Posts Tagged ‘WordPress’

WP-Profilactic 1.0

Date April 19, 2008

Plugin Summary

The WP-Profilactic Plugin publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parseing your aggregated online activity feed from Profilactic.

Road to v1.0 (Why I wrote this plugin)

If you want to keep friends in-the-know on your life online, then you need a way to aggregate your online activities. But, with the number of social sites on the web today, it’s hard to manage one’s own online identity/activies, much less that of friends.

If your friends care to know what books you’re reading, what music you’re listening too, what restaurants you love, etc., then services like FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse & Profilactic – commonly referred to as “lifestreams” – are a great way to keep friends in the loop. (Compare Services at lifestreamblog.com)

As I searched for a solution to aggregate my lifestream to my blog, I came across Kieran Delany’s WP-SimpleLife plugin for WP.  It did exactly what I wanted; however, adding new services was somewhat tedeous (others agreed.  So, I began searching for a simpler solution.

My search of online aggregators led me to Profilactic.  The noticable initial diffirentiator between Profilactic and the others (w.r.t. what I needed) was the large number of supported sites (175 at the time of writing this), the ability to include your own RSS feeds, and the title formatting.  All the other LifeStream Services post items to the feed in a consolidated format (i.e., UserX posted three links on delicious); whereas Profilactic displays the title of each post individually so that users can see exactly what I bookmarked without having to go the services’ website to read the rest of the content.

So, I forked K’s SimpleLife plugin and came up with WP-Profilactic. Visit the Project Page to download.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at prof@opindian.com).

WP-Profilactic

Date March 30, 2008

Plugin Summary:

The WP-Profilactic Plugin publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parseing your aggregated online activity feed from Profilactic.

Latest Version:

Demo Links:

  • Anish H. Patel’s LifeStream
  • (To add your lifestream here, email me at prof@opindian.com)

Installation Instructions:

  1. Sign Up for an account at Profilactic.com
  2. Download and unzip the most recent version of Profilactic
  3. Upload the entire profilactic folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  4. Login to your WP Admin panel, click Plugins, and activate Profilactic
  5. Go to Options and then click the Profilactic link. Enter your Profilactic username and customize your settings (colors, # of posts, etc.).
  6. To show your lifestream on a page:
    • Copy <?php profilactic(); ?> or <?php prof_wtfmo(); ?> into a template file (sample file, profilactic.tpl.php, included in the plugin directory)
    • Save the template file to /wp-content/themes/your theme/
    • Create a new page and use the profilactic template (under the Page Options, scroll down to Page Template and select Profilactic.
  7. To show your lifestream or wtfmo in the sidebar, add the appropriate Profilactic widget from Design -> Widgets.
  8. That’s it!

Changelog:

Oct 13, 2008 – v 1.2.5
- Fixed a favicon issue with Magnolia links.
- Updated regex to accommodate .se, .in, .info, .tv domains

Aug 26, 2008 - v 1.2.4
- Icons now stay visible on Hover.
- Corrected some CSS styling.
- Changed .css filenames (style.css is now prof-style.css; sidebar-style.css is now prof-sidebar-style.css)

May 26, 2008 - v 1.2.2
- Fixed the parse error that prevented activation of the plugin for some users.

May 13, 2008 - v 1.2
- Added sample Template file
- Added cURL fallback option for hosts that disable file_get_contents($url).  (fixed by <a href=”www.sellaro.eti.br”>Alisson Pelucio</a>)
- All color related CSS code and list items moved to profilactic.php` (Hover in IE, FF & Opera really works now and plugin updates won’t mess us your style)
- Fixed Footer show/hide option
- Minor: Support Link, Icons, Documentation updated

April 23, 2008 - v1.1.1
- Fixed the Fatal Error on line 304!! (it was due to timezone function differences b/w php4 and php5.1)
- Corrected Regex for title simplification
- Corrected CSS code order so that hover works in IE, FF & Opera

April 19, 2008 – v1.0.1
- Initial Public Release
- Code Optimization & Cosmetic Updates
- Removed the FriendFeed items because they don’t parse correctly and it’s generally redundant content if you’re already parsing the services it aggregates.

April 5, 2008 – v.85
- Added widget and template options for badges
- Corrected Widget Formatting per WP 2.5 Codex guidelines

April 1, 2008 – v.79
- Initial Beta release
- Corrected the dynamic cache directory detection code
- Included Count Option to control number of entries displayed
- Added option to include/remove Service name from title (i.e., “Digg: story” vs just “story”)
- Added Error Checking for plugin requirements, php version, & caching solution.

March 30, 2008 – v .59
- Initial Alpha release
- Added option to fallback to SimpleXML (useful if SimplePie Core is not installed)

ToDo:

Issues: