The FriendFeed Activity Widget is a simple WordPress widget plugin that pulls your FriendFeed stream, pretties it up a bit and shares it with visitors to your blog. It’s essentially a lifestream plugin that requires just a few steps to set up.
Tags: extension, friendfeed, plugin, wordpress
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I tried installing the FriendFeed Activity Widget, but as soon as I activate it, the site returns blank pages, even in the Admin Dashboard. The only way I can get it back is to deactivate the plugin in SQL. I’m using WP 2.5, and K2 Theme. Help!
Hi Nathan, it sounds like it might be some kind of incompatibility with another plugin you have installed. Could you email me (link in the footer) with a list of plugins you’ve got installed so I can troubleshoot? Thanks for the report!
FYI: All past comments have been cleared out to make way for v1.1 discussions.
Icon is messed up in 1.1, maybe you had a typo.Timezone issue is not solved
nice plugin. thanks.
Nice plugin! Thanks for the work.PS: You should fix a minor bug. The folder decompressed from the zip is named: “friendfeed-activity-widget”The CSS link in the header links to “/friendfeed-activity/”
Hi, I installed your widget which look awesome on your blog. But when I try to install it on mine, there's a problem with the CSS. The code on the page looks for the CSS in [...]/friendfeed-activity/widget.css while the zip archive use the diretcory name /friendfeed-activity-widget/So I tried to simply rename the directory, but it still doesn't work well on my blog. I'll investigate a bit more, but if you can look into that it'll be nice. My widget looks like that on my blog : http://img104.imageshack.us/my.php?image=friend...Thanks!
Ok forget my last comment, looks like the rename of the directory and a Hard Refresh works fine. But to be more standard with other widgets, you should probably rename directly the folder name in the ZIP file with the correct folder name. Oy maybe I'm missing a thing… Anyway, real nice widget!
Hi! Yeah, the icons appear that way because you have installed the plugin to a directory other than /friendfeed-activity/. I have not had time to look at the timezone issue as of yet.Edit: Go ahead and update to the latest version to fix the icons bug.
Thanks!This is unfortunately a problem with the way the WordPress Extend site archives and distributes things. I'll try and find a workaround in the next release that allows for the plugin to be hosted in directories other than /friendfeed-activity/ though.Edit: Go ahead and update to the latest version to fix the icons bug.
Hi Eric, glad you figured it out. Like I mentioned to Jan, the problem with the folder name is sadly an issue with the way the WordPress Extend distributes archives. I'll try and get this resolved in a hotfix release in the coming days. Thanks!Edit: Go ahead and update to the latest version to fix the icons bug.
haha- thanks!
Evan, this is funny… I upgraded to the latest version of your FriendFeed Activity widget and it spewed out something rather creative (see right sidebar): http://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/2583765141/
Haha, sorry about that. It appears WordPress' Extend distributed the archive oddly. Just pushed v1.1.1 which should fix that for you.
FYI everyone, I just committed v1.1.1 which should fix the problems you were having with the CSS path. It'll appear on the WordPress site here in a few minutes. Grab the latest version from the Download link on this page, or upgrade from your WordPress dashboard. Thanks!
Holy Macaroons Evan, that was FAST! Not only did it fix my mesmerizing favico problem, it also re-positioned it correctly unlike in version 1 where it bled off the edge! Bravo, I'm tellin' twitter!
Hey Evan, I love it! Any hope of including the 'comments' from a link added via the friendfeed bookmarklet?
Thanks, Kevin!
Hi Erika, and thanks! That's definitely on my to do list, and I'm going to try and have it implemented in v1.2 in a couple weeks.
Excellent — I can't wait. That will make it perfect for what I'm doing. Thanks!
I'm not sure if I'm the only one having this issue or not, but the feed icons are not showing up in IE7. They show up on FF3 just fine and normally I wouldn't care but my friends use IE.
Hi Chris, the icons render alright in IE7 for me; do you see them here on my site, or is this occurring on another site you're using the plugin on?
Whatever you did in the upgrade today fixed it. Thanks, I'm really enjoying the plugin.
