Updated Today


About the “Updated Today” Plugin:
This is a WordPress Plugin that will display a graphic in the upper left corner of the blog when the blog has been updated the day of the view. This is my first plugin and I intend to make more. If there are any problems with this plugin let me know in the comments. Any suggestions are welcome and comments please.

Download version 2.5

Compatability:
This is tested on the most recent version of WordPress. The minimum for this plugin is WordPress 2.7.1.

To install this plugin within WordPress
1. Login to your WordPress admin area
2. From the Plugins menu choose “Add New”
3. Search for ‘updated today’
4. Verify that it’s the ‘Updated Today Plugin’ and click ‘Install’
5. You should now have ‘Updated Today’ as an option in the Settings menu, go there and set up the plugin to your liking.

To install this plugin manually:
1. Download the .zip archive
2. Unzip and upload the “updated-today-plugin” folder to your “wp-content/plugins/” directory
3. Then simply Activate the Plugin
4. If it does not display be sure to check that this line of code is in the footer.php file of your theme:

wp_footer();

Change Log:
–Version 2.5–
Moved CSS into wp_enqueue_style
Moved pngfix.js into wp_enqueue_script
Added ability to upload images

–Version 2.4–
Added an option to make the image a link to the most recent post.
Cleaned up the options to a single Datbase Entry to require less calls to the get_option function. This also imports your old settings automatically.

–Version 2.3–
Cleaning a little house from old settings and code.
Plugin now sets defaults upon activation and removes settings from the options table when deactivated.

–Version 2.2–
Added the ability to change what post types (post or page) and if it’s modified or published status that is checked. Also added the option for if the banner displays in the header area, or the footer area. Useful for some themes if it just won’t display correctly.

–Version 2.1.1–
Changed date(“Y-m-d”); to use date_i18n(“Y-m-d”); to avoid date conflicts when timezones are set in WordPress

–Version 2.0–
Added a ‘Settings’ page in which you can choose your image to display, the side of the page it displays on and allows the blogger to upload their own images to the specified folder.

–Version 1.8.1–
Cleaned up the whitespace on the CSS and added CSS to make the padding and margin on the image ’0′.

–Version 1.8–
Modified database query to use the $table_prefix variable for databases containing multiple WordPress installations as well as people who modified the $table_prefix on setup.
Big thanks to Georg and TeraS for their help on testing for this one!

–Version 1.6.1–
Fixed an error with some themes that made their header image use a Z-Index of 99, which matched that of the plugin. Changed the plugin Z-Index to 100. – thanks TeraS

–Version 1.6–
Fixed the banner from displaying when a draft was created by adding the post_status query to only include posts with the status of ‘publish’

–Version 1.4–
Fixed the issue with not displaying transparent in Internet Explorer
Fixed link of the banner to now go to the post id instead of the guid URI

–Version 1.3–
Plugin is now fully WC3 Compliant
Minor CSS style changes
Added configuration boolean (true/false) settings for placement, style, and pngfix.
Added link to the most current post
Known Issues:
When a picture is used in a post, that picture becomes the target of the link on the banner.

–Version 1.2–
Chromakode is now helping me out with some of the testing and coding.
Improved WC3 compatability (still one more issue to resolve with code placement)

–Version 1.1–
Included pngfix.js in to the plugin folder in order to make for an easier install. This allows for transparent png’s to be visable in Internet Explorer.
Thanks to http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/ for the PNGFIX code.

–Version 1.0–
This is the initial release of the plugin.
Possible issues:
Not certain if every WordPress install uses the same field names for the post_date and same table names.

{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }

Chris K July 4, 2010 at 6:19 pm

@GeorgWP

Hey Georg, what theme is it that you are using? I’ve had this come up from time to time. You might want to modify the Header/Footer option that I’ve included. If that doesn’t work, let me know the theme name and I’ll test against it.

David Patrick October 4, 2010 at 1:58 pm

Hi Chris,

Have had the Updated Today banner installed on the District Website since it first appeared in Wordpress, and it works great.

What I would like to do is move the banner from the edge of the Browser window, and get it to display over the Image that makes up the header of the site and I have no idea of where to start. Do you have any pointers for me to start looking – I am using the new Twenty Ten theme if that helps at all.

