CodeBlink.com» Development

Upgrading WordPress Plugins

CodeBlink — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:18:57 +0000

One of the great things about WordPress is the ability to plugin new functionality effortlessly through it’s backend interface. Most of the popular plugins get updated very frequently and WordPress does a great job of letting you know this by highlighting which plugins have updates.

If you’re like me, this highlighted number screams for attention and you just love hitting that automatic update. This type of behaviour is fine for personal blogs which get very little traffic, but if your employment is based around blog performance for your company this can be a very dangerous move.

There are good updates and then there are bad updates

Keep in mind, these updates that come through are mostly from people who’ve created their plugin through their spare time and depend on their community for feedback on performance and issues. So when an update goes out the the WordPress world, there’s no guarantee that it’s gone through a stringent testing process.

README

Most plugins when they upgrade will have a log of what has been changed (a ‘changelog’) and these notes are available through a link under the plugins page. Make sure to read through this and gauge if upgrading is really necessary. Security fixes, performance boosts, and must-have new functionality are usually the only things worth upgrading for but you’ll have to judge on your own what’s best for your situation.

Have a development version and production version of your blog

It’s a pain, but it’s definitely necessary to have a mirror copy of your blog. Having this copy, your development copy, is where you can break stuff and not sit in suspense after you upgrade and start hitting refresh on the homepage – praying that your baby is still whole. When upgrading plugins, all you need to copy to the development server is the wp-content folder and I usually do an entire database dump because it’s fast, but you’ll need to configure your environment to take into account for any URL changes for you development domain.

For further information, please refer to the following:

WordPress.org Codex: Managing Plugins

Make your own Google Buzz feed widget with HTML and JavaScript

CodeBlink — Sat, 29 May 2010 14:38:32 +0000

The Google Buzz API was released in Labs recently and I felt like distracting myself with some fun. In a matter of 2 hours I had my own little Buzz feed widget going. Here’s the code I’m currently testing with:

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<h2>My Buzz Feed</h2>
<ul id="content"></ul>
<script type="text/javascript">
function handleResponse(response) {
for (var i = 0; i < response.data.items.length; i++) {
var item = response.data.items[i];

if (item.verbs=='post') {
var verbed = 'posted';
} else if (item.verbs=='share') {
var verbed = 'shared';
} else {
var verbed = item.verbs;
}

document.getElementById("content").innerHTML += '

';
if (item.actor.profileUrl) document.getElementById("content").innerHTML += '<a href="' + item.actor.profileUrl + '"><img src=' + item.actor.thumbnailUrl + ' border="0" height="20" width="20" alt="Jason Rundell profile picture" /></a>';
document.getElementById("content").innerHTML += '<img src="http://www.codeblink.com/images/buzz.png" height="20" width="20" alt="Buzz icon" /> On ' + item.updated.substring(0,10) + ', I ' + verbed + ':<br />';
if (item.object.content) document.getElementById("content").innerHTML += item.object.content;
if (item.object.attachments && item.object.attachments[0].links.preview) document.getElementById("content").innerHTML += '
';
}
}
</script>
<script src="https://www.googleapis.com/buzz/v1/activities/jasonrundell/@public?alt=json&callback=handleResponse"></script>

View the working demo HERE.

Just make sure to change ‘/jasonrundell/’ on line 23 with ‘/[your buzz name]‘ and you’ll have a widget that will display your public Buzzes on any page.

Aside from the several object properties I’m using in this example widget, there are many more available to you to use and manipulate. Let me know what you come up with ;)

Copy and Paste Development with Google Web Elements

CodeBlink — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:23:11 +0000

I half watched and half listened to the the Day 1 keynote videos of Google I/O today and among the plethora of new and exciting features discussed was Google Web Elements.

Most of us have already used the copy and paste embed code for Google Maps and YouTube, but I think we should start paying more f attention to the other web elements listed currently on the Google web elements site. How can we best utlize them? The Checkout and Wave (now that Wave is public) elements look especially interesting to me.

Do you have projects that could use some Googleizing?

