Features

• RSS feed of comments awaiting moderation

Current Version:

WP_ModerationRSS

Installation instructions:

Unzip wp_moderationrss.zip. Upload wp_moderation.php and activate the plugin. You can now access a feed of comments awaiting moderation from:
www.yourblog.com/comments/feed/moderationrss/
or if you’re not using pretty permalinks:
www.yourblog.com/index.php?feed=rss2&withcomments=1&wpmoderated=1

Change Log:

• v0.11 5-28-2008:
  • Fixed 404 when 0 moderated comments
• v0.1 5-20-2008:
  • First Public Version

I realize I’m getting in the dead horse beating side of automatic avatar creation plugins but brainsolid asked for a plugin to generate binary avatars that looked like the text from the matrix and I figured it wouldn’t take too long to change WP_Identicon over to it. Of course, then other things came up and I managed to take quite a while to get around to it but it’s done now so here is WP_Texticon. It generates avatars with an array of colored characters. It’s sort of hard to describe so it’s probably easier to just show a few examples.

So I guess it’s mostly for anyone that likes that text in the Matrix, writing about code (with 0 and 1′s or 0-9 and A-E if you want to get fancy) or biologists (give every commenter their own DNA sequence with ATCG) or maybe general literature (with some random letters and a white background).

Features

• Dynamically generated avatars for each commenter
• Matrix/DNA/Binary-like text array icons
• Customizable character selection
• Gravatar support
• No theme edits necessary

Current Version:

WP_Texticon

Installation instructions:

Unzip wp_texticon.zip. Upload wp_texticon.php and the texticon folder. Make sure the texticon folder is writable. If your unzipping program creates a wp_texticon folder please only upload the contents (wp_texticon.php and the texticon folder). That should be it. Texticons should now appear next to your commenter’s names.

You can adjust the background colors, the type and number of characters making up the Texticons and CSS in the Texticon Control Panel. If you’d like to change the fonts used for the characters, add or remove any Truetype Fonts (files that end in .ttf) you’d like to the texticon/fonts folder. You can also clear the Texticon image cache in the control panel.

For Advanced Users:

For even more control, you can disable the automatic placement in the Texticon Control Panel and add an Texticon to any comment with texticon_build($comment->comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author);. For example, find the comments.php of your current theme (it should be in the folder wp-content/themes/[currentThemeName]/). Open it up and look for something similar to foreach ($comments as $comment). Inside this loop there should be code that displays the comment author’s name or metadata like <p class="comment-author"> or <p class="comment-metadata">. Just before all this enter:
<?php if (function_exists(texticon_build)) echo texticon_build($comment->comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author); ?>
If you would prefer to base the Texticons on the commentor’s IP address instead of the commentor’s email just replace $comment->comment_author_email in the above with $comment->comment_author_IP.

Change Log:

• v0.52 3-27-2007:
  • Fixed missing gravatar bug
• v0.51 3-27-2007:
  • First Public Version

I just updated my MonsterID plugin with great monster artwork from Lemm who out of the blue emailed me with artistic very cool sketches of every monster part. I was just saying I wished I had gradients in my monsters and now I have honest to goodness hand-sketched monsters. Man the internet is great. The new version is a little processor intensive so it might take a few reloads to get all the monsters cached on a popular post but it will only happen the first time and things will be quick after that (and I set it so no one user should have to wait more than 5 seconds). They sure look great once they’re generated. Lemm’s about page says she does some freelance work, so if you’re looking for a great illustrator, it sure looks like she can draw.

Shamus (of DM of the Rings fame) has made his own avatar generating WordPress plugin called Wavatars. They do look pretty good. I like the gradients he uses and the artwork looks pretty nice (almost as good as say monsters or geometric shapes ;) ).

He has some good ideas with automatically adding the icon to the user’s name (I had thought this would mess up the html but now that I think about it should be ok for most blogs) and gravatar support (I suppose they’ll be catching on now that they were bought by the WordPress guy) that I think I’ll implement in my plugins in the near future.

