filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 377 days ago

To learn more about tru_tags, check out the other tru_tags articles on this site.

Current Release

tru_tags 3.1 (for TXP 4.0.5 and above) (download)

Forum announcement

This is a minor bugfix release, fixing issues created in 3.0. Specifically, messy URLs are fixed on clean-url sites, and the text on the admin page has been updated to be clearer.

Read more...

filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 377 days ago

To learn more about tru_tags, check out the other tru_tags articles on this site.

Installation

1. Go to the releases page to get the latest release. Don’t save it – just open it in your browser.
2. Scroll down a slight bit and follow the on-page instructions: copy/paste the big square block of characters into your Textpattern install, under admin -> plugins.
3. Hit “Upload”.
4. Remember to switch the plugin to “Active” in the plugin list.
5. You can find help text for the plugin by clicking the “help” link in the plugin list.

Configuration

Step 1: Click the “read more” link :)

Read more...

filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 377 days ago

To learn more about tru_tags, check out the other tru_tags articles on this site.

Core features

• Tag any article with an unlimited number of tags
• List all the tags associated with an article
• Generate a tag cloud or simple tag list
• Search for all articles tagged with a given tag
• Clean URLs and rel="tag" support without mod_rewrite or .htaccess modifications
• RSS and Atom support
• Support for creating a tag-based archive page
• Clickable list of tags in the ‘Write’ page of the Textpattern admin
• Admin-side configurability
• Admin-side tag maintenance and redirection tools
• Tag links can go to external sites or alternate locations
• Show a cloud of “related tags” in the search results page
• Designed with site security in mind
• Clean, readable code

Advanced features

Adding tags to an article:

• Tags can be multi-word, with spaces. (use commas to separate tags)

Listing tags for an article:

• Supports standard textpattern attributes like wraptag / break / class / etc. (the default break is a comma)
• Don’t have to generate links when showing tags
• Can render article tags as a mini-cloud, including sorting and advanced cloud features

Tag cloud:

• Supports standard textpattern attributes like wraptag / break / class / etc. (the default break is a comma)
• Can filter a cloud to only show tags from specific sections
• Can exclude specific sections from the cloud
• Cloud automatically filters out future-dated articles and non-published articles
• Uses percentages for font sizes, so the cloud can be in any container, with fonts of any specified size
• Can specify min and max percentage sizes
• Can show the number of times a tag has been used, after the link or in the title attribute
• Don’t have to generate links when showing tags
• Tags have the class attribute set in various ways, so you can take complete control over tag styling
• Infrequently (or frequently) used tags can be hidden
• Can sort the cloud by tag frequency (ascending or descending)
• Can limit the cloud to a max of ‘N’ tags, with the ability to keep only the most-used tags or a random set (weighted by frequency)

Tag search:

• Site admins can put the name of the tag currently being searched into titlebars or links to external sites (this is careful about scripting attacks)
• A handy txp tag (tru_tags_search_parameter) to return whatever the user typed into Textpattern’s search field (this is careful about scripting attacks)
• Renders search results just like the standard article list does. This means you have complete control over the tag search output formatting, and that it supports standard features like article excerpts, override forms, etc.
• Customizable support for standard 404 pages

RSS / Atom feeds:

• Includes article tags in the RSS and Atom feeds (which means that Technorati will correctly identify articles)
• Can include article tags in the feed body
• Can customise the feed body to change the look of the tags, and/or to add extra items to the feed

Admin-side:

• A few fancy javascript tricks to make it easy to use
• List can be turned off or styled using CSS (and another plugin) if there are too many tags

Known issues (in the latest release)

• tru_tags must use the Keywords field, and cannot use a custom field
• No support for multiple tags at once (e.g. “life AND books”) tag search (but see this post for possibilities)
• The tag cloud can be limited to just show tags from one section, but when you click a tag link from the cloud it shows articles from all sections
• The tag search doesn’t support pagination. (It will show all the articles associated with a particular tag, no matter how many there are.)

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filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 377 days ago

To learn more about tru_tags, check out the other tru_tags articles on this site.

This post contains an up-to-date list of all the (as-yet-unimplemented) feature requests that I’m aware of, with a rough indication of the order that I plan to implement them. If you have additional feature requests or want to suggest reprioritization of one of the features below, please add a post to the forum thread for this plugin. I’ll see it and update this page, and others will see the request also.

