Archived : Techno Babble
This is the archived version of my b2evolution code blog.
If you require any help regarding b2evolution then
visit it's support forums
You can find my current blogs here
Code : {@link : WafflesOn}
Personal : {@link : InnerVisions}
Playing with a blogrum
Posted on 20th Mar 2008 in : Techno Babble, Skins, Hacks, Plugins & Widgets
Convincing Evo that it's a forum
On the grounds that it's often easier to show something than try explaining it .....go visit the blogrum. Before you ask, no it's not ready for release yet, I need to sort out some permissions stuff to do with comments and tidy up the code and css ..... cos it's a tad messy in there ..... and then it's gonna take a mammoth post to explain what it can do, how, where, why and when. The good news is that it's pretty much just a trick skin with a couple of plugins thrown in, although I have a few more plugins in the works to make it work even more like a forum.
Registration is open, so if you want to have a play then feel free, although guest users can comment in the chatter blogrum so if all you want to do is spam me then there's no need to even register 
¥
Playing with an RSS reader
Posted on 3rd Jan 2008 in : Plugins & Widgets
SimplePie gets widgetised
After being nudged by Danny about an RSS reader I started a fair while back and never finished, mainly because I didn't have a use for it, I felt obliged to create an RSS Reader widget .... mainly to stop him nagging my arse off . Fortunately I'd come across an RSS Reader class a tad ago called SimplePie which would make the task a LOT easier, although it took a bit of pissing about to get it working the way I wanted. If you want to skip all the usual babble you can download the current version of the plugin here ( AM RSS Reader ), it does come with some system requirements which can be found on SimplePies System requirements page.
Installation and usage
Installing is the same as every other widget, download the file, unzip it, upload the am_rss_reader_plugin folder to your blogs folder. Meander over to admin > global settings > plugin install > install new plugin ( damn that's a hell of a path ), click the install link for the plugin. Now wander over to your skins widgets and click add new widget for whatever skin container you want it in. On the widgets settings page choose a custom title for the feed, the maximum number of items you want to display and slap in the feeds url ( note to self : validate the feed url ). If you feel brave you can play with the items html ( see the readme for replacement values ), the chances are that you won't need to change it. Once you have all your settings done, hit save. That's it, you now have the feed in your skin wherever your container is.
So, what can it do?
The short answer is "quite a bit actually", the long answer is that it has a bunch of settings which it utilises in a magic ceremony that results in the RSS feed being spat out, wherever you placed the widget, in a totally customised way. This magic is carried out by unemployed elves who are desperate for work now that christmas is over. So not only will you have a really cool widget, you'll also be helping save the elves, now is that cool or what? Of course this means that the widget stops working around the beginning of december for a few weeks but such is life Rather than repeat all of the settings, what they do, why and how I actually made a readme ( yeah I know, me write a readme, whatever is the world coming to? )
Semi-technical stuff
Due to the fact that I dislike having folder permissions set to "let the world rape me", which is unavoidable on some shared hosting, I decided not to use SimplePies caching system, which uses files, and instead the results are cached in the database. You can set the cache duration to absolutely anything you like, the default is 60 minutes. At the moment I've only enabled the simplest of the SimplePies abilities, ( ie/ you can get post author, content, url, date, title ), but if anybody really wants some of the other functionality that's available with the class then just holler, it's not that difficult to incorporate them.
As always this is a pre-release version, although it's been tested in most 2.x flavours, so if it breaks let me know .... if it doesn't break then it'll be released as soon as I come up with a post that doesn't involve elves
¥
*edit* You can now see the widget in action on my Feeds I read page.
tinkering with the bloglist
Posted on 20th Dec 2007 in : Plugins & Widgets
Controlling the blog list
Now that the evocore has stabilised a tad we decided that it was time we brought AstonishMe out of the stone age and upgraded it to 2.x. which means that we have quite a bit of custom work to redo. At the same time we decided to convert a skin we'd been playing with a while ago. In for a penny in for a pound and all that. One of the main problems we had was with the core bloglist widget, we needed it to do more than what it currently does .... so we decided to recode it and make it a tad more *flexible* and then we threw in some new bits.
