Jefferson's Newspaper » Reference

Tips for Using the WordPress Admin Bar with BuddyPress

E. Bell — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:47:18 +0000

If you run a WordPress Network that uses BuddyPress, you are probably aware of the distinctions between the WordPress and BuddyPress admin bars (or in the latter case, the “buddy bar”), so we can jump right to the point: You are no longer using the buddy bar, and are now using the core admin bar; there is something you don’t like about this arrangement and you need to change it. Well, here are a few quick tricks.

Each of these snippets (with one noted exception) can be added to functions.php of your main blog theme or you can create a simple plugin.

Swap the BuddyBar for the Admin Bar

If you somehow are still using the buddy bar, try one of the following methods. (You may also need to adjust your CSS slightly to accommodate the differences between the two admin bars.)

Here is the preferred BuddyPress method, which is simply added to wp-config.php:

/*
** Add the following to wp-config.php
** Removes BP admin bar and replaces it with the WP admin bar
*/
define( ‘BP_USE_WP_ADMIN_BAR’, true );

If for some reason you find that the above method does not work, you may try adding the following to functions.php


/*
** The following removes BP admin bar and replaces it with the WP admin bar
*/
 
function remove_bp_adminbar(){
     remove_action( 'wp_footer', 'bp_core_admin_bar', 8 );
     remove_action( 'admin_footer', 'bp_core_admin_bar');
     show_admin_bar(true);
}
add_action('after_setup_theme','remove_bp_adminbar');
?>

Remove something from the Admin Bar

To remove a menu item, you just need to know its HTML div id. This example removes the WordPress logo and menu. See remove_node().


/*
** The following removes the WordPress menu and logo
** wp-admin-bar-wp-logo is the div id in the menu HTML but we just use wp-logo 
** see http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/remove_node
*/
 
function admin_bar_remove_this(){
     global $wp_admin_bar;
     $wp_admin_bar->remove_node('wp-logo');
     }
     add_action('wp_before_admin_bar_render','admin_bar_remove_this');
?>

Adding something to the Admin Bar

Similarly, you can add a new menu item to an existing HTML div id. Here we are adding a link to create a new category within the +New menu. See add_node().


/*
** The following adds a link item to create a new "Category" within the "+New" menu
** wp-admin-bar-new-content is the div id in the menu HTML but we just use new-content 
** see http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_node
*/
 
function admin_bar_add_this(){
     global $wp_admin_bar;
     $newcat=get_site_url( BP_ROOT_BLOG ).'/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category';
     $wp_admin_bar->add_node( array(
          'parent' => 'new-content',
          'title' => 'Category',
          'href' => $newcat) );
     }
add_action('wp_before_admin_bar_render','admin_bar_add_this');
?>

Make it Easier for Network Users to Create New Blogs

The BuddyPress dev team has added Notifications and some other BP-specific features to the admin bar, but the link to “Create a new site” is still missing as of v. 1.5.3 (UPDATE: actually, this would be a WP issue, not BP; track this issue here). If you have a very active community, especially one that routinely creates new sites (e.g. a university course blog network), they will notice this absence. To add another complication, BuddyPress redirects wp-signup.php to the network homepage, meaning the default WordPress Network mode method for creating a new site is broken (UPDATE: track this issue here). Luckily both of these are easy to fix.


/*
** The following adds a link to "Create a new site" under "My Sites" menu
*/
function admin_bar_create_blog_link(){
     global $wp_admin_bar;
     $create=get_site_url( BP_ROOT_BLOG ).'/blogs/create/';
     $wp_admin_bar->add_node( array(
          'parent' => 'my-sites',
          'title' => 'Create a new site',
          'href' => $create) );
}
add_action('wp_before_admin_bar_render','admin_bar_create_blog_link');
 
/*
** The following fixes the dashboard link for "Create a new site"
** By default, WordPress sends the user to wp-signup.php to create a site
** But wp-signup.php is redirected to the network homepage by BuddyPress as of 3.1+ and 1.5.3+ respectively
** This just filters that core behavior to use the BuddyPress link instead
*/
add_filter('wp_signup_location', 'bp_blog_creation_link');
function bp_blog_creation_link($old) {
     if (function_exists('bp_include'))
     return get_site_url( BP_ROOT_BLOG ).'/blogs/create/';
}
?>

Feel free to make additional suggestions in the comments.

Migrating from ContentDM to Omeka

E. Bell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:47:46 +0000

Seems like the Omeka forums get a lot of traffic from people looking to migrate from ContentDM to Omeka. I, personally, get inquiries about this all the time (for some unknown reason). So I figured I may as well share what I know about the process here so I can just send a link or you can find it on Google or whatever.

