FiddyP | 2/33 | The personal blog of Andy BaileyFiddyP | The personal blog of Andy Bailey

New CommentLuv version 2.9

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Andy | Permalink 7

I’ve had a blast launching the new free version of CommentLuv and it occurred to me that I haven’t actually put a feature list out there so people know what’s changed in this new version.

So, here’s what’s new :

Completely Standalone
No need to ask your readers to register elsewhere or for you to save your feed URL

New leaner faster code
More reliable and secure code that conforms to WP standards

Dofollow Control
You decided if you want to make the links dofollow and who gets to have dofollow

Grows your membership/list
Enable 10 last posts for readers that register to your site and grow your list!

Auto response to other CommentLuv blogs
Never worry about your feed again when you comment on other CommentLuv enabled blogs

Activate Only Option
You can install it so it works when you comment on other CommentLuv enabled blogs but not actually have it on your comments

On Pages, Posts or Both!
Choose where you want to have CommentLuv enabled (if at all)

Use your own image
Your choice of text, supplied images or use your own image below the comment form. Link it to commentluv or not, it’s up to you!

Custom Messages
You can set what unregistered users see in the info panel or when they comment

Minifying Compatibility
Ability to make the plugin work with minifying and caching plugins (advanced settings)

Manual Insert
New and improved code to allow you manually insert the badge code anywhere you want

Diagnostics (advanced)
New section to aid in getting help. Full list of settings that you can copy and paste into a support ticket

Helpful Embedded Videos
Helpful videos right where you need them (with subtitles), right in the settings page.

phew! that took a while…

just you wait until you see what’s coming in CommentLuv premium!

You can Download CommentLuv here

Blog News, Blog Tools, Wordpress commentluv, plugin, profit, Wordpress

I am NOT a BMX bandit!

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Andy | Permalink 53

I like to ride my..

I got given a mountain bike a couple of weeks ago and since I’ve moved to part time work, I’ve been going out every day on it riding around Lancaster. I regularly ride over 10 miles in a session and as Lancaster is a cycle friendly town, there’s loads of different routes to try.

Bring back the 80′s

Today, I had a crash/scrape. I remember being super awesome on my BMX back in the day (early 80′s) where bunny hopping up a kerb was almost genetically inherited knowledge. So much so that it didn’t require a seconds thought.

Now though, much older (and not even that much wiser) I thought it was the same old ‘push down, pull up, back flick’ to get up a kerb. The thing is, back then in the good old 80′s, I never used to travel so frickin fast down a hill, there weren’t 18 gears, only future rocket bikes had front suspension and kerbs were, well, kerb size.

Now.. 18th gear, at least 30 mph, a kerb (uk term for the bit that raises and separates the sidewalk from the asphalt) that would be more appropriately called a frickin plinth and an unqualified belief that I was still a BMX bandit who could bunny hop anything and you’ve got a recipe for a soreness.

Ouch?

I remember, whilst in mid air, thinking that there’s nothing I can do. I remember not feeling regret at trying to bunny hop at speed, I accepted that it was now too late to do anything and I was going to crash and it might hurt a little bit. All this went through my head before I’d even surrendered to gravity and the friction coefficient of concrete.

A scraping sound, an ‘oomph’ as I met the floor and even a roll or two and I was on my back staring at the blue blue sky.

“hmm’, thought I , “it doesn’t hurt”

A crash at that speed, a meeting of pavement at that velocity and it didn’t hurt? I must be either dead already or I’m an undiscovered super hero. I considered what costume I would have and if I had a home planet that I’d been sent away from when I was a small child. That explains why I had that “I must be adopted” feeling growing up.

As it turns out, I’m just a little dramatic (and maybe even slightly concussed) and have good leather riding gloves and a wicked good bike helmet that protected me from the almighty whack my head got.

I got up (slowly) and sat on the convenient boulders on the side of the pavement and gathered my thoughts. I felt a little sick but I figured that must be the landing flat on my stomach and then I started white-ing out, everything went to high contrast and gain and I felt a bit dizzy.

So, I took a picture of my arm and sent it to twitter of course!!

Then I laid back and watched the sky until the dizziness faded and I no longer felt sick.

40 minutes and 5 miles later, I was back home to much ‘oooh!’ and ‘awwww!’ ‘s when everyone in my shop saw my arm.

