What Others Are Saying
Latest Version: 1.6
Works on: Version 2.07 – 2.7.1
Last Update: 2nd March 2009
Upgrading to 1.6 for Widget users – you may need to add the widget to your sidebar again due to an update of the functions used.
This plugin allows you to display the most recent post of your favourite blogs somewhere on your site. It utilises the RSS link field from the blogroll for each of your links. If the RSS link exists it attempts to get the last post from it. It then displays the most recent X number of posts depending on your settings. Each blog can have one post in the list.
Requirements
I've checked this down to WordPress version 2.0.7 without problem and this works up to the latest version 2.3. The script works on PHP 4.4 and 5.2 and MySQL 4 and 5 so should be fine for most servers.
Instructions
- Download the Plugin and unzip it.
- Upload the file to your plugins folder then activate it via the WordPress admin panel.
- Go to Options – What Others Say and make changes to the defaults if you wish See Figure 1
- Add RSS feed links to the links in your Blogroll that you want to display in the list (The RSS link goes in the Advanced section on the Add/Edit link page) See Figure 2
- Add the code below to wherever you want the list to display (non-widget sidebar) or go into your Widgets admin page and add the widget version.
- PHP Code Excerpt
-
- <?php if (function_exists('what_others_are_saying')) {
- what_others_are_saying();
- } ?>
- Figure 1: The Options page in the Admin
- Figure 2: Adding an RSS Feed in Manage – Links
The plugin simply outputs the post and site name wrapped in a list item, so you would need to insert the above code into either an unordered or ordered list, and also give it a header. I've done it this way so that people don't need to edit the plugin file to change their markup.
- Suggested markup would be:
-
- <h3>What Others Are Saying</h3>
- <ul>
- <?php if (function_exists('what_others_are_saying')) what_others_are_saying(); ?>
- </ul>
If you have any comments or problems with installation let me know 
Updates (Newest First)
- 02/03/2009: Fixed the widget title problem, plus updated a couple of WordPress functions that are being deprecated.
- 02/11/2008: Added the option to set the external links to have rel="nofollow" added. Also added code to make this version work as both a function and a widget.
- 08/05/2008: Updated the admin page to fit in with the new WordPress 2.5 look.
- 17/03/2008: Cleaned up the code to use WordPress API code entirely, removed the need for a cachetime.txt file and set up the cache timing in the options table instead. Added a readme.txt file and screenshot in the zip file.
- 19/10/2007: Cleaned up the code, fixed invalid ampisands in titles and added the option to display either most recent posts or a randomised list of all the latest posts.
- 14/10/2007: The admin page has landed! You can now update the options via an admin page under your Options menu, rather than editing the file directly.
- 08/10/2007: After finding people having problems with modifying the output I realised that perhaps I should just output the list and nothing more, allowing people to write their own header and markup. So I've removed this.
- 03/10/2007: The script now checks for a database connection and reconnects if it needs to. Added support for another type of RSS feed. Option to have the site name linked as well as the post title.
- 27/09/2007: Added in extra variable to allow people to set the header title above the list. Defaults to 'What Others Are Saying'
- 25/09/2007: Found a database table without the prefix on correctly, plus added in code to prevent duplicates being displayed. I think it occurs if two visitors hit during the update at the same time.
- 25/09/2007: The code now pulls in the table prefix from WordPress settings so this will avoid errors where someone has changed the table prefix from the standard wp_ and not updated the file. Also one less thing to set!
- 25/09/2007: Added in a couple of error print outs for if/when errors do occur as it's easier to determine the cause then.
It would be nice if it was upgraded to a widget
then a user can just activate it and move it into their sidebar for example.
By slee on Tue, 25 September, 2007
I don't use widgets so I don't know much about them. Feel free to convert it if you want
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
Sarah, I tried installing it on my blog and ran into a couple SQL errors- I don't have time to check them out right now but I will take a look at it tonight and see if I did something wrong
I got a mysql_num_rows supplied argument is not a valid error on line 82, and a mysql_fetch_object supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource on line 150 error.
By Chance on Tue, 25 September, 2007
Hmm the errors are related as the second error is cropping up because there are no results to display.
The first error is showing because it can't pull any feeds out of the blog roll database. Two questions to that are
1. Have you added RSS links into your blog roll?
2. What version of WordPress are you running on?
3. Is your table prefix wp_ and if not have you changed that in the code?
Unfortunately I don't know how far back the links table schema goes. Mine is 2.2.X and that works.
I'd say give me a shout when you're looking later but it depends how late and how far behind you are to GMT! I'll try and look at the various table schemas for versions and see if I can pinpoint where this may stop working.
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
Hi Jason, I've checked on the schema on a much older site and the table for the links/blogroll contains the fields I'm using so my only guess is that either something is erroring or your RSS feeds haven't been entered.
I've updated the plugin to contain a couple of error outputs so if you want to update with the new version then the errors will appear if there's an SQL issue and we can see what's going on.
I've also removed the table prefix variable and worked out how to use the one set in the wp-config.php file instead, so one less issue to think about
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
Updated to new version with a few minor fixes plus a major fix.
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
There's now a widget version available from Lee
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
2 of the 5 fed posts at http://www.stuffbysarah.net/ais/ are the same ones from your /blog. How about functionality to prevent dupes being displayed?
Also, I like the idea of the widgetised version as it means no faffing around with theme code, but will it be kept up to date as a separate branch or merged into the main?
By Will on Tue, 25 September, 2007
I have, check the update notes
I just haven't updated my AIS blog yet. Still trying to work out how the duplicates are getting in there!
By Sarah on Tue, 25 September, 2007
Users can do this automatically by exporting an OPML file from their feedreader, and then importing that in to WordPress. This should then import the feed URL into the blogroll as well as the site URL.
By David Anderson on Tue, 25 September, 2007
To prevent duplication of links I'd suggest that if you want to import from an OPML file, create a new category and don't make it visible on your blog roll. Then import the links and feed links into that.
The script only retrieves one version of the feed link anyhow, so duplication will only occur if you have the same site with two different feed addresses.
By Sarah on Wed, 26 September, 2007
Another minor update to allow people to change the header title of the list from 'What Others Are Saying' semi-easily (there's still no admin panel!). Thanks to Lee for mentioning this the other day.
By Sarah on Thu, 27 September, 2007
I've now upgraded to WordPress 2.3 and this plugin works fine on that too.
By Sarah on Fri, 28 September, 2007
Hi Sarah,
Im having trouble connecting to the database as well. Ive added one link to my blogroll and placed the corresponding rss feed url in the advanced section. Im using wp 2.3 and your latest plugin file.
The plugin didnt create the table so my initial thought was that it was connected to that however I created the database using the code in the file and im getting the same error.
Any ideas?
By Kevin Muldoon on Sat, 29 September, 2007
Hi Kevin, Is there any error being output? Or is it simply a case of could not connect to the database?
I'm away at present and have barely any internet access but once I'm back I'll write some debug code into the plugin which can be run to report a few bits of info that can give me an idea of why something may not work as it should do.
If there are any errors showing can you let me know what those are then I may be able to have a better suggestion for the time being.
