If you do create websites with WordPress, that go beyond the scope of normal blog pages, you should consider to include a breadcrumb navigation for advanced usability. If you want a very lightweight breadcrumb navigation that supports nested categories and pages, doesn’t need many database queries, and if you don’t need any crazy options this might be your breadcrumb plugin of choice.

Usage

Just upload the simple_breadcrumb.php file to your plugins folder and activate it in your WordPress backend.

To display the navigation add this line of code to the template file of your choice:

<?php if (class_exists('simple_breadcrumb')) { $bc = new simple_breadcrumb; } ?>

Example

You can find a working example at my newest WordPress Theme Javazine
(I excluded the Breadcrumb Navigation from the front page, just open a post/page or a categorie to display it)

Download

• The plugin comes with widget support now
• You can display other peoples favorite posts now (for example on an authors page to display his or her favorite posts)

To take a glimpse how it works you can create an account on my wordpress test installation.
If you like the theme presented there head over to themeforest and download it for a small fee.
Plugin Download is, of course for free, here.

Until now. Some days ago one of my readers (Noura from noupe.com – great site if you are looking for inspiration) asked me if there is a simple way of giving each logged in user the opportunity to create a list of his or her favorite posts.

Since I couldn’t find any plugin that covered the topic I started programing one and now, “some” hours later I present you, without further ado, my first plugin: “my favorite posts”

This post will teach you how to use the plugin.

Current Version: 1.2
Last Update: October 10th 2008

Download

First of all you need do download the zip file, unzip it and place the fav_me.php file at your server at /wp-content/plugins/.

Installation

Installation is rather easy: just activate the plugin, it will create the database table it needs to work on its own.

Using the Plugin

We leave the no-brainer part to learn something interesting now: how to implement the plugin in your theme.
Basically all you need are 2 functions:

1. mfp_the_link();
2. mfp_display();

mfp_the_link will display an “Add this post to your favorite post list” link wherever you call it. Best practice of course is to add the function anywhere INSIDE your WordPress loop. That will create the add link for each post.

You can pass up to two parameters when calling mfp_the_link().
These are: add_link and remove_link.
The syntax is euqal to many wordpress core functions:

mfp_the_link("add_link=add me please&remove_link=remove me please");

This will replace the default link names with the ones you provide. If you want you can add markup as well:

mfp_the_link("add_link=<span class='add_this'>add me please</span>");

mfp_display will display the list of favorite posts anywhere you like. No WordPress loop required here.
So you can put the list in your sidebar, footer, main content area etc.

Of course you can pass parameters here as well. Calling the function without parameters will create an unordered list: each list item will contain a link to the post and a “remove link”.
The default classes added are:

• ul class: mfp_favorites
• link class: mfp_link
• remove link class: mfp_remove_link

So you don’t like my classes? Or you want to display the items in <div> and <p> instead of <ul> and <li>?
Here are the parameters you may change:

• title : Default is no title
• display : Default is “list” -> you may change it to “div”
• remove_link : Text for remove link, Default is “remove”
• class : Class for ul/div , defaul is “mfp_favorites”
• link_class : Class for the post link, default is “mfp_link”
• remove_link_class : Class for remove link, default is “mfp_remove_link”
• order_by : Order of items, default is ID, you can change that to any field name of the wp_posts table: some examples would be “post_title”, “post_author”, “post_date”. Get the full list at the WordPress Codex.

Some examples:

// Add a h3 title
mfp_display("title=<h3>Favorite Posts</h3>")

// Display as Div with different class names
mfp_display("display=div&class=class_1&link_class=class_2");

// Order by post Title & different remove link text
mfp_display("order_by=post_title&remove_link=up up and away");

Another option is to pass the ID of a user to the function. This way it will display another users favorite post list. you can do that by apending the ID as a seperate parameter. The following example would retrieve the posts of user 13 from the database:

mfp_display("order_by=post_title",13);

One of the best options to use this function would be to show it on the authors page of a user. Just insert the ID of the user dynamically

Another option to display the posts is through the widget added in version 1.2.

Thats it. If you encounter any problems, please tell me via contact form or comments. I would also be glad to hear suggestions for improvements, be it in functionality, usability or code wise.

Have a nice day

Version History:

v.1.0: 03.06.2008
v.1.1: 04.06.2008 (major code change, increased flexibility)
v.1.1.1: 10.06.2008 (minor bug fix: broken <a/> tag & php notice)
v.1.2: 10.08.2008 (added widget support and possibility to display other peoples favorite posts)