How to get thumbnails of YouTube Videos!

CodeBlink — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:03:03 +0000

I’ve been working on a video contest project in PHP and it involves user’s submitting their videos from a YouTube link. I needed to show just thumbnails of the videos without having to use a full YouTube embed code. I really didn’t want to get my hands dirty with any kind of YouTube API though. So with a little bit of searching I found that YouTube creates multiple dynamic thumbnails for all of their videos when they’re uploaded.

For example purposes, I will use the incredible, mind-blowing, face-melter music video by DragonForce “Through the Fire and Flames”.

The URLs

In order to properly form a URL for the image, first you’ll need to grab the video’s ID. You get this from the YouTube video’s URL.
This DragonForce’s URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgrCKhxE1s, so it’s YouTube ID is 0jgrCKhxE1s.

Now here are the URLs you have available …

120×90 image – Choice 1
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/1.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/1.jpg

120×90 image – Choice 2
http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/2.jpg

http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/2.jpg

120×90 image – Choice 3

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/3.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1sg/3.jpg

120×90 image – Default Choice

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/default.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/default.jpg

480×360 image – High Quality (HQ) Choice
(does not need to be an HQ video to have an HQ image)

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hqdefault.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hqdefault.jpg

480×360 image – HQ Choice 1

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq1.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq1.jpg

480×360 image – HQ Choice 2

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq2.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq2.jpg

480×360 image – HQ Choice 3

http://img.youtube.com/vi/[YouTube ID]/hq3.jpg
http://img.youtube.com/vi/0jgrCKhxE1s/hq3.jpg

If anyone knows any other tricks, please share! :)

The taste left in my mouth by moonfruit is bittersweet

CodeBlink — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:38:44 +0000

Sorry for not updating sooner. I’ve been very busy at my day job and afterwards with work on the next Project Peru site. My mind has been a-buzz all week!

So no, I didn’t win jack from the MoonFruit contest. Didn’t even get a “wow, this guy’s site idea sucks balls!” (or something along those lines) tweet from @moontweet.

Only one of my friends tweeted about it and left a comment on the site (thanks @DonnaVitan!) even after I e-mailed a bunch of people that I figured would totally help me out. Am I bit tweaked about that? Ya of course. Don’t want to make a sob story of a blog posty, but WTF?

What the hell happened here? Why was this such an epic fail in networking? This is something that will haunt for quite a while I think.

I know the people I e-mailed when to the site, and some people from Twitter went to the link I tweeted about (who knows if @moontweet was one of them). In 6 days, the site received 136 unique visitors, with 900 page views. That’s about the only thing that I found remotely successful about this little endeavour.

Sorry MoonFruit, I will work on my lame YouTube video acting and solarizing Photoshop filters for the next contest :Pem

Oh and the icing on the cake was that they ended up giving out morn 3 iPods after the creative contest was finished!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Random Moonfruit Launch

CodeBlink — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:05:49 +0000

I just finished launching and announcing http://randommoonfruit.info. A site with a little twist! Hopefully it will bring you a few giggles and for ME – a free iPod Touch! So please visit and Tweet about it: http://randommoonfruit.info/ Make sure to use the #moonfruit hash tag to have your own chance to win a MacBook Pro for free!

This idea came around from the Twitter contest Moonfruit (http://www.moonfruit.com) has been having. By using a #moonfruit hash tag in a tweet, Tweeple are being entered for 1 daily draw of a free MacBook Pro (details found here: http://www.moonfruit.com/macbook-pro.html). Moonfruit is also giving away 3 free iPod Touches for the best creative ideas. 2 have already been given away.. I just hope I’m in time for being considered for the third!

I’ll keep you posted on events as they unfold.