By Sarah on Sun, 30 September, 2007
Hi Sarah,
yeah there is an error but its a mysql connection error.
heres what it says
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Access denied for user 'nobody'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 52
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: A link to the server could not be established in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 52
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Access denied for user 'nobody'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 66
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: A link to the server could not be established in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 66
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 67
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Access denied for user 'nobody'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 81
Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: A link to the server could not be established in /..path to my folder../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/other-posts/other-posts.php on line 81
Access denied for user 'nobody'@'localhost' (using password: NO)
thanks for looking into this
kevin
By Kevin Muldoon on Sun, 30 September, 2007
I must admit, your problem has stumped me! At first I thought it may be due to you putting it in its own directory but I've just tried this on two blogs (one is WP 2.3) and it still worked.
It seems that it's not getting your database connection details hence the Access denied error. However as a plugin, it should already have the database connection made by the basis of running WordPress.
Anyhow, if you add the following code in near the top, right after the line
global $wpdb;then it will reconnect to the WP database and then the errors should stop showing. The code is
include ABSPATH ."wp-config.php";mysql_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD);
mysql_select_db(DB_NAME);
Alternatively, download this updated alternative version – Plugin plus new code, which has the extra code in. If that works then I'll put it up in the post for others to use if they suffer a similar issue.
Let me know if that works for you.
By Sarah on Mon, 1 October, 2007
many thanks Sarah, that worked a treat!!
By Kevin Muldoon on Tue, 2 October, 2007
Hey Kevin, great to hear that. I just realised the first line could probably have been omitted as the ABSPATH constant is pulled from the wp-config.php file anyway! So if it didn't know that it would have error'd anyway.
Seems like your database connection had been closed before the plugin function is called. I'll update the existing plugin to check for the connection automatically, saves offering two different ones
Cheers for the feedback
By Sarah on Tue, 2 October, 2007
yeah its working perfectly now
Some suggestions for future versions
* ability to change update time via control panel
* option to make the site name a clickable link to the url (eg. Stuff by Sarah would be Stuff by Sarah)
By Kevin Muldoon on Tue, 2 October, 2007
Hey Kevin, cheers again for the feedback and suggestions. I'm currently working on an admin page / options page for it as I know few people will want to go into the PHP. With it being my first plugin, I'm still dissecting another to work out how!
The clickable links are easy enough to add though
Thanks again.
By Sarah on Tue, 2 October, 2007
Hi Sarah, I love your plugin!
I am just having one small problem at the moment. One of my feeds which should be returning an url like "http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/010817.html" instead returns this url: "http://www.patbdoyle.com/10817@http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/". (It puts my blog URL in the front, then the post number, then @ and then the blog URL.) It only happens with this one feed. Is there anything I can do about this?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
By Pat B. Doyle on Tue, 2 October, 2007
Hey Pat, some feeds weren't supported (yet!) as there are so many different styles! In this instance the feed for Search Engine Guide has a funny URL under the item I'm grabbing it from.
However, now I know this one, give me until the end of the day (as my workload is major this morning) and I'll get the plugin updated to suit the feed
PS. Glad you like it
By Sarah on Wed, 3 October, 2007
Plugin Updated again – version 1.1.3. This now includes the following:
Automatic checking that a database connection is present, it reconnects if it isn't.
Support for another type of RSS feed, let me know if there are any more displaying funny. I wish everyone would use the same code!
A new variable to allow you to switch on/off the option to link the Site Name to the site, which is displayed under each post, as per Kevin's suggestion.
Tested on my own site, as usual, let me know if there are any problems.
By Sarah on Wed, 3 October, 2007
Superb Sarah
Ill upload this later
Keep up the good work
By Kevin Muldoon on Wed, 3 October, 2007
Thanks, Sarah, that was quick! I will install the new version tonight.
By Pat B. Doyle on Wed, 3 October, 2007
Thanks for both of your feedback Kevin and Pat. It's truely much appreciated.
Pat, don't hesitate to let me know if you come across any further problems with feeds. The more different feeds I can see the more I can support!
By Sarah on Wed, 3 October, 2007
"Create a empty text file in the same directory as your blog index called cachetime.txt. Chmod it to 766 (the code does try to do this for you but it probably won’t be successful on most servers)."
Could you please explain what this means? I tried to use Lee's plug-in and it worked fine but does not assimilate with the sidebar. The text is smaller/different and the title does not show up in the same format as the other sidebar items. It otherwise worked great.
If you could explain how to perform the steps above, I'm sure that I could implement this and have it look right, too.
Thanks.
By JHS on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Hey JHS. To explain the step… You need to either upload an empty file called 'cachetime.txt' into the same directory as where your blog files are stored. For most this would be the root, the 'www', 'public_html', 'htdocs' etc.
If you can't upload an empty file via FTP (which is sometimes the case), then just put a character into it eg. a 1, and save and upload that.
Then once it's online, depending on your FTP program, you need to find where to set the permissions known as CHMOD. Usually you can right-click on the file (cachetime.txt) and under the menu that comes up should hopefully have an option called Permissions or CHMOD. Click on that and then change it to 766.
However, I've looked at the site you gave with your comment and if that's the site in question then I can see that the output of the plugin doesn't match your other widgets.
I can either write out the code for you to copy and replace in your plugin or I can redo the output part and provide you with a new plugin file that would have the same output markup and then hopefully take on the same styles as the other sections on your sidebar.
Let me know which is easiest for you
By Sarah on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Sarah:
I looked at my www directory and there was already a file there called cachetime.txt. Thanks for explaining about the permissions. I right-clicked on CHMOD (Unix) and entered 766.
I switched back to your plug-in and put your code into a widget php box, but only the code itself shows up, not the target list.
So I just reactivated Lee's plugin. Either of the two options you suggested is fine with me . . . I appreciate your assistance, but please provide the fix that requires the least amount of time for you.
Thanks.
By JHS on Fri, 5 October, 2007
I will be updating the widget version this weekend with Sarah's new updates so hopefully it will help
By slee on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Hey JHS, my code won't work in a widget PHP box I guess. Sorry I don't use widgets so I don't know how they work. If you prefer using those then I'd stick with Lee's widget.
*code removed as it wouldn't display correctly!*
PS. Cheers for the update Lee
By Sarah on Fri, 5 October, 2007
I got carried away again and i've done it already so if you want the widget pop on over and grab it fro my site
ie updated it with Sarah's latest code as of today.
By slee on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Sarah, thanks, the feed is working now!
By Pat B. Doyle on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Lee, you're as bad as me! Cheers for the update.
Pat, thanks for letting me know
By Sarah on Fri, 5 October, 2007
Lee's new version of the widget produces the same result/look in my sidebar.
So I deleted it and tried the code set forth above. That resulted in a fatal error and the plugin being deactivated.
By JHS on Sat, 6 October, 2007
JHS, Lee's plugin is simple a widget version of mine, so it would still need changing to the code above.
Sounds like it'll be easier if I download Lee's widget and alter the code for you. I won't be able to do this until later today as I'm out for the morning and early afternoon, however I'll get it done and email it over to you later today and we can go from there
By Sarah on Sat, 6 October, 2007
Hi Sarah,
Your Plugin is great byt the sounds of it. I actually got rid of my Blogosphere widget because of yours as i find it much better. More control for the user on what's being displayed.
Problem is I can't get it to work. Seems like JHS I can only get the actual code to display in my sidebar.
