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Posts Tagged ‘Feed’

Role Scoper

October 30th, 2009 No comments

Table of contents

Description

Role Scoper is a comprehensive access control solution, giving you CMS-like control of reading and editing permissions. Assign restrictions and roles to specific pages, posts or categories.

How it works:

Your WordPress core role definitions remain unchanged, and continue to function as default permissions. User access is altered only as you expand it by assigning content-specific roles, or reduce it by setting content-specific restrictions.

Users of any level can be elevated to read or edit content of your choice. Restricted content can be withheld from users lacking a content-specific role, regardless of their WP role. Deactivation or removal of Role Scoper will return each user to their standard WordPress access (but all RS settings remain harmlessly in the database in case you change your mind).

Scoped role restrictions and assignments are reflected in every aspect of the WordPress interface, from front end content and navigation to administrative post and comment totals. Although Role Scoper provides extreme flexibility and powerful bulk administration forms, basic usage is just a set of user checkboxes in the Post/Page Edit Form.

Partial Feature List

  • Customize access for specific Pages, Posts, Categories
  • Assign roles to User Groups (or directly to user)
  • Control Read and/or Edit access
  • Pages and Category listing match modified access
  • Category post counts and tag cloud match modified access
  • Page and category listings maintain tree structure even if some branches are hidden
  • File Attachment filter blocks direct URL requests if user can’t read corresponding post/page
  • Customizable Hidden Content Teaser (or hide posts/pages completely)
  • Control which categories users can post to
  • Control which pages users can associate sub-pages to
  • Assign additional blog-wide, type-specific role(s) for any user
  • Can elevate Subscribers to edit desired content (ensures safe failure mode)
  • Inheritance of Restrictions and Roles to sub-categories / sub-pages
  • Default Restrictions and Roles for new content
  • Default Groups for new users
  • Un-editable posts/pages are excluded from the editing list
  • Specify element(s) in Edit Form to withhold from non-Editors
  • RSS Feed Filter with HTTP authentication option
  • Optimized to limit additional database queries
  • Inline descriptive captions for each of the extensive options and settings
  • Supports translation (contribute your own!)
  • Pending Revisions allow Contributors to suggest changes to a currently published post/page

For more information, see the Usage Guide or Support Forum.

Support

  • Most Bug Reports and Plugin Compatibility issues addressed promptly following your support forum submission.
  • Author is available for professional consulting to meet your configuration, troubleshooting and customization needs.

Installation

Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Faq

How can I prevent low-level users from seeing the Roles/Restrictions menus and Edit boxes?

In your blog admin, navigate to Roles > Options. In the “Content Maintenance” section, set the option “Roles and Restrictions can be set” to “by blog-wide Editors and Administrators” or “by Administrators only”. Click the Update button.

How does Role Scoper compare to Role Manager or Capability Manager?

Role Scoper’s functionality is entirely different and complementary to RM and CM. RM/CM do little more than alter WordPress’ definition of the capabilities included in each role. That’s a valuable task, and in many cases will be all the role customization you need. Since RM/CM modifications are stored in the main WordPress database, they remain even if RM/CM is deactivated.

Role Scoper is useful when you want to customize access to specific content, not just blog-wide. It will work with the WP roles as a starting point, whether customized by RM/CM or not. To see how Role Scoper’s role definitions correlate to your WordPress roles, navigate to ‘Roles’ > ‘Options’ > ‘RS Role Definitions’ in your blog admin. Role Scoper’s modifications remain only while it stays active.

Why are there so many options? Do I really need Role Scoper?

It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your WordPress installation. Role Scoper is designed to be functionally comprehensive and flexible. Great pains were taken to maintain performance and user-friendliness. Yet there are simpler permission plugins out there, particularly if you only care about read access. Review Role Scoper’s feature list and decide what’s important to you.

Why doesn’t Role Scoper limit direct access to files that I’ve uploaded via FTP?

Role Scoper only filters files in the WP uploads folder (or a subfolder). The uploads folder must be a branch of the WordPress directory tree. The files must be formally attached to a post / page via the WordPress uploader or via the RS Attachments Utility.

In your blog admin, navigate to ‘Roles’ > ‘Options’ > ‘Features’ > ‘Attachments’ > ‘Attachments Utility’.

Where does Role Scoper store its settings?How can I completely remove it from my database?

