Image: Adding custom columns to the WordPress media library list is a great way to spot missing information. The same technique is easily applied to other WordPress Admin lists.

Searching through your WordPress media library for items without “alt” text, caption or description can be time consuming and is error prone, especially if you’ve more than a few images to check. A quick scan could easily reveal what information is missing; if only these three columns were available. Well, as you’ll see, its easy to add them with two minor additions to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

Define your custom columns

First we need to tell WordPress the internal and external names of the custom columns we want to add to the media library.

add_filter('manage_media_columns','isv_custom_media_column_headings');

function isv_custom_media_column_headings($defaults) {
   $defaults['isv_alt']     = 'Alt';
   $defaults['isv_caption'] = 'Caption';
   $defaults['isv_desc']    = 'Description';
   return $defaults;
}

You can enable and disable your custom columns using the screen options panel at the top of the page in exactly the same way as for the standard columns.

Fill your custom columns with data

For each media item WordPress asks us what value to show in each of our custom columns. The ALT text comes from a post metadata field, whereas the caption is stored in the post excerpt and the description in the post content.

add_action('manage_media_custom_column','isv_custom_media_column_content',10,2);

function isv_custom_media_column_content($column_name,$id) {
   $none = '<span style="background-color:yellow; color:black;">None</span>';
   switch ($column_name) {
      case 'isv_alt':
         $alt = get_post_meta($id,'_wp_attachment_image_alt',true);
         echo $alt ? $alt : $none;
         break;
      case 'isv_caption':
         $caption = get_the_excerpt();
         echo $caption ? $caption : $none;
         break;
      case 'isv_desc':
         $desc = get_the_content();
         echo $desc ? $desc : $none;
         break;
   }
}

I highlight “none” with an inline CSS style so missing information really stands out.

And that’s all there is to it. Simple!

Add custom columns to other WordPress Admin lists

Use the exact same approach to add custom columns to other WordPress Admin lists. Here are the filter and action names you’ll need:

Posts

Filter: manage_posts_columns, Action: manage_posts_custom_column

Pages

Filter: manage_pages_columns, Action: manage_pages_custom_column

Comments

Filter: manage_edit-comments_columns, Action: manage_comments_custom_column

I’ve added custom columns to my post and page lists for the excerpt and featured image thumbnail. On my comments list I’ve added a custom column to highlight pingbacks and trackbacks so they stand out amongst the other comments.

This was becoming an issue as I keep a local backup of my Gmail account using IMAP Backup. And while you can find attachments in Gmail using search modifiers has:attachment and filename:zip, you can’t search or sort on attachment size.

The solution: the IMAPsize freeware Windows IMAP utility found via this blog post from Amit Agarwal. IMAPsize’s speciality is searching your Gmail account for folders (Gmail labels) and messages based on attachment size.

I quickly found and deleted my large attachments using IMAPsize. Backup problem solved. Recommended.

One of my hosting accounts limits PHP memory, so for these blogs I need to deactive all plugins before running the automatic update. My other hosting service has enough PHP RAM to not have to do this, which is nice.

All my blogs have now been running WordPress 3.0 in production for a few days and so far I’ve not met any problems with the core product.

One minor issue has been with the CSS minification in the W3 Total Cache plugin. I’m using the latest development version of W3TC but it has an issue with CSS so I’ve disabled minification until I’ve time to look into this further.

The new multisite feature in WordPress 3.0 seems a good option for combining a number of separate WordPress installations to cut maintenance effort. I’ve had a first look at some tutorials and it looks possible. However, not all my plugins are yet multisite aware.

The Thesis theme I use on all my blogs is not multisite aware so I’d need to make some edits to the Thesis code to work in a multisite network.

So, I’ll leave my existing installations alone and give my core plugins and theme some time to catch up with WordPress core. Once they are multisite aware I’ll merge all my retired blogs into a single WordPress installation.

Image: The COBOL ON COGS site has some nice attention to period detail, including simulated 3270 terminal phosphor burn-in and a Y2K in-joke for those who’ve been around a while.

You’ve heard of Ruby on Rails, but what about all those COBOL developers? Well, we can goto COBOL ON COGS and reminisce. Pay attention as the screens change to bring back fond memories of the massive, built like a battleship, IBM 3270 green-screen terminals. A very nice touch!

If you’re changing your WordPress site or blog structure and moving posts and pages around, then John Godley’s Redirection plugin makes it easy to add 301 redirects to the new canonical definitions. It also catches 404 errors, with an easy way to add redirects for incorrect URLs, common typos etc.

Image: Andrew Biss: TechPresenting.com curator, founder of strategy consultancy ISVfocus.com Limited and an experienced software industry executive who’s held VP-level strategy, marketing and engineering positions at software companies in the UK, US, France and Germany.

Andrew-Biss.com is my personal blog. I originally intended to use this domain for my online resume, but that’s now over at LinkedIn. I now post here from time to time about software industry issues that catch my eye.

I started my software industry career working as a developer in the financial services sector. A stint in consulting followed, where I championed using automated software tools to create business applications. I later held VP positions in strategy, marketing and engineering at software tool companies in the UK, US, France and Germany.