I uploaded the plugin
I created the cachetime.txt and uploaded it to public_html
I CMOD ed it to 766
I created my RSS feeds in the blogroll
And then I tried to add it to me left sidebar. This is the code where I tried to input it between the tags
What Others Are Saying
All it showed was your code and thats it.
Any suggestions on what to do? I don't want to use the widget from Lee (it does work as I tried it) because I prefer to style my sidebars myself. And when I activated the widget i lost all the other stuff.
Thanks
Monika
By Monika @ The Writers Manifesto on Sat, 6 October, 2007
Hi Monika,
Did it show the actual PHP code or do you have it running at present where the list is empty on your site? If it's the latter then it looks like it's not picking up any entries from other feeds. If you're familiar with phpMyAdmin (and have access to it) this should be able to show you whether there are any feeds retrieved for the list in the table wp_linkspost.
If the code isn't presently running can you let me know what exactly shows up when it is. Feel free to send a screenshot to sarah at my domain here.
I'm presuming your sidebar is the standard side bar (so not widgetised). Also does it execute standard PHP? eg. if you insert the code
<php echo "Hello World!"; >and see if that displays. If it does then the PHP should be running. If it doesn't then something is stopping it.
Let me know on these things and we'll go from there
By Sarah on Sat, 6 October, 2007
Hi Sarah,
I'm not sure what you mean by phpMyAdmin? Is that to be found in cpanel? I tried the code above and it didn't show anything. Still only the "What others are saying in my left sidebar" as the title.
When I did input your original code, the one that is supposed to show all links, it came up as showing this code under the title in my sidebar.
Monika
By Monika @ The Writers Manifesto on Sun, 7 October, 2007
Monika, do you use a widget/dynamic sidebar or a standard one? It sounds like PHP isn't running hence why you're seeing the actual PHP code, which I've only heard happen when you use the dynamic sidebar.
phpMyAdmin is under cPanel yes, but if you've not been in there before don't worry about it as it's not somewhere you want to go! It's like a graphical user interface for accessing a viewing databases and tables. Don't worry about that.
I'll drop you an email with a couple of other options.
By Sarah on Sun, 7 October, 2007
@JHS – I don't know if you got my email from yesterday with a copy of the widget plugin designed to suit your markup. If you didn't (as I know zip files can be blocked as spam or viruses) let me know and I'll post up a link to it here.
By Sarah on Sun, 7 October, 2007
can you show the demo of this plugin?i don't understand what the plugin will look like after being install..
By khairilz on Mon, 8 October, 2007
Hi Khairilz, the plugin is already in use on this site in the sidebar under the heading 'What Others Are Saying'.
There are also other sites currently sporting the plugin. Of those I know about
http://www.osworld.biz
http://www.bloggingtips.com
http://www.patbdoyle.com
http://www.jhsiess.com
http://www.samulli.com/weblog/
I may set up a list of sites using the plugin so that you can see the usage of it across differing sites.
By Sarah on Mon, 8 October, 2007
A new minor update to the plugin. After a few people having either problems or annoyances with changing the output markup I've removed all but the list items for each entry.
So the new version simply outputs
<li>Post 1<br />Site Name</li>
For each post it finds.
If you want to keep the same code I had originally (which I deem to be the most appropriate naturally!), then update the plugin to the new one and replace the plugin code in your sidebar with
<h3>What Others Are Saying</h3><ul>
<?php if (function_exists('what_others_are_saying')) what_others_are_saying(); ?>
</ul>
This will simply give everyone more control and flexibility over how it looks on their own site (as I'm still working on how to do the admin page!).
Feedback, as always, is welcome.
By Sarah on Mon, 8 October, 2007
The admin page has landed
You can now update the options via an admin page under your Options menu, rather than editing the file directly.
Latest version is now 1.2. Let me know if you have any problems with it.
By Sarah on Sun, 14 October, 2007
Hi Sarah,
I don't remember anymore how I found your site, but I have just installed this plugin in my blog and it works great. Thanks a lot for making it available!
By samulli on Mon, 15 October, 2007
Hey Samulli, thanks for letting me know
Glad you like the plugin.
By Sarah on Mon, 15 October, 2007
New update. Cleaned up the code, fixed invalid ampisands in titles (after noticing a warning on my site!) and added the option to display either most recent posts or a randomised list of all the latest posts.
By Sarah on Fri, 19 October, 2007
Hi Sarah, I just installed the latest update, and now the links for 45n5.com are not working correctly. He just updated his site too, so maybe he changed something with his feed. Could you please take a look at this? Thanks, and thanks again for the great plugin!!
By Pat B. Doyle on Tue, 23 October, 2007
Hi Pat, Mark's feed links are wrong which doesn't help. Even in Google Reader they're not correct. I'll drop him a mail and let him know, once his are working I can then alter the parser if I need to.
To be honest I use his feedburner link instead
By Sarah on Tue, 23 October, 2007
Pat, Just to let you know it was an error on Mark's feed, he's fixed it now so it should all be fine for you now, or on the next update.
By Sarah on Tue, 23 October, 2007
Great, thanks, Sarah!
By Pat B. Doyle on Tue, 23 October, 2007
Whoa! Nifty. I SO wanna try this plugin.
By Jenny on Thu, 25 October, 2007
Hey Jenny, be my guest. Let me know if you encounter any problems
By Sarah on Thu, 25 October, 2007
Really nice blogroll plugin. I'd like to use it, if I used WordPress, but I don't. But it 'looks' and feels pretty 'cool'. –John
By John W. Furst on Fri, 26 October, 2007
Cheers John. Sorry you don't use WordPress! It can work outside of WordPress but needs recoding for that. When I've got time I'll make up a standalone version.
By Sarah on Fri, 26 October, 2007
Sarah… I think I'm missing a step or something… Why is it showing a blank list?
- I added feed info to the RSS Address field in the BlogRoll
- Activated the Plugin
- Added the code above to one of my text widgets in the sidebar
- The list is blank!
May be the php code does not work in a text widget in the sidebar??
I may be doing something wrong for sure!
By Guillermo on Thu, 8 November, 2007
Hi Guillermo. Not sure wht you mean by a text widget?
At present there are two plugin versions. The one from this site which is not designed to work with widgets, and the one from Lee's site, which is a widgetised and once installed should just require dragging and dropping via the Themes -> Widgets section.
Are you using a Widget/dynamic sidebar? If so then you'll need Lee's version.
By Sarah on Thu, 8 November, 2007
Hi Sarah, Tks for your fast replay! I will use Lee's version then!
By Guillermo on Thu, 8 November, 2007
No problem, let me know how it goes
By Sarah on Thu, 8 November, 2007
Brilliant – this has just come at the right time for a new site i'm making!
By Martin Paling on Mon, 12 November, 2007
Glad to hear it Martin, let me know if you have any feedback/issues/suggestions
By Sarah on Tue, 13 November, 2007
Okay, I think someone's going to have to explain what 'Chmod it to 766' means?
By Stewart on Tue, 11 December, 2007
Hi Stewart. 'Chmod' is a way to set permissions on a server (non IIS only). Usually in your FTP program you should be able to right click on a file and select something such as 'Permissions' or 'CHMOD' and then you can change the permissions here.
Here's a site that tells you how to update permissions with various major FTP programs – Chmod Article.
Let me know if that helps you at all
By Sarah on Tue, 11 December, 2007
Hi Sarah, Do you know of anything similar to your plug in that can also give me the chance of showing an excerpt of the post?