Role Scoper creates and uses the following tables: groups_rs, user2group_rs, role_scope_rs, user2role2object_rs. All RS-specific options stored to the WordPress options table have an option name prefixed with “scoper_”.

Due to the potential damage incurred by accidental deletion, no automatic removal is currently available. You can use a SQL editing tool such as phpMyAdmin to drop the tables and delete the scoper options.

Screenshots


Admin menus


Roles boxes in Edit Post Form


Role boxes in Edit Page Form


Role Assignment Tabs in Edit Post


Role Assignment Tabs in Edit Page


Edit User Group


Scoped Roles in User Profile


Category Restrictions (bulk admin)


Assign Category roles to expand reading or editing access

Podcasting

October 30th, 2009 No comments

Table of contents

Description

Podcasting brings complete podcasting support to WordPress. Podcasting will take a file from somewhere on the web (either your site or another site) and it will add it to an iTunes-based feed. Podcasting also includes a player allowing visitors to your site to view the file on the web.

Podcasting is brought to you for free by . Spiral Web Consulting is a small web development firm specializing in PHP development. Visit our website to learn more, and don’t hesitate to ask us to develop your next big WordPress plugin idea.

Features

  • Adds a dedicated Podcasting feed with full iTunes support
  • Includes the ability to have multiple podcasting feeds based on file format or other factors
  • Includes both an audio and video player for in-post listening/watching
  • Fully integrates with any existing enclosures already stored in WordPress
  • Offers a migration tool for users of podPress

For more information, visit the Podcasting plugin page.

Installation

Please visit Spiral Web Consulting’s forum for installation information.

We went there for you and here are the instructions. You might want to visit their page just to make sure that these are uptodate.

  1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
  2. Configure your podcasting feed through the ‘Settings’ > ‘Podcasting’ menu in WordPress.
  3. Begin adding new episodes to posts!

Faq

Please visit Spiral Web Consulting’s forum for the latest FAQ information.

Screenshots


An example of the Podcasting enclosure box before a podcast is added.


The Podcasting enclosure box with an example podcast added.


The audio player before an episode begins playing.


The audio player in the middle of an episode.


The video player before an episode is playing.

Google News

October 29th, 2009 No comments

Table of contents

Description

Google aggregates news from over 4500 news sources, updated continously. The results can be retrieved as a number of RSS feeds, where you can create your own specific feed by specifying one of more than 40 regions/languages, and an optional topic ranging from Domestic to Most Popular to Entertainment. Currently there are nine topics, including, of course, All. In addition to this, any feed can be filtered through a search query so that only news items matching your query will be shown. Note that not all combinations of region/language and topic has been enabled by Google but it should degrade gracefully.

This plugin works both as a widget, as inline content replacement and can be called from themes. Any number of inline replacements or theme calls allowed, but only one widget instance is supported in this release.

For widget use, simply use the widget as any other after selecting which feed it should display. For inline content replacement, insert the one or more of the following strings in your content and they will be replaced by the relevant news feed.

  • [google-news] for the default feed
  • [google-news name=”feedname”]

Enable plugin, go to the Google News page under ‘Dashboard’ -> ‘Settings’ and read the initial information. Then go to the Google News page under ‘Dashboard’ -> ‘Manage’ and configure one or more feeds. Then use a widget or insert relevant strings in your content or theme.

Additional information

The available options are as follows.

