The Weight of Service...

May 28

Per Post Copyright for 1.2+

You might find this a pretty extensive hack, depending on your level of experience so be warned.

I have finished the hack to give you post per post control over copyright on your WordPress powered blog.  Honestly the hardest part is adding the entries to the database where needed, other than that you just need to drop in some replacement files.

On the next page are some shots of the modified UI for the post/edit screen, and options-misc:

Here is the new post/edit screen:

And here is the new options-misc page:

Now if you are not scared away, here is a link to the files you will need, and a step by step guide on how to add fields to your WordPress Database:

• First fire up your favorite interface to your MySQL DB, my one of choice is phpMyAdmin if I am away from the server room, or CocoaMySQL if I am in the server room. In phpMyAdmin locate the wp_ (or b2, or whatever prefix)posts table and add 1 new field, anywhere really, I always put them at the end of the table:
  1. post_copyright, text, no length/value, no attributes, not null
• Then go to your options table and insert the following rows:
  1. default_copyright, option type 2, option_can_overide Y, admin user level 8
  2. use_default_copyright, option type 2, option_can_overide Y, admin user level 8
  3. use_copyright_options, option type 2, option_can_overide Y, admin user level 8
• Next backup the following files: edit-form-advanced.php, options-misc.php, template-functions-post.php, post.php, and functions.php.
• Then drop in the new versions of the above files located in the copyright folder you DLed and unzipped.

Now when you login, you should be able to go to Options>Miscellaneous and find at the bottom Use Copyrighting Features.  Now all you need to do is fill out what you want the default copyright to be, place the function call: <?php the_copyright(); ?>where you want the copyright notice to appear and you are golden.

One note, this option works just like the Geographic Tracking Features, meaning that you can modify the default on a post per post basis when you are writing your entries.

As always this tutorial and hack are fully supported by me, when I have time, so leave me a comment here and I will try and help you if you are having any problems.

Archpastoral Visit...

As of the time of this publishing I am probably up to my neck in ecclesia, just finishing the reading of the 3rd and 6th hours, or the Royal Hours as they are commonly known, and am now watching my Bishop being vested in the midst of the faithful at my little church.

And so begins the real life of my Parish.  In many ways this is a watershed moment for my Parish and specifically, three men who attend.  Three good friends of mine will be tonsured Readers, the first office of the minor orders, and the first step in a treck that could take one or all of them to the Priesthood.

This is an exciting time for our Parish, but also a nerve-racking one.  Anytime you have visitors you feel the pressure to "perform", and you can only imagine how much more so when you have the first visit of someone whom is as dear to you as your Bishop.  Today begins a new chapter in my life, and that of my Parish Family, I pray that the Triune God will perfect the faith of those who gather in His name, and protect those that have undertaken service to His Church, and the families they represent.

The cassock is very heavy, and not just for those who don them.

Happy Birthday to me

Today marks the 27th year that I have been on the earth.

It is very strange in some ways to be almost thirty.  I am sure that all of those out there in webspace who are over the thirty mark will scoff at my reflections, but it does not change the fact that this is a very strange time for me.

There are very few thresholds, or milestones that we are allowed to experience in American Culture, and turning 30 is one of those.  Together with being married, and having your first child they create the young adult trifecta, and it gives me pause that it looks as though turning 30 will be the last jewel in that tripple crown for me.

A little teaser...

Here is a glimpse of something I am working on for WordPress currently:

You can see the results of it running on the site now, some of the posts are copyrighted, with sometimes widely varying licenses.

I will keep you updated.

New index page for wp-admin...

I have been working on creating a working version of mpt's new interface mockup.

I think things are going pretty well, I have made some changes to suit my own taste, while trying to adhere to the spirit of mpt's proposal.  I really like having this in place as the first page you see, as opposed to going straight to the write screen.

You can find a screenshot here.

The page requires my wp-stats plugin to be installed on your system, and you need to drop special-functions.php in your /wp-admin/ directory.  Everything else uses built in WP functions (you hear that photomatt? I am actually writing by the developer guidelines!)

So find the files you need in this archive.  Let me know here if you have any questions/comments.

WP-Stats

I have created a simple stats plugin for WordPress, based on Free Statistics Version 1.1.0 by Free-Webhosts.com.

Basically it is a very simple plugin that records each request to each page that the function resides on, and then uses an algorithim that predicts your traffic for the day.  I did not create a very detailed, or all-encompasing plugin, since that is not what I wanted to do.