But now that I updated hashed tags are coming out like so:
bye bye baby. don' t be long. i' ll worry about you while you' re gone.Ok, I know I'm on the verge of becoming annoying, I apologize, but my favorite flickr photos are being shown in the widget as photos I posted to flickr.
Chris, I was alerted to this problem earlier today and will be pushing a patch yet tonight or tomorrow afternoon to resolve it. Thanks for the heads up.
Unfortunately this is a limitation in the way the FriendFeed API serves information about your Flickr events; sadly I don't have any way of determining if one event is an upload or a favorite. There are several other issues with the way FriendFeed's API deals with Flickr events, and I have reported all of them to their team. Hopefully we'll see a fix for it soon.
Glad to hear it!
Pushed v1.1.2 to WordPress.org. Should fix the Twitter hash tag bug. Grab it from the Download Link here on the page or through your WordPress dashboard.
Looking great Evan. One feature suggestion: the FF javascript embed including likes to items I post (ff comments, YouTube, etc.), and items I liked. That would be a great addition (especially if it's configurable).
Hey John; I'll definitely look into this and see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestion!
Evan – have you ever had any issues with the date coding? My installation shows the same date (December 31, 1969) for all posts.TIA.
Howdy! A 12/31/1969 error usually means there is some kind of configuration issue throwing things off. I might be able to help troubleshoot the cause, but can you first confirm you're running PHP5, with CURL enabled on Apache?
CURL is not enabled. The other two are running latest and greatest. That makes the troubleshooting easy – I should have seen that before I asked, sorry.Since the feed part works ok, can you recommend where to comment out that part of the code to not pull the date string at all?
Well, the easiest way to hide that would be to just add a line to your theme's CSS file: #ff-activity p.ff-meta { display: none; }.If you'd prefer to truly remove the output, you can edit widget.php and do a search for “ff-meta”. Comment out from that line down to the closing small and p tag.Of course, the problem with editing the widget directly is that those changes will be overwritten next time there's an update.Hope this helps!
hi. Thanks for pluginperfect.Regards
didn't work out. commenting out those lines sets the rest of the feeds into a nested configuration, indenting to the right – the code makes sense, but remming that class out screws up the alignment.nbd – thanks for the advice anyway. the code is tight otherwise – love the idea. good luck with it…
Hm, they shouldn't become nested- there are no floats in the CSS that comes with the widget that would cause that behavior. It's likely something in your theme's CSS overriding the widget's behavior. Sorry that didn't work for you.
Hi Evan,I would like to put the friendfeed widget on my page. Is it possible for you to share with us the script to call out the widget?Thanks
Hi Hazman, I'm not quite sure I follow you. If your theme supports widgets, all you have to do is add the widget to your page from the WordPress Dashboard.
I think what Hazman means,is it possible to place a php tag anywhere in a site to to call the fuction. I for one never use widgets and hard code and stle accordingly. Is it poss to have a non widget version.Cheers. It is exactly what I am looking for
Hey Dan,Ah, I gotcha! Yup, there is a non-widgetized interface you can use to output anywhere in your theme. Just call friendfeed_activity(). I've heard a few reports that this method is buggy though, so don't be surprised if it doesn't work for you. I'll try to go through it and fix any issues in the next patch.
Hi Evan et Dans,Thanks for both your reply. Yups, that what I meant. I will tried on my weblog tonight.BTW, I like the comment rating up and down. It is fun, including the point allocated. If you guys don't mind, where can I download that plugin. Cools, thanks for the great work guys. Been lately, very busy with some conference.Regards,Hazman Azizhttp://hazmanaziz.com
Okay, i got it now .. this is a disqus.com plugin. gosh , i am disoriented today morning, since my other's half left me…
BTW, how do you integrated ? I used the plugin, its too xxx.disqus.com. boring man ..