  • Name: Optional feed name, that can be used in the widget or the inline replacement string to reference a specific feed. Any feed without a name is considered “default” and will be used if the replacement strings do not reference a specific feed. If there are more than one feed with the same name, a random of these is picked every time it is used. This also applies to the default feed(s).
  • Title: Optional, which when set will be used in the widget title or as a header above the news items when inline. If the title is empty, then a default title of “Google News : <region> : <feed type>” is used. Note that as per Google Terms of Service it is a requirement to state that the news come from Google.
  • News region: A dropdown list of 40 choices, determining the region/language of the feed.
  • News type: Another dropdown list, determining what type of news you are after. Sci/Tech, Business, Health etc.
  • Output type: Some Google feeds come with just text, some pictures or pictures on nearly every news item. Chose which one you want here.
  • News item length: Short or long. The short version is really just the news item title as a one liner but probably the one most WP admins will use. The long version is a 3-4 line teaser that has been severely stripped of useless markup that Google insists on passing along, including tables, links, colour/font/style settings etc. I’ve tried to clean it up so it won’t mess up your theme. For the short version, the long text without html tags is available as a mouse rollover/tooltip.
  • Max items to show: As the title says, if the feed has sufficient entries to fulfil the request.
  • Optional query filter: One of the most important parts of the Google News RSS Feed is the ability to filter the news with your very own search query. Get relevant, up to date news on the exact topic you want. Note that if you add a search query, then the short item length will include an “all N news articles” link curtesy Google. If you choose to add a query, then you most likely want to set a title as well. To explain to the viewer what kind of news you have selected for them to see. The News Query isn’t like a standard Google Query, so you can’t use || between words to search for one or the other. So IF you start your query with the word OR then the rest of the words will be or’ed together. I.e. a query string of ‘OR this that’ will look for news containing either this or that. This is really just a test, so the actual query language used here may change in future versions.
  • Cache time: The feeds are now fetched using WordPress builtin MagpieRSS system, which allows for caching of feeds a specific number of seconds. Cached feeds are stored in the backend database.

Clicking on a news item will of course take you via Google to the news site with the relevant article, as per Google Terms of Use.

If you want to change the look&feel, the inline table is wrapped in a div with the id “google-news-inline” and the widget is wrapped in an li with id “google-news”. Let me know if you need more to properly skin it.

Support

Installation & Settings

  1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Dashboard’ -> ‘Plugins’ admin menu.
  2. See configuation pages under ‘Dashboard’ -> ‘Settings’, ‘Dashboard’ -> ‘Tools’ and on the widget page.

Note if you’re upgrading from a previous release, there may be some strangeness the first time you edit an old feed. Try again and it will work. Or delete the feed and create again, guaranteed fix. :-)

Screenshots


Widget in action under the Prosumer theme. Note the mouseover showing additional text from the news item.


Small part of the Adin manage page for the plugin.


Inline example under the Prosumer theme, replacing [google-news] in content.

Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting

October 15th, 2009 No comments

Table of contents

Description


The Blubrry PowerPress Podcast Plugin has all of the essential features needed to provide podcasting support in a Wordpress blog.

The Blubrry PowerPress interface allows you to easily add/modify/remove podcast episodes from blog posts and includes a simple on-line media player, iTunes compatibile RSS feed tags, ability to upload cover art images, ping iTunes, detect media size, detect time duration (mp3′s only) and add 3rd party media statistics.

Features:

  • Easily add/modify/remove podcast episodes from blog posts and pages
  • Integrated audio/video media player
  • Podcast Only Feed
  • Custom Podcast Feeds (no limit)
  • Category Podcast Feeds
  • Integrated Media Hosting via Blubrry Services
  • Integrated Media Statistics via Blubrry Services
  • Mp3 ID3 Tagging via Blubrry Services
  • iTunes RSS tags
  • Enhanced iTunes summaries from blog posts option
  • iTunes album/cover art
  • Upload new iTunes/RSS cover art
  • Ping iTunes
  • Media size detection
  • Duration detection (mp3 only)
  • 3rd party statistics integration
  • Import PodPress settings and media episodes
  • Import Blogger/Movable Type media episodes
  • Category Podcast Feeds (Category Casting)
  • Tag/Keyword Podcast Feeds (Tag Casting)
  • Hosted Feed Support (FeedBurner.com)
  • User Role Management (Control which users on blog can Podcast)

Settings


Configure your Blubrry PowerPress by going to the Settings > Blubrry PowerPress page.

Faq

Why doesn’t Blubrry PowerPress support multiple enclosures in one feed item/post?
Blubrry PowerPress does not allow you to include multiple media files for one feed item (blog post). This is because each podcatcher handles multiple enclosures in feeds differently. iTunes will download the first enclosure that it sees in the feed ignoring the rest. Other podcatchers and podcasting directories either pick up the first enclosure or the last in each post item. This inconsistency combined with the fact that Dave Winer does not recommend multiple enclosures and the FeedValidator.org recommendation against it is why the Blubrry PowerPress does not support them.

As a alternative, PowerPress allows you to create additional Custom Podcast Feeds to associate any magnitude of media format and/or length in a blog post to specific custom feeds. For example, you can create one blog post associated to separate video and audio podcast feeds saving you time from entering your show notes twice.

