WPBook Updated: WordPress Facebook Plugin

WPBook, the Wordpress plugin which lets you bring your blog posts into facebook, has been updated to version 0.8.1. (You can view this very blog in Facebook as an example, assuming you’re not doing so already).

The main updates were in the 0.8 release yesterday (0.8.1 is just a bug fix to that release). In 0.8, you have the option to enable an “Invite Friends” link. See this section of the admin panel:

If that’s enabled, you’ll see something like this inside your facebook app:

People can use this to invite their friends to your facebook app. (Of course you can also use it to invite your friends to your own app - 15 per day).

Grab the updated version from the WordPress Plugin Directory or directly from here.

If you’re interested in getting involved in development / support of this plugin and others (especially related to educational use of WordPress), check out Scholarpress.

Updated WordPress Facebook Plugin

(As of 8/20 - updated again, to 0.7.5).

WPBook, the WordPress for Facebook plugin which Dave Lester and others at Scholarpress originally created and which I’ve contributed some to, has been updated again.

Version 0.7.4, which I just tagged in subversion (so it should be showing up in the Wordpress plugins directory by the time I post this) includes the following:

• Works with WordPress installs in subdirectories, using ABSPATH to ensure the right includes get called
• Fixed for the “new Facebook” javascript but remains compatible with “old Facebook” javascript as well (as described here)
• Removed hard coded reference to MyAvatarsNew(); and downgraded to WordPress standard avatars
• Fixed the (previously hard coded) offset for permalinks to be dynamic based on blog’s home url

All in all, this should be a much more stable version for most folks.

Note: If you use the “upgrade automatically” feature in WordPress, you must remember to copy the wp-facebook folder from /wp-content/plugins/wpbook/ to /wp-content/themes/ - it must reside at /wp-content/themes/wp-facebook in order for the plugin to work correctly.

You can get the new version from my plugin page or from the WordPress plugin directory.

TripIt Traveler Profiles, Action Stream

(Via the TripIt blog)

TripIt has launched profiles for travelers, with some pretty good controls on what is public and what is private:

The immediate goal is to give TripIt travelers one place to track all their travel information and showcase their travel history. The profile includes basic information about a traveler, including home location, upcoming trip destinations, connections in TripIt as well as important travel statistics like miles traveled, days on the road, etc.

It’s got a nice, RESTful public url - mine’s at http://www.tripit.com/people/jeckman

I’ve updated my TripIt Action Stream plugin - the good news is that it will now provide a real profile link rather than just linking to the TripIt homepage.

You will, however, have to make your activity feed available to everyone - but if you didn’t want to do that, you probably don’t want to publish your activity feed as an action stream anyway. (Actually you could leave your activity stream private and still publish your profile link - just uncheck the activity feed checkbox when adding the profile inside MT).

Wordpress Facebook Plugin wpbook 0.7 available

(Update 5/17 - 0.7.1 is now available - bug fix release).

I’ve spent some time over the past few nights revising the wp-book plugin, which lets you bring your WordPress (self-hosted) blog into Facebook as an application, and I’ve published a new 0.7 version.
(more…)

WP-Book progress

[Update: Minor bugs and tweaking to do - might want to hold off on download for now]

Made some progress on wp-book over the weekend; should be able to release an update this week. (I will post updated code on this site as well as upload to the wp-plugins directory). (If you don’t know what I’m talking about see this earlier blog post).

Still sometimes see an error in Internet Explorer at this point - seems to be a timing error with respect to the “resize to content” for the iFrame. I thought about moving the Facebook application back into FBML (Facebook markup language), but then I would lose the ability to have objects, embeds, and other things inside the iFrame.

If you’re reading this somewhere other than Facebook, and you are a Facebook user, please go check out http://apps.facebook.com/openparenthesis/ and leave a comment.

If you’re reading this *in facebook* please also leave a comment, and tell me what operating system / browser / version you’re using.

When you submit your comment, you will be redirected back to the application landing page - sometimes people get errors there as well, though in essence it is the same url on which they started.