I mean the script is point to http://myurl.disqus.com
I'm using WordPress 2.5.1 and version 1.1.3 of your widget. Regardless of the wordpress theme I choose, the service's favicon tiles behind the status update (ie multilple tiny favicons as the background to the post). I would expect it, like shown on your site, to have one favicon per update. Any thoughts on what could be causing that?IE7 and FF3.Thankspete
Hey Pete,Sounds like there's a configuration issue somewhere that's causing the wrong path to get reported for the CSS file. That tiling issue occurs if the CSS file isn't get loaded. Can you tell me the URL you're using the plugin at? Maybe I can help track down the cause.
Thanks for the cool widget.>Unable to write to cache file. Please ensure the cache.dat has proper write-access permissions.Please, where is that file (cash.dat)??
The cache.dat file is located within your FriendFeed widget folder, i .e. /wp-content/plugins/friendfeed-activity-widget/. To fix this error you can either set /friendfeed-activity-widget to be writable or create /friendfeed-activity-widget/cache.dat and set that to be writable.
The plugin died for me – I think because I have other plugins installed that use JSON. I fixed it by changing your require_once(“JSON.php”);toif (!class_exists('Services_JSON')) require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/JSON.php');
Lot of thanks, Evan Everyhings fine now, i create cash.dat and chmod it to 444Once more, thank You for cool soft. However, with Picassa whether the plug-in works improperly or these are the problems of Friend Feed. URL that is formed leads to the page 404.You can see it at idcontent.com
Hey Jon,Good call on that. I'll be sure to get your fix added into the next version. Thanks!
I only seem to get “Your feed could not be retrieved at this time. Try again later.” pissing me off. Should I just wait?
Kudos to you! Thanks for the fix.
That's odd, the Picasa web album links on your blog work just fine for me. Not sure why you'd be getting 404 errors.
Sounds like FriendFeed is having API issues, or you may have a typo in your remote key.
Thanks for a great widget…and to JON MOUNTJOY for the fix to my issue as well.Is there a way to remove the MY FRIENDFEED PROFILE section from the bottom?Thanks!
How about showing comments posted on FF discussions? I mean, twitter is supported but I'm leaning towards FF comments more and more. Or is this already possible and am I overlooking it?BTW, great plugin, really
Amazingly ! It works fine now. Sorry and thanx againe
Thanks Melle! This is a priority on my list, and I should have it ready in the next couple builds.
Hi Thon,I don't currently have an option in there to disable the Profile link, but I'll add that to the to-do list. Thanks.
Any way to embed this into a page? I tried the call <? friendfeed_activity(); ?> in a page, as suggested above – but am not sure I missed something… can you offer some advice?Site: http://thedailyjoe.net/?page_id=71(I'm testing several plugins – yours in on page Social3!)Thanks in advance for your help.John
Hey John,By default WordPress doesn't allow you to execute PHP within a page. The tag you're trying to use is meant to be ran from the template/themes files.You can use a plugin like ExecPHP to do what you're trying, but I'm a bit weary of recommending that. Permitting arbitrary code execution in your WordPress output opens your blog up to potential hacks and exploits- though I imagine the risk is minimal. If you're willing to take the risk, that's an option. Otherwise, I'd stick with editing your theme files or just using the Widget.
Hi Evan,Awesome plugin any updates on manually adding the code for folks that don't like to use sidebar widgets. I added the proper friendfeed_activity() tag but in the sidebar it says: “Please configure your FriendFeed widget.”
Hi Garry,Still working on it; will hopefully have a fixed build next week. Thanks!
Very awesome plugin, I just installed it. One question, would it be possible in the future to add an option to exclude certain services from the feed? (ie blog, I don't really need to show that on my blog
Great work
Yo Glenn,Your wish is my command. I'll have a “Hide Blog Events” option in the next build. Stay tuned.
Awesome
Looking forward to the manual configuration! Thanks!
Hi, it shows me the following message in the sidebar: “Your feed could not be retrieved at this time. Try again later.”Please let me know what I might be doing wrong.Thanks
This error occurs when either the FriendFeed API is down, or if you've misconfigured your username or remote key. Check your credentials, and if all is well there, give it a little while and the API should come back up.
Strange links in the widget from a Google Reader shared item. I shared a blog post and get three links in the widget to a flickr photo in the post instead of a link to the article. Let me know if you'd like the XML.
