Welcome to Redradar!

I'm Kelly, and I'll be your host today. I'm a recent grad trying to figure out life. I have interests and a resume, if you're looking for web developer (preferably in the Western MA area). I also have wordpress plugins & other projects; and sometimes I talk about interesting tech topics. I hope you enjoy your stay, and come back often! (alternately you can follow me on twitter, or grab my RSS feed)

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post-from-site v2.0.1

Posted on Jul 16, 2010 at 06:58 PM

I’ve just released post-from-site v2.0.1, which fixes the unintentional bit of code left from development (that I left a path absolute from my dev environment). It should be working for everyone now, but let me know if something else is broken.

Download!

Any support questions should be asked here for v2.0.0+. I can only help if you give me information about your error: what error message you get, where in the process it’s failing, etc. I can’t do anything if you just tell me “it’s not working”.

And now I’m going to ask you all for help: I have this plugin installed here, but for some reason, the stylesheet is 404ing. It exists, and I’ve looked in firebug and the response text is the correct CSS, so I don’t understand why the browser is telling me the file doesn’t exist. Any ideas? I also had a similar problem with a JS file for a work project, and I never really solved it, just worked around it. They’re on different servers, so that’s not it. Any ideas?

EDIT 8/11/10 First thing: A co-worker figured out the 404 problem, which might be affecting others. The stylesheet calls a require_once on wp-blog-header.php which apparently does something to mess with the headers of the stylesheet (and the other files I had trouble with), so changing that to wp-load.php seems to include all the necessary functions. I’ll upload a fixed version tonight, also changing the div back to an a tag, since I got a few comments questioning that move (there honestly wasn’t much thought behind it, other than I usually ended up putting the link in a div so it would theoretically save code? Well, it’ll be an a again).
Second thing: Custom fields seem to be a much-requested item, so I’ll see what I can do. Widgetizing it also seems popular, but I’m not sure how that works so I’ll look into it before promising anything.

Plugins, Plugins Featured Comments (18)

I exist!

Posted on Sep 22, 2009 at 10:22 PM

Also, post-from-site v1.9.0 is out! I think I caught all the small bugs, but I am just me, so let me know if I missed anything. I’ve been working (slowly) on figuring out what exactly I’m doing here with pfs, and now I’ve got a better roadmap than the vague ‘do stuff’ idea that I had before. So you should be expecting a v2.0 within… a month? Perhaps longer, as I’m back in classes again. Anyway, this update includes tag support, the ability to create categories and tags, functional (& not hacked-together) image uploading, and a bunch of cleanup/bugfixes. And likely things I’m missing here, as I have been working on it on and off for nearly two months. The changelog should have all the information, and I’ll update the main post here to reflect the new changes tomorrow.

As I said, still planning on 2.0 being out by November (it’s nearly October already, wow) with either (or both) image integration with the media library (so your uploads show up in the library – I tried that for this release but couldn’t get it working, which is part of why it took so long), or AJAX-style image uploads & multiple uploads. I don’t know yet how that would affect the rest of the form (I might have to make everything AJAXy, which is shiny but intimidating), so to avoid the 2 months with no update thing, I’m only going to aim for one of these to happen. Other media support is also a possibility, but really WP likes to be difficult in this aspect.

As for my real life, I’m back in classes & am optimistic about them – I’m at UMass now, as a non-degree student. I’m applying for ‘proper’ grad school for fall ’10, so if anyone has any statement of purpose tips (the hardest part for me), I’d welcome them. I still have a job but no time for it, and I’m involved in various student activities – pretty much the same as last year. I’m also getting over a cold, so I should probably get off the computer & go to sleep at a somewhat reasonable hour.

Personal, Plugins Comments (3)

I did say adventures, didn’t I…

Posted on Jul 16, 2009 at 10:40 PM

So, I guess I’m learning a few things as I go along in developing pfs. And I mean things I know in theory – like not to release something that’s not properly tested – but for some reason don’t think about when I’m working. Doesn’t help that I don’t really know anyone who’d be a tester for me. But anyway, its undergoing a big(ish) update now – added tag support, image placement (via a fake tag), potentially the ability to upload multiple images, potentially integration with the media gallery (these haven’t been implemented yet, so they might be next release), a version-number system that actually makes sense, and a few stupid fixes. I like the ‘template system’ suggested in the comments, maybe for v2.0. Thanks for all the suggestions and downloads, by the way!

Also a learning experience is trying to balance having a ‘real’ job (recent grad, what can I say) with doing on-the-side plugin stuff, with having time to be social and sleep/eat. And not spending all my waking time on the computer. I know it’s possible, but finding the right balance is difficult.