Thanks!
By Guillermo on Mon, 14 April, 2008
Hi Guillermo, I don't know of any plugin similar. But I can set mine up to show excerpts as an option. Give me 24 hours
By Sarah on Tue, 15 April, 2008
Sarah you're amazing… this thing rocks except for each RSS feed i enter there's a title link with a link directly to the feed's main page including the little RSS image. how do i get rid it?
By mark on Tue, 15 April, 2008
wow i give up, i've been trying to get this thing to work for about 10 hours… no matter where i put up the code it just doesn't show up at all. i don't know if its because i don't have a dynamic sidebar. im using word press 2.5 and when i use RSS Feed link it makes it automatically appear on my site regardless of using your code. please help thanks
By mark on Wed, 16 April, 2008
Hi Mark,
I'm not sure exactly what's going wrong for you. You don't need a dynamic sidebar, in fact you shouldn't have a dynamic sidebar for my plugin to work.
You mentioned when you add an RSS feed link it appears on your site, yet the function for my code doesn't work. Sounds like your template is pulling the feed link out.
I'll drop you an email so you can maybe show me your site and I can take a look, privately
By Sarah on Wed, 16 April, 2008
Upgraded this plugin to fit in with the new WordPress 2.5 admin design.
By Sarah on Fri, 9 May, 2008
Your plugin sounds promising; I've been looking for a non-widget plugin like this. I have a problem, however. I've installed and activated the plugin, installed the code on my home page (at the bottom of the page) and checked my options, but nothing appears. Can you suggest what I can do to solve this?
By Phil Barron on Fri, 16 May, 2008
Sarah: Duh. I misinterpreted the instructions, which show me how to do what I asked. Trying the plugin out now.
By Phil Barron on Fri, 16 May, 2008
Hi Phil, sorry was out and missed your comments, I've removed the two middle ones as I didn't think they were relevant anymore! Hopefully everything's working as it should do now for you
Give me a shout if you still have problems.
By Sarah on Fri, 16 May, 2008
The plugin works great! I have just one question. I tried inserting target="_blank" into the URL for the outgoing link because I prefer such links to open up a new tab rather than take people away from my blog, but that didn't work. How would you suggest I edit the link to allow this (assuming it's possible)?
By Phil Barron on Fri, 16 May, 2008
Hi Phil, you'd need to edit the plugin to insert the target attribute. If you're not too scared of looking at the PHP then open up the plugin file, scroll to the bottom of it where you should see the HTML output (mixed with a little PHP). Find the link tag and add your attribute in there.
If you're not sure let me know and I can modify the file and email it to you.
By Sarah on Fri, 16 May, 2008
Hi, Sarah. What you described is exactly what I did (apologies for not describing it more clearly before). Inserting the target attribute in the link tag resulted in a fatal error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ',' or ';' in /home/REDACTED/public_html/wp-content/plugins/other-posts.php on line 239
If you can think of a way to avoid the error, that would be great.
By Phil Barron on Sun, 18 May, 2008
Hi Phil, typical PHP syntax error there. I've amended the file for you and emailed it over, hope it all works fine for you now
By Sarah on Mon, 19 May, 2008
Ah, single quotes instead of double quotes; I should have tried that on my own. The plugin now works as well as I could have hoped. Really, this is just what I was looking for. Thank you very much, Sarah!
By Phil Barron on Mon, 19 May, 2008
No problem Phil
By Sarah on Tue, 20 May, 2008
Hi. Is this plugin still working? Nothing appears on my site.
Installed and activated, then edit sidebar.php to include the tag but failed. Which step I missed out? I'm using WP 2.6.1
Please help Sarah.
Thanks
Adi
By Adi on Mon, 29 September, 2008
Hi Adi, yes this plugin works fine as I have it on my site in my sidebar.
The steps you need to take are
Have you done step 2? If you go into Manage – Links and edit an existing link, scroll down to the advanced section (open it up) and you'll see an input field for the RSS feed. There you need to input the site's RSS address. You'll need to do this for every site you want to include in the plugin.
Also check you're happy with the settings on the settings page for the plugin.
Hope that solves your problem
By Sarah on Mon, 29 September, 2008
Hi Adi, sorry I reread my installation steps in the readme.txt file and realised I'd missed out the step saying to add the RSS feeds. I've updated this now.
My apologies! Thanks for bringing it to my attention
By Sarah on Mon, 29 September, 2008
hi. Thanks for plugin
perfect.
Regards
By baron on Tue, 30 September, 2008
Hi, I installed it. Followed all steps but does not update. I receive no RSS feeds in sidebar! What's going on? I am trying to get a blogspot.com RSS site and a wordpress one.
By HivLinux on Sat, 4 October, 2008
Have you definitely added the correct feed URLs into the RSS field in the links manager, for each site that you want displaying their last post?
If so then can you let me know of one or both of the sites so that I can check on their feeds and see if they work for me.
By Sarah on Sat, 4 October, 2008
Yep, I put right feed links. Blogs are: ciecomatto.net, lauraffaeli.blogspot.com, attivissimo.blogspot.com, then I am planning to put other sites there. I think it's my fault, but please if you can, check out yourself
By HivLinux on Sat, 4 October, 2008
I've added the first site listed to my own site and it's worked fine for me as you can possibly see (if you check this site in time) from my list on the right in my sidebar.
Just to recap on the steps to use this plugin.
1. Install and activate plugin.
2. Go to Manage – Links and either modify your existing bookmarks/links to include their RSS feed link in the relevant box on the page, or add a new site and their RSS feed.
3. Edit the sidebar to include the function.
4. Refresh the front page once or twice to get the update to kick in.
My guess is you need to recheck at step 2. If you've already got links to these sites (sorry I can't read your site so I can't tell if you've got a list of links anywhere), then you need to click to edit each link individually. On the Manage Link page, scroll down to the advanced section and find the RSS input field. Here you insert the full link to the RSS feed (note Atom feeds may not work).
Alternatively, click to add a new link and give the link a title, insert the link, and again, scroll down to the Advanced section and put the RSS feed into the RSS input field.
Then providing the RSS feeds are set up correctly, they should work. If you want to test this, use one of my links as I know for a fact these work:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/StuffBySarah
By Sarah on Sun, 5 October, 2008
Hi Sarah,
I just came across your plugin and think it looks like a great addition to the blog I'm building out. I installed it and ran into the problem that others appear to be having.
So I looked into the code and see that you're using column link_rss in your SELECT but the codex for table wp_links shows link_url. Haven't been following WordPress much so don't know if that's a recent change to the schema.
Here's the fix though for anybody having trouble:
on line 167 change
SELECT link_id, link_rss, link_name FROM ".$wpdb->links." WHERE link_rss != " GROUP BY link_rss
to
SELECT link_id, link_url as link_rss, link_name FROM ".$wpdb->links." WHERE link_url != " GROUP BY link_url
Thanks for a cool plugin!
By Hank on Fri, 10 October, 2008
Hi Hank,
If you check on the WordPress codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Dat.....:_wp_links you'll see the last field is link_rss. What you've effectively done in your code change above is said 'if the link exists, pull out the RSS feed link', however that doesn't work because you can have a link in your blogroll but not have an RSS feed link for it. Half of my links don't have feeds associated with them.
