Please contact me using one of the following links to let me know if you are interested in beta-testing or translating or both.

See after the jump for details of the new changes.

Upcoming changes to version 2.5

• Added positioning options
• Absolute top, right. bottom, left positioning. Now able to specify horizontal and vertical position in viewport as opposed to center only.
• Fixed positioning that allows lightbox stays on page when scrolled.
• Rebuilt interface
• Changed interface to a combination of collapsible and tabbed to make it more concise and usable
• Separate settings into logical groups within tabs
• Added enhanced instructions and details of usage.*
• Improved and updated demos and tests.*
• Page/Post Options
• Auto launch on page. If auto-launch is set Lightbox Plus will automatically open the first lightboxed item on the page.*
• Per page loading. Ff per page options are set Lightbox JavaScript will only load for specified pages.
• Blog/posts only loading. if per page options are set Lightbox JavaScript will only load for specified pages.
• Image grouping
• Added more control over image grouping
• Fixed image X of X problem, can disable Image X of X
• Scrolling If ‘false’ ColorBox will hide scrollbars for overflowing content. This could be used on conjunction with the resize method (see below) for a smoother transition if you are appending content to an already open instance of ColorBox.
• Updated ColorBox to verion 1.3.18
• Fixed a regression where Flash content displayed in ColorBox would be reloaded if the browser window was resized.
• Added safety check to make sure that ColorBox’s markup is only added to the DOM a single time, even if $.colorbox.init() is called multiple times. This will allow site owners to manually initialize ColorBox if they need it before the DOM has finished loading.
• Updated the example index.html files to be HTML5 compliant.
• Changed the slideshow behavior so that it immediately moves to the next slide when the slideshow is started.
• Minor regex bugfix to allow automatic detection of image URLs that include fragments.
• Numerous bug fixes
• Fixed use WP Caption option. Works with singles images and WordPress built in galleries now.
• Fixed text links getting lightboxed even of option is not set.
• Fixed many small issues and text errors.*

* Still in progress

Roman Forum and Colosseum (credit: rmlowe)

I’m switching the forums back to bbPress now that there is a bbPress WordPress plugin for it.  I’m going to try to port all the messages back but there I’m not sure how that will work out.  So please be patient if you feel you need to post to the forums.  I had previously used bbPress but is seemed that no progress was being made regarding development so I switched to Mingle Forum.  Turns out bbPress was more useful – I was able to track topics better and respond better to posts. So that said I need to fix a few style issue and and try to port the posts back to bbPress and then the forums will be available once again.

UPDATE: In retrospect I’ve decided not to import the existing forum content for a couple of reasons.  One, I don’t have the time to do it.  And, two, I’d just like to start fresh with the forums and simplify them.

Website and Service Support

If you are a client of 23Systems we offer full support for all sites, hosting and services we offer. You may place a service request on the Website and Service Support request page or you may call 512.537.2301.

Please see our services page for a list of the different services we provide to clients.  Our support extends to any of those services we have implemented for you.  All services come with a specific service level, response time and level of effort and we strive to meet those as well as possible.  However, there are times when we are unable to contact you as quickly as possible and we thank you for your patience.

If you are not a client but are looking for support or help with a project or technology please take a look at, and fill out our questionnaire or call, 512.537.2301 to see if we are able to assist you.

Support for 23Systems Free WordPress Plugins

23Systems has created a number of free WordPress plugins and we offer limited support for our free WordPress plugins via our forums.  It would also be a good idea to read the FAQs (Lightbox Plus FAQ, Facelift Image Replacement FAQ, Actionable FAQ) to see if you question is answered there. For more in-depth support or if you need extra help with one of our plugins you may place a service request using the form on the Plugin Support page.

23Systems does not offer phone support for any of our plugs unless you are an existing client.  If you would like phone support please fill out the form on the Plugin Support page and request phone support.  Once we receive the support request we can contact you with rates and information.

If you would like to show your support for our free WordPress plugins please consider a donation.

Method One: Speed up WordPress by adding compression via .htaccess

This is my preferred and recommended method as it is a more comprehensive solutions and works either domain or server wide depending on your configuration.  This is also a more advance and difficult to implement method so if you do not understand what I am talking about you should probably skip this method.  The easiest place to add these directive are in the .htaccess fill though you can also add the directives to your vhosts.conf of your apache configuration.  Method one does not apply to Apache 1.x please do not try it unless you are using Apache2.

First you will need to enable both mod_deflate and mod_headers with Apache. This can be done in one of the following two methods.  Apache 2 uses mod_deflate which has some built in detection to determine whether and how to compress data for browsers.

You can enter the following commands on some systems including Debian and Ubuntu.

sudo a2enmod deflate
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

This will enable mod_deflate and mod_headers in the apache config and the the last command will reload the configuration.

You can also manually enable the mods by looking in your apache configuration files and locating where mod are configured (hint: look for lines similar to those below).  You can either ad the following two lines or uncomment them if they already exist.

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so

Again you will need to reload the apache configuration as above.

There are two option that for compressing outgoing content with apache2, compress specific content or compress all content except specified.  Choose one option only.

Option 1: Compress specific content

You can add type such as text/html, text/css, text/plain or even x-application/javascript.  See Webmaster Toolkit Mime Types for a simple but exhaustive list.

