Open Source

THE Facebook Plugin for WordPress?

Posted on by John

You may have seen last week that Facebook and Automattic jointly released a plugin called either “Facebook” or “Facebook for WordPress” (depending on who’s announcement you read).

As someone who’s put a lot of work into two WordPress Facebook integration plugins (WPBook and WPBook Lite) over the last several years, I have to confess I had mixed emotions about the launch. On the one hand, it felt a bit like the proverbial 800lb gorilla had just sat on my head: how could we (I’m the lead developer but by no means the only contributor) compete with the combined development teams of Facebook and Automattic? Did they just make the plugins I’ve worked on redundant, or unnecessary?

On the other hand, I’ll admit, I felt a bit of relief. Supporting a plugin like WPBook or its simpler cousin WPBook Lite is no easy task. There are many complex variations in how people have configured WordPress, there are many possible ways to configure a Facebook application, and both keep changing all the time. Just keeping up with the Facebook roadmap and the constant changes to their settings interface is a challenge. Combine that with sometimes less-than-grateful users and a full-time job (not to mention a life outside web development), and it’s quite tempting to just declare the WPBooks closed and move on.

I think, however, there’s still a need (at least for now) for WPBook and WPBook Lite.
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Open Source

Fun with WordPress HTTP API, Redirection and Cookies: WPGPlus 0.8.1

Posted on by John
Google Cookie Monster from November 2009 – from Web Pro News

This weekend I checked in and released a new version (0.8, followed by 0.8.1 this am) of WPGPlus, the WordPress plugin I wrote which cross-posts to Google+ when new blog posts are published in WordPress.

Because Google hasn’t yet released a read-write API (their API only allows for reading data from Google+ not posting into it), the plugin uses a hack from this twitter bot script, and emulates the Google+ mobile interface: it logs in as you and posts on your behalf.
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Conference/Open Source

WordCamp Boston 2012

Posted on by John

WordCamp Boston 2012 is coming up quickly: July 13th-15th, at the Boston University George Sherman Union (same venue as 2011).

I’ll be speaking again, this time on the topic of “Why the #@*$!% isn’t WordPress a CMS?.” Why is it that WordPress doesn’t get the respect it deserves in discussions of Web Content Management platforms? How do we counter the age-old “WordPress is fine if all you need is a blog” back-handed insult?

On the other hand, are there things that WordPress could learn from the criticism? What could WordPress do as a project to make the WordPress-as-a-CMS conversation more productive and less repetitive? Where does WordPress’ blog-platform heritage show up as an architectural weakness when held up against other WCMS platforms?

Looking forward to yet another fabulous WordCamp on the Charles . . . Hope to see you there.

media/Open Source

Open Parenthesis Is Now HTML 5 and Responsive

Posted on by John
Open Parenthesis is now HTML 5 and Responsive

Finally took the time this weekend to clean up the theme on this blog and make it HTML 5 and Responsive. This basically means a mashup of:

The results look pretty good in all the browsers I have access to, and all the tools I’ve tested in – but do let me know if you find something ugly or unexpected going on. You can find the whole thing at GitHub if you’re interested in the details.

Open Source

WPBook & WPBook Lite Updates for Deprecated Offline Access

Posted on by John
Enable "deprecate offline_access" to get extended access token and be prepared for when Facebook permanently removes offline_access

Facebook’s developer roadmap is always changing. The latest change that impacts WPBook and WPBook Lite is the removal of the “offline_access” permission, coming in July:

The offline_access permission is deprecated and will be removed July 5, 2012. Until then, you can turn this change on or off using the “Remove offline_access permission” migration. On May 2, 2012, we will automatically turn the migration to “enabled” for all apps. If this breaks your app, you can turn the migration back to “disabled” until July 5, 2012 when it will be permanently “enabled” for all apps.

If that wasn’t confusing enough, check out the “Removal of offline access permission” page, which explains that:

While we are removing the use of the offline_access permission, through a migration setting in the Developer App, we are now allowing the option to use access_tokens with a long-lived expiration time that can be renewed each time the user revists your app (see exceptions below). For existing apps that are not using the offline_access permission, there are no changes required for your app, but you should consider using the new endpoint that allows the longer expiration time.

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