David Raynes: MT Plugins http://www.rayners.org/archives/blogging/movable_type/mt_plugins/ en-us Copyright 2005 Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:16:03 -0500 Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:31:54 -0500 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Coming Soon: Remote Publish Andre got in touch with me a couple nights ago with an interesting plugin request. He wanted to be able... http://www.rayners.org/2005/05/coming_soon_rem.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/05/coming_soon_rem.php Andre got in touch with me a couple nights ago with an interesting plugin request. He wanted to be able to have MT automatically send files out via FTP to another host where the web site would actually be living.

So, after about one hour, I had something to send out to him. One hour. I don't want to think about the amount of time I would spend writing something like this in MT 2.x.

It works, but it needs some serious polish and a configuration front-end. Right now, configuration involves hand-editing the plugin, which I try to avoid at all costs when I can. If anybody actually wants to play around with it, let me know and I will make it available.

]]> Remote Publish Thu, 12 May 2005 16:55:13 -0500 Comment Callbacks 0.1 Here is a quick little mini-plugin that I wrote to help me in the development of the next version of... http://www.rayners.org/2005/04/comment_callbac.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/04/comment_callbac.php Here is a quick little mini-plugin that I wrote to help me in the development of the next version of MultiBlog. Comment Callbacks establishes two callbacks for the comment system of Movable Type:

  • CommentCallbacks::PostCommentPost which is called right after a comment is first posted
  • CommentCallbacks::PostCommentApprove which is called right after a comment is approved

If a comment is approved when it is posted (for whatever reason, be it no comment moderation, TypeKey authentication, etc.), both callbacks are called in the order above.

To install, download one of the following files, unpack it, and place comment_callbacks.pl in your plugins/ directory.

]]> Comment Callbacks Sat, 23 Apr 2005 23:51:36 -0500 Looking for Plugin Testimonials As part of an ongoing effort to put together my plugin store, I am looking for some testimonials to use.... http://www.rayners.org/2005/03/looking_for_plu.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/03/looking_for_plu.php As part of an ongoing effort to put together my plugin store, I am looking for some testimonials to use. So, if you have ever used any plugins of mine (especially some of the major ones like MultiBlog/OtherBlog, SubCategories, or one of the pre-release versions of Workflow), I would appreciate it if you could share your experiences, either in a comment or email if you would prefer something less public.

Thanks!

]]> MT Plugins Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:16:03 -0500 Pay for Plugins While I would love to do what Jason just did and quit my job and do the blogging and plugin... http://www.rayners.org/2005/02/pay_for_plugins.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/02/pay_for_plugins.php While I would love to do what Jason just did and quit my job and do the blogging and plugin development thing full time, it is just not an option for me right now. We need the health insurance and my steady paycheck now that Jenn is quitting her job.

And since we are going to be losing her income, I need to make sure that all of the work I do outside of my day job is as profitable as I can make it. So I figure I have two options: either drop the blogging and plugin development thing for the time being (if not for good) or start charging for some of my more time consuming plugins and try to find other types of revenue streams I can generate with this site and my plugin work.

I thought I would start the charging with Workflow, and probably MultiBlog 2.0 (not the current version) after that. Everything that has been publicly released up until this point will still be available free of charge. I have also thought about instituting some kind of rayners-plugin subscription idea, where folks could get access to the bleeding edge stuff that I am working on, as well as get first priority for bug reports and feature requests. It is just an idea at the moment though.

I put a lot of time and effort into many of my plugins. And while I have received donations from a number of very generous folks (and I do appreciate it quite a bit; if I do charge, you will all get discounts), the return on my investment of time spent working on all this plugin code is pretty abysmal. With the situation we are entering into now, that is not something that I can afford to continue. Whatever I end up doing, things will be different from now on.

]]> MT Plugins Tue, 22 Feb 2005 22:37:40 -0500 Category Depth 0.9 This is just a quick plugin I wrote to return the depth of the current category. It provides a single... http://www.rayners.org/2005/02/category_depth.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/02/category_depth.php This is just a quick plugin I wrote to return the depth of the current category. It provides a single tag: MTCategoryDepth.