It’s worth noting at the outset that I don’t know anything about generating ContentDM export files ~~(partially because even the ContentDM documentation is proprietary, or at least hidden behind a login)~~. But I do know that every time someone has sent me a cDM export file, it is in tab-delimited format (UPDATE: here is the Tab-delimited export documentation), which is basically a plain text spreadsheet. I gather these spreadsheets can be produced pretty easily so I think we can start by assuming you already have the spreadsheet and need to prep it for import into Omeka, which will be done in this tutorial using the CSV Import plugin. If you are not already familiar with how that plugin works, check out the documentation page at Omeka.org before continuing.

You probably need to use Excel

First, open the tab-delimited spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. You will later save this file in CSV format. If you prefer using non-MS spreadsheet software, you are probably out of luck. As far as I know, neither OpenOffice/LibreOffice nor Apple’s Numbers have an equivalent ‘Text-to-Columns…’ functionality, which will be used in this process.

Remove unwanted and problematic rows/columns, Rename column headers

Once you have your spreadsheet open in Excel, go ahead and remove any ContentDM-specific administrative metadata, or anything else you don’t wish to carry over to Omeka during the migration. At this point, you should probably rename the column headings to something meaningful. This will help with the crosswalk step later.

Breaking out semicolon-delimited values

Next, you will want to check for columns having multiple entries within a single cell. At the very least, this will probably include the Subjects column (because archivists/librarians are never satisfied with assigning just one subject term… subject classification being the Lay’s potato chip of librarianship). By default, these multiple subjects will be separated by a semicolon (e.g. “Librarianship — Potato Chip Analogies; Librarianship — Puns; Librarianship — Personality Disorders;” ). Instead of copying each one of these entries into a new Subjects column, you can just use the “Data > Text to Columns…” feature in Excel. I recommend using a separate worksheet for this step as the new columns will overwrite your existing ones if you are not careful.

Getting the File Path URLs

So you’ve shaped up all the metadata on the spreadsheet. Now you need to define the path to the item file in ContentDM. This is probably the trickiest part to come up with on your own, especially if you are not so familiar with ContentDM. Basically, our starting point will be the cDM “Reference URL.” Those look something like this: http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/u?/press,59. Assuming you have a whole column of Reference URLs, you need to run a Find and Replace to create your file path (again, I recommend doing this in a separate worksheet so you don’t accidentally overwrite important data). Let’s begin.

UPDATE: in ContentDM version 6+, ShowFile is replaced by GetFile. Adjust the following instructions as needed (i.e. in the first Find and Replace, swap out showfile.exe with getfile.exe).

Start with something like:
http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/u?/press,59

FIND this:
u?/
… and REPLACE with this:
cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/

Next, FIND this:
,
…and REPLACE with:
&CISOPTR=

So now we have something that looks like:
http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/press&CISOPTR=59

This is a working file path that can be used by the CSV Import plugin to ingest the item file along with the metadata record.

In some instances, you might need to tweak this process. For example, if your ContentDM installation includes JP2 or TIF files (or some other unfriendly image format) but you don’t want the hassle of building a custom display wrapper into your Omeka theme, you can append some additional query string parameters to your file URL.

So if you want ContentDM to serve up a JPG instead of a JP2 (or other…) file, add this to your file column
&DMSCALE=100.00000&DMWIDTH=1600&DMHEIGHT=1600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&REC=1&DMTHUMB=0&DMROTATE=0
…using this Excel function (where A2 is the first column/cell in need of appending):
=CONCATENATE(A2,"&DMSCALE=100.00000&DMWIDTH=1600&DMHEIGHT=1600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&REC=1&DMTHUMB=0&DMROTATE=0")

Finally, you need to swap showfile with getimage in the file URL above by running one more find and replace in Excel.

So now, your file path looks like:
http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cgi-bin/getimage.exe?CISOROOT=/press&CISOPTR=59&DMSCALE=100.00000&DMWIDTH=1600&DMHEIGHT=1600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&REC=1&DMTHUMB=0&DMROTATE=0

This will return a JPG file, which is pretty handy. These additional parameters will vary by installation and file type. I don’t know what all of the parameters are or even what each one does; only that this usually works. Again, this is a case where actual ContentDM documentation would be really handy. UPDATE: Keep in mind that this only works with image file types. For more details, check out the GetImage documentation.

Metadata Crosswalk

It’s usually a good idea to plan out your metadata crosswalk in advance, especially if you have multiple export files (and you should if your collection is bigger than a few hundred items; more on that later). Remember that Omeka – out of the box – only uses the first 15 Dublin Core elements. You may need to add a new Item Type or install Dublin Core Extended in order to find/create an appropriate home for your legacy/custom metadata in Omeka.

