3rd Party Authentication

3rd Party Authentication is a wordpress plugin that allows wordpress to authenticate against other authentication systems. These include:

  • Gmail / Google Apps
  • Any generic POP/IMAP email service
  • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/3rd-party-authentication/

    Known Issues
    There is a known issue related to the google login, sometimes it requires the user to enter a captcha (one of those pattern of fuzzy letters), especially if a user types the wrong password. At the moment the plugin doesn’t handle this, and may stop the user using this service. You can fix this by going here: https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha

    Change log
    0.2.3
    Fix so auto creating users populates email field allowing more than on user to be created! Thanks Cody!
    0.2.2
    Added text on login page to indicated regular logins work
    0.2.1
    Bug fix for when using default port
    0.2.0
    Remove blank from the list in 0.1.7
    0.1.9
    Fix for if wp_authenticate already declared
    0.1.8
    Added google apps domains to the list
    0.1.7
    Shows a list of domains that can be logged in using
    0.1.6
    Can now auto create users

    Sound Interfaces

    Over the years I have owned a multitude of sound interfaces for different reasons, far more than my limited recording abilities justify, but thought I would randomly blog the ones I owned and why I sold them.

    MOTU 2408 – returned, didn’t work with IBM thinkpad docking station
    MOTU 2408 (yes another one) – sold, didn’t work with non intel chipset
    M-Audio Delta 1010 – worked, then sold as I wanted a non PCI based one
    MOTU 828MkII – worked, then sold for more preamps and bus powered Traveller
    MOTU Traveller – worked, then sold because the ProjectMix had a control surface and came up for cheap on asiaxpat
    M-Audio ProjectMix IO – bought from John Lauden, worked accept no hot plugging, sold to Audiotraffic when changing laptop to a new MacBook with no FireWire
    M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R – bought on sale, most stable driver yet, until they got bought over by Avid and the support got terrible :(
    Apogee ONE – trying to downsize, but I missed a proper mic, and stereo in/out
    Presonus Audiobox USB – staying small, but a bit more features than the Apogee

    Google Spreadsheet to iCal

    At church and youth we have several rosters in excel for keeping track of who’s doing what and when. I’ve wanted for a while to make a rostering app that would automatically create a roster, assigning a set of users to different tasks at different frequencies for a set period of time. Additionally having it online could be people could automatically be notified of changes and provide an iCal feed.

    In the end though I realised that after uploading an excel spreadsheet to Google Spreadsheet, a program could be written to produce an iCal feed for iCal / Outlook / Google Calendar / Thunderbird (via Lightning) / Sunbird, and it would save a lot of time. So that’s what I’ve done an you can download it here.

    Installation:
    1) Setup you spreadsheet in Google Docs
    2) unzip ical.zip and upload it to your webserver
    3) Edit config.php and add your username, password named range / event start times and spreadsheet key
    4) Subscribe to your calendar!

    Demo:
    There is a demo calendar set up based on this spreadsheet. Click the link, or copy and paste the URL into your calendar application, especially if you’re using Google Calendar. The single entry configuration is available here:
    http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=TestSheet
    And an entry that produces multiple iCal events per spreadsheet row here:
    http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=MultiEntry

    Help
    Help and version information is avaliable here: http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?help

    Item query
    You can query for calendar events from just a specific user or item name listed in the spreadsheet by specifying this on the URL: http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=MultiEntry&item=James

    Multiple sheets
    You can query multiple sheets by using the [ALL] tag: http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=[ALL] or doing a comma separated list of sheets: http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=TestSheet,MultiEntry. These values can also be used in the $DEFAULT_SHEET param in the config, to make these the default available at the root URL.

    Test
    You can run a test on any sheet by suffixing test to the URL. This will not redirect to an iCal file, so you can see any errors in your setup. It will echo the number of iCal events created if successful. http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=MultiEntry&test=1

    Username
    The username / password used to access the spreadsheet can be left out of the config file (global and sheet) and specified in the URL so that the data is not public: http://jameslow.com/content/software/ical/?sheet=MultiEntry&[email protected]&password=password

    Notes:
    Uses the Google GData PHP client: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/articles/php_client_lib.html
    And Flaimo’s PHP iCal library: http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/873.htm

    FAQ:
    1) Named Ranges
    – Sometimes google doesn’t return data from named ranges correctly, its recommended to use a specific ranage eg. A1:C20
    2) Outlook / Windows support
    – Outlook 2007 natively supports subscribing to iCal feeds. For windows you can download Windows Live! Mail. For outlook 2003 you can use the free Remote Calendars add-in and for Outlook 2000/XP this commerical add-in.

    Change Log:
    1.4
    – Query all spreadsheets and multiple spreadsheets using [ALL] or comma separated list of sheets
    1.3.1
    – Add some explanation to config file
    1.3
    – Add calendar title
    1.2
    – Group similar items
    – Link back to spreadsheet
    – Fix to show all dates
    1.1
    – Fix for PHP on some systems
    1.0
    – Initial version