The end of SXSWi 2007

So it’s more than a week after SXSWi 2007 and I’ve not reported on any of the events. Really whats the point. As I sit here on a Saturday morning drinking a cut of coffee and reading my bloglines feeds of other’s experiences during SXSWi I agree it was as expected, fantastic.

Sure I enjoyed the many sessions offered and as usual I really wanted to split myself in two sometimes due to key sessions offered during the same time slot. Thankfully the podcasts for the 2007 sessions are starting to already role in. I think by next year we should be seeing videos of the conference.

So here are some of my highlights for this year.

• Thursdsay evening drinks with Peter-Paul Koch, Alex Jones and Ryan Joy at 219 W. Good times had by all.
• Saturday, the first full day for Interactive. Spent most of the day just following the crowd and mesmerized by the Twitter screens. Watch as many others pulled out their cell phones and post a twit just to watch it on the big screen. Wonder if this was the precuursor to twittervision.
• Sunday, concentracted more on a specific session track. Wanted to learn all that could about cell phone and mobile use. Great sessions.
• Monday and Tuesday were also great just being together with other like minded folks. I meet so many interesting people every year.

I still have about 20 pages of notes I’ve not had a chance to review. Client work seems to be taking it’s priority position. Darn clients.

A new sheriff in town

So this morning I hit the office minding my own business. I had a very bad drive in to work with the rain. I avoided the early morning office conversations because I wanted to keep my head focused on getting some client project work accomplished. This client work involves using WordPress to host the site. But the client also wants to host an Events calendar.

So I pull up my browser and type two words into the search box, WordPress and Events. The first item returned from the search was titled ‘WordPress enthusist Events…’. Curious, I clicked the link. I was brought to the Meetup.com main page. This page listed all the know WordPress groups. This was great. I used to use Meetup.com years ago and was an active member of the local PHP developers and Web Standards groups. But after meetup.com started charging things dropped off. So I quickly scanned the listing and didn’t see anything listed for Austin, hmm. I tried the zipcode search. Nothing. Then I saw the banner, “Start a WordPress meetup group in your area…’. Another hmm.

I had to think about this a little. I really enjoy working in WordPress. And if I had any balls at all I would have worked harder to land the recent job opening at Automattic.com/. So I decided to pony up my credit card and launch the group. I’m the group leader. Can say what that will bring. But I do hope to spread the good word of WordPress.

Do you use WordPress? Do you live in the Austin, TX area? Desire to meet others in the area with similar interests? Then consider joining the group. http://wordpress.meetup.com/173/

I’m also a member of the local Refresh Austin group. There are plenty of members of this group who also use and enjoy WordPress. But do they have time to possibly attend both groups? Only time will tell I guess.

Also setup a mirror Event on Upcoming.org in case you don’t like Meetup.com http://upcoming.org/event/168004/?ps=5

WYSIWYG Button Manager for WordPress

Have you ever managed a large list of content authors on a WordPress site? Ever want to allow certain authors to use more advanced WYSIWYG editor functionality? Keep reading.

Problem

As most users of WordPress 2.x and 2.0.x are aware WordPress come with a very small list of the editor buttons enabled. In order to enable these other buttons you had to open a file (tiny_mce_gzip.php) and add the buttons manually. Now editing the php file is fine for most programmers or folks familiar with WordPress. but for the average user this might be a hard task. Another problem with this option is you are in fact enabling the buttons for all users. If you happen to manage a site with a large list of authors you may want to only allow more advanced WYSIWYG buttons for the authors you trust.

Solution

Announcing the beta version of the WYSIWYG Button Manager for the TinyMCE Editor that comes as part of WordPress. This plug-in allow an administrator user to define WYSIWYG Panels. Each Panel is a set of three rows of allowed buttons. Via this plug-in you can define each button row custom to the users needs. Simple.

So how does this plug-in work? All WYSIWYG Panels are stored as a data structure (array) into the wp_options table. the key for this options record is ‘WYSIWYG_button_manager_data’. when you associate the Panel with the user a new usermeta record is added to the wp_usermeta table. The key for these records are ‘WYSIWYG_panel’.

When the user goes to edit/author an entry a couple of filters are called from WordPress. These filters are ‘mce_buttons’, ‘mce_buttons2′ and ‘mce_buttons3′. If you have defined a Panel that contains any buttons then these will be used over the default WordPress buttons. Really this only overrides the first ‘mce_buttons’ since this is the only variable defined via WordPress. The second and third row are left blank.

Testing

I’ve installed this plug-in into three version of WordPress. I know this plug-in will work with version 2.0.2, 2.0.5 and the latest SVN nightly grab.

Download

The beta version of this plug-in can be downloaded here

Problems

If you use this plug-in and have any problems please do not hesitate to contact me.

Installation

Drop the unzipped file into your wp-content/plugins folder. Via the WordPress Admin interface navigate to the Plugins page. Activate the plug-in. you should see a new menu under the Manage section ‘WYSIWYG Manager’. Only Admin-level users will see this options.

Future

As mentioned this is only a beta version. It’s functional but lacks some of the ‘bling’ options in today’s web 2.0 interfaces. I’d like to provide a complete list of dragable buttons to the user and let them build the editor rows instead of needing to type in the button name. Other ideas include making this plug-in aware of external MCE plug-ins used.