Category Archives: Plugins

wordTube with plugin support

After a very long break I start to work on wordTube again. I recognize that the plugin features for the JW Media Player are now much easier to implement and so I added this feature to wordTube.

So what is the benefit for you ?

For example : You can add now a great rating tool to your videos, see here for a demo. Have a look at LongTail for all available plugins. Additional you can override all global flash settings via the custom fields. Detailed explanation here. wordTube version 2.20 is now available at WordPress.org

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Why GPL ?

Why GPL ?

In the last weeks I read a lot about the GPL discussion for WordPress themes and you maybe noticed the recent reaction of the Cforms plugin author. NextGEN Gallery is as well a popular plugin at wordpress.org and here is my opinion why GPL is not a bad thing :

The most authors argue that someone grap their work and make money with it, so the minimum return of invest is a backlink to the author page. I think the most of them doesn’t understand the idea behind GPL. Yes, you can release a code under a other licence, Creative Commons contains some version where you can disallow to remove attribution or the use in a commercial project, so why should be all code at wordpress.org restricted to GPL ?

Please keep in you mind :

Does the Apache team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the PHP team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the MySQL team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the WordPress team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

None of this projects require a link in any footer, for none of them you need to spend any cent to use it in a project. And if you are a talent web developer you can sell a setup of a simple web page to your clients, within a minute.

But why should they still develop these great product, if nobody need to pay for it ? What’s the motivation ?

Here is my personal view as plugin author :

I started to program my plugins just for my own projects and feel that when I release the code I can return a little bit to the community instead of donate anybody some money. Of course not everybody is able to program plugins, themes or whatever, so a donation is a great motivation any way. But I cannot claim that you maybe use it for a project where your client paid a lot of money. Some of my plugins are not so popular (like wp-table) and I closed the develeopment, because I never need it again, it did the work a long time for me and so I see no reason to continue the work..

But what happened if a plugin, a theme, a CMS or a blog system gets popular ?

First of all you receive more feedback, maybe other programmers contribute to your project, then – and this is the most important part – you are able to sell your knowledge ! As author of a plugin, a program or a theme you have the best knowledge about it and sometimes a company require your help. For you it’s maybe a simple thing and here you can get your best motivation to continue your development.

My plugin NextGEN Gallery is approx. 500.000 times downloaded and during the success a couple of people donate money for more features or even they would say thanks for the work. THIS is my motivation and for the rare case (I don’t belive it) it has still more success, I maybe able to create some buisness around it.

If you see how PHP, WordPress or other large projects evolved, you can see how GPL could help you. Please keep in your mind, YOU are the author of the code and you have the best knowledge about, so don’t restricted it with some silly links.

For all the people which could not follow my opinion I suggest to read also the arguments from Owen Winkler and Justin Tadlock.

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No internet…

I’ve still no connection to the world…

Unbelievable, but I’m waiting on a feedback of my telephone company. Please apologize that I’m currently still not be able to answer mails or question in the forums. Anyway, I’ve now uploaded the Version 1.1.0 of NextGEN Gallery. As you can see in the changelog it doesn’t include a lot of new features: Pagination for albums and in the back end is the biggest extension for this release.

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Random title for your header

A new NextGEN Gallery Addon is available at wordpress.org. Titleimage from Marc Schmidt gives you the possibility to display the first or a random image from a selected NexGEN Gallery. This selected image will be displayed with the php function call showTitleimage(), which can be used inside your templates.

Download at wordpress.org or at the homepage from Marc Schmidt

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wordTube 2.1 for WordPress 2.7

I take some time to prepare as well wordTube for WordPress 2.7. No big changes , only some admin UI updates and I added the statistic feature again (THX to Frederic de Ranter).