A Simple Unicode Decoder/Converter Function for PHP 5

CodeBlink — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:32:08 +0000

I wanted to use the unicode_decode PHP function for something I was working on today, but, of course, this function is only supported in the new PHP 6. I don’t know how it is for my fellow programmers reading this, but getting your I.T. department to upgrade all servers from 5 to 6 can be like getting your grandfather to change from a rotary phone to a iPhone. I.T. is uber apprehensive about such serious change. Their servers are their babies and ‘upgrade’ translates to ‘extreme security risk’ in their minds.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my company and my I.T. department, but when it comes to upgrading – I would be very thankful for a little more progressive thinking. At the same time, I understand the apprehension and can’t fault it completely, but PHP is no longer a light-weight in the world of server-side scripting.

Rant aside, I came up with this really simple function to help me decode Unicode text. Hope it helps!

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function simple_unicode_decode($str) {
$str=str_ireplace("u0001","☺",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0002","☻",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0003","♥",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0004","♦",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0005","♣",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0006","♠",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0007","•",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0008","◘",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0009","○",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000A","◙",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000B","♂",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000C","♀",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000D","♪",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000E","♫",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u000F","☼",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0010","►",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0011","◄",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0012","↕",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0013","‼",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0014","¶",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0015","§",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0016","?",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0017","?",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0018","↑",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0019","↓",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001A","→",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001B","←",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001C","∟",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001D","↔",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001E","▲",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u001F","▼",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0020"," ",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0021","!",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0022","\"",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0023","#",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0024","$",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0025","%",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0026","&",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0027","'",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0028","(",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0029",")",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002A","*",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002B","+",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002C",",",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002D","-",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002E",".",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u2026","…",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u002F","/",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0030","0",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0031","1",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0032","2",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0033","3",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0034","4",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0035","5",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0036","6",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0037","7",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0038","8",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0039","9",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003A",":",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003B",";",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003C","<",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003D","=",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003E",">",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u2264","≤",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u2265","≥",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u003F","?",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0040","@",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0041","A",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0042","B",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0043","C",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0044","D",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0045","E",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0046","F",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0047","G",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0048","H",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0049","I",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004A","J",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004B","K",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004C","L",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004D","M",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004E","N",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u004F","O",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0050","P",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0051","Q",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0052","R",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0053","S",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0054","T",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0055","U",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0056","V",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0057","W",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0058","X",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0059","Y",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005A","Z",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005B","[",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005C","\\",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005D","]",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005E","^",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u005F","_",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0060","`",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0061","a",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0062","b",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0063","c",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0064","d",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0065","e",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0066","f",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0067","g",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0068","h",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0069","i",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006A","j",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006B","k",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006C","l",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006D","m",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006E","n",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u006F","o",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0070","p",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0071","q",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0072","r",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0073","s",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0074","t",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0075","u",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0076","v",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0077","w",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0078","x",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0079","y",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007A","z",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007B","{",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007C","|",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007D","}",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u02DC","˜",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007E","∼",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u007F","",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u00A2","¢",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u00A3","£",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u00A4","¤",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u20AC","€",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u00A5","¥",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0026quot;","\"",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0026gt;",">",$str);
$str=str_ireplace("u0026lt;",">",$str);
return $str;
}

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Please leave a comment or suggestion below!

Birdnapper 1.1 Now Available

CodeBlink — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:39:41 +0000

1.1 Update

Added a line of code to fix inline links to Twitter profile pages. Links will now be external to http://twitter.com. I discovered this flaw when I checked out my Google Webmaster report!

Birdnapper now has a home of it’s on on codeblink.com here: http://www.codeblink.com/codeblink-open-source-projects/birdnapper-the-php-twitter-feed-widget/

Birdnapper Twitter Widget Release

CodeBlink — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:49:00 +0000

I have removed this blog and made a dedicated page to the development of this widget here: http://www.codeblink.com/codeblink-open-source-projects/birdnapper-the-php-twitter-feed-widget/

Twitter Widget in the works

CodeBlink — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:43:54 +0000

Widgets are fun. Why not something for Twitter? It’s probably been done before (didn’t even bother searching for anything before deciding to make this) but I thought it would be fun to just make something on my own.

When it’s done I’ll be posting a link for you all to download and try out.

First Blink

CodeBlink — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:52:09 +0000

The building of CodeBlink.com has begun! Please contain yourselves…