Skowronek.org » Programming

Note to self: Submit Bug with Single Input Box ASP.NET

Skowronek — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:54:51 +0000

<input type="text" style="visibility: hidden;position: absolute">

Here is “one” of the many explanations.

Facebook Badge as a WordPress Sidebar Widget

Skowronek — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:54:31 +0000

I tinker around a lot with WordPress. As a matter of fact, I tinker a lot and am quite good at it. I have created various custom modules (unpublished) as well as written a PHPBB to WordPress migration utility (long lost unfortunately). Lately I have been keen to develop custom sidebar widgets by mashing up social site widgets. My latest, the Facebook badge sidebar widget.

This is alpha code and is not intended for those unfamiliar with PHP and/or the WordPress API.

You will also need to be familiar with the WordPress widget API.

Create a Facebook badge

Copy the script code they provide following a successful build

<script src="http://badge.facebook.com/badge/xxxxxxx.js"></script>
<noscript>
	<a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/people/xxxxxx/xxxxxxx">Facebook profile</a>
</noscript>

Add the following PHP function into your widget.php file with the generated code between the badge tags

function widget_facebook($p)
{
?>







}

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar_widget') )
{
		register_sidebar_widget(__('Facebook'), 'widget_facebook', '');
}

Make sure you have dynamic sidebar enabled in your sidebar.php script

<div class="sidebar">
<ul>

	if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar'))
	{
		dynamic_sidebar(1);
	}
?>
</ul>
</div>

Finally, update your stylesheet to override the Facebook style settings.

.fb_root_vert
{
	width:195px !important
}
 
.fb_vert
{
	width:193px !important
}
 
.fb_object table tr td
{
	width:185px !important
}
 
.fb_badge > a
{
	display:block !important;
	padding-left:50px !important;
}
 
.fb_badge
{
	background:#3B5998 !important;
	margin-bottom:8px !important;
}

Now that you have the code, you can add the widget to your sidebar through the WordPress widget administration screen.

That’s all. Enjoy.

Ektron and Localization Tags

Skowronek — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:37:23 +0000

I ran across an interesting API library deep in the Ektron API framework that allows you to pull the actual localization tag (e.g. en-US, en-GB, etc.) for the current language type id of the site (e.g. 1033, 2058, etc.). Previous to this, we had to create our own associative, key/value pair XML file that stored the relationships. Since I could only find a single reference to this library on the Ektron site, I hoping this information proves useful to others. Enjoy.

// get and instance of the current site API object
Ektron.Cms.SiteAPI sAPI = new Ektron.Cms.SiteAPI();
// retrieve the language date for the current site API instance
Ektron.Cms.LanguageData ld = sAPI.GetLanguageById(ContentBlock.LanguageID);
// assign the localization tag
string langTag = Ld.XmlLang;

Yahoo! YPod?

Skowronek — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:15:35 +0000

I ran across this little morsel today while Googleing more Ektron issues. Yahoo!, Google, Live…how many technologies am I going to need to know to stay afloat in this industry?!

Yahoo! Music Launches New Media Player
Yahoo! Music Player Site

Ektron and Virtual Directories

Skowronek — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:56:30 +0000

Note to self: do not use a virtual directory for the AssetManagement DMS folder when configuring Ektron web sites.

I learned this the hard way (again) today while trying to figure out why my DMS assets were not uploading properly. After a couple of hours (and a night of sleep) and setting up a completely new instance of a bare bones Ektron CMS that functioned properly, it finally dawned on me that perhaps one of the various virtual directories were causing the issues. Apparently, the AssetManagement folder cannot be virtual or it throws off their file upload processor (at least for v7.01).

I believe they have fixed this with the latest version (I hope.)

Let this be yet another learning lesson and hopefully assistance to anyone else running into this similar issue.