The plugin works by checking to see if there is an RSS feed link associated with each link in the links table. If there is a feed link, then it pulls the info out.
My guess is, the reason your 'fix' worked above is because you're putting the feed link into the link input and not into the feed link input box, there are two different inputs in the add link page.
I'll do up a full screen shot tomorrow of the add link page however if you look in figure 2 in the post above you'll see where to add the feed link.
But, if you're not listing links on your site and what to leave it as it is then go for it. However future updates will have the plugin working as it is now, and not accommodate for your code change
By Sarah on Mon, 13 October, 2008
Hi Sarah,
You're right, of course. I _was_ using the link_url for the feed but see where I can use the RSS address in the Advanced Options | Advanced section – and will populate the feed addresses there. Thanks for the explanation.
By hank on Mon, 13 October, 2008
Hank, cheers for letting me know. You've made a valid point in a round about way however, my instructions need improving on
By Sarah on Tue, 14 October, 2008
Just updated this plugin to add in the option to have rel="nofollow" in the links, and finally added the code for the widget version
By Sarah on Sun, 2 November, 2008
Hi,
Thanks for your plugin! A very good and useful work!
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong.
I put the markup code in a wordpress page and did a first plugin test with just 1 feed (from feedburner): everything was ok.
Then, I edited the php file to add css styles to the blog title and everything continued being ok.
But when I added more rss (from feedburner and from Blogger, 4 in total) to the links list, only the first one was showed.
Just in case I did something wrong, I restored the original plugin from a fresh download and reactivated, but no success: only 1 feed is showed.
As a test, I activated the sidebar widget, and the results are the same (only 1 feed showed).
Current settings are: update-10800 / displaying 1 post / link the site-active.
All 4 feeds are in the 'links' list, and have a rss url.
Do you think there is something more I might try?
Thanks in advance.
Frans
By Frans on Sun, 23 November, 2008
Hi Frans, you say under your settings you have it set to display 1 post? That's why only one post is displaying. You'll need to change this to say 5 or 10. Or if you're wanting to display them all on one page then perhaps set it to 25 or more.
By Sarah on Sun, 23 November, 2008
Thank you, Sarah
I have changed the number to 25 and now all 4 feeds are shown.
I thought this setting was for saying how many posts to display per rss, not globally.
As for the plugin, I was using an API from Google Reader to include feeds in the website, but your plugin is by far lighter and charge faster.
A final question: is it possible to show the last post date?
Thank you again!
Frans
By Frans on Sun, 23 November, 2008
Hi Fran, no sorry the plugin is only designed to show the last post from each site, so the post count is effectively how many sites to display. I'll change the wording when I get a chance
As for the last post date. It's possible yes. What I'm planning to do is redo the admin to give you greater control over the code used, and the options available so when I have the chance that will all be available to you
By Sarah on Sun, 23 November, 2008
Thanks, Sarah. I'll be checking for updates…
By Frans on Sun, 23 November, 2008
Is there an easy way to insert the date for the latest entry?
By Krissi on Wed, 10 December, 2008
Hi Krissi, the date is stored in the database table, I've just yet to get the updates done on the plugin. I hope to do these at christmas when I've got a few days off work, so if you can wait a couple of weeks then that plus other options should be available to you
By Sarah on Wed, 10 December, 2008
Hi Sarah,
You said in your comments that you'd implement the option to post a small summary of the post feed. Have you done that? I'd really appreciate that.
I'd also like to be able to format the output so that the link to the Website looks different than the link to the post title, which also looks different to the post summary. This could be done by giving the different elements ids, that I can stylise using css.
And I'd like to be able to choose what order they're outputting.
By Pete Myers on Fri, 12 December, 2008
Hi Pete, all of the hoped for changes should be done over Christmas, and this plugin will be priority. I'll be putting in a template system so you can use any markup that you wish.
By Sarah on Fri, 12 December, 2008
Sarah,
That's great… thanks! One little note, I'm having some trouble getting it to update properly. I added a new rss yesterday (a WordPress.com one), and it hasn't appeared… although it has a post that's more recent than some that are displaying on my page.
Other little requests – the ability to choose only a particular category of links to display.
By Pete Myers on Sat, 13 December, 2008
Hi Pete. If the feed link has worked in the past, then you need to check your update time in the settings, which is by default set to 3 hours, so check you've not added an extra zero by mistake. Then if that's fine, the only other potential reason is the site's feed isn't working correctly. If you can let me know the feed URL then I can check on it myself.
As for category grouping. The plugin only displays links/feeds from links that have feeds set so for now, don't add feed links for sites you don't want displaying. I will add the category option as a parameter of the plugin, so that it can potentially be used differently across the site.
By Sarah on Sun, 14 December, 2008
Hello Sarah,
Thank you for the nice work on this, it really works well.
I am using the Cutline 3-Column Split 1.2 for my theme. It is styling the text at about 8 pts which is a little on the small side. I have not been able to find in your code any of the style classes you are using so that I could control that better. Could you share?
Thank You
Merrill Guice
Valdosta, GA
By Merrill Guice on Sat, 20 December, 2008
Hi Merill, if you're using the function version then you can give your list a class or id and target that. If you're using the widget version then there isn't a specific class, however I'm updating the plugin to allow you to customise the code used regardless of version used (ie. widget or function), so this should be available at some point this week
By Sarah on Sun, 21 December, 2008
Hey Sarah – Great plugin! It does almost exactly what I was looking for. I added the plugin to my blog however I wanted a few more things – so I updated your code. These are the changes I made:
* Display the age of each post, similar to blogspot (# minutes/hours/days old)
* Processes timezones correctly (this was a pain)
* Don't show private/invisible links
* My page-load time was really slow because it was checking some 30 blogs… so I made it do the updates from a cron job instead of during the page load. This was a one-line change that you could skip; there's probably a better way that doesn't require host-side config.
I'd be happy to email you the updates that I made so that you can make them available on the wordpress site (along with the changes you're planning to make) – just drop me an email so I can send it over. Thanks again for such a useful plugin!!
-Jeremy
By Jeremy on Mon, 22 December, 2008
Almost forgot; I made one other update too:
* occasionally the plugin can't load feeds. By default this resulted in the feed disappearing. I updated it to assume that the most recent post hadn't changed if it couldn't access the feed. It still removes the feed if you delete it from wordpress.
By Jeremy on Tue, 23 December, 2008
Hi Sarah,
Really looking forward to the update this week. Don't want to be an irritating fan, but, thought I'd list the features I'm really hoping will be in it:
1) Some kind of caching – as it can take up to 20 secs to load on my site.
2) Template system.
3) The ability to display feeds from only one category, there are many, many uses to this!
Thanks – it's a great plugin
By Pete Myers on Tue, 23 December, 2008
@Jeremy, a few of your changes won't work for everyone (a cron isn't always available for example), however I'll see if I can fit in some of the additions you've added as optional, so that those who can make use of them can do so.
@Pete There is a caching system naturally built into the RSS parser, and this is why you set a time limit before the list updates, however I'll be adding in a couple of other options. The template system is already on the list.
I've been off this week so have made a start but will continue with this and my other plugins next week once I'm home after Christmas. Cheers for the suggestions
By Sarah on Thu, 25 December, 2008
Hi Sarah !
What a great plugin!! It is exactly what I was looking for !