Get a helmet (and maybe riding gloves)

Schwinn Thrasher Adult Micro Bicycle Helmet (Adult)

You hear those adverts on the radio about safety, you see the reports on the news about cyclists whose lives were saved because they wore a helmet and you think, “hmm, whatever”.

It turns out that they were right!! if I hadn’t been wearing my cycle helmet, I would have probably suffered a serious concussion. I whacked my head on the floor when I met it with a serious amount of force. Not only did my helmet save me from possible brain spillage, it prevented me from getting all scratched up and sore for weeks.

My riding gloves (which I only bought to keep my hands clean and prevent blisters from the grips) were destroyed as my hands went out (superman styley) to protect me from the fall and they certainly helped protect my delicate typing hands.

So, all I have is the graze or two on my arm which wouldn’t be there if I’d had elbow pads on but, seriously, there’s a limit to my safety (un)consciousness!

Featured, News crash, cycle, helmet, injury, profit

Bypass / Disable print dialog box in firefox with javascript print()

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Andy | Permalink 22

Just print!

In my ePoS system project, I have the need to open a popup with javascript and print the contents without seeing the dialog box.

Everywhere I searched, there were the ‘you don’t wanna do that because….’ from know it all keyboard warriors saying it was bad because evil doers could send porn to your printer.

What about intranets and web apps?

Finally, I figured it out and as long as you’re using Firefox and you have access to it then you’re ready to make it print without a nasty dialog…

Open firefox and put about:config in the address bar and press enter (you will need to click the button that shows to say you know what you’re doing)
Type print.always_print_silent in the filter box at the top
If you have an entry already there and it is set to false just right click it and choose ‘toggle’ to set it to true.
If there is no entry there already then follow on…
- right click the screen and choose New->boolean
- enter print.always_print_silent as the preference name when asked and press enter
- set boolean value to true and press enter

That’s it, you will no longer see the dialog box when you print. Beware though, it will try to print to the last printer you used when you had the dialog box open. If you ever need to change it then you will need to toggle the value for print.always_print_silent by following the above steps.

Open a javascript popup and print the contents

Now you can print without dialogs, you can use the following code to open a popup window and print it.

open the popup

windowname = window.open('url.html','name',options);

the options you have available are:

Option	Values	Description
location	yes\|no	Does the location bar show?
menubar	yes\|no	Does the menubar show?
scrollbars	yes\|no	Do scrollbars show?
status	yes\|no	Does the status bar show\|
titlebar	yes\|no	Does the titlebar show?
toolbar	yes\|no	Does the toolbar show?
resizable	yes\|no	Can you resize the window?
height	pixels	height of window
width	pixels	width of window
directories	yes\|no	Does the personal toolbar show?
innerHeight	pixels	specifies the inner height of window
innerWidth	pixels	specifies the inner width of window
screenX	pixels	specifies distance from left edge of screen
screenY	pixels	specifies distance from top edge of screen

For example, to open a pop window showing the file called example.html with no menu bar, with a width of 430 pixels, height of 700 pixels, no toolbar, with scrollbars and with the window you would use this command

winname = window.open('/example.html','newwin','menubar=no,width=430,height=700,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,screenX=300');

To close that window, you can add this

winname.close();

To print the window, you can add this to the example.html page

self.print();

or to print it from the calling page, you might need to pause for a little while before issuing the print command so it has time to load the page content first..

setTimeout("winname.window.print();",500);

All the commands need to be within <script> /script tags

Code dialog box, disable, firefox, javascript, print, profit

You’re taking the PoS!

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 11

I’ve had to put my partnership project on hold for the entire month of December so I can work on a new PoS system for our takeaway shop. OMG, I’ve been saying I was going to do it since we moved up here and took over the business and finally, I will be sitting down at the PC and attempting the job.

Why not buy one?

Hah! you do know I’m working in a CHINESE takeaway don’t you? One thing I’ve learned about Chinese businesses is that if you can get away with using something that doesn’t cost money then do. LOL, the only thing that doesn’t apply to (thank heavens) is food and food preparation equipement.

Seriously though, I’ve tried all sorts of other PoS systems and to be honest, they all look like utter shite! They’re still in the old style of Windows and look like they’ve been coded for DOS. Besides, none of them have the features we need like automatic mapping and all the options that we require for menu adjustments. We also need it to be bilingual too..

Good Start

I already have my own caller id system written in Visual Basic that opens up a page on my local server that handles customers details and shows exactly where they live and directions to get there. My first step is to get that integrated into the new wordpress plugin which I’ve started that uses custom post types for the menu items.