So download one of the following files, unpack it, and place categry_depth.pl in the plugins/ directory.

]]> Category Depth Tue, 08 Feb 2005 22:05:39 -0500 New Plugin Idea: Entry Funnel While talking with Anil a couple days ago, he tossed out an interesting seed idea for a plugin and my... http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/new_plugin_idea_3.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/new_plugin_idea_3.php While talking with Anil a couple days ago, he tossed out an interesting seed idea for a plugin and my mind just took it and ran.

So, here is the basic idea: given one or more feeds (Atom, RSS, etc.), create entries in the local blog based on those feeds. The idea is that you could pull in feeds from Technorati, Flickr, Del.icio.us, other blogs, and anything else that publishes feeds and build entries in your own blog to aggregate that content or whatever else you might want to do with it.

I would write more, but it is late and I just spent a couple hours tracking down a "minor" error in a plugin that I have been playing around with. So, any thoughts?

]]> Entry Funnel Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:31:32 -0500 How To Make My Day It all started when I was browsing some local blogs in Bloglines this morning. Among other things, fellow Baltimore blogger,... http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/how_to_make_my_1.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/how_to_make_my_1.php It all started when I was browsing some local blogs in Bloglines this morning. Among other things, fellow Baltimore blogger, DaBrettman wrote the following about what he did early this morning:

... since I installed MTCloseComments as a plug-in (isn't CloseComments a Raynes creation? Talk about gods of MT development... heh)

Since the ingenious CloseComments plugin is actually the work of Alan Carroll, I took it upon myself to let DaBrettman know. I left a comment on his site mentioning that the plugin was not mine and that he had probably confused it with a quickie script I wrote, which was mostly just a port of a MySQL specific script that somebody else wrote.

Later he responded to my comment thusly:

David: See, I would have worshipped at your altar if you would've just lied a little.. you and your integrity, I swear.

Thanks, DaB. You made my day. :)

]]> MT Plugins Tue, 18 Jan 2005 22:30:51 -0500 New Plugin Idea: Template Preview So, I was doing some testing on a quickie little plugin that I wrote to help out a reader. It... http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/new_plugin_idea_2.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/new_plugin_idea_2.php So, I was doing some testing on a quickie little plugin that I wrote to help out a reader. It occurred to me that having to create a template and keep rebuilding it while I was testing a single template tag was a little silly. Why not have the ability to just toss the text into a form field, click a button, and get a rendering of that template text? I could write that without too much difficulty.

And then I could add features. Like previews for existing archive templates so that changes could be tested before the entire site is rebuilt. Things like that.

Any other ideas out there?

]]> Template Preview Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:02:16 -0500 TKPal for MT 1.0 Release Candidate 1 Almost a week ago, Andre first released TKPal: TK Pal is a snippet of PHP code you can place in... http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/tkpal_for_mt_10.php http://www.rayners.org/2005/01/tkpal_for_mt_10.php Almost a week ago, Andre first released TKPal:

TK Pal is a snippet of PHP code you can place in a PHP enabled page to restrict access to content to TypeKey users who have specifically paid to see that content.

So, I have begun writing a wrapper plugin around that so MT users can take it for a spin. This has an enormous amount of future potential.

Just to test it out for myself, and to demonstrate that it works, the link to the plugin code and instructions for installation are in the extended entry, which will cost you $3.50 to access (if you have ever seen that episode of South Park, you will understand where that number came from).

Note: This plugin requires that all the pages in which it is used are output as php.

I should also mention that the fact that you need to pay to access this plugin is meant as a proof of concept only. If you would like, I would be happy to refund the money you paid to get it. All you have to do is ask.

This entry contains premium content. Please browse to the archive page for the entry to access this content.

]]> TKPal Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:38:47 -0500 ParentCategoryRebuild 1.1 Just a quick update to the ParentCategoryRebuild plugin. This new version fixes the bug that caused archives to be rebuilt... http://www.rayners.org/2004/12/parentcategoryr.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/12/parentcategoryr.php Just a quick update to the ParentCategoryRebuild plugin. This new version fixes the bug that caused archives to be rebuilt even if the entry being saved was not published, and removes the condition that was causing the error message if the entry had no categories selected for it.