Cheers,
David

Chris K October 4, 2010 at 10:39 pm

@David Patrick
Unfortunately, without heavily modifying the theme hard coding the plugin into the theme, it would prove to be pretty difficult. I will keep this in mind though if I can find a good way to do it, I’ll try and include it in a future update.

san jose chiropractor November 14, 2010 at 1:26 pm

ty :)

Kaori Otani December 7, 2010 at 6:25 pm

Hello.
Sorry about my English ability.
I use your updated today plugin maybe for 1 year,with “Generic Design 1.0.1″ theme,and it worked until (sorry,not sure)recent day.
I used same theme on 3 blog,but “Generic Design 1.0.1″ seems to be not updated,so I changed one(URL)to “Retromania 1.5″,still doesn’t work and I cannot see any image on setting page.
Now my wordpress is 3.0.2(Jp).
I tried “WordPress Default 1.6″theme,still doesn’t work..

I am not so good at php,but I’ll try.(and same to many Japanese,My English writing is disaster but I can read)As I read backlog,it seems to be difficult,but do you have any idea why your plugin (once worked)doesn’t work?

Chris K December 12, 2010 at 10:24 am

@Kaori
I will take a look and see if I can see what’s going on.

Chris K December 13, 2010 at 6:16 am

@Kaori Otani
I have tested on the Retromania 1.5 theme and the plugin is working correctly. Please make sure that your settings are done properly and are configured to display on new posts and try changing the ‘Insert Into’ option to see if that helps out. If that doesn’t help out let me know what settings you are using and I’ll see if I can duplicate it, but at this time it appears to be settings related. You may also want to try disabling other plugins to see if one that you have added is affecting the display.

I do see that the site you linked in your comment is using the Retromania theme and the plugin is displaying at this time.

Kaori Otani December 17, 2010 at 12:01 am

Chris,

Thanks for checking my website,and one problem came to my mind in one moment.because you could see banner is displayed.
I’m sorry,It was my security software!!
I use Kaspersky Internet Security,and maybe one day its’ update made unable to see plugin.(with all browser I use)I just disabed security software,so I could see bannerI’m sorry for my too basic mistake.I keep your reply for better configuration.

Thanks!

Chris K December 20, 2010 at 7:16 pm

@Kaori Otani
Thanks for the update. Not sure why Kaspersky would block it but I’ll keep that in mind in future trouble shooting and maybe I can see what’s causing that if I can duplicate it. If you have any other issues let me know.

TeraS July 13, 2011 at 8:12 pm

Hi Chris, there seems to be a problem with 2.4 as follows: On the settings page the banners that are included with the plug in do not appear on that page nor does the banner appear on the site when there is a new post made for the day…

Huggles

Tera

Chris K July 13, 2011 at 8:29 pm

@TeraS
I just visited your blog and it looks like the images are showing. Let me know if there’s something going on I can help out with or if the issue is cleared.

omskaap December 6, 2011 at 1:24 am

Hi there Chris, i’m in absolute need of your plugin for my online shop. Is there any way for me to show “x number of new products added today” instead of the static “updated today” message?

Chris K December 14, 2011 at 4:14 pm

@omskaap,

The ‘Updated Today’ is in the image, with some changes to the plugin you could make the banner look different (more of a badge or icon) and write out the number of posts with today’s publish date. That would work fine.

Faisal Humayun January 22, 2012 at 12:10 am

Hi Chris,
Any chance you can update the plugin to be WP 3.3.1 compliant?
Thank you much!

Chris K January 28, 2012 at 8:37 pm

@Faisal

On a stock WordPress 3.3.1 installation using the Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven themes I have no problems with the banner. What issues are you having with it currently?

Kahil February 24, 2012 at 4:28 pm

Heya,

Is there a way this can be modified where it could be applied more specifically? As in not just anything being updated, but specifically a custom field or any other specific section?

I use a plugin called Magic Fields 2, which basically just uses custom fields. With the setup I have I would like to be able to be notified when there are new or updated sections on a page without having to search and figure out what is new and what isn’t, etc.

Thanks!

Chris K March 27, 2012 at 4:29 pm

@Kahil

The plugin is always able to be modified, adding in a custom field wouldn’t be too much work, other than just modifying the database query looking for the most recently updated item.

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