alexyz

Here’s the scenario:
We have a store site.
The store site has a link on its homepage that leads to a wordpress site.
When a visitor clicks the link,
we want a url parameter that is passed with the visitor to the wordpress site
to remain in the url
so that when/if they click a link in the wordpress site that leads back to the store,
the parameter comes back with them.

Normally, you’d simply add a $_GET in your theme somewhere,
assign it to a variable,
and then append that onto any links that are headed back to the store site.

The trouble, though, is that when WordPress’
clean and pretty Permalinks URL function is active,
it takes over, and forwards (via htaccess, wordpress base code functions, or otherwise),
at which point in time data passed over is lost.

Solution:
In WordPress’ index.php (the very first root directory index),
include another file.

include(‘passback.php’);

In that file, instantiate SERVER SESSIONS, and save received parameters.
Something like this (of course looping through the REQUEST parameters dynamically would be smarter, but for simplicities sake, let’s just target a particular parameter):

session_start();
if($_GET['persistme'] != ”){ $passit = $_GET['persistme']; }
if(!isset($_SESSION['passback'])){ $_SESSION['passback'] = $passit; }

Now you can include your passback retrieval class in your theme, grab the parameter, and use your JavaScript library of choice to loop through all the links in the page and append it onto them.
Something like this (Prototype, and only appending links that already have a ? and thus other parameters they’re sending back…):

document.observe(‘dom:loaded’, function() {
$$(“a”).each(function(a) {
newhref = a.href;
if(newhref.include(‘?’){
newhref = a.href + “?rememberme=<?php echo $passit; ?>”;
a.writeAttribute(‘href’, newhref);
}
});
});

So you submitted your podcast, with a post containing placeholder content because you had to have it approved and live by some deadline, but now it’s deemed not presentable, because marketing has changed the title last minute, and as you change this first post’s content via its RSS feed, some of it changes, the dynamic parts most likely, the media, and so on, but the title isn’t changing in the iTunes store…

In my example, I used a feedburner feed (iTunes is using that), so I can simply change the feed source in feedburner, to something like the example xml feed in this post, and we can at least get the eyesore out of iTunes, freeing us up to make a new feedburner feed, and re-submit THAT anew to iTunes for a fresh clean go of things…

Host something like this somewhere, and point the old feedburner feed to it, done.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<rss xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd” version=”2.0″>
<channel>
<itunes:block>yes</itunes:block>
<title>A Title Is Required For The Feed To Validate</title>
</channel>
</rss>

wp-includes/version.php

<div id=”sidebar”>
<ul>
<?php
$myposts = get_posts(“category=1″);
foreach($myposts as $post) : ?>
<li><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>“><?php the_time(‘M’) ?>. – <?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
</div>

mostly in thanks to:

http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2008/03/category-based-archive/

http://www.themightymo.com/2009/07/22/includeexclude-category-from-wordpress-wp_get_archives/

http://kwebble.com/blog/2007_08_15/archives_for_a_category

WordPress 3

Start with a Post and get Category ID:

Get the id number(A) for the post you’re interested in in wp_posts table,  id column

Go to wp_term_relationships table, and find that same id number(A) in the object_id column, read over to the term_taxonomy_id column and get that number, that’s the category id

Start with a Category ID and get Category Name:

Go to the wp_terms table, and find the category you’d like in the name column, read over to the term_id and note the number

Find all Cateogry IDs:

Go to the wp_term_taxonomy table and sort by taxonomy value ‘category category number is in term_taxonomy_id column