Tweet This is a WordPress plugin for Twitter developed by me. In this 1-hour screencast, I talk over the first 440 lines of the main file, tweet-this.php.
Watch the screencast (.html, Flash, 33MB) or download the source file (.fbr, BB FlashBack Express 2 Player, 54MB).
I’ve decided I’m going to consolidate my other websites, thripp.com/blog, composersjourney.com, and iseeafish.com under the richardxthripp.thripp.com domain. Nobody goes to them anyway… they don’t have the PageRank to rank high in Google’s search results… this site does, so why should I try to fight Google?
It’s really better to have all your sites under one domain anyway. I’m not going to merge daytonastate.org, since its value lies largely in the domain itself (similar to daytonastate.edu), but my other websites will be consolidated here including previous content over the next few months… I might even sell off the domains! But probably not.
On a sad note, today my half-sister Anna would be 11 years old. I only met her once, and she passed away in an accident at six months. She died on Father’s Day… 1999-12-16 / 2000-06-17 never forget.
I’ve been having a lot of fun tutoring and meeting people at Daytona State College even though my classes ended Oct. 22, 2010 since I took Fall A classes. Next semester I want to be a tutor at the Academic Support Center or Student Disability Services for math and English… should be fun and help me to relate to people.
I met Trina Chakravarty at Rotary Int’l. last week. She was Miss India USA 2005 and Miss India Worldwide 2006, she’s going to be an M.D. (medical doctor) next year at 24, and she even writes a blog! So amazing…
I have been slacking posting newly re-edited photos here, but I’ll have some this weekend.
Finally, I have decided to disable Infolinks on my sites. Infolinks is an ad network that double-underlines words on your site with ads. They are just too annoying, and they make next to …
I’ve set up some virtual Thripp.com subdomains for pages on richardxthripp.thripp.com that used to subdirectories. All the old URLs 301 to these new URLs. Check out the first batch of subdomains:
about.thripp.com
contact.thripp.com
domains.thripp.com
index.thripp.com
gallery.thripp.com
portfolio.thripp.com
portraits.thripp.com
All of these are for me only and are completely part of richardxthripp.thripp.com. In 2008, I intended Thripp.com to be a social network built on WordPress MU with subdomains for each user, but that never worked out so I feel comfortable owning the *.thripp.com namespace for my own projects now. I will never be changing the URL of this blog from richardxthripp.thripp.com since it’s been that way for so long, though.
This was actually very hard to implement. I’m using WordPress MU 2.7 and the WP Subdomains plugin, but I had to do hacking on both and I can’t get any subdirectories on these virtual subdomains to work so I have to use query strings. For example, gallery.thripp.com is paginated so page 2 is gallery.thripp.com/?page=2/ because I couldn’t get gallery.thripp.com/2/ to work. However, I’m glad I set this up since I will be using Thripp.com subdomains for many pages and ad campaigns in the months to come.
30 minutes ago, I received this email from Google AdSense:
Hello,
We continually review all publishers according to our Terms and Conditions and program policies, and we reserve the right to disable publishers or sites that are not in compliance with our policies.
Our specialists have found that your account is not in compliance with these program policies. As a result, we have disabled your account.
Google has certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers. We believe strongly in freedom of expression and therefore
offer broad access to content across the web without censoring results. At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the ads we display in our AdWords program and the sites on which we choose to display them in our AdSense program, as noted in our respective Terms and Conditions.Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
I immediately filled out an appeal, but I don’t even know why I was banned. The email doesn’t say. Is Google trying to cheat me out of the $570 they owe me? I earned $430 last month and $140 this month I have not yet received, and my AdSense account says they are not going to pay me until “issues” with my account are resolved. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???
If you use my Tweet This plugin, DO NOT enable “Insert Google AdSense ads to support Tweet This” anymore. Unless my account is restored, Google will just keep the money. It won’t help me at all.
