Gravatar
Posted on October 24, 2007
I generally like the idea of consolidation. I’m tired of all the logins I have all across the web. I try to use a very small list of identical names, passwords and e-mail addresses but with the shear number of sites out there and the different security requirements it’s very difficult to keep them all up to date. I’m a fan of openID although I don’t think they quite get it yet. I love the concept I’m just not sure about the execution. Using a website address as your one unique login is awkward.
In general there’s just too much clutter on the web. Too many things that accomplish the same task. Too much information being generated by every individual. I wrote before about consolidating the feeds I generate into 3 main categories.
Today I consolidated my avatars. An avatar is what people see of you. It’s often the first image they’ll get of you, or perhaps even their first impression. It’s a drag to update these avatars on every site you use. I myself hardly used to use them simply because I don’t like searching for a photo to use and trimming it down to size etc.
Gravatar makes it very easy. Essentially you attach an image with an e-mail address and thats it. Any website which is Gravatar enabled will display your Gravatar wherever it detects your E-mail address. Your Gravatars also have ratings so that certain sites can say they only want to allow ‘G’ or ‘PG’ Gravatars for example. The only Gravatar I have is this:
I have now enabled Gravatars on RandyAldrich.net and RandyandRachel.com. I’ll probably do so on any website I administer in the future as I think its a great way to build community.
If you hate seeing the Gravatar logo, Create yours today!
If you’d like to enable Gravatars on your wordpress blog simply download and install this plugin and then add the following line of code in comments.php wherever you’d like them displayed:
<?php if (function_exists(’gravatar’)) { ?><img src=”<?php gravatar(”X”, 80, “”); ?>” class=”gravatar” alt=”Gravatar Icon” /><?php } ?>
As a sidenote… I may create an updated version of the plugin myself (or send the needed changes to the original author) which inserts the above for you when I get a chance.
Bug Fixes
Posted on July 22, 2007
I have fixed several annoying bugs in ZippyPhotos one of which caused directories to be displayed in the wrong order. It amazes me how easy PHP is to work with every time I make a fix or add a feature.
I also added the ability to specify the number of items currently displayed in the RSS feed. Right now the default is set to 10 but like everything else in Zippy, it’s configurable via settings.php.
Filesystem Photo Gallery
Posted on April 20, 2007
I’ve been looking for a good filesystem-based Gallery system for a while. I haven’t been able to come up with one that has the features and is as lightweight as I’d like it. Therefor I decided I’d write my own. I i’mplemented the first version in .NET but have since ceased development and decided to move away from IIS/windows and begin using linux/apache and an external host (powweb). I also want the Gallery system to work seemlessly with wordpress and any other php based content management system (or blog engine). Therefor I decided to scratch the .NET version and start on a PHP based version.
I started working on my new PHP filesystem based Gallery system last night. It’s intended to be extremely lightweight with no database interaction. It will assume the first image in a directory should be the ‘thumbnail’ for that directory. It will dynamically generate thumbnails for images which do not yet have a thumbnails. This is so that they are only created once.
I’m very surprised at how fast the The system is coming together. I suspect that in a few days I’ll have a working version with most if not all of the features I’m looking for.
The only problem is I have no Idea what to call it. If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them.
As soon as I come up with the name I’ll publish a google code site with all the documentation and downloading goodness.
Widget Trouble
Posted on April 17, 2007
I had some trouble finding examples on how to Widgetize your WordPress Theme. I found plenty of links but all were dead. I figured I’d mirror a how-to guide here to make it easier for people to find out how to make their Theme work with WordPress widgets.
First of all you’ll want to put some code in your sidebar.php file to have a default sidebar as well as a dynamic sidebar when available. to do this use something like the following:
<ul id="sidebar"><?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')|| !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
<li id="about">
<h2>About</h2>
<p>This is my blog.</p>
</li>
<li id="links">
<h2>Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://example.com">Example</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
This will enable yoursite to use a dynamically generated sidebar. Next we need the ability to implement a dynamic sidebar. To do this simply add the following to your functions.php file:
<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar();
?>
Provided you have the Widgets plugin installed and activated, you should now see a ‘Sidebar Widgets’ section under Presentation in the Admin sectin of your site.
I am not the original author of this tutorial nor am I a contributor in any way to the Widgets plugin. If you have questions about the plugin itself, or this method is not working please contact the author or see the plugin website.