It's really simple but I got a problem which I didn't manage to solve by reading all the comments of this post ^^
So I did everything you said :
- installed the plugin
- configured the plugin options
- insert your code in my theme
- added all the RSS I wanted in my links
Problem is, it only shows the first one. I checked the other RSS but they're ok (I tried with yours and still doesn't appear). So I tried to delete the only RSS that was displayed. And.. it still there although I deleted the link…
I checked almost everything and I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with my theme or my links or the way I configured your plugin.
I'm using WordPress 2.7 and I really don't know where the problem comes from, so if you got any ideas to help me, it would be great!
Cheers !
By Julie on Sat, 27 December, 2008
oooki, well, suddenly it works. guess it was just a matter of time. Sorry I bothered ^^
Thanks anyway !!
By Julie on Sat, 27 December, 2008
Hi Julie, glad to hear it's working finally! Sounds like you added one RSS link in, then added in the function to the sidebar which would have cached the one link, then added the others in afterwards, so yes it was just a matter of time to wait for the next update (around 3 hours by default – you can change this in the options page). Glad it's working now for you
By Sarah on Sun, 28 December, 2008
So my problem is similar to Julie. I added What others… turned it on, added it as a widget to the sidebar, and started adding feeds. The first one worked, but after that nothing. I tried turning the update interval to 10 sec, tried turning What others off and on, but no dice. I get only the one feed listed. Using WordPress 2.7
By John Willis on Mon, 19 January, 2009
Hi John, the things to check are
1. Are the feed URLs definitely in the right place on the edit link page?
2. Have you set the plugin to only display 1 link at a time (check under the Settings page)
3. Are the feed URLs standard RSS feeds. Some feeds don't work, but those from WordPress, Blogger and Feedburner should be fine.
Check on those and let me know.
By Sarah on Tue, 20 January, 2009
Hi Sarah, thanks for following up. The links are all under the heading RSS Address under Edit Link and as I said works for the first one of the links. The settings are still at default 5 links at a time except that I changed to time between updates to 1080 to see if I could trigger a change. Three of the links are Feedburner and the rest WordPress, other or none.
By John Willis on Tue, 20 January, 2009
ok, I found my problem. I had copied the feeds as they came up when I clicked on the various sites which for one of them was http://etc but for the others was feed://etc. Apparently only http: works. I changed the feed address to be the normal http convention and they seem to work fine.
By John Willis on Tue, 20 January, 2009
Hi John, thanks for getting back to me. I see what the problem was now. Yes the feed:// isn't conventional, some WordPress sites put that in by default, others don't. It's not an issue that occured to me so I'll add it into the user notes so that others don't get stuck at the same point.
Thanks for letting me know.
By Sarah on Tue, 20 January, 2009
Hi, What others are saying seems not to work on a server with PHP5.
That is: if I have just one link, it seems to go straight on
but if I fill in a collection of links and RSS feeds, then the plugin (or also widget) on sidebar just interrupts and does not display anything, cutting also the rest of sidebar and footer off. I switched back to php4 and it seems to work now
By talksina on Wed, 21 January, 2009
Hi there. My site runs on PHP5 and I've not encountered any problems, plus the code isn't PHP version specific (besides PHP 4+, but that goes for WordPress).
It sounds like you're getting an error so if you can post that up then I can possibly work out what's wrong for you. The error will either display on screen, in the markup or in your error log on the server.
By Sarah on Wed, 21 January, 2009
Ok, yet another question. How would I change the display to differentiate between site I'm getting info from and the most recent post. I notice that on your site the font color is different but I don't see where that can be changed in the WOAS plugin. In my case both referenced site and most recent post are the same color and it's a bit hard to read.
By John Willis on Wed, 21 January, 2009
Hi John, I only have the post linked and not the site (this is an option under the settings). If you have both linked then they will take the default colour of your links. If you hover over the site name in my list you'll see it isn't linked.
By Sarah on Wed, 21 January, 2009
Ok, you are quite right. I should have thought of that. I unlinked the sites and it looks fine now. Thanks again.
By John Willis on Thu, 22 January, 2009
Hi Sarah. Finally installed this plugin as a widget on my site and think it's great. Thanks
By Sam on Tue, 27 January, 2009
No problem Sam. I'm still working on some updates, work has just got in the way (as usual!), but let me know if there's anything extra you can think of
By Sarah on Tue, 27 January, 2009
Hi Sarah,
thanks for the great plugin..it works fine for me. One suggestion: is there any way to add the time and date of the feed? Or some other indicator, such as "posted N hours ago".
Thanks again!
By Mike on Fri, 30 January, 2009
Hi Mike, the date (and possibly time) is taken out of the feed and stored in the database table. Once I get my new version finished (soon I hope!) you'll have the option to add this to it.
By Sarah on Fri, 30 January, 2009
Hi Sarah,
I added the "$issued" string to the display line and the time and date shows up. But the weird thing is that the postdate does not seem to reflect the original time and date of the post. Instead, I think it shows the time and date when the post is retrieved by the plugin. Thus, older feeds have their dates "reset" to match later feeds. Just thought you might like to know for your next update… so far I haven't figured out how to solve this.
By Mike on Sun, 1 February, 2009
Hi Mike, the issued field in the db table is pulled from the feed. I have correct issued dates on the posts in my table pulled from other sites, otherwise there'd be no way of telling which posts are the most recent
As I mentioned, I'm working this as a template tag into the next version. Client work has just got in the way a little! I'll see if I can add the date and time as an option tonight if I get my work finished
By Sarah on Sun, 1 February, 2009
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for this great plugin. You can see how I've implemented it at http://www.mesmerlab.com. The 'Other Talk' block on the bottom right sidebar is where I'm using it.
My problem comes with one of my blogroll feeds. In the footer you'll see 4 links under 'More Links'. The feed that isn't showing up is from http://www.zeldman.com/.
I've tried using…
http://feedvalidator.org/check.....n.com/rss/
…and also simply…
http://www.zeldman.com/rss/
…with no luck.
I have the default plugin settings. Not sure what is going on here. Any thoughts?
By Jason on Fri, 6 February, 2009
Sarah, sorry for the double post but all 4 feeds work now. Feel free to take out everything in my previous comment about the problem.
Thanks!
By Jason on Fri, 6 February, 2009
Hi Jason, Cheers for your comments. Glad to hear it's all working now for you. I'm guessing the problem was just the feed hadn't updated and then did in the next update? Would be good just to know for certain
By Sarah on Sat, 7 February, 2009
I assume it started to work after I used the shorter 'http://www.zeldman.com/rss/' link and then Jeffrey posted a new article. Seems like the 'feedvalidator' part threw a wrench in the code.
Thanks!
By Jason on Sat, 7 February, 2009
Well, I did the automatic update (from March 2 version) and the What Others are Saying sidebar element disappeared completely. I don't suppose there is anyway of going back again? Everything was unchanged from a previously working version.
By John Willis on Tue, 3 March, 2009
Hi John, if you were using the widget version then you may need to go back into widgets and re-add it as functions were updated due to WordPress dropping older functions.
I'll put a note at the top in regards to this too. Cheers for letting me know.
