What happened?? [news]

WHAT HAPPENED??

I'll try to keep this post short.  Recently, after having some stray "old versions" making their way into some of my current files I decided it was time to cleanup my dev storage on my computer.  Not a horrible thing, right?

Sadly, at the exact same time I was doing this, my VPS hosting started acting horribly horribly strange.  Going down randomly and not restarting.  Not starting when the servers were reset, etc.

Strangely enough, there were not traces of any error messages thay my provider could find.  In a last ditch effort before attempting to move providers (again), I had my VPS wiped and reset to a clean slate.

Unfortunately, while I DID have the gallery and the most current versions of my plug-ins backed up, I appear to have lost the older versions of the plug-ins.

While this is not a huge loss as I had already changed the plug-in structure to work with the nightly (and upcomign 1.3.2) release of Zenphoto, I had wanted to maintain a historical archive of the plug-ins for older zenphoto releases, even though I did not intend to support them.

Long story short, though the plug-ins may function partially with the 1.3.1.2 release of zenphoto (official release 9/3/2010), they are intended to work with later nightly versions as the build structures have changed.

My apologies for any inconveinences this may cause you, but as I always suggest, a current version of zenphoto is a happy version.  Stay upgraded.

It's time for a "face" lift! [news]

Well, as we all know technology spins at odd revolutions.  And as developers we must put in work when we can manage!

It was time for a facelift for the site.  Having done a bunch of work with the facebook social plugins, I only felt it fitting to create a facebook inspired theme.  I will release the theme once I clean it up some more on the backend if there are requests for it.

I've taken the last couple of weeks updating the zenFBSuite plugins to work with the latest nightly (currently tested against 1.3.1.2 6078).

Also I updated the zenTwitter plugin at the same time.  Changelogs below.

zenFBSuite

v1.3.1.2-6003

• Update to plug-in version numbering.  Plug-in versions will now reflect the version of Zenphoto the plug-in was tested with.
• Change to meta key loading to migrate from old addpluginscript method to Zenphoto's new zp_register_filter 'theme_head' section.
• Better commenting of code.

zenTwitter

v1.3.1.2-6003

• Update to plug-in version numbering.  Plug-in versions will now reflect the version of Zenphoto the plug-in was tested with.
• Change to meta key loading to migrate from old addpluginscript method to Zenphoto's new zp_register_filter 'theme_head' section.

Welcome! [news]

Welcome to one of my many little slices of this heaven known as the internet.

At one point in my life I considered myself an aspiring photographer.  Sadly, I just don't seem to have the time necessary in life to devote to it at the moment, though I'm always looking for moments to try.

I use everything from digital SLR cameras, point and shoots, and even cell phones.  In my growing library of photos I decided to create a gallery.  After combing over the many options available for gallery systems I settled on Zenphoto because like the slogan says, it truly is "simpler web gallery management".

After spending a few months playing with it, and coming back to it time and again from my episodes of real life business, I decided to try my hand at some coding of plugins.

So please, take your time and look around.  You'll find links to my different Zenphoto projects, news updates, and of course the gallery all on the nav menu.

Thanks for visiting!

-Micheal

Finding your Facebook UserID [news]

For a while there, you could get your UserID number from a method grabbing it out of the address bar.

That has changed however and I'm not sure when it did. However, the good news is it's now much easier than trying to dig it out of a photo album url.

Click the following link and you should see your User ID# listed on the line next to the http://graph.facebook.com/######## line. the ######'s are your User ID.

Click here!

Creating your Facebook APP_ID [news]

Problem

Initially the zenFBSuite plugins ran off their own app_id.  For a short time this was fine, but as Facebook expands their api and enhances their plugins, this is not going to work well for much longer.  Many of the more advanced plugins and features will be tied to the app_id and will not function if being presented from a URL that is not associated with the app_id.  The "Login Box" being one of the bigger ones.

On top of this, it provides errors in the linting process which means eventually they will provide errors in the plugin itself.

Long story short, if you want to use the zenFBSuite of plugins, you'll want to register your own app_id.  Besides, don't you want YOUR site to be listed when someone clicks like or leaves a comment that posts to their wall?

Solution

Step 1

Log in to your facebook account.  Then navigate to the URL listed below.

http://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php

Step 2

Enter the application name as you wish it to appear in the Facebook stream.

NOTE:  Cannot contain Facebook trademarks or have a name that can be confused with an application built by Facebook.

Step 3

Once you've clicked to agree to terms and entered the captcha, you're presented with the Application Settings page.  It's at this point that you can fill out some additional info, add an image/icon, provide contact info for your application, as well as find your application ID.

While you may want to play around and fill out the additional info on all the tabs, you only need to fill in the info for the "About" tab and the "Web Site" tab.

NOTE:  Facebook is particular about how some of the information is entered.  It will provide you an error message if you put something in wrong, just fix it and save.

Step 4

Finding and using your application ID should be self explanatory at this point.  When you click on the "Web Site" tab, you'll find the Application ID with a string of numbers following it.  This is your application ID, which you will input into the settings of the ZenFBSuite plugins you're using.

Step 5

Click like and share this information to help others!