I am going to look into hacking up a version of a new admin interface proposal by the big man mpt using this plugin to power some of the features he was proposing.

AS always you can find the hack, with instructions at the usual place.

Let me know what you guys think.

Good Lord...

Great scott!

Do you want to see what a mass exodus looks like?  Check out the trackbacks on this entry over at Mena's Corner.

Today Six Apart, the company formed by bloggings Dynamic Duo Ben and Mena Trott, announced the immediate availability of Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition.  Oh and they had another small announcement; new license and usage restrictions.

Apparently the idea that if you have more than one author and/or three blogs, you must pony up a rather large sum of money has not been met with the accolades and cheers that one would expect.  Oh no, in stark contrast to that assumption, the announcement has been met with loud rumblings of "What the f**ck", and "Wow, thanks for that knife in the back!" and my personal favorite, "My wife and I have an MT family blog for friends and family.  Two authors equals $100!!!  We're moving to WordPress."

On the WordPress IRC channel #wordpress, photomatt, aka Allusion, aka Matt Mullenwefjkdsjfk (or something along those lines.) had this to say:* photomatt is not prepared for the coming flood of usersAnd of course we had many good and useful suggestions:<brux> photomatt: get a raincoat
<brux> photomatt: build a levy
<Jesuit> learn to swim

We just love to be helpful.

But that does raise an interesting question, how are we as a community going to handle the influx of new users that this announcement is going to create?  WordPress is probably the fastest growing Personal Publishing System in use today, and for good reason.  We have some of the most vibrant and dedicated developers and support community that money hasn't bought^TM.  Because of this we have been able, in a short amount of time, to create a world class system that is almost infinately extensible through a very easy to use plugin system, standards compliance and semantic elegance.

The numbers of active users is going to explode in the next couple of months, and with that the need for better documentation and a dedicated team of volunteers to act as a support clearing house.  Some very talented and dedicated people are already on the job improving the documentation, a tip o' the hat to Cena and Craig; so I would like to take this opportunity to suggest that we in the community who are inclined to user support band together and form a team much like the doco team to help better enable the developers to live up to their title, and develop.

Basically we would be tasked with trolling through the Support Forum answering questions, and point people in the direction of examples and tutorials on using WordPress.  We would also need to write the aforementioned Tutorials of course, but that is neither here nor there.  There are already a number of us who are doing this, so I would think that it would be a logical step to make it somewhat official and structured.  Something like have one or two (depending on category size) member(s) of the team responsible for a given area of the Forum, e.g. Bob would be responsible for answering questions in How to & Troubleshooting, while Joe is in charge of answering quandries in Installation.

This is of course just an example.  We could just have a support free-for-all, where questions are answered on a first come, first serve basis.  Doesn't matter to me.

So what say you?  Is there any energy on this topic, or am I off in left field as usual?  Leave some comments and let's talk about it.

A case for CMS features...

I have been reading alot about what CMS features to add to WordPress.  One of the most requested features is the inclusion of a more robust templating system.

With the recent relaunch of blogger by parent google I think that this is an even more relevant path to follow.

The crux of the matter is that WordPress was not designed to be a CMS.  And I agree, there is no real advantage for WP to try and compete with some of the established systems out there.

However I do think that some features of the CMS would be good to fold into WP.  Case in point, a robust templating system coupled with a decent selection of pre-built templates.  This would be trivial to do really, one solution could be:

• Adding a theme folder within the wp-content folder
• Adding a Template option to the wp-admin UI, either under the actual template tab, or as a preference under options.
• This option would basically be <?php echo get_setting('template'); ?> .   The user would set which template they would like to use, which would just be a CSS file really.  Then when called in your index file it would output $siteurl/userselectedCSSsheet/.

This would be less than trivial and give users another reason to use this software, and might be another point in our column when Hosting Companies are looking for blogging software to install by deafult.

Burn It - Spring 2004

I am sorry that I was not faster getting this up, but I am participating in a very swanky event called Burn It.

According to the website:

You burn 5 identical CDs. Keep one for yourself and send the other three to the other people in your group and one to me. You should then receive three new CDs from the other three people in your group.

This could potentially be a very cool thing, especially since this edition is the Cover Songs edition.  I have a lot of really cool (at least I think so) cover songs here and it will be fun to see what other people will send out.  The deadline for this edition, the Spring 2004 Burn It is tomorrow May 10th, so if you want in you better go over and sign up.