By Sarah on Tue, 3 March, 2009
Indeed, that was the solution. I should have seen that. Thanks for the quick response. Lately I've been trying to figure out why some sites seem to be stuck at older posts and then I noticed that many of the feedburner links had changed. Never neglect the obvious…
By John Willis on Tue, 3 March, 2009
I installed the plugin and it works as described.
I have a question related to the actual feed info displayed.
Is there a way to display the full feed as provided by the site I subscribed to?
I noticed that one of the sites I subscribed to seems to provide the full article in the feed but the plugin appears to only display the title of the article. is there a setting to enable the plugin to display the full article?
thanks
By ron on Mon, 30 March, 2009
Hi Sarah–
I am a neophyte, but love the plugin and have seen it on other sites. For some reason it is not working for me.
I am on 2.7.1. Installed, activated and had the settings to display 25 posts.
Went into all of my links in the WEBSITE category I assigned them and included the feeds in the advanced tab. Saved them and refreshed the site a bunch and only one is showing up.
Here are the feeds, I have used and only the last one (Annapolis Capital Punishment) shows up whihc is surprising because two other are blogspot feeds. Any suggestions?
THanks SO much!
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/sweethomeannapolis
Annapolis Anchor
http://mikenetherland.blogspot.....ts/default
Mike's Nether Land
http://budtheblogger.blogspot......ts/default
The No BS Zone
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/myaacps
My ACCPS.net
http://annapoliscapitalpunishm.....ts/default
Annapolis Capital Punishment
By John on Sun, 12 April, 2009
Hi John, sounds to me like you only had one feed in place before activating the plugin. The list will cache and not update for at least an hour or 3 hours if you don't change the update time (in seconds) in the options page. Hopefully, by now, all your feeds are showing.
By Sarah on Wed, 15 April, 2009
Ron – sorry I missed your comment, been a bit hectic round here with work.
It is possible but not with the way the current plugin is. I've been working on adding in new features and options however personal and work commitments have just slowed me down. If you're capable with PHP then you could edit the plugin and the db table to save the feed as well.
I have a number of changes to add in which I hope to get back onto soon and get a new version released.
By Sarah on Wed, 15 April, 2009
Sarah, how do I edit "CSS" of the Widget? At my website your wonderful plugin appears with so small letters…
By Rafael Reinehr on Wed, 20 May, 2009
Hi Rafael,
The plugin just outputs the list items, so usually you would set the before and after code in your functions file, and then you can target this if necessary. Without seeing your site though I can't really give you any suggestions.
By Sarah on Wed, 20 May, 2009
Sarah, here´s the frontend example: http://rsurgente.opsblog.org/ , under the title "Últimas da Blogosfera".
Do you need some piece of code to help me? It would be very nice of yours if you could help me to solve this issue…
By Rafael Reinehr on Wed, 20 May, 2009
Rafael,
You'll need to add some CSS styles to your site. I added a class of 'greenlist' to my LI items in the widget code. You can see my implementation at http://www.mesmerlab.com on the bottom right of the sidebar.
Sarah, maybe you could modify your plugin to have a class on each item?
Jason
By Jason on Wed, 20 May, 2009
Hi Rafael, looking on your site the list is within a list item with an id of what-others-are-saying, so you can use that to target the text size eg
[code]#what-others-are-saying { font-size: 12px; }[/code]
However, also looking at the code, the list from the widget is not in the correct UL tags. This is down to both the plugin not outputting it and your functions file not adding it in. I removed as much formatting/markup from the plugin to allow the users to have more control, so I don't know if you can make your functions file add in the
before the plugin output and the
after it.
Alternatively I can send you a modified plugin file with the markup in, but if you upgrade this when I eventually get my new version out, then you'll need to alter it again.
By Sarah on Thu, 21 May, 2009
I´ll try the first alternative, but it would be very nice if you could send me a modified plugin file, since i´m kind of a "dumb" in this kind of alterations…
By Rafael Reinehr on Thu, 21 May, 2009
Sarah, i´ve been trying lot´s of modifications to the code with no success… Maybe the modified plugin you told me could do the job?
By Rafael Reinehr on Mon, 25 May, 2009
Hi Rafael, I sent it over, I guess it got lost along the way. I'll send it over again to you
By Sarah on Tue, 26 May, 2009
Hi Jason, sorry just dug your reply out of the spam box! Cheers for your reply. I wouldn't add individual class names to each list item as it's a bit overkill to be honest. However, the next version of the plugin will allow you to give a template of the code to suit your site anyway. It's been a long time coming but I'm aiming to get this available soon!
By Sarah on Tue, 26 May, 2009
Hi Sarah,
I've implemented your plugin in my blog, and I will try to tweak it a little. I'm NOT PHP-literate at all (this is the first time ever I try to code in PHP, always been a .NET guy).
The only thing I want to say now is: Sarah, you are AMAZING. You have almost two years worth of tech support (of every caliber, from neophytes to programmers) for your plugin in this single page –all for free!
I just wanted to express my gratitude for you and the effort you've done for almost two years. That's the kind of vocation that keeps the Internet a wonderful place to learn new things.
Gyga-Cheers!
By Darío Martínez Batlle on Thu, 28 May, 2009
I love the plug in first and foremost!
Is there a way to adjust the settings so when someone clicks on the link, it opens in a new browser window?
I have the NO FOLLOW box checked in your plug in.
In the links section of WP, I have the name,. URL, and feed along with the _blank checked. But when I click on a link created by the plug in, it redirects from my site.
Thanks
John
By John Frenaye on Sun, 28 June, 2009
Hi John, glad you like the plugin. It doesn't use the target attribute as it's invalid markup for HTML 4.01 and XHTML. What I would suggest is to give your surrounding list an ID and then use a simple jQuery technique to open all links on the list in a new window. JQuery comes with WordPress by default so you can load this in your header file using
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');right before the wp_head() tag. Then below wp_head() and outside of the PHP add in
<script type="text/javascript">jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery("#listid a").attr('target','_blank');
});
That will then use JS to dynamically add the target attribute to each link. Note, you'll need to change #listid on the 3rd line to match the ID of your list.
I'll set it up so that this can be managed via the plugin in the future
By Sarah on Mon, 29 June, 2009
Hi Sarah
Just to let you know that this plugin is great! And your always glad and active help here is marvellous.
Thumbs up and a big hug :O)
I have been working a little with the plugin so it meets my needs. There is just one ting I cannot figure out. One of my buddies feed do not show up in the list. I think it has something to do with the file-type…
It's like this: "subdomain.domain.prefix/rss-2.0.xml"… It's the only type of feed that are not showing up…
Any ideas?
By jos on Sun, 5 July, 2009
Just forget it Sarah, it doesn't matter anymore. I'm not using the plugin anymore. It slows the site down, way to much
By jos on Fri, 17 July, 2009
Hi Jos, I'm sorry I've not had a chance to look at your comment, I've just moved house and lost a close friend amongst other things, so I'm still catching up on everything.
Sorry you seem to think the plugin slows the site down however the only time things run slowly is when the feeds are updating, which you can change to just once a day using the cache time setting. Other than that the plugin will not slow the site down at all, it'll run just as quick as the rest of the site.
The feed that isn't working is most likely due to the way the feed has been output. Unfortunately if it doesn't follow the standard RSS format then it won't get parsed correctly.
However, if you're no longer using the plugin then it doesn't matter, but this reply may be of use to someone else. I do mention in the readme file that not every feed will work. It's unfortunate but it would mean bloating the plugin out to manage so many variations on the standard format.