I’m hoping that all the code I’ve been doing over the past 6 months has put me in good stead to complete the project.

Quiet please…

For the entire month I will be quiet. yup. shhhhh!

Code firedwok, point of sale, pos, profit, vb

Would you buy ‘almost premium’ plugins for your blog?

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 36

I’ve decided on a course of action for having my own products.. Rather than write an ebook which I wouldn’t do anyway because I just despise writing copy! and rather than try and convert my CommentLuv plugin to become a fully fledged big budget premium plugin (which I will do eventually), I am going to try my hand at releasing some smaller plugins for a very reasonable price.

People want updates and support

From my own experience of my free plugins, one thing that I know people want when installing plugins to their site is somewhere to go for help when things go wrong or when other plugins don’t play nice.

Another thing they want is regular updates or at least the knowledge that their site isn’t going to break because they update their WordPress code and the plugin doesn’t play nice with the new functions.

If it is too big it’s too bad!

The biggest road block to me releasing the super duper update to CommentLuv that would take it into the realms of ‘premium plugin’ is the fact that it’s already grown to such a long list of source code and it’s functionality is already a headache when I start thinking what I’ll have to do it add this or that feature.

I’ve seen it with other premium plugin coders that are trying to survive on their own. Releasing something so big and so super duper that you can charge between 50 and 100 dollars for it means you have to really make it super duper and chock full of features. Then you’ll have to create a support site and probably forums where you’ll spend 50% of your time, the other 50% will be either coding the updates or marketing. Good luck if you want to release more than 1, you’ll need a team of coders, supporters and designers and marketers.

For he guys at premium.wpmudev.org it’s not a big deal but for little ol’ me? well, I’m going to try something different. Something that is maintainable and wont require a visit to Dragons Den or seek angle investors. Something that I can actually release more than one of.

Bring on low cost, great value blog bling!

My plan is to release a set of great value blog bling plugins at a price where people wont have to break the bank or hesitate for too long before buying. I’m going to integrate it with the existing comluv credits system which allows existing comluv affiliates to advertise them and earn a percentage from any credits purchases that result and I’m going to provide top level support that is exclusive to people who purchase the plugins.

They are going to be useful little buggers, these plugins -o -mine! And because they are going to be managable in size and updates, I’ll be able to release more than one. Here’s three very reasonably priced plugins that I have written and found to be really useful for my own sites.

Dashboard Tweeter

Price: – $20
A nice dashboard widget that greets you with your latest @replies from twitter and allows you to respond without ever leaving the dashboard area. The advantage is that you can set up your own twitter application so when your replies go out there, there’ll be a handy link directly back to your blog for people to click.

It also has Direct messages and your twitter stream to browse too. All links and hashtags are automatically converted to open in a new window links and all replies/DM’s will use the proper format so that they are fully compatible with the twitter api.

You can see what it looks like in action here – Dashboard Tweeter

Installation video, lifetime updates and support forum

future: this could be expanded to allow your recent posts to be tweeted from the widget and even notify users who have supplied their twitter username when their comment has received a reply.

Guest Blogger Notify

Price – $15
If you’ve ever had a guest blogger come to visit and write on your site then you’ll like this one. It will allow you to choose which meta boxes you want shown on an add new post page in your dashboard when it’s a contributor.

It’ll also add a user configurable message box to the write post page that you can use to let contributors know what your posting guidelines are direct on the page they’re writing on.

What sets it apart will be that it automatically emails the contributor when their post is published using the message you set.

No more support tickets or emails from contributors asking if their post is published yet!

Instructional video and premium priority exclusive support.

Future : this could be expanded to have a feature where guest posts will show an author box with the users bio description and links to their site.

Choose Full Feed Post

Price: -$15
This will be useful if you use subscribe to feed by email services by Feedburner or Feedblitz.

It will allow you, on a post by post basis, to choose which posts will show the full text and which posts will show just the summary in the RSS feed of your site.

Now you no longer need to choose one or the other, you can have both! If you have set your feed to excerpts only but you have a newsletter type post or something you would rather the reader sees fully in their feed read then you can. Similarly, if you have full feed posts set then a particularly long post can be set as excerpt only which keeps the size of the emails that are sent out down to manageable levels.

Same full exclusive support and instructional videos.

future: This can be expanded to have a feed only shortcode function so you can show text , images and links only in the feed. A great way to encourage people to subscribe.

