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.
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.
zenFBSuite 1.4.0.2 [6701] released! [news]
After taking a brief respite to the land of no internet (dear God save me!!) I've returned. The first thing I came back to of course was the zenFBSuite.
For the last few releases you may have noticed bits of code (if you looked) that seemed to do nothing. It's true, they apparently did nothing!
Actually what I was working on was incorporating a way to have email notifications when someone posts a comment.
At first, the functionality worked, then it disappeared and ceased to function.
I believe it's a conflict of jQuery's, but even when attempting to use the noConflict approach I was unable to get it to function properly.
Sadly, I decided it was a lost cause for now and have removed it. So here's the snippet from the changelog:
v1.4.0.2-6701
- Code cleanup.
- Removal of test code for email notification. Will re-add if I get it functioning.
- More centralization of options and code into the zenFBcommon portion of the plugin.
zenFBSuite 1.4.0-6454 released! zenTwitter also updated! [news]
zenFBSuite, zenTwitter & Zenphoto 1.4.0
With the official release of Zenphoto 1.4.0 I've dusted off the old coding fingers and put the final touches on the updated zenFBSuite of plugins and zenTwitter. Highlights of the changes include:
- Added requirement of zenFBcommon plug-in to be enabled. Plug-in functionality will be disabled unless you enable the zenFBcommon plug-in.
- zenFBSuite of plug-ins option interface updated to adhere to Zenphoto 1.4.0's new performance enhancements.
- zenFBComments can be disabled for all Album/Image/Page/News pages via admin options.
- zenFBComments now adheres to whether comments are enabled/disabled per article/page as designated via the admin interface by checking "Comments On".
- Moved OpenGraph keys from zenFBSuite plug-ins to zenFBcommon.
- Added option interface for specification of application ID & admin ID.
- Plug-in now distributed as pack with other zenFBSuite plug-ins.
zenTwitter option interface was updated to adhere to 1.4.0's new structure enhancing Zenphoto performance.
For more information and download please visit the following pages:
