Nicely modified vanilla

Creede

Just wondering if any of you have seen the vanilla install over at Houseblogs.net. He has a nice integration with movable type and a good friends extension and tag extension. Check it out.

3stripe

Its not _that_ different from the normal Vanilla, apart from the trimmings, imo... The 'blog' category is interesting though.

Krak

Tags? He has tags? And he has not shared?

houseinprogress

OK, I kinda figured someone from here would eventually come across my site... I was planning on posting a link to it here at some point, but it's never seemed ready for scrutiny from all the great developers here. :-)

3stripe is right--everything is written as extensions so it's just Vanilla 1.0.1 with added features. (Note: you can't see many of the features unless you log in as a registered user.) To be up front, I didn't code it myself--I paid someone.

I'd originally expected to share several of the extensions in the add-on directory but unfortunately the poject has become increasingly proprietary--alot of the extensions (like 'Friends' or the 'Profiles' directory) are interdependant so they wouldn't work as stand-alone extensions. I can probably answer questions and share some of the approach if people are interested.

As for the tags users can add to their profile pages, the approach involves two new tables: LUM_Tags and LUM_UserTags. The first table itemizes the tags (the fields are TagID and Tag) while the second table pairs tags and users (the fields are TagID, UserID, and tdate).

russlipton

How did you implement the function that picks out the (most) recent comment and aggregates it/them to the News category?

Bentot

omg ponies!!

houseinprogress

@russlipton If you're referring to the way that comments and discussions appear on the home page, I'm doing that via a php script that goes directly to the relevant MySQL tables. It's very much like the latest post extension:

http://lussumo.com/addons/?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=169

jimw

@houseinprogress - how do you access the tables directly without being logged in (as a registered user) to avoid the mysql errors? I've tried that but have not been successful yet.

houseinprogress

You might need to make sure you're authenticating database access. That's often done with a php include to a file named something like described here:

http://us3.php.net/function.mysql-connect

Example 1. mysql_connect() example

<?php
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'mysql_user', 'mysql_password');
if (!$link) {
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo 'Connected successfully';
mysql_close($link);
?>

jimw

@houseinprogress: How long ago did I ask you about the tags on your site? Well, tonight, I finally completed implementing your idea into my WeightedWords add-on. I don't use any tables, though. If you want to see it, please check out my site. I'd like your comments. I also added at the bottom how long it took to build the list.

houseinprogress

Wow, nicely implemented. I think it looks pretty good and is pretty similar to the way we're presenting the tags on our site. The only thing I noticed is that at least on Internet Explorer some of the larger words overlap others.

How are you generating the words you're using? From the description in the add on directory I wasn't able to tell...

jimw

Yes, IE is a formatting problem. To generate the list I read through every discussion and comment and count the words. I know this is not efficient, but until I can figure out another way (which I am working on), this will have to do. I'm using the code primarily that is in the WP plugin by the same name. Your way is the preferred way and when the tag add-on for Vanilla is completed, that will be the preferred way to go.

Minisweeper

"I read through every discussion and comment and count the words"...what, manually? :D

jimw

The script does that. I would get pretty tired if I had to read the comments over and over again. :-)