Hi Steve,I haven't experienced any strange results from my Google Reader output; if you would, pop your cache file to me: hello at evansims. I'll try and track down the issue. Thanks!
For Amazon, you have “wishlis” instead of “wishlist”. Also, you have “their”, which is plural; it'd be nice if we could indicate if we were a “he” or “she” or “they”.Still, great plugin!
Hi Scott, and thanks for your comment. I'll fix the typo in the next version, and will consider adding a sex selector to the widget options. That said, “their” can be used in a singular context, though not everyone agrees.
This is a great plug in
I had a bit of trouble getting this working in its non-widget-ized flavour. I tried the “friendfeed_activity()” call, but had the same problem as Garry above. Any news on that new version?Sounds like a great plugin, looking forward to being able to use it.
ok well, it just doesn't work on my private server. Got it working on my public blog.Is there a way to more easily control some things? Pandora album covers are HUGE!
I have a fixed build running here on my blog, but I need to do a bit more testing before I push it to the WordPress servers. I've unfortunately been really busy with school this last week so I just haven't had a chance yet. I will hopefully have it ready for everyone early next week.
Hey Thoraxe,You can control image sizes by adding rules to your theme's CSS. My site, for example, locks image sizes to a maximum width of 55px. Modern browsers will scale images proportionally if you define one dimension and not the other, so it works out well. Here's the CSS I use:#ff-activity img { width: 55px; margin: 0 5px 5px 0; }Feel free to try that on your site, and let me know how it works out.
The plugin works beautifully, except the icons don't show up, except FriendFeed's at the bottom. Not sure what to do to fix this.
Evan,I ended up modifying the php code because for some reason I had a mental moment and forgot you could force image sizes through CSS. I'll go back and change that now.Thanks for this great widget.
I'm running PHP4 with CURL and the dates don't work for me in the WordPress FriendFeed Activity Widget. Any idea what date functions have changed between PHP4 and PHP5? Anything else I do that handles feed dates in PHP4 works correctly.
Sorry shokk, I've never tried the widget in a PHP4 environment. I honestly have no idea what would need to be changed to make it work. I know the PHP team did some major reworking of the timezone support in PHP5, which is probably the problem you're seeing. Not sure specifically what they changed though.
Glad you got it working, Erik! Let me know if I can be of any further help.
Yea. I spent hours working on this, but still can't get the icons to show up. YouTube shows up waaaay on top, FriendFeed at the bottom, and the rest just disappear. Any tips on what to do? I'll keep trying.
Hey Anon, can you give me the URI of the blog you're trying this on? It sounds like your theme is interfering with the Widget output somehow.
Hi Evan,Wohoo! Got the icons to show up. Yes, it's my theme. I don't use sidebar widgets. Instead, I enter the PHP code directly to make each one unique.Since I pulled the first post outside the loop to style the latest post differently from the old posts, then I added a call for a dynamic sidebar after the first post, and this is where I added your plugin.It's up and running though the date is stuck… even though it does update the feed, the date is stuck on last week. Any ideas what I did wrong?Like others here, I also look forward to the “friendfeed_activity()” call. This is my favorite plugin. Thanks!
Are you using PHP5?
Hi Evan! Thanks for the cool plugin. It has some issues though with combined activities. On friendfeed it says: “posted two messages on twitter” but your plugin splits the two entries. Interesting enough your plugin combines other activities like google-reader-additions correctly.. Can you take a look into that?By the way.. the twitter-icon sucks so big because of that white halo-stuff.. Would be cool if you could integrate an own clean one.. i an provide you a fine png.
Hey Andy, the plugin doesn't group twitter postings on purpose, actually. It was a design decision I made early on in building the plugin. I might add an option to group those later on.The icons are actually provided by and pulled from FriendFeed. You could override them using CSS. For example, div.ff-twitter { background-image: url(path/to/your/icon'); }Thanks!
Thanks for your fast response. As I said the grouping sometimes works and that's brilliant. I was just wondering why the twitter-messages got posted seperately although they already were combined by Friendfeed (which is also nice..
