I have recently been working on my first project on the MediaWiki platform, a football wiki site for FootballFanCast.com. The Football Fans Wiki is a wiki written from the fans perspective, with information about each team's stadium, transport info, where to eat & drink locally, songs, programmes, merchandise store, links,video clips & more.

Key features that I added as MediaWiki extensions:

• Register and login from the FFC site instead of through MediaWiki itself
• News & blog feeds on the wiki homepage

Check it out now: Fans Wiki

I have been working for some months now to develop an e-commerce module for Admin76,  the CMS which is currently exclusive to 76 Creative. The e-commerce module, called Cart76, utilises many of the nice features of Admin76 such as drag n drop functionality, advanced image gallery management, etc. It is now in it's final stages of development, so if you are interested in running your self-managed site on the Admin76 platform, or if you require a self-managed online store please contact 76 Creative for more info.

While working on a WordPress site recently I came up against a problem that had never occurred to me before. The client wanted each post excerpt on the homepage to include an image which when clicked would link to the main post (permalink) itself. The built in functions of wordpress when inserting an image allow you to link to either the 'File URL' (i.e. the full size version of the image) or to the 'Post URL' which is actually an attachment page in wordpress which displays the image, but does not include the text of the actual post itself. However, without either editing the html of each post (not an option for this client) or inserting the image without a link, and then adding the permalink to the image (too long winded) there was no simple way to create the image links in the way they wanted them.

My solution to this was to create a very basic hack which would allow them to use the 'Post URL' link when inserting images, but instead of linking to the attachment page, the link would automatically be updated to link to the post's permalink itself.

Here is the basic php function that you would need to insert into your theme's functions.php file:

function lose_attachment($content){
return preg_replace('/<a(.*?)href="(.*?)\/attachment\/(.*?)"/i', '<a$1href="$2"', $content);
}

add_filter('the_excerpt', 'lose_attachment',2);

This will remove the 'attachment/name-of-image-file' part from the URL making it link to the post's permalink itself.  I hope someone out there finds this useful!

If you create a hyperlink to a media file that can be opened within the browser such as an mp3, mpg, jpg, pdf, etc. a single left click will open the file in the web browser instead of triggering a download. To download the file you need to right click (CTRL + click for mac) and choose 'Save File As...' from the dropdown.

If your intention is to create a link for the user to download the file rather than viewing it in their browser you can do so using a simple php script. Create a file called 'download.php' and copy in the following php:

<?php
$download_file = $_GET['file'];
$download_file_name = $_GET['name'];
$handle = fopen($download_file, "r");
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$download_file_name);
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($download_file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($download_file);
fclose($handle);
exit;
?>

You can then create your download links like so:

www.example.com/download.php?file=images/example.jpg&name=hello.jpg

The URL should include the path to the file to be downloaded, and the name you want to give the file. In the above example the file is 'images/example.jpg' but the name of the file downloaded by the user would be 'hello.jpg'

When using PHP headers it is important to note that the headers will only be executed if they are called before any text is output to the page. Any html, or php echo tags, before the headers will cause the headers to be ignored. A line break or space before the opening php tag will also prevent headers from working.

This week I have been working on improving the 'Moving Image' section of photoneil.com. When I first built the site (designed and built by 76 Creative) the Moving Image page featured Neil's video showreel, since then video has become a more prominent aspect of his work so I have created a video gallery page for the site, allowing him to showcase a range of his video work under different categories.

As this video gallery uses seperate pages for the video list and the player itself I programmed it in PHP using the Longtail / JW Player to play the flv videos. For more information about encoding video for Flash as flv see my article: Encoding FLV

The video gallery also offers the option to download higher quality Quicktime Movies of each video. I encoded the quicktimes using the mpeg-4 codec and reducing the frame size slightly to allow for higher picture and sound quality while keeping the filesizes reasonable for a download.

Check it out: www.photoneil.com/movingimage.php

Turn your wordpress blog into a games arcade!

This beta version WordPress plugin, WP Games Embed, makes it easy to embed games into your WordPress blog by using shortcodes in your posts and pages. WP Games Embed is intended to be able to support content offered by the various free games sites out there using the codes or downloads they provide.

FEATURES

4 Different views:

1. Grid view - a grid of thumbnail images linking to each game (can be restricted to a single category or parent category)
2. Category view - this view includes a medium sized image and a written description of the game
3. Single page view - the page where you play the game itself
4. Featured Game view - this view is similar to category view, but allows you to pick the games yourself to create your own 'Featured Games' page.