Why doesn’t Blubrry PowerPress include media statistics built-in?
Blubrry PowerPress does not include media statistics built-in. This is not because Blubrry has its own statistics service, although that’s a good reason by itself. Maintaining and calculating statistics is a resource and server intensive task that would add bloat to an otherwise efficient WordPress podcasting plugin. We recommend using your media hosting’s web statistics to give you basic download numbers and, if you are seeking more grandular measurements such as client and geographical information for each episode, you’re more than welcome to use the Blubrry Statistics service as well.

As of Blubrry PowerPress version 0.8, you may now access your Blubrry Statistics from within your WordPress dashboard.

How do you insert the player within a blog post?
You can insert the media player within yoru blog posts by using the WordPress shortcode feature. The shortcode for PowerPress is [powerpress] (all lowercase)

You may use the shortcode to add a player to other media files (non episode files) by specifying the media url in the shortcode: [powerpress url=”http://example.com/path/to/media.mp3″]

For advanced users with multiple podcast feeds, you may insert the player for a specific feed by specifying the feed slug in the shortcode: [powerpress feed=”podcast”]

If you want to specify a cover image, add an image attribute which points to the specific image url: [powerpress image=”http://example.com/path/to/cover_image.jpg”] Experimental

Why can’t you upload large media files?
File uploads are tricky to handle because there are so many web hosting variations with different upload size limits. We recommend using an FTP application to upload large media files. FTP is much more efficient than web based uploads and is typically provided by nearly all web hosting providers.

Screenshots


Add podcast episode, found within the edit post screen


Select from 5 audio mp3 players for your web site


Example of the Flow Player Classic in a blog post


Example of the 1 Pixel Out Audio Player in a blog post


Cross section of Blubrry PowerPress iTunes settings page

Contact

Author: Angelo Mandato, Blubrry.com

Author Hompepage

Plugin Homepage

Twitter Widget Pro

September 8th, 2009 Comments off

Table of contents

Description

A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username, #hashtag, and link parsing. It supports displaying profiles images, and even lets you control whether to display the time and date of a tweet or how log ago it happened (about 5 hours ago, etc). Requires PHP5.

You may also be interested in WordPress tips and tricks at WordPress Informer or gerneral Web Developer News

Settings

Go to ‘Appearance’ -> ‘Widgets’ from your Dashboard menu and drag the Twitter Widget Pro widget onto your sidebar.

Faq

Can I use more than one instance of this widget?
Yes, Twitter Widget Pro employs the multi-widget pattern, which allows you to not only have more than one instance of this widget on your site, but even allows more than one instance of this widget in a single sidebar.

Can I follow more than one feed?
Absolutely, each instance of the widget can have different settings and track different feeds.

Why can’t I display a friends feed anymore?
Aparently the database queries required to display the friends feed was causing twitter to crash, so they removed it. Unfortunately, this is outside my control.

Screenshots


To use the widget, go to Appearance -> Widgets and Add “Twitter Widget Pro” widget.


Each widget has settings that need to be set, so the next step is to click “edit” on the newly added widget and adjust all the settings. When you’re done click “Save Changes”


This is what the widget looks like in the default theme with no added styles.


By using some (X)HTML in the title element and adding a few styles and a background image, you could make it look like this.

Tags: , ,

FeedBurner FeedSmith

August 19th, 2009 Comments off

Table of contents

Description


The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

Installation


You’ll need to sign up for a Google account if you haven’t already got one.
  1. In the WordPress administration area, begin the configuration by clicking Options and then the FeedBurner FeedSmith sub-option.
  2. Follow the links to create your FeedBurner feeds, or if they already exist, simply fill in their URLs in the boxes provided.
  3. Note: If you currently use the old, 2005-vintage version of the Ordered List FeedBurner plugin that generates a FeedBurner-specific URL (an example: www.yoursite.com/feedburner_838196/), that URL is no longer available or necessary. You will have to reset your FeedBurner feed’s Original Feed address to now use your standard blog feed address. Additionally, you should examine any .htaccess files that control access to your WordPress installation’s content and remove any existing references that forward or redirect your feeds, as these references will no longer be necessary.

  4. Verify your URLs in the text entry fields, and click Save.

Now all of your WordPress feed traffic should be redirected to FeedBurner.

Help


Help

Contact


Original Author: Steve Smith
Author Homepage
Plugin Homepage
1 pages