) So a 1:1 update from friendfeed would be enough for that…
Grouping should always work, except for Twitter, unless i haven't added formatting for that service yet. if you have any other services that aren't getting grouped or formatted properly let me know and I'll be sure to get those in.FriendFeed unfortunately does not output it's grouped format from the API, so much of the work the widget does it formatting things and making them look more or less along the lines of what you'd see on FriendFeed. It's unfortunate they don't offer an API hook for fetching things just as you'd see them on their site.
O I C.. thanks for the info! By the way.. do you plan to implement a function to put the lifestream on a page? Something like the plugins http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simplelife/ or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/ do? Would be cool to have the x most recent entries in the sidebar and a complete log on an extra page..
Yup, I have considered building something like that, but it's probably a bit outside the scope of this particular plugin. Even so, it's an idea I plan on toying with as a separate plugin in the near future. Keep an eye on my blog for updates on that.
excellent plugin, BUT i really really need it to actually “make a blog post” with the info, not just stream an rss. the main thing im after is to get the “just added youtube fav” and ” just dugg a story on digg ” from friendfeed to make a blog post in wordpress.
Thanks, castaway. Unfortunately that functionality beyond is the scope of this plugin.
Evan, I am creating a blog for some friends and would like to be able to use more than one FriendFeed widget. How could I do that? Basically it's a dual author blog and they want both sets of feeds. The current plugin only allows for one. Could you make it do multiple? Or is there a way I can make it do more than one widget?
Hey Sephrym, the next version of the plugin should do precisely what you're looking for. I'm trying out some new techniques in my latest plugins that I'll be applying to the next FriendFeed Activity version, and one of those is multi-user support. Stay stuned to the blog for an announcement when that goes live. Thanks!
I appear to be having the same issues with Picasa showing up properly in the Friend Feed Widget that idcontent was having about a month ago. I waited the night to see if if would just go away before posting, but no dice.
The preview just shows the image name, imgp0477.jpg or IMGP0458.JPG, for example. Clicking on the link takes you to a google 404. What do you think is going on here?
Hi imaginal,Yeah, I haven't had a chance to get Picasa formatting in there yet, which is why you're seeing odd things like that. I'll make that a priority for the next version. Thanks!
I also noticed that the WordPress plugin site says that this is only compatible up to 2.5.1, and I'm now running 2.6. I don't know if this is an issue or not, but I apologize for supposedly submitting a bug when I'm not even in the right version.
http://www.geckoz.com if you need to see the formatting issues.
No worries; it does and is intended to work with 2.6, I just haven't had a chance to update the WordPress SVN with that info yet. Thanks!
Evan,This is great. Thanks for creating it. I'm working with a new theme, and while everything works fine, the font size is huge. Do you know how I go about fixing this? See the middle column.http://robertbluey.com/beta/Thanks,Rob
Hey Rob,Thanks! Your theme is looking quite nice. A quick glance with FireBug looks like you've got a CSS rule defined for .title with a font size of 28px. You're probably using that for your post headings or something. Unfortunately that's the same class the widget uses. The easiest way to fix that would to be more specific with your .title rule; for example, div.post .title. I'm not sure where exactly you're using that .title attribute, but that's one example.Let me know if that solves the problem for you. Thanks.
Thanks, Evan. That did the trick. Appreciate your quick response.I have one additional question: It appears every item is showing up with the same timestamp — Wednesday 17:33. Do you know why this might be happening?Really looking forward to having this on the new blog. It's a great addition.
Glad that worked. Yeah, a couple of people have reported the date error. It appears to be something specific to a certain server configuration, and the issue lies somewhere in the Friendfeed API wrapper that I use. The next release uses a completely different method of acquiring data, so that bug will be resolved in that update. If you can, hold tight until I can get that out the door.
No problem, Evan. I can wait. Keep up the good work! Thanks again for your help.
How often does this plugin grab the current FriendFeed data? Is there anyway to change the interval or force an update?
It refreshes it a maximum of every 10 minutes. Due to FriendFeed API limitations, I haven't allowed this setting to be configurable. Update too often and the API will ban your web server's IP. The next version of the plugin uses a different means of aggregating your data, which is exempt from this limitation, so I may make this configurable in the future.
