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ZenPhoto 1.2.9/1.3.0 plugin: Random Wisdom

Blue Dragonfly Member
in Plugins
Hello all,

I have developed a plugin to include random quotes on my site (Dragonfly Images), and it seems functional enough to share. I have a lot of coding experience, but not as much with PHP, so any feedback is welcome.

This plugin will simply select a random quote from a delimited text file of quotes, and display it within your theme. I use a slightly modified zpFocus, and include it in the sidebar so it shows up on all pages.

The quote file is flexible, in case any users have an existing file or other source of quotes they wish to use, though if the format of the file is different, the Regular Expression will need to be tweaked to parse it. This is configurable (as is the path to the quote file) in the Admin / Plugins tab.

I'm not quote a Zen Master of Regular Expressions, but I can try to help out if people have an existing format they need parsed. If there are some common files/formats out there that are in wide use, I can include the proper RegEx in the documentation.

I have used what appears to be "best practice" CSS styling to generate the quotation marks using the proper localization (for the most part - Safari will need additional languages specified in the CSS file). The quotes are in HTML 'q' blocks, the citation in a 'cite' block. CSS class IDs are used for both, plus the surrounding 'div'. As such, the CSS should be able to handle all aspects of the output formatting, so comlete customization of the appearance should be possible without modifying the code.

This includes a small sampling of quotes from the likes of Mark Twain and Thomas Jefferson. The more conservative among you may wish to go with something a little less Libertarian-leaning; that said, while it is freeware and I won't try to stop you, it will break my heart - more than a little - if this were to be used to quote the likes of George Bush or Glenn Beck. Unless, of course, it is done in a satirical manner :-)

Feedback and bug reports are welcome, as is critique from the ZenPhoto team if I've not followed any guidelines.

The plugin can currently be found here: http://www.blueninjasoftware.com/downloads.html?func=select&id=11

Enjoy!

Comments

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    It would be good if you had a page where it stays, then I could add an entry on the extensions section.
  • Blue Dragonfly Member
    That download link isn't expected to change anytime soon, but I will add a more formal "page" for it that includes the link as well as other info from the readme file, such as version history.

    Thanks!
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