Private Files

Ok, latest wordpress plugin. I’m getting quite into these. The other two were modifications. This one is completely from scratch. There are several plugins to make a blog private, making it a good tool for basic collaboration / group ware. However file attachments / images have still been visible too the public, until now.

Private files acts as a proxy, making sure users are logged in before they can download any files. The nice thing about is, it doesn’t modify the current uploads at all, doesn’t store files in a different place, so if you want to stop using it, all links to files stay the same, so you don’t need to redo anything.

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/private-files/

If you have deactivated the plugin or deleted it and you want to unprotect your files manually, just delete the .htaccess file within your wp-content/uploads directory.

As with most wordpress plugins, the security is not guaranteed, use at your own risk.

Change Log:
0.40
Added MS Office 2007 mime types
0.39
Enhancements to block URLs with /../ in them
0.38
Bugfix which prevented logged in subscriber users from accessing files.
0.37
Now accounts for spaces in file names
0.36
Shows a warning if you are not using WordPress permalinks
Should work on a wider variety of WordPress setups (subdirectories etc.), but uploads must be a subdirectory of your WordPress directory.
Should work with relative and absolute upload paths
Tested on the latest version of wordpress
0.35
Now uses raw file() read instead of echo, which should clear up issues on some setups.
0.34
Bug fix so this actually works under various wordpress conditions, eg. root and not root installations of wordpress
Tested with wordpress 2.5.1

Allow Categories

Ok, latest wordpress plugin modification. This time its of L. Fargue’s Restrict categories plugin.

  • Users are assigned permissions to view posts in certain categories
  • If users don’t have permission to certain posts, those posts aren’t shown, including in the main view and archives.
  • Categories can be made public to everyone, and there is an option to force users to login.
  • This is an initial version, so please report any errors or bugs.

Installation:
1) Download the plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/allow-categories/
2) Unzip it
3) Copy to your wp-content/plugins directory
4) Activate within wordpress admin
5) Goto Managed->Allow Categories to edit permissions

Change Log:
0.6.4
Removed debug statement
0.6.3
Fix for recent posts
0.6.2
Remove debug statement
0.6.1
Added allow_list_categories($args) function that can be used in templates to replace wp_list_categories($args) functions. This is a work around until wordpress provide a proper hook for filter a list of categories, so its not perfect. It may work in place of some wp_list_cats() and list_cats() too.
0.6.0
Fix for (Public) posts and redirect to login
Admin users no longer show up in list for version 2.5+
0.5.9
Option to redirect to login if viewing a post or category that is not public and the user is not already logged in
0.5.8
Small bug fix to comment logic in 0.5.6
0.5.7
Allows editing of draft posts by non-admin owner of the draft.
0.5.6
Shows comment content for RSS for public posts or for RSS readers that
know that share login information with the browser (eg. Opera).
0.5.5
Bug fix that would show posts to users who had no categories listed.

Disclaimer:
This plugin is experimental and is provided with no support or warranty. It should not be considered as providing complete security to wordpress content.

Alter Ego

Hey, This is just a quick not to ask you to add my friends app Alter Ego http://apps.facebook.com/profile/ Its an app similar to your profile, but your friends edit it not you. Please spread the news and add edit as many other people as you can.

If any of you know Janakan, this is one of the steps leading to his website. It allows testing of some of the systems that will eventually make up the whole website. His company / website will eventually have a huge charitable element, so by adding the app, editing your friends profile, sending invites to others and spreading the news you’re helping make that a reality.

Facebook Comments

IMPORTANT: Facebook comments isn’t working right now, I’m looking for someone to take over this to make it work. Leave a comment.

Basically a new version can start using the facebook comments API for notes, but will still have to match note ids to wordpress URLs by screen scraping facebook like the original plugin.

Old Info:
For a while I’ve been using Adam Hill’s facebook comment importer, to get comments from facebook back in to my blog. I recently realised it wasn’t working, so I tried Thomas Albright’s edit, no joy there either. Did some debugging and got it working my self. You can download it here: facebooknotes.php.

All new changes have been commented incase they need to be moved back, though I think my version is the only one being actively maintained at the moment.

Change Log:
0.36
Latest fixes for facebook with changes from Benjamin Trice
0.33
Option to not import comments for posts whose comment status is closed.
0.32
Should work for pages and situations where there facebook user specified in wordpress isn’t friends with the commenter on the note.
0.31
Removed debug statement
0.30
Fix for the latest version of facebook!
0.29
Option not to notify (email) of new comments from facebook
0.28
Option to import from every page of notes from facebook, not just the first one.
0.27
Version 2.5.1 introduced that the GUID might not be the permalink (http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6492). The plugin now uses a different method for converting the URL to a post ID. Should also fix some earlier problems with the “Original Comment Post Not Found” error.
0.26
Version 0.26 with fix for latest facebook HTML mark up
0.25
Fix added by Aaron Harp to allow thie plugin to work with feedburner

Fresh Look

Ok, I’ve just started work on new look for the site. There are a few things like archives and stuff that I need to fix, so please be patient, but hopefully it will be more ‘me’ than the old design.