Upcoming changes to zenFBSuite [news]
So now that I've had some time to dust the old code fingers off and started looking at some more of the OpenGraph implementation and requirements that Facebook is using, I'll be doing some updates to the zenFBSuite. You'll notice some of the changes working already on this site, once I get everything coded properly for the plugin I'll do a new release.
I may wait until 1.4.2 of ZP is released though, we'll see how time allows me.
zenFBSuite - version 1.4.1-BETA [7271] [news]
I'm excited! Zenphoto 1.4.1 is just around the corner! So in the spirit of the project I decided to update the zenFBSuite and my other plugins to the most recent trunk build, which as you can see from the title is the 1.4.1-Beta.
While updating the site to the 1.4.1-beta and fixing a couple of things that needed to change in the zenFBSuite to match, I added a new feature to the zenFBSuite. A "Send" button. What this will allow you to do is similar to the Like button. It will share all the pretty info the Like button does, but instead of posting it to your wall, it allows you to send a facebook message to a person, people, or groups. Pretty keen eh? Check it out in action around the site or the demo/info page: here.
Aside from it being it's own plugin, I've also included it as an option in the Like button options so it can be included right alongside your Like button.
Updates, updates, updates! [news]
Ch...Ch...ch...Changes!
(sorry song was stuck in my head)
The Site
So it appears over the last few days I've had a chance to do some updates on my plug-ins. As well as plug-in updates, I updated the site to use the 4/18/2011 Trunk build. I try to keep up-to-date with the nightlies and almost always update the site and test the plug-ins before doing and "upgrade" notes.
Everything appears to be functioning as planned with the changes to the plug-ins and the site.
Please see general notes below as well as visit plug-in pages listed in menu for info/demo/download per usual.
zenFBSuite
A few changes to the suite. Archives will now be uploaded with two names. One for archive/version number, and one labeled current. This is merely a housekeeping item and will let me avoid having to update every download link on each page to the new archive/version numbers.
Development Note: Soon, I will have the plug-in disable itself if you do not provide your OWN application ID and/or admin ID. This is done for your sake, believe me. So follow the steps in the articles linked in the menu to the left please!
zenFBComments
Updated to utilize the "new" Facebook comments plug-in. I put new in quotes because it's been out for a while now, I just didn't want to make changes until they allowed for either CSS updates or a dark theme option. Eventually they did as well as a few other changes to the API.
Also, as the zenFBComments style is now handled via a light/dark theme option provided by facebook, the "plugins/zenFBComments" folder with the various CSS files are no longer needed.
Provided a link to the new Facebook moderation/comment tool that allows you to see a centralized listing of comments on your site, and if you've enabled moderation as default option, allow you to moderate comments.
zenFBcommon
A couple of quick changes here. Most notable would be the addition of the "Default Logo URL" option. If zenphoto is now on a gallery page showing an item with a thumbnail, it will populate og:image with the cached thumbnail. If it is not, it checks to see if anything is specified for the URL to default logo. If "default logo" is not null, it will then populate og:image tag with information pointing to default logo. If "default logo" is null/empty, it will not add og:image metatag.
The rest are minor housekeeping/commenting of code, which includes removal of some stray google verification code that may have slipped through on last release.
zenTwitter
Just a version update after verifying changes with the site's current trunk build.
Development Note: I'm looking into the Twitter API to see if there is a better way to handle this plug-in but for now with my current time constraints I'm leaving plug-in as is.
zenHttpbl
Just a version update after verifying changes with the site's current trunk build.
Development Note: I'm pondering a change to the zenHttpbl plug-in to display the stats of blocked users. Ideally I'd like to have a log of IPs blocked, as well as display the stats from the HTTP:BL dashboard but as far as I can tell there is no API interface to pull those stats. So, hopefully in the near future I'll have at least implemented a counter to show the # of blacklisted IPs blocked so you can proudly show that you are spam free and have a log of the IPs that you have denied access to.
google_analytics
As a note, this plug-in still works under current build (1.4.0.3-7031). As this was really just a minor update to another authors plug-in I'm not keeping current archives of this plug-in.
I think that about does it with the changes. I'll update if I remember anything else.
Onward & upward!
What's up with zenFBSuite?? [news]
So you might be thinking, "Hey Mike! That's some spiffy looking comments you've got enabled there! How can I get my hands on that?"
Simple answer? Patience. Sadly I'm not going to release it until the Facebook dev team updates their API to include the ability to either customize it with CSS or a dark theme (like the like/recommendations/activity).
Sadly, the new comments plug-in, while extremely feature packed, is really only designed to be used on lighter colored sites.
To top it off, I haven't decided what I want to do about the migration part of it.
The new system allows you to "migrate" old comments over, but it's ugly and not really functional. So I haven't decided if I want to setup the new version to be "migrate-friendly" or not. I probably will, but I just have to convince myself that it's worth it.
Analytics, FacedOut, ZenFBSuite [news]
Alright dudes and dudettes, I knocked a few things off the code to-do list. So here we go:
Analytics
I release a quick update to the google_analytics plugin that was being used. I had implemented j916's version of the plugin ages ago and it stopped working around 1.3.1 or something like that. So I made some changes, fixed the loading bugs, and moved onward. Then the changes happened for zenphoto moving into the 1.4 structure and I made it compatible with that as well. It's a fairly simple little plugin, so should work straight away.
FacedOut
One of the other big projects was to finish cleanup of the old theme I had made, "FacedOut". Initially I loved the design, but I'm a fickle man. I get bored of looking at the same stuff all the time so I changed it up to it's current incarnation and will likely be creating a new theme again in a few weeks as this one has already begun to get boring.
ZenFBSuite
And now for the big bad voodoo daddy that I'm sure you're wondering about. As you can tell I've made some updates to the ZenFBSuite of plug-ins. You'll notice the comments plugin has a new look, functionality, etc.
So why haven't I released the update? Basically the developers at Facebook made some major changes to the Comments system. Most of them good, most of them. One of the changes they made was the inability to use custom CSS on the plug-in now. So that forces us to use their default themes, which as of right now is just a light them only. They say they have a dark version incoming similar to the light/dark themes on the zenFBActivity etc. So I'm waiting for that so I can set the optioning properly.
One of the other good changes to the comments platform is that now the comments boxes will be tied into the facebook notification etc. So that conversations can be had on facebook or on your comments box and you will see the comments on both sides. This is an exciting development and I can't wait for some more work to go into it!
So, sit tight on the ZenFBSuite update, it's coming, just at the speed of Facebook, lol.
-micheall