Group 1

• Fix txp:older and txp:newer, and the broken limit attribute

Group 2

• Limit cloud to tags from X recent articles, or within X time period
  • Order list by (oldest? newest?) article date
• Color tags by age (of most recent article)

Group 3

• Related article list (for a single article), based on number-of-matching-tags
  • Filter by section / category
  • Second-level sorting by date?
• Limit cloud to a specific category

Group 4

• Multi-tag search (tag1 + tag2)
  • General boolean logic ((tag1 or tag2) and tag3)

Group 5

• Grouped index of tags – by section, category, alphabetical, etc
  • show articles for each tag?
  • single page per group
  • show tags (on the admin side) based on the category/section chosen
  • see Markus’s forum post about it
• Grouping related keywords (admin-side)
• Grouped-tag search (public side)
• Color tags by category / section

Group 6

• Move admin-side tag cloud to a better location (for big clouds)
• Auto-complete typing in the Keywords field (admin-side)

Group 7

• mintagcount / maxtagcount, but based on percentages
• Show a “related” cloud for general search-result pages (or other custom-generated article lists)
• “There are [x] posts tagged: [tag_name]”
• Alphabetical listing of articles in tag search result

Group “depends on the next release of Textpattern”

• RSS feeds for individual tags

filed under: geek, podcasting, textpattern, tru_podcast

Posted 676 days ago

A friend of mine, Amitai, has been wanting podcasting support for his blog for a long while. He uses Textpattern, as I do, and it doesn’t support podcasting. Until recently, it was impossible to create a plugin to support it, but changes made in Textpattern 4.0.4 have made it possible. I therefore offered to help him create a podcasting plugin, and the net result was that I wrote it myself :)

I’m publishing it here as tru_podcast. It was designed to be simple, although I’m sure the feature requests are going to come piling in immediately, and it will grow. It supports Atom and RSS, with a single “enclosure” per article. The media file is specified via one of Textpattern’s custom fields.

I don’t actually use the plugin, but you can see it in use in Amitai’s music feed. Check out the feature list, releases, and usage instructions, and let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

Add a comment [1]

filed under: geek, podcasting, textpattern, tru_podcast

Posted 676 days ago

To learn more about tru_podcast, check out the introductory article, the releases page, or the feature list.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Configuration
• Tag Reference

Installation

1. Go to the releases page to get the latest release. Don’t save it – just open it in your browser.
2. Scroll down a slight bit and follow the on-page instructions: copy/paste the big square block of characters into your Textpattern install, under Admin -> Plugins.
3. Hit “Upload”.
4. Remember to switch the plugin to “Active” in the plugin list.

Configuration

Step 1: Rename one of your custom fields

tru_podcast uses a custom field named “tru_podcast”. Name one of your unused custom fields “tru_podcast” on the Admin -> Preferences -> Advanced tab.

Step 2: Upload a media file (a podcast)

Whenever you want to create a new episode, upload a media file to a web server. You can use Textpattern’s “Files” features, if you want. (Note that it is possible to FTP large media files to Textpattern’s files directory, and then use the “Files” tab in the admin to alert Textpattern that the file is there.)

Step 3: Start podcasting!

Find the tru_podcast field on the “Write” tab. It will be hiding behind the “Advanced Options” link.

Put the URL of the media file into that field. If you uploaded a file through Textpattern’s “Files” interface, just put the ID# of the file into the tru_podcast field. If the file is somewhere else on your web server, you can use a relative URL. Write whatever you want in the article, and save it.

That’s all it takes – the file will appear in your RSS and Atom feeds as an enclosure, and podcast clients (iTunes, for example) will identify it correctly.

You’ll probably want to install Rob Sable’s rss_admin_show_adv_opts, which will automatically expand the “Advanced Options” section of the “Write” page, when you are writing articles. That gives you easy access to the custom fields.

Step 4: Include links in your articles (Optional)

For people reading your site via their web browser, you can link to the media file from your articles with something like:

<txp:tru_podcast_if_podcast>
This article has a podcast!  <txp:tru_podcast_link linktext="Right here!" />
<txp:else />
No podcast here!
</txp:tru_podcast_if_podcast>

Step 5: Use a category to create a podcast-only feed (Optional)

You don’t have to create a special RSS feed for podcasts – the “enclosures” will simply show up in your normal feed(s) any time you specify a media file – but you can do so if you want. Simply create a new category for all your podcasting, and use the feed for that category as your podcast-only feed.

Step 6: Other types of “podcasts” (Optional)

You don’t have to limit yourself to audio; tru_podcast supports any type of media (video, images, etc.). As long as your server knows the correct MIME type for your media, everything should work.

Step 7: Advanced configuration (Optional)

The source code of tru_podcast has a few well-commented settings (right at the top) that you might want to change, especially if you use Textpattern’s “Files” features for your podcasts and if you’re using a non-default /files/ directory. If you run into problems with your podcast clients, you might want to try editing the plugin and changing those settings to see if it helps. (I don’t know of any problems with any clients, at the moment.)

Tag reference

tru_podcast_link

This tag will generate an <a href... link if the current article has a podcast URL set. The generated link will automatically have rel="enclosure" set in case an old podcast client is looking for it. You can pass any attribute to this tag and it will be passed on to the <a> tag, except linktext as indicated below.

