Live Blogging version 2
I’m pleased to announce the release of version 2 of the Live Blogging plugin for WordPress.
The Live Blogging plugin offers lots of functionality for WordPress bloggers, especially those who blog following live events. Using Live Blogging, you can create many small, microblogs within a single post, with each update automatically appearing on your readers screens.
For a demonstration on how to use the plugin, and how it works, I’ve created a 4 minute screencast demonstrating it.
For users of version 1, version 2 is an almost complete rewrite, adding many new features – the most important of which is the removal of the requirement of Meteor for automatic updating (although using Meteor offers improvements over the standard polling situation), so the effect demonstrated in the screencast is available to everyone. More customisability is available too, for those who have used Live Blogging v1.
I’d also like to thank the beta testers for helping me debug the release before I released it. Also, thanks to all the users who are using the live blogging plugin.
Download the plugin
Please spread the word!
Hi Chris,
great Job. Plugin works perfect for us.
KR Roy
Hi Chris,
great to see a update for this plugin.
Unfortunately i get an “Call to undefined function curl_init()” error in the settings page, because i havent installed the curl extension on my test system.
maybe it is a good idea to use eg a “function_exists(‘curl_init’)” to check the availability of the curl extension.
regards
christoph
Possibly, but all that would mean is a nicer error message on loading the plugin.
in function “live_blogging_options()” i added the following code to prevent the error:
if ( function_exists(‘curl_init’) ) {
// the twitter login form-table
} else {
// msg: no twitter login available.
}
works for me, maybe helps.
regards
christoph
There’s more code than that that needs to be made conditional. I’m hoping to have an updated version out today.
Chris
Hi Chris,
thanx for this change:
After publishing a new entry, return to the new entry screen, rather than the edit screen.
Roy
Hi there,
Awesome plugin! I didn’t use v1 as I did not have the resources to run Meteor but with AJAX in v2 I can finally use it. I have tested it and it was ok except for some issues:
If there are no live blogging posts (fresh install) and I click on add new (live blog entry), the page will stop loading halfway. Adding a post with with the live blog post ticked fixes this. Not a big issue but your code is probably stalling somewhere while looking for live blog posts (and when there are none).
Another issue is with twitter– I can post to twitter but @replies are not coming into the comments. Live commenting on the post itself was tested to be working.
Finally, when connecting to twitter and clicking on accept, and twitter forwards the page back to /wp-content/plugins/live-blogging/twittercallback.php?oauth_token=blabla, I get a whole chunk of code on the screen with the last lines saying, “Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/tehloft/public_html/wp-content/plugins/live-blogging/twittercallback.php:27) in /home/tehloft/public_html/wp-content/plugins/live-blogging/twittercallback.php on line 33″ Strangely, posting to twitter still works, but as I said above, @replies don’t.
By the way, the chunk of code contains your oauth keys.
That’s by design – if there are no live blogs enabled, it doesn’t load the whole page (an error is displayed in the live blogging meta box). I admit that it could be made nicer.
Apologies for the error with the twittercallback.php script, it appears I left some debugging code in.
I’ll investigate the issue with comment importing not working.
okay, figured out the comment importing issue – appears when you update, the schedule doesn’t get updated to add the job to check Twitter. 2.1.2 should correctly add it on update (it also removes the debug code and fixes another bug where the Twitter comment time is wrong)
Hi Chris,
Awesome! Thanks so much for the update!
I would prefer if it loaded the rest of the page so I could navigate my admin site from there instead of having to press back (I have quite a bit of my submenus open on the site and I use them a lot to move around). Not a deal breaker though, thanks again!
Hi Chris,
Mentions don’t seem to be working yet. Twitter sign in works great though! I’m on 2.1.3.
Mention importing definitely works on my test site. Is there anything which appears in your PHP error log which may help debugging? Alternatively, you could try deactivating and then reactivating the plugin.
Hi Chris,
I found the comments, they were not being approved. Sorry about that!
Hi Chris,
Ok, it seems like the tweets take quite a bit to import. Also, it is making me approve every single imported tweet. (I have turned off approval for comments already) I am able to post comments straight on the post without approval. The timezone for imported tweets seem wrong too, the time on the imported tweets are off by about 8 hours. My blog is set to +8 UTC.
It should check Twitter once every 5 minutes, which isn’t that long a period of time imo. I’ll see if I can identify a way to look up what the comment approval setting is set to and automatically approve them based on that. As for the time bug, you’re right, it’ll be a timezone bug. The comments are imported with the time that Twitter puts on them, which I suppose will be UTC.
