The top plugin request I get is for an guest blogger header plugin. I had written a little how to using WordPress templates, but a plugin would be much better.

So the plan..

I’m going to build the plugin, documenting it as I go. In fact I plan to do it in more steps than necessary so that I will be able to cover just about every topic that you might need to build your own plugin.

If you would like to follow along with me I would suggest that you have some basic knowledge of php. A good place to start would be WWW3Shools Introduction to PHP

You’ll also need a good text edit. I like EditPlus, it’s a good basic html editor. Also PHPEdit is a good IDE editor for php.

It would also be a good idea to install a server on your home system. I use XAMPP Lite and have written a tutorial on running it with virtual host.

I should have the first tutorial up in the next day or so. Make sure you subscribe to the RSS.

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So If you need to install XAMPP I would suggest you do it this way –>

4 Steps to Apache with virtual host on Windows

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It uses PHPMailer with a gmail wrapper, so to speak. Here is the code needed:

require_once('/phpgmailer/class.phpgmailer.php');
$mail = new PHPGMailer();
$mail->From = 'user@domain.com';
$mail->Username = 'user@domain.com';
$mail->Password = 'password';
$mail->FromName = 'User Name';
$mail->Subject = 'Subject';
$mail->AddAddress('myfriend@domain.com');
$mail->Body = 'Cool, Email working!';
$mail->Send();

here is the required files

So now you can get the mail function to work with php and XAMPP.

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In my case:

C:\>l:

Then cd to the dir
L:\>cd xampplite

Now start XAMPP L:\xampplite>xampp_start.exe

Hopefully this helps someone. Please contribute below with your comments.

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I’m going to show you how you can do this in 5 minutes, and just 4 steps. Before we start you will need to download a fresh copy of XAMPP Lite. Once downloaded, unzip the file. You do not need to install this it will run right out of the extracted directory. See if you can do this in 5 minutes. Post your results in the comment section below. Let’s get started:

Step 1 adding host name to windows

You will need to open your windows host file. Depending on your version of windows, this file will be located in different locations. Here is the list of where your host file will be:

Windows 3.1/95/98/ME:
c:\windows\hosts

Windows NT/2000/XP Pro:
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Windows XP Home:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Windows Vista:
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Open the file with notepad. If your using Vista you’ll need to run notepad as administrator. Just left click on the notepad icon and click run as administrator in the drop down menu.

Now add this to the bottom of the file

127.0.0.1 wordpress
127.0.0.1 websitebaker

The number to the right is your computers default ip address. In most cases the number should be the same as I have listed here. The words are the virtual host name. In this case I am adding 2 new hostname, wordpress, for my WordPress directory, and websitebaker for my Website Baker directory.

Save the file. Make sure notepad doesn’t append .txt to the file. That’s it for step 1, see easy so far.

Step 2 Edit the httpd-vhosts.conf

Open the httpd-vhosts.conf file with notepad. You will find it in xampplite\apache\conf\extra. Copy and paste the following code at the end of the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs
ServerName localhost
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName websitebaker
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs/websitebaker
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /xampplite/htdocs/websitebaker>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName wordpress
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs/wordpress
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /xampplite/htdocs/wordpress>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now scroll back up and un-comment this line:
#NameVirtualHost *:80 (toward the top)

To look like this:
NameVirtualHost *:80

Save the file and create the 2 directories (wordpress & websitebaker) in your htdocs directory.

Step 3 Start Apache and test it.

go to \xampplite directory and click on xampp-control.exe and click the start button next to apache,

Watch for errors. If apache reports no errors then give your virtual host a try http://wordpress/

I hope you had fun, please comment your experience.

Step 4 (Okay, now I can count, with a little help from Eric)

Tell us about your experience by commenting bellow, and enjoy your XAMPP server.

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So what’s happening is that Skype & XAMPP are both listening to, and sending data trough port 80. But they were not designed to share that data stream. This is commonly called a port conflict. I liken it to my daughter not sharing with her brothers.

So now when you try and visit localhost with your browser, the request is sent to you Skype client, instead of XAMPPP. That’s no good for you, now is it?

Ok well let me show you how to fix it. The easiest way is to edit what port Skype uses. To do this open your Skype client, and navigate to TOOLS > OPTIONS > and click on Connections on the right panel

Then Un-check use port 80 an….. Then close Skype and open again.

Now you should be able to use both Skype and XMPP at he same time.

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Even if you gave detailed instructions, they wouldn’t figure it out. So after a little digging I found AMPstart. It’s a small package with one small exe file, a config file (.ini) and an auto start file. Don’t use AMPstat it contains spyware!

Your client plugs in the thumb drive and viola, the server starts it’s self, opens their browser to the site on the server. A small icon loads in the systray. When they’re done looking at the site the double click the systray icon and the server shuts down.

Why not just use a cd, you may ask? Well with the thumb drive they will be able to interact with the site, by adding to the MySQL db. Not possible with a cd.

One other benefit to this software is that it does not use XAMPP’s Control Panel, So you will not have to worry about memory leak from pv.exe.

One more thing to note; you can use the .exe file to start your server without the auto start file. So you can replace the Control Panel all together.

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The first thing you’ll need to do is download XAMPP lite from XAMPP’S web site. After downloading extract the files onto your thumb drive make sure that your route file is the main directory (F:\xampplite\).

Then to start XAMPP simply open the main directory, and double click “xampp-control.exe

When it’s time to move to new PC, simply stop Apache and My SQL and XAMPP the dashboard. You can now take your XAMPP with you. If you have any problems or questions with this, please post a comet and I will be happy to help.

Also, if XAMPP crashes on you be sure to read my previous article is XAMPP crashing on you.

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The reason your systems crashing is due to a small program called pv.exe. The program’s purpose is to monitor Apache, and mySQL to ensure continuous running. However, this program runs in the background every second without dumping the memory it’s used.

This program is being called from XAMPP dashboard. So the easy way to get around this problem is to start the dashboard and from there. Launch Apache, and mySQL, then shut down the dashboard with the exit button. when you’re ready to shut down Apache, simply open the dashboard again and shut down Apache and mySQL. Then exit the dashboard again

If you know, a fix for this. Please add your comments.

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