By John Eckman on October 27, 2009
I’m very happy to note I will be attending, volunteering at, and speaking at WordCamp NYC, coming up in November 14th and 15th.
My talk is one of the Saturday Sessions in the Beginning Developer track. (Hopefully not a rating of my development skills as evidenced by the plugin’s code, but reflecting the intended audience).
Here’s a quick blurb:
You Got Your WordPress in My Facebook!: Developing WPBook. WPBook is a plugin that enables users to turn their self-hosted WordPress blog into a Facebook application. Full web posts are viewable within the Facebook context, including embedded multimedia. Users can comment using their Facebook identity, and comments (and comment threads) are shared between Facebook users and regular blog readers. WPBook uses a deceptively simple set of actions and filters, along with the Facebook API, to create a relatively high degree of integration. In this talk I’ll go over the basics of how WPBook works, the current challenges in terms of meeting user requests, and some of the solutions currently in development.
WordCamp NYC looks to be an amazing production: good location, large crowd, and a solid group of speakers, including a Sunday keynote from Matt Mullenweg himself. Tickets are still available but I would not be at all surprised to see this sell out, so register now.
I’m also leading the organization for the first-ever WordCamp Boston, on January 23rd, 2010. We’ll be hosted at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development center, which is a fantastic venue right in Kendall Square.
Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but there is an announcements google group if you want to be notified when they do go on sale, and an organizers google group if you want to help put the event together. There’s also a design contest for the logo (enter by November 11th please!). I expect to open a call for speakers shortly.
Given all the interest I’ve seen and heard around Boston from end-users, SEO and affiliate marketing folks, developers, and businesses small and large in WordPress as a platform (including .com and .org), I suspect WordCamp Boston will sell out as well – so sign up for the announcements list if you think you’d like to attend.
Posted in Boston, facebook, New York, Syndicated, wcb2010, wcnyc, WordCamp, WordPress, wp, WPBook | Tagged openparenthesis.org
By John Eckman on March 27, 2009
Quick Update: I just (3/27) released 1.3.1, a quick bug fix update. Details in the readme. Recommended for all users – still supporting PHP4 in this bugfix release, as I haven’t started on 1.4 yet.
I’ve just checked the code for version 1.3 of the WPBook plugin into subversion, which means it should shortly be available for auto-update in your dashboard/plugins page, or for download here. (Remember that your dashboard/plugins page only checks once each 24 hours for new plugins, so you may not see it until tomorrow).
Changes in this release:
- Improved Admin UI – options sorted into categories, with help text
- More options: ability to include date with post title, option for custom header/footer including custom date/time formats, tags, categories, and author names
- Style cleanup on the “view post on original blog” link (now matches the share this post link)
- Bug Fix: No more duplicate blog name on the top of the “Invite Friends” page
- Bug Fix: When profile boxes are updated as a result of a new blog post, the permalinks were pointing to the blog outside Facebook, rather than the Facebook urls
I also cleaned up the installation instructions (included in the plugin as an html page and PDF document) to reflect the new options screen and some facebook side changes.
NOTE: This will be the last version of WPBook that will support PHP4.
The Facebook client is only officially available in PHP5, and I need to add some exception handling for cases where the Facebook client fails to update the users profile FBML. (Right now that case, when it occurs, throws a very dramatic if harmless “Uncaught Exception” error in the WordPress interface).
If someone wants to create an alternative version of WPBook for PHP4, they can do so using this release as the place from which to branch, but when WPBook 1.4 comes out, I will no longer include PHP4 support.
Apologies to those of you who rely on PHP4, but it’s time to find a host that can enable PHP5.
Special thanks in this release to Brandon Dukes, who wrote most of the updated code in it. Sorry it took me a week to get it tested, packaged, and released.
Here’s a screenshot showing some of the new customization options:
Options available within WPBook for customizing the user’s experience
Here’s the “advanced” options screen:
Advanced Options screen – click for full size
Next version, 1.4, I hope will include the ability to post notices into the Facebook status feed and/or news feed when you publish a blog post and (potentially) when comments are published. Not sure what the timeline on that will be, however.
Posted in facebook, Open Source, php4, php5, Plugin, Release, Syndicated, Update, WordPress, WPBook | Tagged openparenthesis.org
By John Eckman on February 14, 2009
(Updated: 1.3 has been released, so I’ve disabled comments here – please raise any still open issues there.)
Just checked in changes for WPBook version 1.2 – get it from the WordPress Plugin Directory or on this blog.
The biggest change here from 1.1.1 (and why I decided to make it 1.2 rather than 1.1.2) is a change to the mechanism used to create the user profile boxes. Although it worked for some users, the previous method (relying on an fb:ref url pointing to the recent_posts.php page inside the WPBook theme) was at best inconsistent, and could even cause uncaught exceptions.
The new mechanism, which sets the profile FBML in a function and uses an fb:ref handle to refresh it, seems to be more generically robust and should improve things, especially for anyone who had the “No content to display” error when trying to add the profile box to the profile.
Also in this release are some administration page improvements (thanks Brandon) and timestamp on posts.
As always, comment below if you have issues, and if you get your blog setup using the plug please leave a comment on this page.
Posted in facebook, Open Source, Plugin, Release, Syndicated, WordPress, WPBook | Tagged openparenthesis.org