The main problems we needed to overcome were :
- The ability to display public blogs , no problem the current widget already does this
- The ability to display members blogs to logged in members
- The ability to hide certain blogs from everybody ( including ourselves )
- The ability to add each blogs description to the blog list
- The ability to re-order the blogs to suit ourselves
What does it do?
This is basically a direct replacement for the current widget except it comes with a fair few new settings. The main ones are the "Current Blog" and "Other Blog" settings which allow you to enter the html to use, either in the settings or from your skin, both settings have some replacement values to allow further customisation :
- $blog_url$ replaced with the blogs url
- $blog_shortname$ replaced with the blogs short name
- $blog_name$ replaced with the blogs name
- $blog_desc$ replaced with the blogs long description
- $blog_ID$ replaced with the blogs ID
What about the blog order?
To achieve the rest we decided it was time to abuse the blogs *notes* field .... mainly because we don't personally use it and it's one of the few fields that you don't end up fighting later. Ordering of the blogs is done by sorting them on the blogs notes field, so depending on what text you have in there depends on where they appear in your blog list ( ours start with "blogorder:1" "blogorder:2" etc ). If you happen to be one of the rare people that actually uses the notes field then just ignore the first line when yer reading them. Since we were abusing the notes field anyway we decided to abuse it a bit more. When the blog list is being displayed the plugin looks for the text "bloglist:hide" anywhere in the notes field. If it finds it then it skips ahead to the next blog in the list.
So where is it?
Until we finish recoding AstonishMe you can find the plugin here. Unzip it, upload it, install it, play with settings. As well as the other settings we threw a few in for Afwas although the rest of you may or may not find them useful. Once we have AstonishMe recoded you'll be able to find all our plugins on one easy page. As always, remember that this is a pre-release version of the plugin, so if you find any bugs or quirks let me know and we'll work at ironing them out.
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Photozoom 3 takes steroids
Posted on 6th Dec 2007 in : Plugins & Widgets
Introducing the PZ3IceCold plugin
We haven't really named it that, it just kinda fit with the flow of the rest of the post ... just like all the images do ... So, you want it, you desire it, you love the feel of it in your hands, you want to do all sorts of cool and sexy things with it ...... you need a shrink ...... but where the hell do you get it? The short answer is here, the long answer is way longer and also involves big words .... but you've already downloaded the plugin and forgotten all about my tacky lil pad, whilst you paw over the coolness of the interface .... I understand .... sniff .....
for the minority that are still reading, here's the rest of the post ( including all the big words ):
We rock 
Millions of people email us on a daily basis begging us to code a photozoom plugin that works with every version of b2evolution that we've tested it with ........ which is .... urm, whatever version I'm running, and another one, and scott may have tested it by the time I post this, in whatever version he's running, so that's three versions it may or may not run in ...... Today their dreams have become a reality ..... so stop emailing us already, just download the bloody plugin 
...... from now on, adding a photozoomed image to your posts is as simple as clicking a button, emailing us to tell us how frickin' cool the interface looks, clicking a few more buttons here, type the odd caption there and ... just for you IE users out there ..... clicking on a radio button, and voila, or boom or blammo or whatever, instant PZ3 image in your post complete with caption, alt text, title text and some other bits of your choice ....... how cool is that!
So, how come we're cooler than a canadian snowstorm?
The short answer is "install the plugin".The long answer is much longer and includes those big words I promised : On the grounds that the b2evo admin pretty much requires javascript just to function, we decided to have a play with improving the work-flow by manipulating the DOM with some pretty persuasive code .... which is ironic really, since photozoom was specifically created to be a pure CSS solution .... without all the ie specific html shit that other solutions employ ... anyway, I digress .... so, we started to play with an interface .... ohhh, and we bent the core a tad, sorry FG .... and then we spent a fair smidge of time, courtesy of Mr Gates, with a slightly higher than normal blood preassure ... and then, finally, we stepped back and looked in awe at the wondrous mess we'd created ....... at least it proved the concept was viable 
So, we wandered off into a dark and lonely place and spent a few days coding up the new work-flow ... and then we spent several hours beating IE over the head with a copy of HTML for Dummies ... and finally it was done. The end result is a plugin that makes it a doddle to add photozoom images to your post, without you having to worry about all the HTML/CSS required to make all the magic work. As an added bonus the plugin actually puts the HTML into your post so even if you uninstall the plugin, as long as you include the pz3 css in your skin, your images will still work.