Download one of the following files, unpack it, and place parent_rebuild.pl in the plugins/ directory.

]]> ParentCategoryRebuild Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:16:02 -0500 ParentCategoryRebuild 1.0 This plugin will automatically rebuild the category archives for the parent categories of the categories to which an entry has... http://www.rayners.org/2004/12/parentcategoryr_1.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/12/parentcategoryr_1.php This plugin will automatically rebuild the category archives for the parent categories of the categories to which an entry has been assigned. The idea is that if you are using MTEntriesWithSubCategories in your category archive templates, you will want those category archives to be rebuilt when an entry is saved. However, the normal behavior is only to rebuild those categories to which the entry is directly assigned. So I ripped the code that performed the parent category archive rebuilding from the last version of the SubCategories plugin, cleaned it up, and here it is.

Download one of the following files:

Unpack it, place parent_rebuild.pl in your plugins directory, and you are all set.

( Note: this plugin is using a callback that was introduced in MT 3.1, so it will not work in earlier versions )

]]> ParentCategoryRebuild Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:30:42 -0500 My MT Task List This is as much for all you folks out there as it is for myself. I just wanted to go... http://www.rayners.org/2004/10/my_mt_task_list_1.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/10/my_mt_task_list_1.php This is as much for all you folks out there as it is for myself. I just wanted to go pick my own brain and write down all that I have told myself that I would work on in the near future. Feel free to make suggestions.

  • Polling plugin (significant revamp/rewrite of MTVote most likely)
  • Update MultiBlog to handle multi-user environments correctly
  • Update ExtendedComments to include changes to the comment process from MT 3.1x
    • Finish up CommentThreads and CommentTitles
  • Clean up and release the Apache Authentication for MT "plugin"
  • Plenty of work to be done with MT Forge
  • Start working on the plugin permissions "plugin" idea

Update: Also needing significant work is the Plugin Manager, but that's more of a long term task. And I am currently not planning on porting any of my plugins to PHP for two main reasons:

  • I cannot use the dynamic publishing features myself as I am using Postgres, so testing would be difficult
  • The majority of my plugins use data stored with PluginData, which is inaccessible to PHP plugins
]]> MT Plugins Wed, 20 Oct 2004 08:41:58 -0500 Dropcash Plugin 1.1 Just a quick update for the plugin, incorporating a change Andre made to the Dropcash feeds and adding a pair... http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/dropcash_plugin_1.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/dropcash_plugin_1.php Just a quick update for the plugin, incorporating a change Andre made to the Dropcash feeds and adding a pair of new tags: MTDropcashGoalIsReached and MTDropcashGoalIsNotReached

Download:

See the Dropcash plugin instructions.

]]> Dropcash Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:08:30 -0500 Problems with some of my recent plugins A number of people have reporting having a specific problem with some of my plugins recently (though MultiBlog is the... http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/problems_with_s_1.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/problems_with_s_1.php A number of people have reporting having a specific problem with some of my plugins recently (though MultiBlog is the only one I can remember off the top of my head). So, if you are receiving an error message concerning get_config_value, that is because the plugin was written to target MT 3.0D and above. The get_config_value method in those versions of MT was written to make plugin configuration storage and retieval easier.

I could back-port a similar mechanism for MT 2.6x users (it would not be possible for MT 2.5x), but I would rather spend my time beefing up some features that have shown to be lacking (e.g. multi-author sites using MultiBlog). I am tempted to create another feature ransom for the back-porting if people really want it.

]]> MT Plugins Wed, 15 Sep 2004 20:39:32 -0500 Dropcash Plugin 1.0 The campaign has been more than successful, though it does not currently reflect that as my Paypal account still needs... http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/dropcash_plugin.php http://www.rayners.org/2004/09/dropcash_plugin.php The campaign has been more than successful, though it does not currently reflect that as my Paypal account still needs to finish setting up.

So, here is the plugin as I promised.

Download:

Unpack it and install dropcash.pl into the plugins/ directory. Tags and instructions can be found at Dropcash Plugin Documentation.

]]> Dropcash Wed, 08 Sep 2004 20:51:20 -0500