Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and php

Image-board blog shoutbox?

Marquis — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:08:35 -0800

How can I add an image-based shoutbox to my blog? Looking for elegant, cruft-free scripts that allow me to create a kind of mini image-board within a blog post.

I'd like to be able to make a post (eg: "What's your favourite photo of a cat sleeping in a tuba?") and then let users upload images in reply. The images could be hosted on my server, and all I'd need is for the poster to leave a name/email etc.

Really what I have in mind is a shoutbox like YShout or Shoutmix, but with users leaving images instead of text.

Bonus points if I can have multiple boards open at once, and if I can close boards to new messages while leaving the image galleries online. (e.g. stop accepting new "cats in tubas" images after one week, but start soliciting "raccoons in trombones")

PHP Script to Socially Network The Elderly...

bleucube — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:26:08 -0800

Performing community work for a elderly care facility. They are interested in hosting a "facebook" for their 100+ residents. Plenty of computers around. Need help choosing an open source package. Requirements:
1. Self-hosted
2. Dead simple to use from an end user perspective
3. Each client has their own page
4. Main component is allowing family members to communicate with resident and vice versa through blogging, messaging, and private email.
5. PHP and MYSQL (if needed)

I would love to use an open source package.

Any suggestions? With your suggestion please list any mod/plugin/addon that might be needed to do the job :)

(I've looked at Wordpress MU, Elgg, and Drupal. Haven't ruled them out but default install and few hours led me to believe they wouldn't fit the bill.)

What are best practices for changing the directory of a Wordpress blog?

tweebiscuit — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:06:13 -0800

I want to move my Wordpress blog from a subdirectory on my domain to the root directory -- i.e., I want the URL of my posts to be changed from http://www.domain.com/blog/post-permalink to http://www.domain.com/permalink . What's the best way to ensure that external links don't die? Is there a way to make sure that individual posts will retain their Google PageRank? I know that some variation on a RewriteRule in the site's .htaccess file is what I'm looking for, but I'm unclear on the specifics. What are best practices for this sort of transition?

Customizing a Wordpress function

adamrice — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:36:19 -0800

Wordpress/PHP question. I'm working on a Wordpress theme and want to use an algorithm to alter some of the HTML it emits. I've got a general idea of how to do this, and could probably manage a brutish implementation on my own, but my PHP-fu is weak and there is probably a better way. Here's what's going on. I'm using the blueprint css approach for a gridded layout. And I've got a "bottom-bar" of widgets, laid out in three columns. With blueprint css, the div for the third column needs class="last" added to it in (in addition to class declarations that apply to all divs) order for everything to line up right.

What I want to do is get the count of widgets each time a widget is emitted, and if count mod 3 = 0, insert 'last' into the class. Barring that, if I could insert class="widget-N" (where N=count) in all divs, I could manage, although it would be less elegant. Ideally, all browsers would magically support CSS3 and obviate this problem, but I'm not holding my breath.

Obviously I don't want to touch the core code. I don't mind inserting an altered version of whatever function is necessary into my functions.php file; but if there's a callback that lets me avoid doing that, so much the better.

Multiple blogs

phaedon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:42:21 -0800

I'm looking for a CMS/blog that allows for multiple "installations" to be maintained through one control panel and also allows me to add custom fields. I want to adapt a CMS/blog to keep track of separate project logs that can be maintained by one user in an office environment. I don't want to do separate installs because that means the person has to keep logging in to different control panels. I should also mention that I can't use Movable Type because I am using MAMP to run these logs locally on Mac OS X and I haven't figured out how to install MT (because of Perl). Hence something with a PHP backend.

WP Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine

Baud — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:53:01 -0800

WorpressFilter Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine - help ! I've upgraded my Wordprees blog to the latest version and all hell broke loose on me... First it was a full blatk blog and admin section. I've regained access to the admin section by deleting a theme folder but there is still a white page where somebaudy.com used to be

Deleting the content of the plugins folder did not help.

if it's of any help I'm hosted by DreamHost

WordPress posts on a non-WordPress page?