Attributes:

• linktext will set the content of the <a>...</a> link. If you don’t specify linktext, it defaults to the URL of the media.
• Any other attribute desired can be passed to the <a>. For example, <txp:tru_podcast_link linktext="test" junk="worthy" /> will generate this HTML: <a href="/some/media.url" junk="worthy">test</a>

tru_podcast_if_podcast

This conditional tag will render its contents if the current article has an associated media file (in the tru_podcast custom field).

tru_podcast_get_url

This tag will return the URL of an associated media file, if any.

Attributes:

• full="1" tells tru_podcast_get_url to convert relative URLs to full URLs
• protocol can be used in conjunction with full="1" to specify a protocol other than “http://” for the generated full URLs.
• convertnumber="0" will turn off the automatic conversion of file index numbers (from Textpattern’s “Files” interface). This is only really useful if you want to get directly at the text entered into the tru_podcast custom field.

Add a comment [11]

filed under: geek, podcasting, textpattern, tru_podcast

Posted 676 days ago

To learn more about tru_podcast, check out the introductory article, the releases page, or the usage instructions.

Core features

• “Enclosures” (1 per article) in RSS and Atom feeds
• Tags to generate links (in the article) to that enclosure
• Support for any media type, including audio, video, and images, with correct MIME-type handling
• Support for relative URLs
• Support for files uploaded via Textpattern’s “Files” feature

Known issues

None

Add a comment

filed under: geek, podcasting, textpattern, tru_podcast

Posted 676 days ago

To learn more about tru_podcast, check out the introductory article, the feature list, or the usage instructions.

Current Release

tru_podcast 1.1 (download)

Forum announcement

This release makes a few behind-the-scenes changes to improve tru_podcast’s compatibility with iTunes and other podcast clients. It also adds a few configuration options for tailoring the links that are generated, but it’s very unlikely that you’ll need them. There are no new user-visible features, but I recommend that you upgrade so iTunes (and others) work correctly.

Read more...

filed under: geek, programming, textpattern

Posted 712 days ago

I recently submitted a patch to Textpattern to refactor some of the code to eliminate a lot of duplication and allow me to generate tag-based RSS feeds from my plugin. My patch has been applied to the “crockery” branch and will be a part of Textpattern 4.1. Cool!

Update: I’m in it again (in 4.0.5 and 4.1) with my comment patch. Cooler!

Add a comment [2]

filed under: geek, programming, textpattern

Posted 724 days ago

(In case the title didn’t warn you, non-geeks probably won’t be interested in this article.)

Textpattern has a “feature” whereby HTML tags are completely stripped out of visitor comments, presumably to close a common security hole. I’ve created a patch for Textpattern 4.0.4 that changes it such that HTML tags in comments are allowed, but the relevant characters (<, >, &, ‘, “) are converted to entity codes and therefore aren’t treated as HTML delimiters and therefore aren’t a security concern.

Net effect: it’s possible to post HTML code examples in article comments. I’ll post such a comment right after I post this article, just to prove the point.

I’ll be announcing the patch in the txp-dev mailing list and on the forums, and inviting Textpattern developers to use this article as a place to test such comments. Hopefully it will be merged into the next official Textpattern release, so I don’t have to maintain this patch for more than a few months.

Add a comment [12]

filed under: tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 743 days ago

I’m proud to say that tru_tags is the tagging plugin of choice over on Textpattern Resources v2 (a.k.a. textpattern.org). That makes it the preferred tag plugin of at least one of the Textpattern developers, and puts it in the spotlight on an official Textpattern site.

Check out the gorgeous tag cloud and the post describing the use of tru_tags.

Woohoo!

Add a comment [3]

filed under: geek, rainskit.com, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

Posted 993 days ago

When I first created this blog I wanted it to have tagging support, which doesn’t come built into Textpattern (my blog software). At the time (Christmas 2005), tagging plugins for Textpattern were virtually nonexistent. Hunting around the web, I found ran_tags, chh_keywords, rss_unlimited_categories, and ajw_technorati_tags. They were all unworkable for me, because of bugs or complexity or feature-set, so I was left without tagging support.

So I wrote my own, based on ran_tags. I published it on the textpattern forums and subsequently released about a dozen new versions, each with new features to make it more powerful and/or easier to use. The plugin has seen a lot of adoption, and seems to be popular among the textpattern community. You can see it in use on this site.

It’s written with ease-of-use, simplicity, and security in mind, and it has a very rich feature set. To learn more, please check out the features list. There is one (potential) downside for some users, though. To help keep the code simple, I call out to the Textpattern code to actually do the tag search. That means that articles can only be tagged via the Keywords field, rather than using a custom field. Some people use the keywords field for other purposes, so they can’t use tru_tags. There are also a few other minor annoyances documented on the features page.

tru_tags can be downloaded from the releases page, and you can learn to use it by reading the detailed usage instructions. If you have questions, please post comments to any of these articles, or in the forum, and I’ll get back to you quickly.

Enjoy!

Add a comment [42]