Hi Evan – Just tried this on my blog and got this doozy:[Warning: assert() [function.assert]: Assertion failed in /home/ctap/public_html/wp-content/plugins/friendfeed-activity-widget/friendfeed.php on line 18; fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in /home/ctap/public_html/wp-content/plugins/friendfeed-activity-widget/friendfeed.php on line 258]Then realized cURL needed to be activated. Now that curl is on, the widget works well, except that long images from my FF stream were breaking out of the widget frame and look super-ugly. So I added your suggested CSS:#ff-activity img { width: 55px; margin: 0 5px 5px 0; }to my style.css and all seems great. (Just left this for the sake of future user issues)..
Would be cool to be able to move it to the top, too.
I just installed the plugin yesterday and I can't get that repeating icon issue to go away. I downloaded the newest version from the WP site. You can see it here: http://www.mysticalmagick.com/index.php?p=15
Hi Araceli,The theme you're using appears to be missing the wp_head() call in the <head></head> tag. This is also why you may have noticed limited functionality in other areas, like missing rss feeds, the inability of third party tools to login to your site, and so forth. Adding that tag will fix it.http://codex.wordpress.org/Hook_Reference/wp_head
Thank you so much. That fixed it. I've been building the theme from scratch and didn't realize that was missing.
No problem!
I tried adding it to http://austinblogger.com/blog but I'm still struggling to get it to work, could it be that since WordPress 2.6.1 just was released today and I upgraded that there's now an incompatibility. Did you get my email Evan about the project?
Hey Paul,I haven't got any emails from you; could you try sending it again? hello at evansims dot com. In regards to the 2.6.1 upgrade, let me upgrade my blog real quick and see if I encounter that problem. Will update shortly.EDIT: Nevermind Paul, I did get your email. It got sorted into Spam for some reason. I'll get back to you soon on that.
Hey Paul, I just upgraded to 2.6.1 and everything appears to be working fine here. Can you confirm you're running PHP5 with CURL enabled? Do you know if your web host is running in safe mode?
PHP Version 5.1.6CURL support enabledCURL Information libcurl/7.10.6 OpenSSL/0.9.7a ipv6 zlib/1.1.4 see http://austinlifestyles.com/phpinfoNot sure how to determine the safemode thing.
safe_mode Off Offsafe_mode_exec_dir no value no valuesafe_mode_gid Off Offsafe_mode_include_dir no value no value
I tried it on another blog – http://austincast.com/blog/ and it came up with another error this time: * springnet friendfeed Error – Unable to write to cache file. Please ensure the cache.dat has proper write-access permissions.I didn't see a file called cache.dat anywhere in my wordpress directory though.
Hey Paul,Still working on troubleshooting your problem with the other blog, but you can resolve this particular issue by manually creating the cache.dat file and setting it to the proper write permissions.
Alright, I touched up a cache.dat file in the plugins directory and in the directory which contained Evan's awesome app and that did the trick on http://austincast.com/blog/ … Now if I can figure out how to embed a friendfeed widget on the main page of http://austinlifestyles.com I'll be a hapy camper for today.
That''s great to hear, I'm experiencing the same issue and came here looking for a solution. Other than that, the widget works great., thanks for the hard work.
It would be nice if the plugin could be used to display on a page as well as in a widget. Having said that, it does look quite cool in my sidebar too.
Very nice! Much more attractive than FriendFeed's own widget — great how it plays nice with the theme style.I'd like to second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) the notion of having this work on a normal page as well. I wouldn't need any different functionality, just the opportunity to have it do the same things it does in the sidebar, but giving the additional space available in the many body area of a WP page. Perhaps the same items from inside the widget specs could be added to an Options screen, and then a <!– –> tag could just call it on the page you want it on? Just a thought.Anyway, nice work!