Satapher — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:45:10 -0800

Can I evoke the recent posts of a WordPress blog installed at mysite.com/blog/ to an non-WordPress PHP file such as mysite.com/index.php? So, my site has a blog, but I dont want my entire site to be in the blog format, just the seperate folder for the blog. However I would like to display the most recent posts of my blog on my non-blog front page. I wish I knew the terminology to make this explanation easier :)

My non-blog site uses PHP (just like WordPress does) I was wondering if there was a to display/call the most recent posts from my WordPress blog @ mysite.com/blog onto my front page via mysite.com/index.php

Pressing onward

adamrice — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:44:55 -0800

I'm working on transitioning a blog from Movable Type to Wordpress, and I'm getting hung up on one technical issue Movable Type includes a Keywords field in every post, and I use it for folksonomy-style tags as a comma-delimited list. I would like for this information to survive the transition, but it isn't easy.

Wordpress' MT importer ignores the Keywords field entirely. Wordpress does not have a Keywords field by default, but it does allow custom fields, and with the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, does lots of fun taggy things.

I did find a patch for an older version of the MT importer that updates it to deal with the Keywords field, but the patch doesn't apply to the current version; I know enough PHP to do about half of it manually, but after that, I'm adrift.

thanks in advance (and no offense, Anil).

hard to find a stripped down piece of software...

pissfactory — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:47:17 -0800

I'm looking for a simple PHP blog. There's a catch... Here's the thing. I don't want a CMS, I have a well-developed website written in PHP & mySQL. What I want is a blog "module" that just plugs into my existing PHP pages so that I keep the look/feel of my website. For example (this is made-up code):



  < ?php include 'miniblog_setup.php'; show_blog_entries(script_name); ?>

would get inserted in my existing PHP template. I could write my own mySQL wrapper in PHP and use phpMyAdmin to make blog entries, but there *must* be the possibility to add a blog (or wiki or whatever) as a plug-in module into an existing non-CMS website and doesn't require smarty or any other stuff that isn't raw php/mysql... thoughts?

How do I fetch the slug, sans domain, in WordPress/PHP?

cortex — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:26:42 -0800

Learning my way around WordPress. How do I fetch the slug text, sans domain, in WordPress/PHP? Neither the docs nor Google seem to have an answer for me.

I don't, for example, want the_permalink(), which returns a fully-qualified URL. I want just the slug text, as bolded below:

http://www.domainypants.com/06/07/31/this-is-the-slug/

I have enough programming acumen to figure out how to strip this out of the larger permalink if necessary, but I'd like to know, definitively, if I need to or if WordPress actually makes this available out of the box.

PHP class for externally posting to blogs?

frenetic — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:38:48 -0800

Anyone know of a decent PHP class or function library out there for externally posting to various weblog packages (Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type) via XML-RPC? I want to add "post to your blog" functionality to a website but I haven't had much success tracking something like this down. Pointers to anything helpful would be appreciated.

MT PHP API?

xmutex — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:36:34 -0800

Movable Type PHP library: is it possible to use the PHP library in the same fashion as the perl library? Maybe I am not making sense. MT comes w/ the perl library, e.g. MT.pm, Entry.pm, etc.

I've taken lately to writing shell scripts and cron jobs in PHP, but I have one perl script (and another coming) that must be in perl cos they use the MT library to write an automated entry, e.g.:

$entry = MT::Entry->new;
...
$entry->save;
$mt->rebuild_entry(Entry => $entry, BuildDependencies => true) or die $mt->errstr;

So but lately MT comes with an extensive PHP library (mt directory/php/lib). But it seems like this isn't really a library/API, but rather some basic functions. Is it possible to duplicate the above functionality using MT's php lib?

How to build a family website?

mono blanco — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 03:43:45 -0800

How do I build an interactive family website? How do I build an interactive family website?

I'm just now getting up to speed on XHTML and CSS thanks to all the great suggestions in this thread (I'm almost finished with the Head First book, woo hoo!). Now I want to try my hand at building a simple family website which would (1) require a password for entry (2) allow family members to post text and images (3) allow for thread-like discussions and, perhaps (4) permit members to have their own separate pages or sections of the site.

Suggestions? So far I'm doing everything through a text editor to make sure I learn the concepts, but I'd be happy to use appropriate website software. Is this something I should be able to do with, say, WordPress or Moveable Type? Does the interactive element mean I need to learn PHP? My website host says they provide PHP and MySQL Replication, if that's any help.