Noteworthy things: I recently installed a few new programs (on ubuntu) – exaile and gnome-do. Gnome-do is shiny, not sure how much more useful it’ll be than the generic run-app dialog, but I like the fact that it gives my windows button something useful to do. Exaile initially seems like any other music player, though it has an odd method of organizing my music – which isn’t to say I don’t like it. I went from iTunes to Rhythmbox, which both use panels of genre-artist-album. So anything different is interesting. Anyway, the bit I just discovered and like best? The ‘dynamic’ option to extrapolate a playlist based on the current song (via last.fm) Great for me, since I’ve got like 15GB of music (not that that’s an excessive amount, but it’s enough that I forget what I have).

As far as firefox plugins, I’m probably late in getting on the bandwagon for Firebug, but it’s also incredibly useful – specifically the item layout bit, and the network analysis.

I don’t think I’ve added anything awesome to my windows computer lately. I freaked out a little because I only had 1GB of hd space left, so I may be removing the Ubuntu partition on that laptop. I don’t use it anymore, not now that I’ve got another laptop that’s strictly linux.

I’d also like to eventually finish the new theme idea I have for this site, but it’s relatively low priority, so. We’ll see – the idea is continuing the alien-abduction theme, but a different setting. I should maybe get on designing a logo too. Branding and SEO-type things are much lower on my priorities list than maybe they should be.

Personal, Plugins, Tech Comments (0)

pfs update

Posted on Jun 11, 2009 at 11:53 PM

Image support is nearly done. I’m glad WP is so well documented, it makes things like this much easier. I’d love to get the uploader working all AJAX-y, but I’m less confident in my ability there. So perhaps I’ll learn, and get back to it.

Support for making ‘Post to X category’ links is now coded and will be tested soon.

Theoretically none of the changes in wp2.8 should break pfs, but I’ll install it and test this weekend. I’m also considering installing BuddyPress and forking pfs for it after a suggestion in the comments.

This last week’s been somewhat hectic – I was moving into my new apartment. I finally got all my furniture (though the bookcase has yet to be assembled), and I can get back to normal life. On a somewhat unrelated note, Ubuntu Netbook Remix? Not really worth it. (more…)

Personal, Plugins Comments (0)

Unveiling Post-From-Site!

Posted on Jun 03, 2009 at 09:31 PM

“Post-From-Site: Add a new post directly from your website – no need to go to the admin side.”

Version 1.9.0

Released 9.22.09

Download!

This new wordpress plugin allows you to post straight from your front-end (i.e. website) – perfect for a quick update! Also useful if you have multiple users and don’t need them to see the admin side of things (this is the reason the plugin was initially developed). (more…)

Plugins Comments (133)

Post From Site, a new plugin!

Posted on May 13, 2009 at 11:38 AM

Over the last few days I’ve been avoiding my last final writing a new plugin. You may have noticed significantly more ‘falling code’ than usual. This one is currently very customized to a specific client site, but as soon as I get it installed and running for them I’m planning on making it much more customizable.

I had originally planned to use a lot more ajax fanciness in getting it to work, but since I’m not familiar with most of what’s involved there, I moved all the functionality over to the server side in PHP. Time was an issue, but isn’t so much anymore, so I might poke at that again. My current plans on getting this together are:

  • Making a settings tab in the admin side to let the user customize:
    • The look of the popup: background, header image
    • Permissions: Ability to upload images
  • Adding AJAX shininess, with the help of jQuery?

I’ll probably update this further as I finish installing it on the client’s site.

Plugins Comments (3)

Category Intersection Plugin

Posted on Dec 26, 2008 at 08:15 PM

Description: Enables intersection of categories: [your url]/?cat=1,2&and=1 will show posts only in both categories 1 and 2. [your url]/?cat=1,2&and=0 is the default functionality (shows posts from categories 1 or 2).
Author: Kelly Dwan
Version: 0.2
Wordpress 2.6 – 2.8

My first foray into the world of wordpress plugins, born of need for exactly that functionality. None of the functions we looked into seemed to work properly (there were conditions on the categories, it didn’t work with this version of wordpress…) so it seemed easier to write it myself.

To install, simply add the intersection.php file to your wp-content/plugins directory (remove the .txt extension), and activate the plugin. If, for some reason, you’re still using ver 0.1, and add the line:
<?php if ( function_exists('intersection') ) intersection();?>
in the header template (header.php).

I definitely welcome any comments or feedback, and if there are any questions I’ll try to answer as best I can.
EDIT 02/01/09: Clear up installation instructions.

EDIT 02/02/09: Edited meta in file header with a link to this exact post.

EDIT 06/13/09: New version with hooks, so you don’t even need to add code.

Plugins, Plugins Featured Comments (4)

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