Hopefully we’ll see more automatic avatar generating plugins as they catch on.

Aziz of metaBLOG suggests that the new tags in WordPress 2.3 can be used to create a “folksonomy” on WordPress blogs. For those not in the know (including me until a couple days ago), a folksonomy is is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content according to Wikipedia. Basically it’s letting normal people (versus say artificial intelligence or an administrator) help describe things. For example, adding a tag on flickr or using del.icio.us.

So since WordPress doesn’t currently have anything like a public “Add a Tag” and I haven’t coded a WordPress plugin recently (although I did upgrade WP_MonsterID if anyone is using it), I thought I would code up a quick plugin to see how it works. So here is WP_Folksonomy. It’s fairly basic at the moment but I’d like to get it out there to see if it’s useful and if anyone is interested in it.

Since it uses WordPress’s tagging features WP it’s only going to be compatible with WordPress 2.3 and up.

Features

• Allow readers (or registered users) to add tags to posts
• Choose between immediately displaying tags and waiting for admin approval first
• Delete user submitted tags
• Delete or approve all tags by user/IP address
• RSS feed for monitoring added tags
• Javascript autocompletion for increased tag standardization
• Limit tags per time limit to discourage bots

Current Version:

WP_Folksonomy v0.8

Installation instructions:

Unzip wp_folksonomy.zip. Upload wp_folksonomy.php to wp-content/plugins/ and activate in the Plugin Control Panel. Now the slightly difficult part. Unfortunately there is no automatic hook near the tags in WordPress so you’ll have to make a minor change to one of your theme files. We’re aiming create a tiny form to allow your users to add tags. Many themes will be using the wordpress <?php the_tags('some','options');?> to list the tags. Try to find this function or a similar tag listing function. It’s often either in wp-content/themes/CurrenTheme/index.php or wp-content/themes/CurrenTheme/single.php. Once you find it add the following code <?php if(function_exists('wp_folksonomy_add_form')) wp_folksonomy_add_form();?> immediately after it. For example in the default WordPress theme, it looks like:

<?php the_tags( '<p>Tags: ', ', ', '</p>'); ?>
<?php if(function_exists('wp_folksonomy_add_form')) wp_folksonomy_add_form();?>

Sorry it’s not more automatic but if you’re having any trouble figuring out where to put it feel free to ask in the comments (make sure to tell me which theme you’re using). You can view and delete tags from the Folksonomy control panel in Settings or a little widget on the dashboard an RSS feed.

Change Log:

• v0.8 9-22-2008:
  • Put in a time limit for max tags per time to discourage bots
• v0.71 7-5-2008:
  • Fixed deleting problem with term_id vs term_taxonomy_id
• v0.62 5-28-2008:
  • Added caching compatibility
• v0.61 5-28-2008:
  • Fixed invalid HTML
• v0.6 5-27-2008:
  • Fixed missing $wpdb->prefix causing missing table
  • Fixed installation directions (extra “function ”)
  • Added javascript tag completion
  • Fixed paging on tag display
  • Removed dashboard widget
  • Added an RSS feed for monitoring added tags
• v0.5 12-21-2007:
  • Fixed undeleteable tags when tag had been created, deleted, created
  • Fixed added tag not displaying on submitter’s page until after reload in themes with a late call to wp_head()
• v0.4 12-19-2007:
  • Approve all tags by user/IP
  • Delete all tags by user/IP
  • Tags added within post page (no longer needs $_GET variables)
• v0.3 12-17-2007:
  • Limit tags to 25 characters
  • Only allows users who can edit posts to approve/delete tags
  • Fixed option update bug
  • When Registered Users options set, only displays tag add form for registered users
• v0.21 12-15-2007:
  • Fixed overlap between tag add and comment add $_POST variables
• v0.2 12-15-2007:
  • Added Control Panel
  • Added Subscribers Only and Authorize Tags options
  • Tracks submitted tags
  • Added Delete and Accept Tag actions
• v0.1 12-14-2007:
  • A rough public tag adder