Batching

To avoid server timeouts, you should consider breaking your spreadsheets into manageable batches. I try not to import more than a few hundred items at a time, and even then one of the two servers involved is likely to timeout or throw an error or something. Keeping the batches small makes it easier to isolate problems, avoid import errors, and undo problematic imports.

Using the CSV Import Plugin

From here, just follow the standard instructions for using the CSV Import plugin.

Bugs, Known Issues, and Limitations

As of version 1.3, there are still some quirks. For example, your file path – that hideous long URL you worked so hard to create – will become the actual name of your imported/migrated file. In some instances, your files may be ingested sans file extension (e.g. .pdf, .jpg, .mp3), which can cause various headaches (though it’s worth noting that these files will generally display inline on your site, due to the way most Omeka themes handle media files, and will only break down when someone tries to download the file, in which case they would need to manually add the file extension). From time to time, you could have an import that hangs indefinitely, never finishing and never failing — and thus not easily “undo-able” (at least, the “Undo Import” button will not be visible). In such a case, you can manually create that button by entering the following URL pattern into your address bar:

http://[PATH TO YOUR OMEKA INSTALLATION]/admin/csv-import/index/undo-import/id/[IMPORT ID]

– this is on the plugin documentation page by the way, as are several other points in this tutorial.

One of the biggest limitations of the CSV import strategy is that you will probably have issues migrating compound objects and other multi-file items, primarily because of the way ContentDM formats the export file and serves compound objects online and partially due to limitations in the way the plugin works with Omeka. Basically, you need all the files for an item to be in the same row as all of the other item-level metadata (e.g. in columns like “File 1,” “File 2,” “File 3,” etc). And there is currently no way to use the CSV Import plugin to assign file-level metadata. For example, if you had a postcard in your ContentDM collection and it had distinct metadata for each side (say, for front.jpg and verso.jpg), along with general metadata for the object as whole, something is going to be lost in the migration without some serious elbow grease.

The Omeka Dev forums are the best place to report bugs, inquire about error messages, discuss workarounds, and submit patches. The general Omeka Forums are also great for more basic questions; happily, most questions get answered in fairly short order. Please do not post support questions here. Please do, however, feel free to leave general comments, suggestions for improvement, requests for clarification, etc.

IMAGE NOTE: poorly Photoshopped post image contains assets by multiple artists and designers, including the amazing “Bob” sketch from Matt Haley’s unreleased but totally awesome sounding Twin Peaks: Season 3 graphic novel.

Acronyms and Initialisms My Library Degree Failed to Teach

E. Bell — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 08:38:21 +0000

I’ve been told many times since completing my M.L.I.S. that most skills related to library and archival work are developed on the job. In fact, I realized about halfway through my degree program that my professional training would continue well after grad school. Not unlike other professional-academic hybrid programs, library school provided a sufficient foundation, but the bigger challenges and learning experiences came during my practicum and in my daily work, as well as in the various (un)conferences and workshops I’ve attended and professional development courses I’ve elected to take since graduation. In many ways, this suits the overall learning style and personality of the “typical” librarian or archivist (without getting onto a tangent, I think it’s safe to assume that most librarians would consider themselves to be relatively eclectic and prolific learners). Generally, this approach to learning is indeed a very comfortable one for me. While I enjoyed the rich academic world of the humanities as an undergrad – exploring ideas through research, reading and writing – library and information science requires a higher degree of hands-on experience and purposeful technical training. Sure, LIS programs include conventional graduate reading seminars, research papers, etc. But unlike, say, history, where a historian-in-training may expect to use and hone these skills over the course of a long career in scholarly research and writing, the average librarian or archivist will not be publishing books, writing for academic journals, or conducting original research. Information professionals certainly need an academic, scholarly background, but I’m not sure I consider them (us) to be academics or scholars in the usual sense. We have too many responsibilities, too many constituencies, too many rules and protocols, and too many acronyms and abbreviations.

Though we know information work is highly technical, it seems most library and information science programs are not — even when the faculty are involved in cutting edge technical research. The programs are relatively short, culminating after just 1-2 years — not much time, especially considering that, unlike most other graduate programs, LIS students are generally starting from scratch with degrees in unrelated fields. As such, the curriculum is broad but mostly shallow, save for some specialized tracks and doctoral programs. The following is my shortlist of abbreviations and acronyms that I’ve come to view as important to my work in public/digital history, digital humanities, and educational technology. I don’t work in a library exactly, but I know firsthand that many of these are also important in that setting as well.