Hi Chris,
It just seems awfully long when I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong, but during usage, you’re right, 5 minutes is fine.
I’ll be looking forward to an update appearing on my dashboard!
Oh and one more thing, I hope I’m not sounding awfully problematic.. this plugin doesn’t play nice with Simple Twitter Connect (or STC doesn’t play nice with Live Blogging I’m not sure). From what I notice, both Live Blogging and Simple Twitter have a similar, yet different way of implementing OAuth, and they won’t work together. I get class already exist errors on STC, and when commenting out its dependencies on OAuth and twitteroauth so it uses Live Blogging’s, it still doesn’t work. I’m not using STC in production so it’s not a big issue, just hoping to highlight this.
I suppose you can’t hook functionality into a global, shared OAuth function like how you can hook functionality into WordPress functions.
Well, I guess we both use the same OAuth library. I did consider that, and my plugin will only load the library if it’s not already loaded (otherwise it’ll use the library the other plugin loaded). But I guess what is happening is that Live Blogging is getting loaded first, so when Live Blogging is loaded, it loads the library (as it’s not already loaded), but when STC loads, it doesn’t first check whether or not the TwitterOAuth library’s been loaded, and loads it anyway. I’m not quite sure if there’s a way to load Live Blogging after STC (that would fix the problem)! But my code works around it as much as it can – it’s the responsibility of the other plugin to check if the library needs loading before loading it.
I see, I hope STC fixes this then!
Oh by the way, Live Blogging works perfectly now, thank you so much!
Hey Chris,
My entries show up just fine on the site, but when I go to the Live Blog Entries, there is nothing there. I made some test entries and it says there are 6 published, but it won’t actually show me the posts, so I can’t edit them in any way.
Any ideas?
Jim
oh, that’s odd – afraid I’ve not got a clue, works perfectly on my system!
hey !
This is a great job
; I used to customize old version to meet my requirment but this version is awesome.
The only single problem I currently have is that i can not put my liveblogs into pages, as I used to do it.
Do you have any quick hack to enable it in pages ? i’m not sure WP3 enable custom type in page, but it would be nice if I can have a page instead of an article.
2.1.5 now supports this
Hi Chris,
one question. I use the Advertisement Managament Plugin to put Banner over and under new posts. When its activatet i will have the banner in each live post. do you have any Idea how i can deactivate ist for live blogging like the function for “sociable display hook”.
Thanks Roy
You need to read the PHP code to find the name of the function which is hooked in to the_content. It’ll look something like this in the file:
add_action('the_content', 'function_name');. Once you’ve found it, go into the options and click the green + in the advanced settings section, and type the function name into the box that appears, and then save.Thanks, i found this:
add_action(‘admin_menu’, ‘admanagement’);
So i have to put “admanagement” in to settings?
Roy
No, the first argument has to be
the_contentActually, it’s probably add_filter, not add_action
This one?
add_filter(‘the_content’, ‘advertising’);
Roy
Yes, so add ‘advertising’ to that list
Sooo great !!
thank you for this update!!
Now, last but least problem : how to have a WYSWYG editor when using with qtranslate ?
I don’t know why, the editor does not display when using qtranslate…
I will replace the current editor with a input field (so that i can have a max of 139 characters) but you may want to take a look on this bug to fix it ^^
Have a nice day
TeeWee
I would imagine it’s due to qtranslate not supporting custom post types, rather than an issue in my code.
not so sure ; it w<as already the case in version 1.x ; i never figured out why it happened…
Sounds like a nice plugin! But I still can’t figure out why after installing the plugin and doing everything like it was suggested in the tutorial, the new entries only appear after refreshing the page. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any suggestioan in advance.
I’m afraid I don’t know – it could be that some other plugin or your theme is breaking it. Are you sure that the updating method is set to polling? Have you got a link to a live blog, so I can have a look?
http://www.lieinthesound.de/2010/10/bundesvision-song-contest-2010-im-live-blogging/
Live Blogging is over now. But it didn’t work without refreshing the site.
Your blog URL doesn’t match the actual URL, which means you’re suffering from XSS restrictions. You need to set your blog URL to match your actual address (at the moment it’s trying to load from lieinthesound.de, but the page is from http://www.lieinthesound.de)
Awesome job. Thanks.
