The following piece of code added to a .htaccess file achieves this nicely:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

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In the file /wp-includes/widgets.php there is a function wp_widgets_init() and it is in this function that the sidebars are registered. To duplicate the Search sidebar widget you would duplicate this code:

$widget_ops = array(’classname’ => ‘widget_search’, ‘description’ => __( “A search form for your blog”) );
wp_register_sidebar_widget(’search’, __(’Search’), ‘wp_widget_search’, $widget_ops);

However, rename the first argument of wp_register_sidebar_widget() to something like ’seach2′, so that it does not conflict with the original Search sidebar.

Now, instead of adding the duplication directly in the wp_register_sidebar_widget() function in the file, I opted to create a simple plugin to do the job. At the end of the function, you will notice the plugin hook do_action(’widgets_init’). It is this hook which you can use in the plugin to add the extra sidebar registrations. Here is the code for a simple sample plugin I created which adds an extra Search widget and an extra Links widget.

/*
Plugin Name: Extra Widgets
Plugin URI:
Description: This plugin adds an extra available search widget to your Wordpress installation's sidebar system.
Author: Simon D'Alfonso
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://sjdalf.com
*/

function add_search() {
$widget_ops = array('classname' => ‘widget_search’, ‘description’ => __( “A search form for your blog”) );
wp_register_sidebar_widget(’search2′, __(’Search’), ‘wp_widget_search’, $widget_ops);
}

function add_search() {
$widget_ops = array(’classname’ => ‘widget_links’, ‘description’ => __( “Your blogroll”) );
wp_register_sidebar_widget(’links2′, __(’Links’), ‘wp_widget_links’, $widget_ops);
}

add_action(’widgets_init’, ‘add_search’);
add_action(’widgets_init’, ‘add_link’);
?>

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Having made the decision to use the comment system, I needed to then add some extra fields to the comment form, which would accept pieces of information that were part of the reviews. I searched around briefly for some information on the web regarding how to modify the Wordpress comment system, but could not find much, hence I have written the following short account of how to add custom field to the Wordpress comment system.

To begin with, here are the 3 files that you will need to edit:

• /wp-content/themes/[Your Theme]/comments.php (i.e. your theme’s comments file)
• /wp-includes/comment.php
• /wp-comments-post.php

Now, say that we wanted to add an extra field to the comment form, a simple text box into which the user inputted their favourite colour. We would put something like the following line into the section of your theme’s comments.php where the form fields are located.

<blockquote><code><p><input type="text" name="favcolour" id="favcolour" value="" size="22" />
<label for="favcolour"><small>Favourite Colour</small></label></p></code></blockquote>

The next thing which requires modification is the wp-comments-post.php file. Around line 38 the form data is assigned to variables. After the line

$comment_content = trim($_POST['comment']);

we will need to assign our new form data to a variable with a line like this:

$comment_favcolour = $_POST['favcolour'];

Once that is done, it will need to be added to the final data array. Look for a line like this near the end of the file:

$commentdata = compact('comment_post_ID', 'comment_author', 'comment_author_email', 'comment_author_url', 'comment_content', 'comment_type', 'user_ID');

and add to it the new ‘favcolour’ variable to get:

$commentdata = compact('comment_post_ID', 'comment_author', 'comment_author_email', 'comment_author_url', 'comment_content', 'comment_type', 'user_ID', 'comment_favcolour');

Once that is done, it is time to edit comment.php. Around line 635 there will be a line where the data is inserted into the database; it will start off like this:

$result = $wpdb->query( $wpdb->prepare("INSERT INTO $wpdb->comments
(comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_auth ...

Once the ‘favcolour’ information is added to this line, it will look something like this:

$result = $wpdb->query( $wpdb->prepare("INSERT INTO $wpdb->comments
(comment_post_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url, comment_author_IP, comment_date, comment_date_gmt, comment_content, comment_approved, comment_agent, comment_type, comment_parent, user_id, comment_favcolour)
VALUES (%d, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %d, %d, %d, %s, %s)",
$comment_post_ID, $comment_author, $comment_author_email, $comment_author_url, $comment_author_IP, $comment_date, $comment_date_gmt, $comment_content, $comment_approved, $comment_agent, $comment_type, $comment_parent, $user_id, $comment_favcolour);

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In order to do this, open up php.ini and find the line that has [mail function]. Then change the value of ‘SMTP’ to the mail server (e.g. mail.example.com). You will also want to change the value of ’sendmail_from’ to your details (e.g. Your Name ).

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