Downloads
Book Reviews Plugin v1.4 for WP 2.5
Slight update to make the plugin work better with version 2.5 of WordPress. Not sure how backwards compatible it is, due to changes in 2.5 I would not recommend using this on anything less than 2.5.
SRG Clean Archives Plugin
I use the SRG Clean Archives plugin on my blog but it wasn’t working under WordPress 2.3 so I hacked it and made it work, and I thought I would make it available to download for others should they want it.
Note that the official development of the SRG Clean Archives has been taken up over here, and their version works with 2.3 as well (apparently). I had a plugin that worked and couldn’t be bothered downloading another version and modifying it when a couple of hacks to the code was all it took to get the one I’m happy with up and working.
Book Reviews Plugin v1.3 for WP 2.3
The Book Reviews plugin has now been updated to work with version 2.3 of WordPress. Due to the changes in 2.3 this version will not work with older versions of WordPress, please stick with version 1.2 or upgrade your copy of WordPress.
More Tag Modifier
It’s easy enough to modifier a WordPress template to include standard code, such as advertising blocks, above or below the content of an article, but it’s not so easy to put a block in the middle of your text. There are some plugins for the likes of Google Ads to allow you to do this, which is great, if that’s all you want to do, but what if you want to use another advertiser, or just put in something custom? Well, now there’s the More Tag Modifier plugin.
This plugin will take whatever is in a file you designate and put it wherever you insert the more tag in your article. You can see an example of this, using Amazon’s advertising code, at A Screen Near You, just look at any of the (longer) articles and you see the block appearing in the middle of the text.
Installation instructions are included in the zip file.
Book Reviews Plugin v1.2 for WP 2.1
The Book Reviews plugin has now been updated to work with version 2.1 of WordPress. Aside from just making it work on 2.1, it also adds a new function, br_get_books_list, which provides an easier way to list all of the book reviews you’ve made in a variety of formats. I’ve also created and included a couple of drop-in templates for a page and single post entry as examples of how to use the plugin.
Please note that I have only tested this on version 2.1, so I’m not sure what backwards compatibility is like.
Update: Very slight modification made, version increased to 1.2
If you are using WordPress 2.0 then you should use version 1.1 of this plugin, version 1.2 appears to be incompatible. You can download version 1.1 here.
List Books User Feed Plugin
I’ve produced another simple plugin to take advantage of the new functionaility on List Books that grabs your 10 latest listings from the new user books RSS feed, converts it into one of four different layout formats and then includes it in the template wherever you call the function. List Books is another one of my sites, designed to allow anyone to sell their old books commission free.
This plugin allows you to display the book title and author with links to the entry on List Books. You can see an example of the plugin in action on the reading page of my blog.
Please note that it only updates the feed every 3 hours.
Full installation instructions are included in the zip file.
List Books Feed Plugin
I’ve produced a simple little plugin that grabs the contents of the List Books RSS feed, converts it into one of four different formats and then includes it in the template where you call the function. List Books is another of my sites, designed to allow anyone to sell their old books commission free.
This plugin allows you to display the 10 latest books with links to their entries and details of the author.
Full installation instructions are included in the zip file.
Update (22/01/2006)
Slight change to the date comparison, version 0.91 released.
Book Reviews Plugin v1 for WP 2.0
I’ve been meaning to tidy up the Book Reviews plugin I wrote for a while, to sort out a couple of errors and make it run a little smoother. The launch of WordPress 2 and some free time due to the Christmas period has provided that opportunity, so I’m now releasing version 1.0 (beta).
First off, I should point out that this only works under WordPress 2.0 (and higher, presumably). This is because they’ve changed the way plugins can interact with the backend to make it neater, and boy is it. The whole plugin is now contained in two files.
Aside from making it easier to install, I’ve removed the need for editing the files manually and built an options page (under Options->Book Reviews) which adds a bit more choice and should make it a little easier to use. This allows you to specifiy which categories you’re using for the book reviews as well as hiding fields you don’t plan to use in the writing screen. I’ve amended the writing screen to fit in with the new look admin area too.
Also new is the review management screen (found under Manage->Manage Book Reviews), this lists all the reviews you have written and allows easier access to editing and deleting them (instead of trawling through all of your posts for them).