Formatting Combined Feeds as a Daily Link List

0bvious — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:49:31 -0800

I have been using reblog to combine two feeds (for a blog and a forum) which I then publish through Feedburner. What I want to do is have the blog part of my feed update normally (i.e. individual posts) and the forum part of my feed compiled into a daily link list (which itself is published as if it were ONE feed post each day)... What ways exist for me to do this? I have already devised a simple way to do this, but I cannot edit the output.

At the moment I have reblogger publish my forum feed to a delicious account. Then using the feedburner link-splicer, delicious posts are called up at the end of each day and compiled as a daily link list in my feed.

Problem is I can't edit the title, format etc. of the output. (I'd like to change the title of this daily post to read something like 'Forum Activity for 30th March 2006')

Any other methods to do this? (my knowledge of PHP and the like is slim, so be gentle).

Thanks a lot

Favourite Wordpress plugins?

furtive — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 18:33:23 -0800

What are your favourite Wordpress plugins? I'm overwhelmed by the selection of plugins available. Which ones would you unabashedly recommend?

Which PHP-based blogging tool should I use?

sauril — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:23:00 -0800

Which PHP-based blogging tool should I use? I'm getting married this summer, and with most guests coming from out of town, I thought it would be a good idea to set up a blog for any news and information I need to provide. I have a domain and hosting I'd like to use, and I have PHP/MySQL setup on the server. Which package would fit my needs? It would be nice if it a) was free and b) has some decent tempates, my design sucks.

Titles in EventCalendar?

Biblio — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:05:14 -0800

Help with Eventcalendar on my Wordpress blog? Thanks to Askme, I am happily using Wordpress. I have eventcalendar 3.0.4 installed and I am trying to get the titles of the events to show up in the calendar itself. I followed the instructions in this thread at the WP support site, and you can see the code I am using and a link to my site in the post I left there earlier. Does anyone here know why there is extra code in my calendar?

Simpe PHP Code Question

panoptican — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:13:27 -0800

How do I arrange this PHP code so that it does what it is supposed to do? First of all, here is the code:

http://rafb.net/paste/results/QUVmtU10.html

Specifically, I'm concerned with lines 6-48, the IF/ELSE stuff. I don't know PHP but I can usually figure code like this with a little trial and error. Thus far I've failed with this piece though. At first it was just a bunch of IF statements with an ELSE at the end. Then I tried using a flag so that anytime the IF failed, the ELSE would be triggered. That didn't work either. Basically, I want the IF/ELSE statement to apply to each of the "IFs." Right now, it logically works with the "photos" line since that's the only one where the if is followed directly by the ELSE (I thought the flags would fix this but it didn't). I tried also putting the ELSE statement after each of the IFs but that seems to break things. How do I arrange the code so that it works with "bookmarks," "links" and "clippings"? Presently, when I click the photos link, it only shows photos. But for the other three, it'll show both the IF and the ELSE. I hope my question makes sense. Thanks for any help you provide. If needed, I can post a link to the blog where the code is presently in use (but not correctly implemented obviously).

Feel free to use Paste (); if you want to alter the code.

Suggestions for Parsing Blog Feeds Using PHP?

jeanmari — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:15:26 -0800

Can anyone suggest good PHP books or existing scripts that can help me successfully parse RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom 0.3 feeds, then save them to a MySQL database? I'm developing a website that aggregates entries from various blogs dedicated to a specific topic. (Blog authors have agreed to participate.) I've currently got a version working using Ari Paparo's RSStoMySQL script, but it only seems to work with RSS 1.0 feeds. I'm successfully converting some non-1.0 feeds using FeedBurner.com, but it isn't working for others. Basically the script seems very particular. Any suggestions on other ways I can also successfully scrape Atom and RSS 2.0 feeds? To be clear, my solution needs to save entries to a MySQL database so I can manage entries in several ways.

MoveableType

adamkempa — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 19:54:39 -0800

As a self-imposed php refresher, I've recently been toying around with writing custom movable type submission frontends for a few less web-literate family members (Basically just simplified forms that throw the user input into the MT mysql database). I've got everything ticking along nicely, but none of the submitted entries will show up until I log in and rebuild the site from within movable type. My question: Is there some way to either force a rebuild from a custom form, or automate a rebuild? I've searched the MT forums with no success. I'm using MT 2.64 with minimal knowledge of its inner workings. Any suggestions / pointers / links are appreciated!