Why query_posts is bad: http://developer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/querying-posts-without-query_posts/

How to use pre_get_posts to modify your WordPress query: http://www.billerickson.net/customize-the-wordpress-query/

With the advent of the admin bar in WordPress 3.0, it seemed like a logical place to put it and it will work across all aspects of the site. This plugin adds a new drop-down called Theme Switch that gives you a list of all installed themes.

The Theme Switcher menu item allows you choose an installed theme from the dropdown.

The Theme Switcher drop down with lots of themes installed.

You can grab a copy from the WordPress plugin repo or install from Add New Plugins (Search for “admin bar theme switcher”).

Install and activate the plugin and it will report back with a notice or error at the top of the screen. It will let you know if you’re good to go or if PHP and/or MySQL don’t meet the minimum requirements on your server.

Until its in the plugin repository, you can check the plugin page.

Today, I’m glad to announce, with the help of Phillip Copley, NoStock– an out of stock notification plugin for WP e-Commerce. Now before we go any further, I’ll admit its a bare-bones, beta of sorts. The functionality is there, but the polish isn’t. Try it out, see if it breaks anything.

Update: I’ve just been told this plugin works on single products, but if there are variations of a product, it will not work right if one of the variations is out of stock.

Basically, the way it works is when a product is out of stock, you will now see a button to request notification. It will record your email address in a list and when the quantity is updated so the product is shown back in stock, anybody that requested notification will get sent an email.

You can grab a copy of the plugin from here: nostock.zip

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp Phoenix. It was amazing. We flew in to town on Friday (yes, I took the family) and I quickly set off to catch up with a few friends once I checked into the hotel. I enjoyed a nice dinner with @jaredatch @sleary @dremeda and @perezbox. After that a ton more people filtered in and we hung out til the wee hours of the morning. I’d list names… but I seriously met way too many to do so.

Saturday was an awesome WordCamp event at Chandler Center for the Arts. It opened with Angry Birds being catapulted into the audience, a parody of “There Will be Blood”, and a Mariachi Band… because that’s how Amanda and Chuck roll. The sessions were great. I presented on the back end workings of Custom Post Types (Slides can be found here).

Saturday night we were able to get a babysitter (Because, once again, Amanda’s awesomeness knows no bounds) so I could take @crystalduff to the Afterparty at City Hall. Yes, that’s right, the after party was at the courtyard at Chandler City Hall. Food, open bar, kegs, barricades, and a police officer. It was like an opening scene from CSI Miami– without the crime, of course. (Although, it was pretty scandalous!)

Sunday was the Dev/Hack day at Gangplank. Gotta admit, its a pretty awesome co-working facility and I’m pretty jealous that my area is so technically inept we don’t have anything like it. I cooked up some burgers and mushrooms with @aaronjorbin and had an overall good time. I also got interviewed by @wpcandy (which by the way still isn’t posted?). After that there was a speakers dinner at an urban farm in Phoenix. The food was awesome, and the guy had a pretty neat setup for the plants he grew.

I was conflicted all weekend about what to do Monday. There was snow forecast for northern Arizona and we had almost given up on our plans to visit Sedona and/or The Grand Canyon. Sunday night we decided we were going to get up early and go anyway. We hit some snow on the way up and some more once we got to the Grand Canyon. Couldn’t see too much shortly after we got there, and even less when a big squall came through. It was 32° and almost like being back in Pennsylvania. We were getting ready to leave and hit the gift shop… on our way out it had cleared up. I convinced Crystal to walk back up to the viewing area and we got some better pictures the second time around. Still have to process them…

We left early enough to swing through Sedona and see the red rocks on the way home. It was pretty amazing. Plenty more pictures to process. I did also got pulled over on the way and luckily only got a warning My rental car was very quiet and it was easy to do 90mph and think you were doing 60…

I gotta give it up to Amanda Blum and Chuck Reynolds for putting on one of the best… if not the best WordCamps I’ve ever been to. You guys did an awesome job!

Details can be found here.

List of changes can be found here and here.

One thing to note, 3.0.2 was released in under 4 hours after disclosure.

As usual, please update immediately. If you have any questions or would like help upgrading, please feel free to contact me.

There’s a copy of my slides over on Slide Share if you want to check them out.

Here’s a simple script I created to ease management of subversion based installs of WordPress. Just edit the paths variable. Make sure to remember the trailing slash.

#! /bin/bash
# Copyright (c) 2009 Ryan Duff <http://ryanduff.net>
# This script is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0 or above
#
# This script upgrades (switches) a subversion copy of WordPress
# to a tagged version of your choice.
# List of Current WordPress tag versions can be found at
# <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags>

# Set your paths
paths=(/path/to/install/1/ 
/path/to/install/2/
/path/to/install/3/) 

clear

echo WordPress Update Script
echo ------------------------
echo
echo -n "Please enter version number and press [ENTER]: "
read version

for path in ${paths[@]}
do
cd $path
echo
echo
echo -n "Updating $path"
svn sw http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/$version/ .
done