I have also added an extra option for adding links to a second hand copy of the book. I’ve done this because one of the things I do on my blog is link to the copy I’m selling on another of my sites (www.listbooks.co.uk, which lets anyone sell their old books free of charge). Use it or don’t use it, it’s up to you.
Something to make note of if you’re upgrading, I’ve renamed the functions as well, this is to try and avoid any possibly conflicts in future, but it does mean anyone running an old version will need to update all the template files to change the names of the function calls (all the functions have had br_ put on the front).
I’ve released it as a beta version because I’ve played around with it but not given it a thorough testing, hopefully it’s solved any existing problems, but I may have created more. Please leave any feedback in the support forums.
Book Reviews Plugin
I write a fair number of book reviews and I was planning on adding books to a few of my other sites, but there’s no real easy way to do book reviews easily in WordPress. I could have used the excellent structured blogging plugin, but that doesn’t separate the data, it stores it all in the post and excerpt fields using custom XML-like tags. The problem is I wanted to split up the information and be able to enter it separately so I could access it individually, rather than just make it part of the main text of an article.
I’d worked something out for my blog so that I could add book posts and they would automatically be grouped by author and links provided to the right places. It was a simple enough method using the custom meta data fields that WordPress supplies. The problem was that with up to five fields to add if became time consuming to add them all one at a time. There are no real easy ways to pull the info back up using that code either, so I couldn’t offer it to you guys.
So, I sat down and built a better plugin, with some more functionality, a custom admin screen and made it a whole lot easier to use, and here it is. The plugin allows you to create book entries with a title, author, recommendation, review, book link and image link and then provides some functions for pulling that information out as individual entities, or all of your books as a group of posts, and it also includes the function I use for displaying my books on my reading page.
The principle reason for the effort of the overhaul was because I wanted to use it on my film blog, and this probably provides the best example currently. You can also use it in ordinary post listings or for individual entries. Let me know what you think.
Recent Posts
This is the modified version of the MtDewVirus recent posts plugin that I use on my Digerati Peninsula site.
It adds a 200 character text excerpt to the original plugin.
Viewfinder Send to a Friend Script
This script is a simple drop-in PHP file that will allow you to add a Send to a Friend link to any page of your site (so it can be page specific if you wish).
It will allow someone to send the link to your page, with comments, their name and email address.
Installation instructions are in the recommend.php file in the download zip.
UPDATE: 28-05-2006
I have updated the script slightly to handle more complex URLs, but I haven’t had much chance to test it, so I’ve kept the old version available for download too.
WP Print
I’ve long been an evangelist of having a print option on your site and employ the fantastic WordPress 1.5 Print add-in on my blog.
Unfortunately, when you print an article or post, you lose any links that appear in the article. So, I added a little extra to the WP Print file so that it outputs a list of any links in the article for easy reference.
Viewfinder Mailing List
This has now been updated, the current version is available here
Viewfinder Mailing List (VML) is a simple to use, easy to install mailing list manager.
At the moment it only supports plain text emails and one list, but it will allow people to subscribe and unsubscibe automatically, with a validation email if you desire it (to stop people from signing up any old email address). Other features include an archive of sent mails, management of the list of subscribers, the inclusion of default headers and footers and the designation of the ‘from’ email address.
VML is designed primarily for small-medium sized lists.
VML requires PHP and a MySQL database to work.
Update (10/05/05): I have made a change to the admin header file as the previous version would allow you to type in the address of a page in the admin section and gain access to it without a password. Please update any previous copies.
Update (03/01/07): Version 1.0 is available here
Viewfinder Feedback Form
This is a simple feedback form for your site that uses PHP.
Read the two files in the zip for installation instructions.
UPDATE (04/01/2006)
I have updated the script to provide much improved resistance to sendmail injection attacks which allow people to use mail scripts to send malicious email. It is recommended that you upgrade any previous version of the script with this new one.
These downloads are free applications and add-ons released under a GPL license. The only thing I ask is that you leave my credits intact and link back to this site where appropriate.
Unfotunately I cannot offer complete support for these items so please make use of the support forums.
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