Nice one Evan. Much neater and no CSS messing compared to the FF's own js incarnation.Thank you – see your widget in use on my blog here: http://jamesspratt.org/blog/
Hey everyone, just a quick heads up: I am working on v2.0 of the plugin. The new version is a total rewrite, and will resolves all of the known bugs and satisfy the most requested features I've received. Give me a little time and I'll get this out the door as soon as possible.Remember to follow my blog updates via RSS or Email (at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmi... ) to get the latest news on v2.0. Thanks!
Great plugin. Can't wait for version 2.0. I've also translated it for my website in Bulgarian. Will it be possible to use .mo, .po files in future version, Evan? I could contribute with Bulgarian and French version.
This is a great widget, thanks for creating it.One problem I've having is that all the date/time stamps are stuck on “Wednesday 16:33″Any suggestions?
Hey, there, looking forward to your new version. Had another idea, thought I'd share it, whether or not you'll do it at all or in time for the new version:FriendFeed's own badges including not only the Feed Widget which is like your Activity Widget, but they also have a badge which lets you show, with icons and links, all the different services you've got on your FriendFeed.How *awesome* it would be if your widget provided the option of adding this sort of thing below the activity items, right below the link to “My FriendFeed profile…” I've got ideas on a few bells and whistles to flesh this out, and I'd be happy to share them with you if you ever decide you'd want to pursue adding this to the widget!FYI, this was inspired by two things. First, Twitter has so many more users than FriendFeed (so I believe, at least), and even though the dates below each Twitter update are linked to the Twitter account, it seemed to me this might not be obvious enough, that an explicitly link like “View my Twitter” or “Follow me on Twitter” might better encourage people to actually follow. This actually had me considering abandoning your FriendFeed widget, but I'd hate to do that because I like that it includes all the other non-Twitter stuff, too.The other things was, even aside from Twitter/FriendFeed, I've looked for a quick and easy way to provide a list of links with icons to the various sites at which I have accounts. Then I realized, duh, FriendFeed might be totally complete, but most of it's there, and boom, their Badge sort of does it.Anyway, food for thought!
Evan – my widget seems to have stopped updating at some point early this week. Any ideas? (http://www.cosmictap.com)
Try deleting the cache file in your FFAW folder; this usually happens when the API is down, the API is actively blocking requests (due to maintenance, or to reduce overhead to the site) or when the cache file is having write problems.
Thanks – that seems to have worked great.
How close are you finishing it? Don't mean to nag–just curious. Thanks!
thanks for the plugin, it works perfectly. I have only one question tho, is there any way i can setup the expiration of the cache file? i'd like to have the plugin updating more often
Hi Evan,I'm using WordPress 2.5 and PHP 5, but I'm getting the following error message on my widgets page: %BEG_OF_TITLE%Friendfeed Activity Stream%END_OF_TITLE%Error – Unable to write to cache file. Please ensure the cache.dat has proper write-access permissions.I'm using no other plug-ins apart from Akismet on this WordPress install.How can I resolve this issue?
Have you given the FFAW directory and/or cache file write permissions? Does your web host support CURL?
This problem occurs when you attempt to run the plugin in a PHP4 environment.
Thankyou, this is exactly what i was looking for
you can do so without the plugin. Just use the feed for wordpress plugin to import the your feed.
I am working on a friendfeed page template which displays all the activities in a separate page using the same core of the widget. It's pretty sweet too. Shouldn't take much more time to work the kinks out.Cheers ^^
Hi Evan,The “Wednesday 16:33″ issue is appearing because PHP is treating the time as a 0 value. Dates come in GMT format, like this: “2008-10-29T08:05:38Z” but not all PHP installs understand it. I just knocked out a quick fix for those that will be interested.Change the following line (it's around line 380 in /wp-content/plugins/friendfeed-activity-widget/widget.php):echo date($date_format, $event['published']);to:echo date($date_format, strtotime(preg_replace('/[^d:-]/', ' ', $event['published']))) . '';If you want to account for your time zone, you could change that line to look like:echo date($date_format, strtotime(preg_replace('/[^d:-]/', ' ', $event['published'])) + (1 * 3600)) . '';where the + (1 * 3600) is the offset. This example is +1hr GMT. If you wanted +12 you'd put ” + (12 * 3600) ” and for -4 GMT ” – (4 * 3600)”.The time zone setting is actually stored in the WordPress database so it's really a quick hack of a fix until Evan finishes his “version 2″.
