Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Geolocation Plugin for WordPress

May042010

This Geolocation Plugin will be a nice addition for people who do travel blogging or who write about things in a particular area (restaurant and business reviews, hyperlocal news, etc).

The plugin adds a subtle but powerful addition to posts you’ve geotagged using WordPress for iPhone: a link appears inside your post with a short description of the location where the post was tagged. When your users hover over the link, an interactive map appears allowing them to view the location as a pin on the map.

You know, you could probably even combine this with the HookPress plugin, and have it automatically check you in on Foursquare, Gowalla or Yelp when you publish a geotagged post.

FancyBox Gallery demo fixed

Apr292010

Yesterday, I discovered that the demo at the bottom of my FancyBox Gallery plugin page was broken. After a little research, I discovered that a third-party javascript was the culprit. I’ve disabled that script for now, and alerted the service provider to the problem.

So, my apologies if you came to the page and got the impression that the plugin didn’t work well.

In a related note, I’ve been working (slowly) on some updates to the plugin. Hopefully I will be able to wrap up the changes by the time WordPress 3.0 is released. New features will expand the features to include the ability to use FancyBox with individual images, and an options page with options to set things like the caption placement, special effects, and timing for the image expansion and transitions.

If you aren’t already familiar with this plugin, FancyBox Gallery gives you a nice popup image browser using the attached images displayed by the WordPress [gallery] shortcode. See the plugin page linked above for a live demonstration.

WordPress as a Forum?

Apr212010

I know there are some efforts to integrate forums with WordPress. Of course there’s bbPress, which can share user logins. And there is the Simple:Press plugin, which seems pretty full-featured. And I have heard references to other efforts for plugins, or integrations for external forum systems. The main problem with external forum systems (as opposed to solutions purely based on plugins and themes) is that if you want a consistent look-and-feel between your blog and your forums, you have to do a lot of work.

Making WordPress look like a forum is mostly a matter of theming. Categories can group forum topics. WordPress posts map to forum posts. Comments map to replies. Administratively, the main differences are in how you manage user accounts, plus maybe some spam control features.

I’m just curious about what other approaches people are taking. Is anybody looking at custom taxonomies and post types for implementing forums in WordPress? I am mainly thinking this would make it easier to present both a blog and forums in a single site install, and easily keep them separate from each other. It seems like this would eliminate (mostly) the need for additional database tables. It’s not a project I’m looking to do myself, but I see the topic come up so often, I’m just surprised that there aren’t several more plugins available in this space.

Open Source Community Personality Spectrum

Apr142010

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice)

Most good open source projects attract an audience of supporters. When the buzz around the project reaches a certain point, it will also pull in detractors. We commonly use the term “community” to describe the group of people discussing the project. Mostly we mean the supporters, but it really includes anybody with an interest in the project, good or bad.

When you observe these communities for long enough, certain archetypes emerge…
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Email subscription changes

Apr132010

For a while now, I’ve had an email signup form in the sidebar (look, over there on the right), and a few people have taken advantage of it. This allows you to receive an email notification whenever there are new posts here on my blog. Until now, these emails have been driven by FeedBurner. However, I’ve now moved them over to MailChimp.

This will give me more control over the formatting of the emails (I hope my subscribers will agree that the new emails are more attractive). And I’ll also have the ability to send “one-off” emails, not directly tied to a blog posting. I don’t have any current plans to do that, but should the need ever arise, I will at least have the option.

Those of you previously subscribed may receive one or two messages in duplicate (a message from Feedburner, and another from MailChimp). Once I’m sure everything is working as planned, I’ll turn off the Feedburner emails.

If you are not already an email subscriber, now’s your chance! Use the handy-dandy form, then confirm your opt-in request when it arrives in your mailbox.

Customize Your WordPress Dashboard

Apr122010

If you are reading this, there is a very high chance that you are a WordPress user. There’s even a chance that you arrived here through a link in the Other WordPress News widget in your Dashboard. The WordPress Dashboard is a great summary of current activity on your site and in the WordPress community. What some of you might not realize is that you can customize your Dashboard according to what you think is most important.

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Running on WordPress 3.0-beta

Apr022010

I’ve been running this site on WordPress 3.0 for several days now (it was still alpha when I switched, and it hit beta-1 status on Friday night). Despite all the cool new stuff available in the new version, you probably won’t see much different when you upgrade. The most obvious changes that you might see in the admin area are that “Updates” moved from under “Tools” to under the “Dashboard” menu, there’s a new “Menus” item under the “Appearance” menu, and you might see upgrade notices for themes now, depending on the themes you have installed. Additionally, there’s a new default theme.

So, you’re probably thinking, “Is that it? I thought this was supposed to be a big upgrade!” Oh, it is. You just need to dig into a few things before you start seeing the new knobs and switches.

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Bug Chasing

Mar072010

Okay, so in my post about Code Spelunking I mentioned about how working on a project can lead you to explore the code because you need to become more familiar with how the code works. But it can also lead you to explore the code to figure out why code doesn’t work. In this particular case, I spent many hours puzzling over why something didn’t work correctly, chasing down the root cause, and eventually finding a bug in the WordPress core. I documented the bug in Ticket #12394, provided a patch, and it was committed to core in Changeset [13561], which will be part of WordPress 3.0.

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Dougal on WordPress Community Podcast

Feb232010

I was the guest tonight on the WordPress Community Podcast, hosted by Joost de Valk and Frederick Townes. We talked about upcoming features in WordPress 3.0, my past work as a WordPress core developer, my WordPress plugins, microformats, and a smattering of other topics. My interview should be up later tonight.

Joost and Frederick do a great job with the interviews, so if you haven’t already, you should subscribe to the WordPress Community Podcast and give it a listen!

UPDATE 9:30 p.m. EST: The show notes are up now!

WordPress Code Spelunking

Feb182010

Earlier today, I finished up a WordPress plugin that I’ve been working on for a client. Without divulging too many details, I’ll say that it wasn’t a huge project, nor was it overly complicated, but it was interesting. One fun thing about working on projects for clients, is that it often gives you a chance to explore areas that you might not have looked too closely at on your own.

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