Different embedding modes:

1. iFrame embedding - embed iFrame content using code provided by free games sites, or use this method to display games from your own server where an html file has been provided with the free game download.
2. Flash embedding - embed Flash content using embed codes provided by other sites, or embed flash games directly from your own site. You can even upload them easily using the wordpress 'Add Media' tool.

WORKING EXAMPLE

Visit Zap Gamez Arcade to see an example of the plugin in action.

INSTALLATION

1. Download the plugin from the link at the bottom of this page
2. Upload the wp-games-embed.php file to your wp-content/plugins folder.
3. Activate the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress.

USAGE

Use shortcodes to embed games into your posts, or to create a grid of thumbnails on a page or your home page.

Embedding a game in a post:

Shortcode: [game /]

Additional attributes:

• width - the width of the game
• height - the height of the game
• src - the url of the game (html file for iframe embedding, swf file for flash embedding)
• flash - if set to true flash embedding will be used, if set to false iframe embedding will be used. (default=false)
• thumb - the url of the thumbnail image (70px x 60px)
• main - the url of the large image (appx 300px wide)
• title - the name of the game!
• description - your description including controls etc.
• featured - whether this should be formatted as a featured game. (default=false)
• game_url - only to be used in Featured mode (when featured is set to true). See  the shortcode examples below for more details.

Shortcode Example 1 (embedding game as iFrame):

[game width="640" height="480" src="http://www.example.com/games/pacman.html" thumb="http://www.mysite.com/images/pacman-small.jpg" main="http://www.mysite.com/images/pacman-medium.jpg" title="PacMan" description="This is a great game! Use the arrow keys to play." flash="false"/]

Shortcode Example 2 (embedding game as Flash):

[game width="640" height="480" src="http://www.mysite.com/games/pacman.swf" thumb="http://www.mysite.com/images/pacman-small.jpg" main="http://www.mysite.com/images/pacman-medium.jpg" title="PacMan" description="This is a great game! Use the arrow keys to play." flash="true"/]

Creating a grid of thumbnails on a page:

Shortcode: [get_latest_games /]

Additional attributes: list_category - the category id for the games you want to appear in the list.

The list_category attribute makes it possible to display the latest games under a certain category e.g. 'Arcade' or the latest games under all categories. Simply set up a main category called 'games' and then create all your games categories (action,adventure,sports, etc.)  as sub-categories.

Shortcode Example 3 (thumbnail grid):

[get_latest_games list_category="2" /]

Creating a Featured Games page:

Shortcode: [game /]
Additional atrtributes: (see above)

The important attributes for creating a features games list are 'featured' which should be set to true, and 'game_url' the url where the game can be played on your site.

Shortcode Example 4 (featured games):

[game  main="http://www.myblog.com/uploads/pacman-medium.jpg" title="PacMan" description="This is a great game! Use the arrow keys to play." featured="true" game_url= "http://www.myblog.com/games/pacman/" /]

[game  main="http://www.myblog.com/uploads/donkeykong-medium.jpg" title="Donkey Kong" description="This is a great game! Use the arrow keys to play." featured="true" game_url= "http://www.myblog.com/games/donkey-kong/" /]

DOWNLOAD THE PLUGIN

Using keypresses as an alternate way to to navigate through websites  is a great way to make sites more accessible. For instance pressing 'p' takes the user to the previous page, while pressing 'n' takes them to the next. The benefits of using jQuery to achieve this are:

1. Concise code
2. Easy to implement various functions on keypress
3. Works on IE, Firefox & Safari

DETECTING THE KEY CODE

To detect which key a user has pressed you need to set up a function that returns an ascii code each time a key is pressed. A full table of ascii codes is available here. The tricky part to this is that Mozilla and Safari define the value as charCode, while IE defines  it as keyCode. The following script is based on the 'n' key and 'p' key, it takes the links from the 'Previous' and 'Next' buttons on your site and changes page when the key is pressed. Also note that it is important to detect for both the lower-case and upper-case letter as the ascii codes will be different for each.