      #-- compress content with type html, text, css and javascript
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css x-application/javascript

        # correctly handle http requests that come from behind a proxy
        Header append Vary User-Agent

Option 2: Compress all content

Manually excluding specified file types such as images, zip files, pdfs, or other files that already have some sort of compression on them.  In this case you exclude file by their extension using regular expressions.

    # set filter mod_deflate (chooses gzip or deflate compression based on browser support) on all outgoing content
    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
    # exclude content that is already compressed or does not compress well via file type
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|rar|zip)$ no-gzip

      # correctly handle http requests that come from behind a proxy
      Header append Vary User-Agent

Additional Apache2 Directives

This directive should probably be added to properly handle old browsers that do not support compression.

    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
    BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

Additionally you can add the following directives for additional logging

    DeflateFilterNote Input instream
    DeflateFilterNote Output outstream
    DeflateFilterNote Ratio ratio
    LogFormat '"%r" %{outstream}n/%{instream}n (%{ratio}n%%)' deflate
    CustomLog logs/deflate.log deflate

Note: that the client browser has to request compression via headers sent on request and IE 6/7 will only request compression on .html, but not on .txt nor .css. Mozilla/Firefox/Chrome/Safari can handle all three types.  I am not sure about Opera or IE 8.

You should now test your site using various browsers and you can also check to make sure your are sending compressed content using the GIDZipTest page.

Method Two: Speed up WordPress by adding compression via PHP

If you don’t have the ability to modify you apache configuration files or .htaccess you can still try to get some compression by adding a small snippet of PHP code to your template.  This may work with Apache 1.x bu tI have not tested it.

This method is very simple to implement.  Open your header.php in the theme you are using and add the following line to top of the file or just above the <DOCTYPE! line.

That’s all.

Again you should test with various browser to make sure your site is working and you can use the GIDZipTest page to see if you page is being compressed.

Method Three: Speed up WordPress using a plugin

There are many plugins for WordPress that will combine, minify and compress your WordPress output.  I haven’t had much luck with any of them due to some quirks with this site but they may be the simplest way to save bandwidth and speed up WordPress.  I am not going to go into detail on how to use these plugins but I will merely list the most promising – those which other WordPress developers I know have used successfully to achieve that same results.

PHP Speedy - PHP Speedy can consolidate javascript and CSS and combining them all into two files, one for the javascript code and the other for CSS. It also minifies and compresses the combined files and caches them then removes all the javascript and CSS links in the <head> tag and serves the combined file from the cache to the readers.

W3 Total Cache – Increases you site’s performance  by using a variety of techniques including file caching, database query caching, minifying/combining/compressing files, content delivery network (CDN) integration and more.

Webo Site SpeedUp – This is a commercial plugin but it also have a free version that does quite a bit to speed up your site.  It is without a doubt the most configurable and the free version allows you to do file caching, minifying/combining/compressing files and more.  The commercial version gives you total control over optimizations ranging from the .htaccess tweaks listed here to various file and database caching methods.

0.8.9.1

• Minor interface updates
  • Quick links in plugins list
  • Added additional support and FAQ links to admin panel
• Readme and faq update

0.8.9

• Moved JavaScript calls to the footer to improve load times.
  • You must have the wp_footer() call in your template for FLIR to work – see /wp-content/theme/default/footer.php for example.
• Updated Facelift to version 2.0b3.
  • Various improvments to rendering and speed
  • Using minified version of FLIR for improved load times
  • Additional features (not all are implement with FLIR for WordPress)
  • Bug fixes from previous versions
• Added one additional setting – Single Cache Directory option
• Updated admin panel to hide help text and provide icon to toggle

0.8.8

• Updated Facelift to version 1.2.2.
  • Corrects security vulnerability with Facelift

0.8.7.1

• Minor adjustments to work with WordPress 2.8.
• Minor changes to jQuery method to ensure compatibility with jQuery 1.3.2.

0.8.7

• Fixed typ0 in JavaScript which creates issue with IE7.

0.8.6

• Fixed bug in disable for IE 6 that was also disabling for IE 7 (Thanks Zack for pointing out my stupid error)
• Change some text in the admin panel to clarify a few items.

0.8.5

• Set the tags used by the Automatic method to follow the element types as defined in the configuration
• Add checkbox to allow the use of external JavaScript libraries – jQuery, Scriptaculous and Prototype support only
• Hide Elements to Replace section when using Automatic method as Elements to Replace is not used in that case.
• Add checkbox to disable FLIR for IE6 or lower users to avoid rendering issues that sometimes occur.
• Fix the global Use FancyFonts not showing it’s activated.
• Other minor interface fixes for WordPress 2.7
• Changed internal selection methods to increase speed and reduce memory usage.

You can download it from WordPress.org or 23systems or you may download Facelift Image Replacement 0.8.9.2 directly.

You can get support at the Facelift Image Replacement message board.

1.6.7

• Added fix to auto-lightbox images that are missing title attributes (Thanks Jörn)
  • This primarily affects images that were placed using older verisons of WordPress
• Interface updates
  • Changed admin panel to work that same way as my other plugins and thereby ease code maintainence
  • Quick links in plugins list
  • Added additiona support and FAQ links to admin panel
• Readme and faq update
• Actually includes ColorBox 1.3.6 which some how was replaced by 1.3.1 in last release (1.6.6) for which I apologize.
• Includes lightbox-plus.pot for language translations for interested parties.

You can download it from WordPress.org or 23systems download Lightbox Plus 2.4.6 directly.

As usual you can get support at the Lightbox Plus message board.