Twitter is extremely popular but not amongst developers.  When Twitter exploded into the public domain it was not just down to what Twitter is used for but what 3rd party developers were creating with it’s API. You only have to do a quick search for Twitter apps and you will find there are many to choose from. The problem faced by these apps is that Twitter is now putting a cap on how much they can use the API.  I like to use 3rd party apps like Osfoora and like many others I don’t necessarily like to use the official Twitter app.  I find the app to be very cumbersome and a lot of the apps new features have been on 3rd party apps for ages.

Many are moving to new upcoming solutions like app.net but I don’t like the idea of moving to a paid solution not because of the money but because the everyday user won’t pay for something like this when there are free solutions.

So what do we do and what is the future of Twitter?

I cannot say for sure, Twitter is a very popular tool and nothing else seems to be come close at the moment. Google+ for me is just not got the right following, it seems to be more popular with those in the I.T industry which is great if you are into that but if you are a local business then this is not for you (yet). Many are trying but I am not sure how successful they are.

For the time being I will still be using Twitter but I will be keeping my eye out for any new solutions.

I have been delving more and more into StartBox recently, in total I have built 5 sites using this excellent WordPress Framework.

My latest site which will hopefully be going live very soon needed the ability to allow the user to have an options page that had a WYSIWYG Editor. Currently StartBox does not have this ability, so I took a look under the hood and found it was extremely easy to add this feature into options code.

Here is how I did it

I added the following code to the top of admin_settings.php (this is in StartBox > includes > functions):

add_action('admin_print_scripts', 'add_thejs' );
add_action('admin_print_styles', 'add_thecss' );

function add_thecss()
{
    wp_enqueue_style('thickbox');
}

function add_thejs()
    {
        if ( user_can_richedit() ){
            wp_enqueue_script('editor');
            wp_enqueue_script('media-upload');
            add_action('admin_head', 'wp_tiny_mce');

        }
    }

That adds the relevant scripts and styles for the editor.

Then I simply added this into the elseif statements:

elseif ($setting['type'] == 'wysiwyg') {
$output .= sb_input::wysiwyg( $setting_id, $label, $value, $desc );
}

And finally added a new function:

public function wysiwyg( $id, $label, $value, $desc ) {

        $output = "t" . '<p>'."n";
        $output .= "t" . "t" . '<label for="' . THEME_OPTIONS . '[' . $id . ']' . '">' . $label . '</label><br/>'."n";
        $info = THEME_OPTIONS . '[' . $id . ']';
        $output .= the_editor($value,$info);
        if ($desc) { $output .= "t" . "t" . '<br/><span> ' . $desc . ' </span>'."n"; }
        $output .= "t" . '</p>'."n";
        return $output;
    }

And hey presto it works

Since using this I have noticed one small bug with the buttons for the editor. For some reason when there are more than one editor on the page the editors (apart fromt the very first one) show both rows of buttons. If anyone of you know of a fix for this please let me know.

As with any of my code snippets make sure you test this before using it on a live site.

The good news is that Brian will be adding this to the next release of StartBox so we can all use it in the future

Happy New Year to everyone!

I hope this year is better than the last and you are all successful in what ever you do.

Best Wishes

Lee

For those of you using StartBox this maybe useful to you.

If you enable ColorBox as per the StartBox docs it will allow you to put the CSS class “colorbox” on your images which will then make the image pop-up in a window on the page as per a light box script.

You can see the script in action by click on the ColorBox image on the right.

This is great but wouldn’t it be better if it automatically did it for all images in your post and also grouped them, allowing you to add your images (leaving the link to the image in there which WordPress does by default) and having it all done for you.

This will work with or without StartBox or WordPres but you will need to enable colorbox in your web page. This code will also work with a few changes for other lightbox effect scripts using jQuery but for this purpose I will provide the code for ColorBox.

