Hacks, now in Plugin mode!

W00t! 

I had missed that I am listed as one of the Unofficial Five (six by some counts) Kingdoms of Hackdom on the wordpress site!  Thanks so much to Cena over at WP for the linkage, I must write more plugins!

The newest nightlies of the Wordpress Blogging System have depricated the my-hacks.php file in favor of a more user-friendly plugin system.

The new system is wonderfully implemented, for both plugin writers and users.  A plugin is really nothing more than a well formed php page that contains your custom functions; the end user then simply drops this php file in a directory labeled, get this: plugins, that resides inside the wp-content directory.  I am not sure about the wisdom of not having the plugins directory at root level, it isn't for security since you can easily navigate to the folder.  But that is beside the point, since the system is in flux currently.

Within the archive you will find:

1. AuthorList(); (use <?php author_list(); ?> to call this function once you have the plugin installed and enabled.)
2. AuthorRSS(); (use <?php author_rss(); ?> to call this function once you have the plugin installed and enabled.)
3. MyTunes(); (use <?php my_tunes(); ?> to call this function once you have the plugin installed and enabled.)
4. RecentComments(); (use <?php last_comments(); ?> to call this function once you have the plugin installed and enabled.)

I left out my CreativeCommons(); hack for now. There is a little more involved with it, and I am trying to decide a good way to handle the need for an admin screen with it.  That is it for now, so if you are like me and enjoy living dangerously and already have a build of WP that uses plugins, then please by all means DL away and go for it.

Author RSS feeds

This hack will query your database, returning all the authors and constructing the RSS feeds for each on the fly.  You can see it in action in my menu bar to the right, under RSS for each author.

Insert this into your my-hacks.php:

function author_rss() {
global $tableusers;
$query = ("SELECT user_nicename, user_nickname from $tableusers ORDER BY user_nickname");
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($data = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
echo "<a href="/index/author/feed/$data[0]/rss/">$data[1]</a> ::<br />n";
}
}

Then just throw this in your index page where you would like the list to appear:

<?php author_rss(); ?>

That is all there is to it, as always here is a text file.

Look on it and be glad...

Look below and know joy.  It seems that Lucas Films has released the final art for the DVD version of the Original Trilogy plus a special DVD containing various extras and a Documentary.

Here it is:

I am really into this art.  It seems nice and clean, very classic.  I hope that they don't screw up the movies anymore than they already have, but I am looking forward to the fourth disk that contains special features and a documentary.  Here is the info that Lucas has released thus far: Follow the boucing ball.

That is it for now, back to no-bloggin Lent action.

Holy Bishop Patrick

Today the world over people are getting drunk making asses of themselves and generally being idiots.  All in the name of St. Patrick.  Who was St. Patrick you might ask, He was a righteous and long suffering servant of God; a sinner, a man, a priest and a Bishop.  Now don't get me wrong I am Irish, and I love a good party and drink at times, but it seems wrong somehow that this man who fought against the devil in Ireland should now have his memory tied with such reckless abandon and debauchery.

Read the rest »

Live Preview for comments

I have ported at hack from MT to Wordpress that gives you live previewing of comments.

The hack is simple to implement and loads of fun at parties!  Here you go:

I have moved the hack to this file since it was pretty lengthy, and it was screwing up my validation.  The file is well commented so you shouldn't have a problem.

And there you have it.  You can see it at work on this site, just leave a comment.