Life time updates!

One of the advantages to me and to the purchasing user would be to have lifetime updates and priority support.

If I am getting paid for it then answering your support questions is a no brainer! I would be happy to exchange my time for your money

Updates to wordpress break the plugin? no problem! if you’ve paid for a plugin then it seems fair that I would make sure that it would be compatible with future versions of WordPress. Once you have paid, you will be guaranteed lifetime updates.

All of this for just a few dollars.

Would you pay ?

If you knew you were going to receive 1st rate support and guaranteed updates, would you consider paying between 5 and 20 dollars for a plugin?

your comments are welcome!

Blog Tools, Making / Made Money, Wordpress plugin, premium, profit, support, updates

Drown out the noise and get a quiet nights sleep

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 33

I finally got a good nights sleep!!

Nope, they’re not replacement day-glow nipples! they’re a set of comfortable silicone ear plugs that fit nice and deep in your ear to drown out external noise. I finally had a proper sleep without being woken up by the over sensitive car alarm or the too-fast drivers who scrape their under carriage when they speed over the speed bumps outside my window.

Cheap as chips (and better for your ears)

I got 10 pairs for less than a fiver and because they’re reusable, I think they’ll last a long time! (a lot longer than sticking chips in your ears anyway)

They have a small plastic rod inside which help to insert them in your ear, which you have to do with two hands.. one hand that reaches around the back of your head to pull your lobe and the other inserts the plug. You can remove the rod if you want, I just pulled it out a bit and left it in while I slept.

It’s like being dead

Seriously, I thought I was dead it was so quiet! My missus has to stay up later than me some nights and normally ends up going into another room that’s cold just so she can do some accounts but no more! Once I have these little blighters in my ears, she can watch TV, count coins or talk on the phone and I’m fast asleep just a metre or so away.

I’m so much happier in the morning if I’ve had a good sleep.

Blog News, Reviews ear plugs, noise, profit, sleep, traffic

Easy aMember Protect Lite WordPress Plugin

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 0

Announcing the release of a new plugin for WordPress (single and multisite) that will allow you to use your purchase of aMemberto protect your posts and/or pages very simply, easily and best of all – do it for FREE!

Download the plugin at the wordpress site here

Download aMember 30 day trial here

How to install

Download the file from the official WordPress page or visit your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins/Add New and search for “easy amember protect lite”.
If you downloaded it, extract the folder from the zip file and upload the whole folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory using FTP
Activate the plugin

How to configure

The plugin assumes that your amember installation resides in a folder called amember in the root of your wordpress install. If your installation uses a different folder name or is in a different location you will need to set the correct location in the settings page.

How it Works

You should already have some products in your aMember setup and the PHP_Include plugin activated (it should be anyway).

The plugin will use the product ID number from your aMember setup as the value of the custom field you add to the posts or pages that you want to protect.

The aMember product you want to allow access to

Once you know your product ID, add the custom field to the post you want to protect.

If you want to allow access to more than one product, add a new custom field for each product.

Allow multiple products

Format your post with –more

If your blog shows the whole post in the archive view or blog post list, you need to use the < !--more--> tag after the text you want everyone to see. Once someone clicks on the title of the post or the link to read more, they will get redirected to the amember login page (if they aren’t already logged in).

the more tag in HTML mode

The more tag in wysiwyg mode

Have fun!

With a bit of imagination and time on the amember forums, you should be able to get your own premium content membership on WordPress site up and running in next to no time!

Notes

This plugin is not a replacement for the official amember wordpress plugin, it wont create a new user on WordPress or allow you to log in to both sites. It simply allows you to protect a single page or post from being seen by someone unless they have an active subscription to one of your amember products.

This plugin is provided ‘as is’ and is free for you to use any way you wish.

Hire me to do your dirty work!

If you want support, modifications and/or custom code then you can contact me on the amember forum (my username there is Andyb) with the details of what you want and request a quote. Prices range from 20$ for telephone support, 50$ for a simple mod, 100$ for custom coding additions and up to and over 250$ for more complex requests. (quotes are free and it costs nothing to ask!)

If you want to try out aMember before you buy, you can download a fully functional 30 day trial for free here. I recommend it if you need a quick solution to add a paywall to your site or you want to charge people to download an ebook, zip or other file.

Business Software, Wordpress amember, membership, paywall, profit, protect, Wordpress

Matrix Dreams

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 4

Am I asleep dreaming I am awake?