SOURCE

//process this function whenever a key is pressed
$(document).keypress(function (e) {
//Next
//if the keyCode or charCode is 110 (lower case n) or 78 (upper case N)
if (e.keyCode == 110 || e.charCode == 110 || e.keyCode == 78 || e.charCode == 78){
//grab the href attribute from the link with the id "next_link"
var next_link = $("a#next_link").attr("href");
//if the next link exists (i.e if it's not the last page)
if(next_link){
//go to the next page
window.location = next_link;
}
}
//Previous
//works exactly as the above example but for the 'p' and 'P' keys
if (e.keyCode == 112 || e.charCode == 112 || e.keyCode == 80 || e.charCode == 80){
var prev_link = $("a#prev_link").attr("href");
if(prev_link){
window.location = prev_link;
}
}

});

You must have the jQuery library installed on your site to run this script. For more info about jquery visit the site: http://jquery.com/

I was recently confronted with the problem of having a single html form with three different submit buttons, each button submitting the form data to a different php script. This is obviously impossible with html alone, as a form can only have one 'action' attribute, which dictates the URL of the file that the form's data is submitted to.

I searched around on the web for an easy way to implement this and found various examples. One of the best examples I found was on CoderLab's blog: Multiple submit buttons on a multiple blog which uses javascript to apply a different action attribute to the form depending on which button is pressed. Each button in the form has it's own onClick function like so:

<form name="myForm" id="myForm">
Search: <input type="text" id="wrdSearch"/>
<input type="button" name="google" id="google" value="Google" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
<input type="button" name="msn" id="msn" value="MSN" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
<input type="button" name="yahoo" id="yahoo" value="Yahoo" onClick="SendTo(this.id)"/>
</form>

(Visit the page to see the javascript that goes with it: http://blog.coderlab.us/2005/10/04/multiple-submit-buttons-in-a-form/)

As I already had jQuery installed on the site, and the CoderLab script would still need some modification to serve my specific purpose, I decided to see if I could find a simpler way to achieve a similar result using jQuery. The form on my site was a lot more complex, with many fields etc. So what I really needed was a script that would submit all the form data to each of the 3 php scripts depending on which submit button was clicked.

Firstly, I stripped the onClick functions out of the form and removed the name attributes from the buttons too, like so:

<form id="myForm" method="post">
Search: <input type="text" name="search"/>
<input type="button" id="button1" value="Submit to script 1" />
<input type="button" id="button2" value="Submit to script 2" />
<input type="button" id="button3" value="Submit to script 3" />
</form>

I then wrote the following jQuery script to change the form's action attribute accordingly and submit it when each button is pressed:

$(document).ready(function(){

$("#button1").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_1.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

$("#button2").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_2.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

$("#button3").click(function(){
$('form#myForm').attr({action: "script_3.php"});
$('form#myForm').submit();
});

});

The script should work on any browser that is compatible with jQuery (see here: http://docs.jquery.com/Browser_Compatibility)

For more information on installing and using jQuery visit the website: http://jquery.com/

GETTING STARTED

1. Open a new flash document
2. Go to 'File ->Import -> Import to Stage...' (or CTRL+R) and import your logo image.
3. Move your logo to the top left corner of the stage (position 0,0)
4. Go to 'Modify -> Document' (CTRL+J) and set your document's height and width to the height and width of your logo image. Set the framerate to 12fps.

CREATING THE SHINE

1. Create a new layer above the logo layer for your shine
2. In your new layer draw a white rectangle with no outlines (about 25ph high and the width of your logo)
3. Select your rectangle and go to 'Modify -> Convert to Symbol' (F8) and choose 'Movie clip' as the symbol type, name it 'shine'.
4. Double click on your new movieclip to open it, select the rectangle again and repeat step 4, converting it into another new Movie clip, but this time name it 'rectangle'.

I noticed in the WordPress forums that a lot of people were asking how to remove the title="example" attribute from the links generated by the WordPress template tags wp_list_categories and wp_list_pages. The title attribute is what generates the little text box with something like "View all posts filed under <category>" when you hover over a link.

I had previously devised a 'hack' for removing the dreaded title attribute for a theme I worked on. The key is to set the 'echo' parameter of the function to '0' and then to use preg_replace code to remove the title attribute. Here is the code:

wp_list_categories:

<?php
$cool_cats = wp_list_categories('echo=0');
$cool_cats = preg_replace('/title=\"(.*?)\"/','',$cool_cats);
echo $cool_cats;
?>

wp_list_pages:

<?php
$clean_page_list = wp_list_pages('echo=0');
$clean_page_list = preg_replace('/title=\"(.*?)\"/','',$clean_page_list);
echo $clean_page_list;
?>

Personally I don't mind having the titles on my site navigation, and I use the NAVT plugin to generate my nav, so the template tags don't apply for me.