Hi Chris,
is it possible, to push any liveblog from my Site parallel to an other Site where WordPress is not running. An normal html or php site where i can integrate some code for showing my entries over the Meteor Server!
thanks Roy
Yes, but it’s a big task. You’ll have to take the JavaScript out of the plugin and then alter it to work without WordPress, then integrate that into your page.
Hi Chris,
download on WordPress page v.2.1.6 dont work!
Roy
Interesting – that’s a bug with WP.org, nothing to do with me!
hi mate, I found that everytime when I add an image to the live blog messages, the format of the live blog would be changed. do u know why?
How do you mean the format changes? Do you have a link to where it occurs?
Hi Chris,
we are allways happy with your plugin. now i have a new question.
is it possible to push an actual LiveBlog of my site over meteor to a different site (other Blog with wordpress) at the same time. I meen a livebloig thats showing at 2 Sites at the same time?
What have i to do at the other blog? I inserte the same Serverdate and the connect to the Meteor Server is ok! But how can i insert my Liveblog into a post on the other Blog?
Thanks Roy
You’d need to change the code to do that, but it’s not a very difficult change.
Can you send me that codechanges per mail please?
Thanks Roy
I’m currently full-time employed doing other work, so I’m not currently available to hire as a freelance developer, sorry.
Hi,
Plugin looks great, but when I implement it I get this:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function filter_var() in /var/www/html/devhio/wp-content/plugins/live-blogging/live-blogging.php on line 553
line 553: $title = filter_var($post->post_content, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
Also, works great in Firefox, but not in Explorer 7
Do you know what might be the problem?
It appears you’re running an unsupported version of PHP – you need at least PHP 5.2 I’m afraid (older versions are also unsupported by the PHP community)
I see. I’ll look into that, thanks.
How about Internet Explorer? It keeps mentionning “Exception thrown but not caught” and only updates with a page refresh.
Have you encountered this problem before?
Afraid I’ve not seen that one
Hi chris,
is there a problem with the newset version and meteor? My Meteorstatus shows me ok, but i will see no new entry in the post automaticly. I allways have to refresh the site?
Any Ideas?
Thanks Roy
Not heard any complaints from anyone else, and it works here
Shit, we have a LiveBlog tomorrow… Meteor status is ok, but the page where i insert the LiveBlog needs long time to load data and no automatic post will show!
I have no idea whats wrong at the Moment!
Roy
Hi Chris,
I really like the Live Blogging plugin and it has worked great for my coverage of the NBA Playoffs. Thanks!
I just have one concern. I have installed a Facebook Like plugin (http://www.gb-world.net/like-button-plugin-for-wordpress/) and it applies to all of my WP posts, including all of the individual Live Blog entries which makes it quite messy. I have been disabling the Like feature on my live blogs in the interim and then copying and pasting all my live blog content to replace my [liveblog] shortcode as a temporary fix.
This might seem like a silly question but do you know how I can make Live Blogging entries not be seen as “posts” but rather elements in a “post”? I only want the Like button at the end of my post and not after every single one of my LB entries.
Thanks in advance for your reply,
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Unfortunately there’s no way for WordPress to stop seeing the individual posts as posts – because that’s what they are – posts using WordPress’s custom post type feasture. What you can do is to use the live blogging plugin’s “unhook” feature (See the FAQ) to disable that plugin for the live blogging entries though, which should solve your issue.
Chris
Thanks Chris.
You don’t happen to know what the action name is for the particular plugin I’m using? I actually did try to use the unhook feature but am not really an advanced user and do not know what the action name is or where I can find it, so I typed “like” as an unhook since that was the shortcode for the plugin.
I’m sorry if these seem like silly questions but I really want to continue using your plugin.
I’m afraid I don’t. The only way to find out is to read the code and look for a line like
add_filter('the_content', 'X');, where X is what you want to unhook.
Hi,
I’ve just started using your plugin.. good effort.. thanks for it..
would it be possible to add twitter like “Load More” button after some count of entries instead of displaying all entries in page..
maybe not possible but I still want to ask if you can make entries filterable on single pages.. or grouping.. a drop-down button would be nice to filter content
thanks
Filter how?
sorry for foolish question.. I don’t know php well.. just thought it could be done using custom fields but only liveblogging writing panel, we can’t add custom field..
You should be able to use custom fields no problem.
if the sort thingie is possible, and if you are not available to do it a freelancer, could you please drop me an email that how much you can do it for me ? also “Load More” too..
Thanks
I’m not really available to do freelance for a while, I’m afraid