Here is the version until WordPress 2.7 will be released :

Download wordTube 2.1.0 RC2
Beta Version @ Google Code

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First insight into Version 1.00 : Each gallery has a author

Ok, let’s have a look for the new features : The first one you maybe didn’t recognize after you upgrade. Go to “Manage Galleries” -> Edit a Gallery :

Author

In the Gallery settings you find a new setting “author” (During the upgrade routine it will be set automatic to the admin), now you can define the author for this gallery. It works similar to post and pages, if you are not the administrator or if you have capability to see all galleries (Look in the roles settings), you can only manage your own galleries.

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Adobe Flash 10 = no more Flash Upload

I updated in this minutes on my browser the Adbode Flash Plugin to Version 10, this new version has a changed security behaviour, therefore it’s not longer possible to use the Flash Uploader which is based on SWFUpload (also the WordPress Core Media Uploader failed). The author is already working on a new version, I will release a new update when it works stable…Update : Thanks to the effort of Jake Roberts, he released a new solution for Flash 10. I tested this here with Chrome,IE7 and FF3 and it works so far. Quick Fix for upcomming version 1.00 is now uploaded, feedback is always welcome…

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New updates available…

As promised I updated NextGEN Gallery and wordTube for the support of swfobject 2.1. This updates are required to embedded the flash object in a new way and keep compatible with other plugins like Viper’s Video Quicktags.

Please note that some other flash plugins or addons (Nextgen FlashViewer will be updated very soon) can be get in conflict, because the new script is not compatible with older versions. I suggest not to upgrade until the author update there plugins, because this release is not mandatory…

Wish you all a nice weekend ! 

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Final test week

I have uploaded the release canidate for wordTube. It contains now the swfobject 2.1 for showing the flash content and is compatible to other plugins , like Viper’s Video Quicktags. Please update to this version and report your issues at my GoogleCode project.

Please note :This version breaks the currently swfobject of NextGEN Gallery (and as well the addon’s like the Flashviewer). If you are interested, you can test also the update for NextGEN Gallery, here you get the version.

If I faced no big problems, both updates will be available end of the next week at wordpress.org

Happy testing !

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SWFObject 2.1

This article is for plugin authors which uses the great swfobject JavaScript library. The new version 2.1 contains a complete new way to emded and prepare the script code for the flash content. It’s NOT backward compatible with the implementation of version 1.5 , so it breaks my plugins wordTube and NextGEN Gallery. Due to the fact that I need to rework this for both plugins, I created a small PHP class which makes it much easier to implement the script code.

For example : 

$swf = new swfobject( $url, 'id', $width, $height, '7', 'false');

This initiate the swfobject with the url of the flash and the width/height settings and set an id name. This PHP class ensure that the id is not used two times, because it append always a internal counter. 

You can add to the $swf object new parameters, attributes or flashvars :

$swf->add_params('wmode', 'opaque');
$swf->add_flashvars( 'myboolval', $option_a, 'false', 'bool');
$swf->add_flashvars( 'myintval', $option_b);
$swf->add_flashvars( 'mystring, 'abcdef');

Now you can generate the output for your content with the follow function :

$out = $swf->output();

And the generated javascript code can be done with the function:

$js = '';
$js .= $swf->javascript();
$js .= '';

Please note that you can add the JavaScript code to any position in your output, but it’s recommended to add this to your header or footer area. To keep it more flexible it will not automatic add the <script>  wrapper around the code.

This functions produce now the follow HTML output :

<div class="swfobject" id="id_1" style="width:160px;height:120px;">
Get the Flash Player to see the flash content.
</div>


var id_1 = {
    params : {
       wmode : "opaque" },
    flashvars : {
        myboolval : "true",
        myintval : "10",
        mystring : "abcdef" },
    attr : {},
    start : function() {
        swfobject.embedSWF("file.swf", "id_1", "160", "120", "7", false, this.flashvars, this.params , this.attr );
    }
}

id_1.start();

This few lines of code should demonstrate how easy you can create dynamic swfobject content with PHP, without build up the JavaScript code manually. The swfobject script will automatic exchange the <div> element with the flash content.

You can download the class from my current GoogleCode trunk :

Download swfobject.php
PHP class @ Google Code

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