This is a great plugin. However, when I installed it the thumbnails don’t seem to be working for Flickr, only links to the photos. Are thumbnails supposed to show by default or is there something I can do to make the thumbnails appear? Thanks for the plugin!
I’d love to use this plugin. Currently I’m getting the following error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/friendfeed-activity-widget/cache.dat on line 1
I’m using WP 2.6.5 and K2.
Hi Evan. Is there anyway to add the widget to my Home Page not my blog?http://www.igorthetroll.com I program PHP so I can probably figure it out, but do not want to waste time right now. If you have an easy hack let me know and I will grease monkey it.Thanks,Igor
Hi Evan. Is there anyway to add the widget to my Home Page not my blog?
http://www.igorthetroll.com
I program PHP so I can probably figure it out, but do not want to waste time right now. If you have an easy hack let me know and I will grease monkey it.
Thanks,
Igor
Possibly this is related to the @replies problem listed above… On my blog (http://amateurearthling.org/) the tweets which begin with @username are not linking the @username to that user's twitter page, while @usernames which are embedded within the tweet are. Actually, this sounds like the opposite of what you're suggesting the situation is in the comments above. Which is weird. I'm running WP 2.7 on Debian (etch) with PHP 5.2.0.And thanks for the awesome plugin. Other than this minor issue, it works fabulously out of the box. I love it!
Possibly this is related to the @replies problem listed above… On my blog (http://amateurearthling.org/) the tweets which begin with @username are not linking the @username to that user’s twitter page, while @usernames which are embedded within the tweet are. Actually, this sounds like the opposite of what you’re suggesting the situation is in the comments above. Which is weird. I’m running WP 2.7 on Debian (etch) with PHP 5.2.0.
And thanks for the awesome plugin. Other than this minor issue, it works fabulously out of the box. I love it!
What browser are you using, Anthony? I haven't seen that happen on anyof the browsers I've tried.
Firefox 3.0.5 on Mac.Screenshot here: http://www.citrano.com/pix/friendfeed-wallpaper...
hmm … clearing my browser cache fixed it. like i said it wasn't just on my site, it was on any site using your widget…
Hmm, so odd. That happens when the widget's stylesheet fails to loadfor whatever reason… I'd normally say it's an installation problemwith a setup, but since you're seeing it on mine I can only figurethere is something stopping it from loading properly for you. Are youbehind a firewall or anything?
No, no firewall.. I mean, I'm behind my Airport Extreme router, asalways, but … that can't be the issue…
Hi Evan – I noticed the widget is wallpapering entries with the service icon. Is this new? Is it by design? I think it's hideously busy and would love a way to fix it. I noted that yours is doing the same… thanks.
What browser are you using, Anthony? I haven’t seen that happen on any
of the browsers I’ve tried.
Firefox 3.0.5 on Mac.
Screenshot here: http://www.citrano.com/pix/friendfeed-wallpapering-issue.jpg
hmm … clearing my browser cache fixed it. like i said it wasn’t just on my site, it was on any site using your widget…
Hmm, so odd. That happens when the widget’s stylesheet fails to load
for whatever reason… I’d normally say it’s an installation problem
with a setup, but since you’re seeing it on mine I can only figure
there is something stopping it from loading properly for you. Are you
behind a firewall or anything?
No, no firewall.. I mean, I’m behind my Airport Extreme router, as
always, but … that can’t be the issue…
Hmm, very weird. Try loading it up in Safari and see if you get the same result.
Hi Evan – I noticed the widget is wallpapering entries with the service icon. Is this new? Is it by design? I think it’s hideously busy and would love a way to fix it. I noted that yours is doing the same… thanks.
Hmm, very weird. Try loading it up in Safari and see if you get the same result.
I really like this plugin, although it would be nice if it showed Flickr thumbnails. I’ve also noticed that Flickr and Wakoopa titles show up twice (in the same entry). My site will probably be showing this bug for the next day if those entries don’t get too old to be displayed.