Here is the code:

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

	//set all images(bmp, gif, jpg, png etc) with links to use colorbox
	var thumbnails = 'a:has(img)[href$=".bmp"],a:has(img)[href$=".gif"],a:has(img)[href$=".jpg"],a:has(img)[href$=".jpeg"],a:has(img)[href$=".png"],a:has(img)[href$=".BMP"],a:has(img)[href$=".GIF"],a:has(img)[href$=".JPG"],a:has(img)[href$=".JPEG"],a:has(img)[href$=".PNG"]';

		jQuery(thumbnails).addClass("colorbox");
		jQuery(".colorbox").colorbox({rel:'group1', maxWidth: "90%", maxHeight: "90%", opacity:.6});
	jQuery(".ext").colorbox({iframe:true, innerWidth:"90%", innerHeight:"90%", opacity:.6});

});

It simply checks for any links that link to the specified image extension and adds the CSS class “colorbox” to the link and then calls the colorbox script to do its magic.

You will need to include this jQuery into your site by either putting it into your header.php in your theme (make sure jQuery is called first) or if you are using StartBox you can put it into a Javascript file and have it enqueued like this example on the StartBox forum additional scripts (You will need to be a member I believe to view the code)

I hope this helps

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. I hope next your is better than ever for you all. January will mark the 2nd year since being a Full time freelancer and it has been a great journey. Thank you all, I am looking forward to what 2011 will bring.

Today WordPress have launched their new app for Windows 7 mobile phone: http://windowsphone.wordpress.org/

If you are running a website or blog using WordPress which many of the sites I build use, then make sure you have a look at WordPress for ios http://ios.wordpress.org/ (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) or WordPress for Android phones http://android.wordpress.org/.

You can then edit your posts and pages while on the move.

If you have seen my Tweets or have read the news on here recently, then you know I have been using a WordPress framework called StartBox. I have been extremely pleased with it and Brian who is the creator of StartBox has been very helpful.

I am currently working on a new website that needs to load a random image from a set of image on page load. I thought I could make use of the current slideshow feature that StartBox has and adapt it to load one image instead of loading all images into a slideshow.

First of all I tried changing the shortcode for the slideshow to output the random image. I just removed the for each loop and added code to get a random item in the array. Don’t worry if you don’t want to know how I modified it, you can simply copy and paste the following code into your functions.php file in your child theme if you have StartBox.

// Handle Shortcode
function sb_randomimage_shortcode($atts, $content = NULL) {
	extract(shortcode_atts(array('id' => 0), $atts));

	$size = get_post_meta($id, 'size', true);

	switch($size) {
		case 'max':
			$dimensions = get_post_meta($id, 'size_max', true);
		break;
		case 'custom':
			$dimensions = get_post_meta($id, 'size_custom', true);
		break;
		case 'min':
		default:
			$dimensions = get_post_meta($id, 'size_min', true);
		break;
	}

	$slides = get_post_meta($id, 'slide', false);
	usort($slides, 'sb_slide_sort'); // order the elements of the array
	$total = count($slides);
	$random = (mt_rand()%$total);

	$result = '';
	$result .= '
';
	$slide = $slides[$random];
	$result .= sb_post_image( $dimensions['width'], $dimensions['height'], null, 1, array( 'image_id' => $slide['attachment_id'], 'title' => $slide['caption'], 'alt' => $slide['caption'], 'echo' => false ) );

	$result .= '
';

	$result .= '';

	return $result;
}
add_shortcode('randomimage', 'sb_randomimage_shortcode');

It will allow you to use a shortcode like this in any post or page (without the space after the [ ):

[ randomimage id="123"]

This works fine but I wanted to save having a duplicate shortcode for the sake of it, so I began updating the plugin Brian created in StartBox.

Now when I add a Slideshow the options panel has the option to show a random image from the set on page load.

By default the slideshow is on but if you choose Random Image then it will hide the slideshow options and leave the size option, like in the example image. You can still set the size but instead of the animated slideshow it will only load one image every time the page is loaded.