By Sarah on Fri, 17 July, 2009
Hi,
Just found your great plugin and I am using it in my rebuild (server error killed my old site).
Just wanted to know if the plugin can show more than 1 post from each link?
By Richard on Mon, 20 July, 2009
Hi Richard. At present no it can't. It just displays the last post from that site. However, it's a valid point and I can add it in as an option for the next release
By Sarah on Mon, 20 July, 2009
Thanks for the quick reply, look forward to an update then.
By Richard on Mon, 20 July, 2009
Oh and possibly an 'open in new window' setting would be handy.
By Richard on Mon, 20 July, 2009
How do I add css to this? Anyone who can make a basic guide? I want no underline below the links but I keep getting errors…
By Kristoffer on Sun, 26 July, 2009
Hi Kristoffer, sorry for the late reply. If you've added the code as per my suggestion above, then change the ul to have an id. Then in your style.css file add in:
#idname li a { text-decoration: none; }Of course change idname to be the name of the id on the ul tag. That should then remove the underlines.
By Sarah on Fri, 21 August, 2009
Hey Sarah–
I love the plug in and it is working wonderfully except for one pesky URL.
the feed I get from their site is :
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/rss.xml
None of my other feeds are XML. Is this the issue? I have had them listed for several days and they have updated several times, but not showing up.
ANy suggestions?
Thanks
Jon
By John F on Mon, 31 August, 2009
Hi Jon, it appears that the feed you're trying to use isn't recognised as a feed by the WordPress tag that's used to read it. I've tested it myself and using the WP function it doesn't get any data from it which means it's most likely not formed correctly. It looks fine at a glance but WP doesn't seem to like it.
I'm currently working on updating the plugin and I have to get the function that reads the feed in changed anyway, as the current one is now deprecated, so maybe the new one will work with it. I'll update here once it's done so keep an eye out for a new version at some point (can't say when, got a wedding to plan first!) and see if that works for you instead
By Sarah on Mon, 31 August, 2009
Hi Sarah,
I'm sorry for your loss and congratz on your moving.
See, I recently changed my hosting company and moved my blog database to the new place. I installed a few plugins in the new hosting (yours was one of the first to be installed!).
But off the sudden, I can't make What Other Are Saying to work. My blogroll is the same I had in my former hosting company. The plug in does nothing but presenting the Heading.
Is there some way to delete/recreate/rebuild the cache file, or somehow reset the plug in to work?
Have any ideas to try? I'm kind of puzzled…
Check it at 40limones.com
(in Spanish, but WOAS is located at the bottom of the sidebar)
By Darío Martínez Batlle on Mon, 28 September, 2009
Hi Dario, if you copied your whole database over then, if nothing else, the plugin would be pulling out the old cached data.
To give it a kick into action you can go into phpMyAdmin and empty the _linkposts table. If there's nothing in there the plugin will always run and try and update.
If that doesn't do anything or the table is already empty, then check on your server to see if you have an 'error_log' file and if you do, see if you can find a PHP error relating to the plugin as that may give a better idea as to why it's not running for you.
By Sarah on Mon, 28 September, 2009
Thanks for the fast reply, Sarah!
I checked the database and it has the data I would expect the plugin to show on the sidebar. I truncated the table and give the plugin another try. It populates the table back again, but still nothing shows up.
I have an error_log file on my site root, but it does not appear to have anything related to WOAS.
This is the content of the file:
#####################
[27-Sep-2009 22:32:11] mismatched tag at line 426, column 80
[27-Sep-2009 22:32:11] not well-formed (invalid token) at line 92, column 41
[27-Sep-2009 22:32:14] not well-formed (invalid token) at line 10, column 252
[27-Sep-2009 23:41:19] mismatched tag at line 424, column 80
[27-Sep-2009 23:41:20] not well-formed (invalid token) at line 92, column 41
[28-Sep-2009 00:46:21] mismatched tag at line 420, column 80
[28-Sep-2009 00:46:22] not well-formed (invalid token) at line 92, column 41
[28-Sep-2009 00:46:27] not well-formed (invalid token) at line 10, column 252
#####################
Unless those "not well-formed (invalid token)" references are to something on WOAS, I have no clue on what's going on, but I checked the php file for WOAS and I don't think lines 92 or 10 have anything to do, and the script doesn't go up to line 420…
I'm really puzzled…
By Darío Martínez Batlle on Mon, 28 September, 2009
Hi Dario, Looking at the source code of your site the page dies right after the closing h2 of the plugin title. From what I can see you're using the widget version of the plugin?
The only solution I can suggest here is if you want to use my contact form (link at the top) and send me a temporary admin account login for your site, I can take a look, do a couple of checks in the plugin code and hopefully work out why it's not displaying the content. It's clearly doing the hard bit (getting the feed data), so it must be a bug with the plugin widget or a conflict with something.
By Sarah on Mon, 28 September, 2009
Hi again, Sarah,
Thanks for your assistance. I've sent a message with the requested info. Thanks for so much willingness to help!
By Darío Martínez Batlle on Mon, 28 September, 2009
I love this plugin. It means that I dont really use BLOGLINES anymore. There are one or two blogs that do NOT show up though and I cannot figure out why.
here is an example of one of the feeds that wont show on my page:
http://rhodemontijo.com/blog/?feed=rss2
(the blog should be called CUENTOS) and it is a WORDPRESS blog. Thanks for any tips!
By jamie on Fri, 23 October, 2009
I'm trying to figure out where the rest of the configuration is. Your figure 1 shows the options pane, figure 2 shows advanced options which I don't seem to have.
Am I not loking in the right place or is it missing?
This is in WP 2.8.5
By A Johnson on Mon, 2 November, 2009
Hi there, the advanced options screenshot is from the bottom of the add link page
By Sarah on Mon, 2 November, 2009
Oh OK, Thank you Sarah, it's formated differently in WP 2.8.5 and I'm noobish.
By A Johnson on Mon, 2 November, 2009
Yeah, the screenshots are a little out of date. I've not had time to update them
By Sarah on Mon, 2 November, 2009
Hi Sarah,
I get an error when I try to activate the plugin.
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare woas_adminmenu() (previously declared in /xxx/wp-content/plugins/what-others-are-saying/other-posts.php:22) in /xxx/wp-content/plugins/what-others-are-saying/other-posts.php on line 23
My blog is on a server with safe-mode on, but I've had no problem activating other plugins, if that has anything to do with it.
I'm using wordpress 2.8.6.
/Emma
By Emma on Thu, 19 November, 2009
Hi Emma, you're getting the error because either you have two instances of the plugin on your site, one is activated and one isn't, or the plugin file has corrupted, as the error is stating that it's trying to declare the function woas_adminmenu twice, and the file doesn't do that so somewhere along the line something is incorrect with your setup or file. It states line 22 and 23, and the function is declared on line 21 so I think your file needs checking.
By Sarah on Thu, 19 November, 2009
Hi, love this plugin very much.
Just curious, is it possible to add in "image thumbnail" or snapshot for each link?
By KeeMan on Mon, 3 May, 2010
Hi KeeMan, it's not something I've thought of doing but it could be possible as you can add an image to the link in the Add/Edit link page. I'll add it to the list for you
By Sarah on Sun, 6 June, 2010