UPDATED 2010-11-11 20:45 GMT: Here are some details of my AdSense usage I posted on this forum:
I’ve been doing the same thing for the past 8 months and receiving Google checks every month, so it’s really surprising that
…
I use the WordPress plugin Exec-PHP to use PHP in my posts, but under normal circumstances if I do this with “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” (a.k.a. tag balancing) checked in Settings > Writing, I get this nasty error whenever I try to use PHP:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/thripp/public_html/wp-content/plugins/exec-php/includes/runtime.php(42) : eval()’d code on line 1
The solution the developer provides is to simply disable that feature. That’s fine most of the time, but I encountered a tricky situation where I needed to use PHP and have WordPress close open HTML tags which I simply could not close.
My posts on this blog are usually photos with short descriptions, but occasionally I write long articles which may go on for thousands of words. Up until last year, my tag, category, and archive pages displayed the full content of my posts. WordPress excerpts were unacceptable for two reasons: 1.) they are always 55 words; 2.) I use Post Thumb Revisited to auto-convert 800×600 images to 400×300 thumbnails, but it only converts them through the_content filter, not the_excerpt. While the excerpt length is customizable in WP 2.8 or newer, I am unwilling to upgrade from WPMU 2.7. What I really needed was an excerpt that used the_content, respected all HTML tags, worked with Exec-PHP, and let me customize the excerpt length.
Enter The Excerpt Reloaded. The plugin was 5 years old, so I found an updated version with bugfixes that was only 3 years old. I quickly wrote this code for my theme’s index.php file and left it this way until today:
if(is_category() || is_archive()) the_excerpt_reloaded(200, ‘all’, ‘content’,
true, “<strong>… continue reading</strong>”, false, 1, false, false,
’p’, ‘Click to see whole entry.’, true);
else the_content(__(’… CONTINUE READING’));
This has been the best of both worlds. It cuts off the …
I’ve been hosting all my websites on a WiredTree Managed Hybrid VPS Server since July 2009, and the plan has not changed a bit until this week. For the past year and a half, WiredTree offered 1GB RAM, 80GB disk space, 2TB bandwidth, and 1 processor core for $99 per month. Starting Monday, this plan has changed to 2GB RAM, 100GB disk space, and 3TB bandwidth, with no increase in price. These stats are real—WiredTree does not oversell and this resources are always reserved for your account. If you aren’t using all your RAM or disk space, nobody else gets to use it—it stays unused and immediately available to you.
Hybrid Servers are actually beefed-up Virtual Private Servers—the name VPS is not used because they provide the resources of a low or medium end dedicated server without the expense. For instance, a WiredTree server might contain two 1TB hard drives, 16GB RAM, and two quad-core processors. Such a server might host 7 Hybrid Server accounts, giving each 2GB RAM, 100GB RAID10 mirrored disk space, and a processor core. The remaining core, RAM, and disk space would be used for software called Virtuozzo, which partitions the server into virtual machines. Such a powerful server may cost under $400 a month to operate—WiredTree would get almost $700 from seven different clients. While offering the server directly to clients is an option, most people do not need and cannot afford such a powerful machine. A Hybrid Server is a much better option.
Prior to this, WiredTree Hybrid Servers were not a spectacular deal—you could find faster servers at cheaper prices elsewhere. Thousands of people choose WiredTree not for their rock-bottom prices, but for their superior uptime, customer support, and reputation. You can …
Today I released Tweet This 1.7, the first update to my WordPress plugin in nearly a year. This version adds OAuth support, and it is an important upgrade because Twitter will be disabling basic authentication tomorrow, Aug. 31, 2010. I’ve also added support for the Bit.ly API and fixed many bugs, including problems with automatic tweeting.
Tweet This 1.7 is also available on the WordPress plugin repository and it has been downloaded 100 times since I released it an hour ago. Twitter requires each user of Tweet This to fill out a lengthy and complex application registration form and then copy and paste four API keys to the Tweet This settings, all of which long and confusing, like “5151540-ADGJeaa-dgaiojt-3ugeaei-ghq75gj-dwerty.” Even Alex King, creator of Twitter Tools, has complained about it. Unfortunately, it’s my only option, so I’ve included detailed instructions on the Tweet This options page.