Is that it?
Realising that not everybody likes the black look, weirdos, we added loads of classnames and id's and stuff to all the various bits that make up the interface, so if you prefer your screen to be red just hit the relevant stylesheet and play with hex. Just don't forget to take IE to one side and slap it around until it understands your changes. Please note : this is a pre-release version, so there's still a few style glitches to work out with the interface. The actual photozoom part of it is fully finished though and won't be changed between now and the public release, so it's safe to play with it.
As always any feedback would be appreciated, even if all you want to say is "your interface sucks", of course we'd just refer you to a good shrink, but that's by the by.
¥
Playing with relations
Posted on 22nd Nov 2007 in : Plugins & Widgets
Hey cuzz
Of course, all the relations were of adult age and consent was given .... so, I've come back to a plugin that I was playing with months ago, but put on hold because I couldn't be arsed coding in all the tag stuff that it needed. However the latest version of b2evolution has tag support, so I can just do the lazy arsed bit and code the related posts component of it
What does it do?
Well, apart from molesting your relations, it adds a list of related posts to each of your posts based on the tags that you've used for your posts, in a kinda "nearest cuzzin" way. This is all automated ( although I might make it a skintag thing at a later date ), so you just need to upload and install ..... and yer cuzzins are mine
As always, this plugin is supplied as is .... and if it molests yer granny then .... well, hell, she deserves a tad of excitement at her age huh? ... anyway, you can download it here .... let me know if it fails huh?
¥
Swift update 23rd Oct
After a tad of testing by John the plugin has had a couple of glitches ironed out. It's also had a shedload of parameters added to it so that you can play with the layout directly from admin. The zip has been updated.
Update 24th Oct ( zip updated )
The plugin has now been "widgetised" which allows you to have individual settings per blog, and a new setting has been added to the plugin settings to turn widget support on/off
Note : To use the widget abilities you need a container in your post loop where you want the related posts to appear. Obviously you also need to install the widget in the container as well
Another update 24th Oct ( zip updated )
Thanks to Gary a couple of bugs with rss feeds and "only post with tags" have been cured
Cleaning clouds
Posted on 5th Oct 2007 in : Plugins & Widgets
Prompted by a forum comment by jibberjab asking how to exclude certain word/search terms from our Search Cloud plugin, I decided to do a tad of an overhaul, as the only solution was "crack open the plugin file and add <snippet> to the code" .... not exactly user friendly ... so I decided to "crack open the plugin file" and add a setting for it ....... and then I went mad and added settings for pretty much everything you could imagine.
Announcing the new and improved Search Cloud Plugin
Not content with just adding a new setting for excluding search terms, and moving pretty much every other parameter into settings as well, I widgetised it for those of you running 2.0.x, so you can have settings based on individual skins/blogs .... how cool is that ? ...... well apparently it's not cool enough 
.... Scott woke up .... and during one of my more lax moments , I mentioned that I'd recoded the plugin ..... never a good move 
Announcing the new and improved Search Cloud Plugin
So, after the input from the grumpy bugger, and a tad more coding, we're proudly run by wordrpess .... just kidding, have you seen the code that runs a wordpress blog? ... *shudders* ..... anyway, back on track, we have a new improved, should cover all situations ( even Scott situations ) search cloud plugin ..... although some enhancements require javascript
Anyway, if you like to live on the edge, and have a spare cpu for your server, you can download a test version of the code here. I haven't updated the helpfile yet, so you'll either have to hit the plugin settings and try and work it all out, or take a look in the source for all the available shit. If you're running 2.0.x then you should also have all the settings as widget settings ( which default to the current plugin settings .... damn this all gets complicated fast ) ..... As always, this code is supplied as is, and if it melts your server then .... urm, tough
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