Neo.. wake up

I’ve been working bloody hard for the past 13 weeks on something that still isn’t even close to being finished. It’s invaded my brain so much that even whilst on holiday, every time I closed my eyes I would wake up in a sweat thinking about it.

Seriously, almost every time I fall asleep I dream about it. Even my ever faithful friend – the afternoon nap has been compromised!

The Value of Giving

That’s it, that’s the mistress my missus has become increasingly jealous over. Mrs. VoG has been driving me crazy or filling me with joy over the past few months as I try and get her to play nice with amember and pap4 (two other saucy code maidens that I’m bending to my will(y))

Click the image to see if it’s ready, if it’s not just enter your details in the form and you’ll be notified when it is. Be prepared!, this has been a mammoth task to put together and will be a brand new way to do things.. oops, I nearly let the cat out of the bag.. you’ll just have to wait and see, I’m still under a non-disclosure agreement until it’s launch time.

Tens of thousands of lines

Nope, I’m not talking about a night out with Keith Moon from The Rolling Stones! .. I’m talking about the reason this will be so good , why it’s gonna blow everyone away and also why I’m going slightly doo-lally every time I close my eyes. It’s because I’ve written over 10,000 lines of code in custom plugins, modifications and additions to existing plugins.

I’ve needed to do this because even though we’ve spent thousands of dollars on commercial scripts and 3rd party engines, they just weren’t designed to do what we wanted to do. Close, but not quite and the ‘not quite’ bit has required hours and hours and hours of discussions over skype, conference calls, sketches and ultimately hundreds and hundreds of hours at my keyboard.

BIG PROJECTS SUCK ARE COOL

Haha! it’s been a duplicitous wench of a project so far, I’ve never sworn so much at inanimate objects. I’ve torn my hair out, freaked up/down/sideways and out until , as one of the partners, Mark says, “I’ve spent all my freak”

But, it’s also been hugely fun and satisfying to venture into unknown realms of WordPress, affiliate systems, membership packages, payment gateways and PayPal IPN scripts.

I’ve learned new things about WordPress that I never knew existed, things have gone in my head that can be used forever more on a metric tonne of future ‘what if?’ projects that I’m just gagging to get started on (yes, I really am a sucker for punishment!).

This is most definitely the biggest coding project I’ve ever worked on and as much as it is painful, it’s also fun. I’m really hoping that we can get to the open the doors stage soon because, if I don’t start seeing some action and if I can’t stop saying ,”not yet” when my missus asks if it’s ready then I might just get chucked out onto the street and honestly folks, without her, no tappy tappy code monkey.

Stick with me boyshz and galshz

Stick around, keep checking in and coming back to find out more because this is one huge momma of a site and well, it’ll rock the online business / hobby / charity / social and WordPress world. If you’ve ever had a business or a website or both, you’ll see the Value of Giving on day 1.

Blog News affiliate, business, profit, Social Networking, value of giving, vog, websites

Stickin it to the G-man? no need, seriously! Dont!

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Andy | Permalink 34

It always amazes me how much time and effort that people will put in to SEO tricks and tactics, how they swear that they know Google will ‘see’ this or ‘know’ that based on some rumour of a overheard bit of gossip written by a black hat SEO guru. Lol, what is a SEO guru anyway?

It’s an emperors new clothes designer that’s what! If someone tells you that they know what the Google algorithm wants then they are feeding you a line of BS because no one knows and if they did, Google would change it so it would be old news very quickly.

Is all SEO hopeless or even real?

Of course not! there are things that you can do that are known as ‘best practices’ or more commonly known as, ‘common sense’ and you can find out about them from Google itself from their webmaster pages and blog.

A good friend of mine who has successfully got his clients to the number one position on Google for their chosen terms recently wrote an interesting article on SEO and is it real?. He spends his life on and around Google search and even he says that you can try too hard.

The human factor

I recently had emails go to and fro with a colleague and she was quoting another SEO guy who said to bold this term and only do it once and how that is how the Google algorithm ‘knows’ what the article is about.

That makes me lol! Google algorithm ‘knows’ nothing! it can’t ‘see’ anything either, it can only trawl text and html source. It doesn’t look at images, it only stores what they’re name is and whether or not it has a caption and what that caption is.

Here’s a little experiment I want to try to prove that last paragraph..

Pages: 1 2 3

Blog News, Wordpress algorithm, google, heisenberg, profit, seo