It’s similar in concept to the Simple Facebook Connect plugin. In fact, it rips off quite a lot of the same code. But instead of Facebook, this integrates your WordPress site better with Twitter.
Now, there’s a lot of Twitter plugins out there already. And this plugin by no means competes with them (yet). This plugin can’t, for example, send a post to Twitter (yet). Nor can it pull posts from Twitter to display on your own site (yet).
What it does is to provide the framework for a more complete Twitter integration. Right now it can do:
Login via Twitter
Comment via Twitter
Not much, really. But it has the backend code necessary to make it easier to connect your site to a Twitter Application, and to make plugins surrounding it that won’t interfere with each other. That’s the same basic reason for the Simple Facebook Connect plugin.
So yes, eventually this plugin will send and receive stuff from Twitter. But for now, it lets you allow users to Login and/or to have users Comment using their Twitter credentials.
<?php
include "../../../wp-load.php";
?>
... javascript code ...
The reason for this sort of thing is that there’s some option or code or something that the javascript needs from the database or from WordPress or whatever. This PHP file is, basically, generating the javascript on the fly.
Usually, the case for this turns out to be something minor. The code needs the value from an option, or some flag to turn it on or off. Or whatever.
Problem is that finding wp-load.php can be a bit of a chore. I’ve seen extreme efforts to find and load that file in plugins before, including searching for it, examining the directory structure to make decent guesses, etc. This sort of thing has existed even before wp-load.php came around, with people trying to load wp-config.php themselves and such.
Note: This post has been moved to here. Please leave comments there instead.
The majority of the email I get from users of the Simple Facebook Connect plugin is questions regarding how to setup their Facebook Application. It’s really not that hard to do, but the plethora of options can seem somewhat intimidating. So here’s the basics of what you need to do.
I saw this morning that Jesse Stay had created a rather neat little chicklet for his FBFoundations plugin. I thought it was a clever idea, so naturally I stole it and added it to Simple Facebook Connect as well.
Of course, just copying an idea is no fun. So I had to improve upon it a bit for my version. 🙂
I ended up not using any of Jesse’s code, but I did (mostly) keep the format of his chicklet output the same, so as to try to be compatible with it for styling rules and such.
When writing the Simple Facebook Connect plugin, I investigated how the Settings API worked. It’s relatively new to WordPress (introduced in version 2.7), and many things I read said that it was much easier to use.
It is much easier to use in that it makes things nice and secure almost automatically for you. No confusion about nonces or anything along those lines. However, it’s slightly more difficult to use in that there’s very little good documentation for it. Especially for the most common case: Making your own settings page.
Simple 2 step setup for Facebook Connect. Just create the App via Facebook and paste in the API key.
Share button, with meta support.
User status widget
Comment using Facebook Identity (alpha, not operational, for testing only, will be working soon).
Like most things I announce early, it’s not fully featured yet. I’m modifying and adding onto it as I go along, so expect a lot of updates to show up in the plugin list if you use it.
And if you have ideas for how to improve it, please email them to me. 🙂
Over here, Jorge Escobar is writing about how he got hacked with the latest version of WordPress. After some minor back and forth on FriendFeed, I got him to do a search which found a malicious backdoor he might not otherwise have found.
In so doing, it occurred to me that most people don’t keep up with the world of WordPress in the way I do, and so have not seen nearly as many hack attempts. So I figured I’d post my little contribution, and show people how to find hidden backdoors when cleaning up their hacked sites.
I always wondered how Google Maps knew traffic conditions. Today, there’s a blog post where they explain it a bit better.
That ain't on an iPhone...
Basically, they simply have all the phones running Google Maps with GPS send back data as to a) where they are and b) how fast they’re moving. Both of which GPS gives you more or less by default.
It’s a clever idea, and I like it, but it fails in a couple of major ways, IMO.
Firstly, when I use Google Maps on my phone, I tend to not leave it open. Google Maps is fine, but it’s not a very good navigation system. It’s just a map. A real navigation app is worlds better. I recently got Navigon Mobile Navigator on the new iPhone, and it’s pretty slick. Thinking about a dashboard mount for it now, actually.
Secondly, this system relies on a lot of people having Google Maps open and running and sending back data. If nobody with Google Maps running has been on your street recently, you get no information.
What Google really needs to do is to open it up as an API. Let other navigation system manufacturers both send and receive traffic data from the Google Maps system. It doesn’t have to be complex.
Any good navigation app knows your location and speed, so a simple way to send that info could be made easily enough. The problem, of course, is allowing third parties to use the data.
Google Maps works in layers of images, which is one of its major shortcomings, IMO. The street views are images. The terrain are images. Just big sets of tiles that get displayed next to each other. And I’m almost certain that this traffic thing is just another set of images they’re generating or updating. For navigation providers that use 3d views and such, they don’t need that stuff in the form of images, they need it in the form of data. What streets are busy? How can that information be used to improve the navigation? Etc.
Google is generally pretty good at opening up their APIs to third parties. However, they’re generally not good at providing data in different forms. Most of their APIs are “this is what we use, if you need something else we don’t have it” sort of thing. Hopefully, the Google Maps team will see the light here and realize that to get good data, you have to give good data, and start pushing in that direction. Because open traffic data would be pretty cool for everybody.
WordPress 2.7 includes a lot of new enhancements, but one of the big ones is the new comment functionality. Comments can be threaded, paged, etc. This is all built in, but unfortunately, your theme must support it. So, for theme authors, I’d suggest getting to work on making your themes compatible right away.
(This post is geared more towards PHP authors and fans of WordPress, so if you’re not into that sort of thing, why not go look at some pictures of cats instead?)
So, I upgraded to the latest 2.7-bleeding edge version of WordPress on my blog today, and discovered a new feature that I had missed in my earlier readings. There was a new menu item on the Plugins menu:
New Menu Item - Install Plugins!
Yes, it appears that WordPress now has plugin installation built into it. Similar to the Plugin Upgrade feature introduced in 2.5, 2.7 will be able to download and install plugins directly from WordPress.org’s plugin directory.
Naturally, I had to try this out, so read on if you want to see what it looks like…
