Good: It worked! Every instance of the #fb tag was removed, and everything else stayed.
Bad: Twitter Tools posted four copies of the digest.

Well, Twitter Tools does that sometimes. I’ll frequently see it post 2 or even 3 copies, and while I’ve determined it’s not related to WP Super-Cache, I haven’t gotten around to seriously debugging it. So I don’t know if it has anything to do with my plugin. Actually, it probably doesn’t, since it runs within the digest-building code.

For what it’s worth, Friday posted only two copies of the digest. I only found one item worth saving, though. (Well, two, but I expanded the other one into this post.)

I guess it still needs some testing. When I’m sure it’s working properly, I’ll post the code.

I also ran the main page through the mobile-readiness evaluator at ready.mobi, and noticed that most of the issues it cited with the mobile edition of the site were really simple changes. Some were basics like fixing unbalanced HTML, and others were recommended practices like including a DOCTYPE and making sure that headings were nested properly. So I whipped together a patch for WordPress Mobile Edition 2.1a. (It’s labeled as 2.1.1 in the readme, but it shows up as 2.1a in the list of plugins.)

Changes:

• Add XHTML Mobile 1.2 Doctype.
• Fix unbalanced <small> tag.
• Fix mising <ul> tags around list of recent posts.
• Avoid empty class attribute on comments.
• Add type attribute to style element.
• Change non-standard value attribute on <meta> tag to content attribute.
• Reassign headings so that h1, h2, h3 appear in order.

Download:

wp-mobile-validation.patch

The patch should be applied to the wp-mobile folder that you place in your themes folder.

Update: This has been completely superseded by more recent versions of the plug-in, which use Carrington Mobile instead.

Just replace this:

function add_tags_textinput() {
	global $postdata;
	$tags = get_post_meta($postdata->ID, 'tags', true);

with this:

function add_tags_textinput() {
	global $post_ID;
	$tags = get_post_meta($post_ID, 'tags', true);

The problem is that it will show existing tags, or let you add a new tag, but it will lose tags when you edit a post. It’s not able to retrieve the tags to fill in the form field, apparently because $postdata isn’t returning the ID it expects.

I’ve submitted the fix to wp-plugins.org, so if the author is keeping track of tickets there, the fix should show up in the next version of the plugin.

Update Jan. 3: The plugin author has released version 0.5 with a slightly different fix (plus a few other improvements), and it’s now compatible with WordPress 2.0.

Either way, the new comment notice went out, and the recipient sent me a spam complaint. I apologized and removed him from the update list, but it moves “accidental spam” from a theoretical risk to an observed problem. I’ve disabled the subscription plugin until I have a chance to figure this out.

The good news is that Subscribe to Comments 2.0 is out now, so I should be able to upgrade when I get a chance. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem to have added a confirmation step, meaning it’s still (effectively) opt-out. Sure, you have to opt-in to get it in the first place…but the fact is that anyone can opt you in just by giving your email address instead of their own.

<?php code goes here ?>

On some servers—maybe even your own—you can shorten this to just the opening <?. The following line in php.ini will disable this “feature,” and many web server administrators do so to simplify things like generating XML with PHP:

short_open_tag = Off

When this option is set, PHP will ignore <? and assume it’s simply part of the template… along with all the code following it. If you’re lucky, it means a bunch of PHP code gets sent to the web browser. If you’re not lucky, it results in invalid syntax, and PHP grinds to a halt, spitting out a blank page and a PHP Parse Error.

So please make sure you always use the full opening tag so that your plugin will be compatible with everyone’s system. If you run your own server, set that option in php.ini so that if you miss one, you can catch it before you post it.