If this is useful to you then here is the slideshows.php file for you to download and use yourself. This works with the latest version of StartBox which is version 2.4.8.4

Random Image slideshows.php file for StartBox

You will need to download the file which I have zipped and extract the slideshows.php file. Then using ftp you will need to upload it to your website into the startbox theme. The folder the file needs to go in is in startbox > includes > plugins. There will already be a file there with the same name. To be safe, make sure you backup the original or rename it for now and then upload the new slideshows.php file.

Once uploaded you can use the original shortcode for the slideshows e.g:

[ slideshow id="123"]

You never know Brian may think this is useful and include it in the next release, but for now follow these instructions and let me know how you get on. If you have any trouble just put the original file back or delete the new one and set the old file back to the correct name.

Although this is working fine on my site please make sure you test this before using it on a live website. You are using the file at your own risk.

The Funk House is delighted to be working with a Southampton based charity called DAIN (The Disability Advice and Information Network). The Funk House is providing the business with a new website that will allow them to edit their own content and establish an online presence for the first time. The website is due to launch in the New Year.

I finally got around to updating the website and I chose to use StartBox from Brian Richards. It is a WordPress framework that allows me to create great WordPress websites without having to start from scratch each time. I will be writing more in detail about it soon but if you are into building websites with WordPress then make sure you check out StartBox.

The new site has more funky jQuery magic in the portfolio section and a new home page. I have made use of some of the new features of WordPress such as the Custom Post Types and the new menu.

Along with the new refresh of the website the blog is now going to be updated much more, so make sure you keep an eye out for new posts. If any of you followed my articles that I wrote on bloggingtips.com then I hope to continue on my own website when I have time.

If you use a Mac and use FTP for any reason then you should be using Flow from Extendmac.

Flow is an FTP program that is simple to use and has excellent features.
I am a little bias as I use it all the time, however I have used many other FTP programs and Flow just seems to work.

The interface is what you would expect from Mac software, it is clean, sleek and a little bit whizzy. Add a new bookmark and you will see what I mean by whizzy, the panel slides in and lets you add the necessary details for your website FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or MobileMe iDisk servers. Transfer a file and the transfer panel slides in showing the progress and when finished it slides back.

Want to edit some files on your site directly?

I use this feature all the time, not only can you use the inbuilt text editor to edit html, php or any other text based files you can also set it to open files in your favourite editor. I edit my php files using Dreamweaver (don’t worry I use it as a glorified text editor) directly from the server and each time I save the file it shows a quick Growl notification to let me know it was saved. I can then view the site and the change has happened.

Need to see what image is what on the server?

You can with ease by simply clicking on the QuickLook button, it pops up a preview and you can view the image.

My favourite part of Flow is using Droplets. Droplets allow you to use a bookmark as a icon that is stored on your Mac. As an example I put a droplet into my working folder for a website. Then instead of having to launch Flow each time I want to upload a file I can drag the file onto the Droplet and it uploads the file for me.  A progress bar pops up to let me know it has worked even for multiple files.

I have only mentioned a few features that I particularly like but there are so many neat features that you need to try it yourself.

For one lucky reader I am fortunate enough to have a spare copy of Flow that Brian from Extendmac is allowing me to giveaway.

The Competition

To win a copy of Flow simply Tweet this article making sure you have @thefunkhouse in your tweet so I know you have done it.

Here is an example tweet you could use:

RT @thefunkhouse Flow FTP for Mac from @extendmac Free Giveaway:
 http://is.gd/adNLp A funky FTP program for mac that is so useful

If for any reason you do not use Twitter please leave a comment below stating how useful Flow would be for you. Please do not leave short comments that mean nothing, they will not be entered into the competition.

The winner will then be randomly chosen from all of those who participate.

The closing date is 18th March 2010 at 1pm GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

HAS NOW ENDED

The winner will be notified on Twitter and I will also leave a comment below. The winner will then need to email me using the contact form leaving their Full name and email address so the license can be issued from Brian at Extendmac.

Good luck!