Please leave me feedback and bug reports, as I will be actively developing Tweet This over the coming months.
On my new site ComposersJourney.com I post my musical compositions like this:
Ode to Ted Kennedy MP3, 1:52, 1.35MB
Ode to Ted Kennedy MIDI, 7.69KB
Ode to Ted Kennedy PDF, 25.47KB
Ode to Ted Kennedy Score (Sibelius 6), 40.85KB
I upload each file through WordPress to the /files/ directory with subdirectories for years and months enabled. The filename is the title of the musical composition followed by my initials and the date of posting, and I use hyphens as spacers. I use a modded version of WPaudio to turn MP3 links into JavaScript-based music players.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could automate the creation of these links instead of having to type the filenames four times, the title four times, the size of each file, and the length of the MP3?
The first step was to download and enable Exec-PHP so I could use PHP code in posts. Then I checked “Disable the visual editor when writing” in my profile and under Settings > Writing I unchecked “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically.” Next, I wrote this function and added it to my theme’s functions.php file:
function flnk($e = ‘mp3′, $t = ‘MP3′, $a = ”, $c = ”, $l = ”) {
if($c != ”) $c .= ‘, ‘;
$d = wp_upload_dir();
$n = array(’Bytes’, ‘KB’, ‘MB’, ‘GB’);
$b = ‘/’ . get_the_time(’Y/m’) . ‘/’ . basename(get_permalink()) .
‘-rxt-’ . get_the_time(’Ymd’) . $a . ‘.’ . $e;
$p = $d['basedir'] . $b;
$u = $d['baseurl'] . $b;
if(file_exists($p)) $f = filesize($p);
else $f = ‘1000′;
if($e == ‘mp3′) {
$i = round(($f/(12000))-.5);
if($l == ”) $m = floor($i/60) . ‘:’ .
str_pad($i % 60, 2, 0, STR_PAD_LEFT);
else $m = $l;
$m .= ‘, ‘;
}
if($e != ‘mp3′) $z = ‘ target=”_blank”‘;
echo ‘<a href=”‘ . $u . ‘”‘ . $z . ‘>’ . get_the_title() . ‘ ‘ .
$t . ‘, ‘
…
Most blogs consist of one person commenting on the world, and a whole bunch of people passing by, spending five minutes to skim several posts, and perhaps making a comment or two. These people move on to never return, and they are replaced by more people who in turn do the same.
While blogs are typically considered more communal than typical websites, they may in fact be less so. Other websites have forums which receive hundreds of posts per day from established and respected members. That is a community. Blogs have comments. If you’re lucky (like with this blog), they are threaded with email notifications. This has the potential for community building, as people may make comments, reply to other comments, and return to reply again. However, it generally does not create community. Most people still visit once and only once.
Some bloggers try adding a forum. I did this, and the sad reality is that you will get no participation. For every 100 people that visit your website, one person will make a comment. And for every 100 people who comment on your blog, one person will sign up and post on your forum. Even if you put a widget in your sidebar with the latest forum topics, you’ll still get little to no participation. The forum is basically a separate website, one that will receive no benefit from the fame of your blog. Unless your blog is so popular that you’ve turned off comments, forums are a waste of time. You must chose: forums or comments. One or the other. Not both. On a popular blog, you may be better off disabling comments and creating a forum requiring registration. It cuts out the noise.
Bloggers used to require registration to comment, but fortunately no one does this anymore. It is …
I made a custom Internal Server Error page for the Thripp.com network, with all the photos from my portfolio. Error pages are fun again. 
I put a lot of ads there too, so I can monetize the outages. Plus, the links are to the photos on my jpgmag.com gallery, and all the thumbnails are on Photobucket, so the page is light-weight, won’t chew up bandwidth, and makes my photos accessible when the database is down. It’s only 10KB!
Check out this HTTP 500 page; instead of being rudely interrupted with a cryptic error message and an accusation that you broke the server, on Thripp.com, you’re greeted by beautiful photography (and plenty of ads to boot).
