE</option>
<option value="thickbox"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay2 == 'thickbox') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>thickbox</option>
</select> <em>Note: Only applies when <strong>Link Images To Full Resolution</strong> is on.</em>
</td></tr>

It should look like this:

<tr valign="baseline">
<th scope="row"><?php _e('Insert "class=..." Attribute In Link:') ?></th>
<td><select name="gallery_plus_overlay2">
<option value="none"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay2 == 'none') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>NONE</option>
<option value="thickbox"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay2 == 'thickbox') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>thickbox</option>
</select> <em>Note: Only applies when <strong>Link Images To Full Resolution</strong> is on.</em>
</td></tr>

<tr valign="baseline">
<th scope="row"><?php _e('"rel" value in &lt;a&gt; tag:') ?></th>
<td><select name="gallery_plus_overlay">
<option value="none"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay == 'none') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>none</option>
<option value="lightbox"<?php if ($gallery_plus_overlay == 'lightbox') echo ' selected="selected"'; ?>>lightbox</option>
</select> Specify which, if any, javscript image overlay package to use. THIS PLUGIN DOES NOT INSTALL ANY OVERLAY PACKAGES.<br /><em>Note: Only applies when <strong>Link type</strong> is set to "image".</em>
</td></tr>

Now lets edit the gallery-plus.php file:

Find.

'overlay' => get_option('gallery_plus_overlay'),

Add the 2nd line below, like this.

'overlay' => get_option('gallery_plus_overlay'),
'overlay2' => get_option('gallery_plus_overlay2'),


Next Find.

<a href=\"$full_image_href[0]\"" . (($overlay != 'none') ? ' class="' . $overlay . '"' : '') . ($atagtitle ? " title=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_title, ENT_QUOTES ))."\"" : '') . "><img src=\"$thumbnail_link[0]\" title=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_title, ENT_QUOTES ))."\" alt=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_excerpt, ENT_QUOTES))."\" width=\"$thumbnail_link[1]\" height=\"$thumbnail_link[2]\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail\" /></a></{$icontag}>";

And change the $overlay to $overlay2, like this.

<a href=\"$full_image_href[0]\"" . (($overlay2 != 'none') ? ' class="' . $overlay2 . '"' : '') . ($atagtitle ? " title=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_title, ENT_QUOTES ))."\"" : '') . "><img src=\"$thumbnail_link[0]\" title=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_title, ENT_QUOTES ))."\" alt=\"".trim(htmlspecialchars($attachment->post_excerpt, ENT_QUOTES))."\" width=\"$thumbnail_link[1]\" height=\"$thumbnail_link[2]\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail\" /></a>
</{$icontag}>";

note: I know that this is really just riding the plugin of the lightbox script and telling it to use the thickbox only script, but till it’s added in, this is the way I went about it.

Thanks

I just came across an article over at WPHacks.com about a “how to” shift and bring back posts hidden way in the archive. Seems really interesting, cause I have a few blog sites myself and some of them like thefrosty.com and jeanasays.com. Theses sites have been working hard for a long while and have built up a good 20 plus paginated archive of posts.

So I am going to try and download the plugin Scheduled Post Shift Plugin by Dagon Design.

Once I have a chance to review this plugin I will surely write about it. 🙂