Unless you’re reading this via RSS, you probably noticed a few changes here on the blog. It is much too late at night to elaborate on any of them in lengthy detail (as I am prone to do), but I will post a quick summary for now, and follow-up later with more details.
- Rojo Syndication: This one solves two of my recent desires: (1) Wanting a way to include headlines from other sites, etc. without creating a whole post about them, and (2) really wanting to write a 2.0-ish plugin. I wrote this one by making use of Rojo’s feed data, where I can “flag” posts as I read them, and then my plugin will pull them in here and cycle through them.
- Tagboard: Yes, it’s finally back. I decided to totally rewrite this one, basing the UI around this AJAX Shoutbox plugin, but instead of the custom table backend that one has, mine uses the standard Wordpress commenting system, so that it is automatically integrated with your existing anti-spam systems. It will auto-update without refreshing the page, so if you are carrying on a tag conversation with other people, you will see their entries without refreshing. And it’s now a “widget”, as well.
- Widgets: All my sidebar items have now been packaged into Widgets, which is a new WordPress package for sidebar plugins which will allow you to use a little ajax-y UI to reposition stuff (plugins, etc.) into your sidebar, and not need to know how to insert the appropriate PHP, etc. - (see the link for more info).
- New Recent Comments and Top Commenters plugins: I’ve rewritten both of these plugins I did a long while ago to be Widgets, and they have their own configuration options available on the widget admin page now, instead of specifying them in the call to the plugin like you had to before.
- Widget Collapser Plugin: I packaged up the javascript I’ve been using in my theme for a while to collapse those side menu items into a plugin that will automatically work with any sidebar widgets that are on your page. After the page loads, it ads show/hide links next to the title for all your sidebar widgets, and then will remember any given user’s settings (via a cookie) so that the next time the come to the page they don’t have to collapse and expand the ones they did the last time, if they like seeing things a certain way.
I’m pretty tired now, so that will have to do it for now. Like I said above, I’ll probably follow up later with individual posts that will go into more detail about each new plugin (including download links).
15 Comments
And before anyone else mentions it, I know I’ve got a few remaining theme tweaks to finish off too - the whole package also includes a redesigned from scratch theme that isn’t 100% done yet, but it will do for right now.
Man, its impossible to read your blog.
I think I’m getting sea sick.
Nevermind.
Never mind.
I take back both never minds. I’m still getting sea sick, or rather I’m getting syndication sick. I thought that it was resolved when I found that I could close the content, but then I realized that it just keeps coming back when I move to a different page.
OK, sorry about that, I realized this morning that I had switched it back to the default theme - this one should work much better.
yeah, that was the most annoying thing ever… stupid kubric. anyways, the tagboard is below the content on xp firefox. and can you get rid of the syndicated content on the internals?
The second part should be fixed now too. I’m not sure about the tagboard showing below the content on firefox, though, I’m using firefox on XP and it’s OK, unless your screen width is less than 1000 px. I guess I should adjust that to support at least 800 wide.
OK, the supported width should be better now, too. The sidebar should only wrap down to the bottom if you go less than 800 px wide.
Looks good but I thought you were going to change the design.
No, I just was rewriting it. Same general look, but it’s based on the page structure (XHTML) of the default 2.0 theme, whereas the other one was based on the default 1.5 theme.
It’s mostly subtle (and some incomplete) differences visually, but the XHTML behind the scenes is more like the default Wordpress 2.0 theme now.
I’ll expand more on why I did this in a later post.
yeah, i don’t like my browser all maximized and stuff.
Sorry for being impatient, but the widget collapser plugin looks really useful. When are you releasing it?
Hopefully tonight.