API
Application Programming Interface
APIs connect different platforms and programs, most often via established functions and methods. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google and many other web services provide open APIs that allow you to embed, feed, and connect with their services on your own site or application. Operating systems, content management systems (WordPress, Drupal, dSpace, etc.), game engines, and programming languages (Ruby on Rails, jQuery, etc.) all have APIs that allow programmers to tap into, customize and extend functionality.

API @ Wikipedia

XML
eXtensible Markup Language
XML is the core of several languages, tool, and protocols used in digital archives, digital humanities, and general web development. In my experience, it is kind of a bear to work with, but is nonetheless worth investigating as it is the basis of RSS, EAD, and TEI, among others familiar to M.L.I.S.s.

JSON
JavaScript Object Notation
JSON is a lightweight, language-independent data interchange format, billed as “The Fat Free Alternative to XML.” I’ve never worked with it, but probably will at some point.

JSON @ Wikipedia

OOP
Object Oriented Programming
Okay, well, I’m listing OOP here as a placeholder for various programming languages, some of which are not, strictly speaking, object-oriented by definition. The point is that, while I was introduced to HTML and CSS for the first time in an elective grad school workshop, there’s really not that much you can do with those tools alone. Static webpages have limited use these days. Most libraries, archives, and digital humanities projects need someone who understands – or better, can do – programming/scripting on some level. The languages listed below are probably the most commonly used in the field, though as more projects start to involve mobile app development, Objective-C (iPhone) and Java (Android) will also be in demand.

LAMP
Linux Apache MySQL Perl/PHP/Python
Basically, a LAMP server is composed of several open source components, including MySQL for database service, Apache as the HTTP server, and pre-installed “P” programming languages (Perl/PHP/Python) running on some variety of Linux operating system. This LAMP “stack” is the basis of most sites on the web today.

LAMP @ Wikipedia

SQL
Structured Query Language
SQL, and particularly MySQL, is one of the most common relational database platforms in use on the web today. As part of the open source LAMP stack, it is available on nearly all web servers by default and forms the underlying data structure for most open source content management systems. In recent years, a variety of alternative platforms have emerged under the banner of NoSQL, sparking some amusing yet mostly incomprehensible (to me) debate.

DCMI
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
A metadata schema for describing “physical resources such as books, digital materials such as video, sound, image, or text files, and composite media like web pages.” It is often said that Dublin Core is “capable of describing anything, though not particularly well.” Still, a good place to start. Like the two metadata standards that follow, it is often used in conjunction with some type of XML. I’m listing just a few here but there are many others one might add to this list.

DCMI @ Wikipedia

METS
Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
Another metadata standard “for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library” using XML.

METS @ Wikipedia

DACS
Describing Archives: A Content Standards
And another metadata standard “for describing archives, personal papers, and manuscript collections.”

DACS @ Wikipedia

DMCA
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Understanding copyright legislation is essential for many projects in libraries, archives, education and digital publishing. I name DMCA here mainly because it’s an abbreviation and thus fits into the scope of this post. It is difficult to imagine a web consisting only of the publisher’s own original content. Today we share, link, quote, and remix content created by others as part of our daily routines. Scholars post research material for students; archivists post manuscripts for researchers; librarians share book reviews; students and other user communities contribute to projects by uploading content. While most institutions have a copyright policy, it’s important that it be kept up to date, both for the organization’s protection, but also for the protection of our collective legal rights. If we take a casual view of copyright, we risk legal action on one end and the forfeiture of our power on the other. A large part of DMCA applies specifically to Digital Rights Management software (DRM) and the legality of circumventing it. Archivists of film, videogames, music and other commonly DRM’ed material obviously have something at stake here.

General Resources

This list may seem overwhelming. I wrote it and it overwhelms me, even two years out of grad school. And it’s not even comprehensive. But you have to start somewhere.

My progression from HTML newb only a couple years ago to, well, a newb of several additional, more difficult things, came by way of hacking WordPress. I’m sure this is quite common. There are plenty of other ways to learn a programming language, but from what I can tell the key factors are always going to be necessity and specificity. If your motivation is to complete a specific project (regardless of languages involved), you will be far more likely to succeed and learn something than if you are simply trying to grasp the language itself in an abstract, academic way. I have a book on Objective C sitting on my shelf, but until I need to complete a real life project with Objective C, I probably won’t get much further than “Hello World!.” Find an actual need to develop these skills and you will probably make some progress. If nothing else, you will discover along the way all the things you don’t know, which is also helpful.

Another important thing to remember is that you will almost never be working from scratch. When you plan out a project, find something to serve as a solid foundation. It may be a document to use as an example, a description of an existing project, an open source code base, or some other fundamental element that almost fits your needs perfectly, and then figure out what needs to change to make it your own. As you go deeper and begin to produce your own content, this will seem less like copying and more like learning from and contributing to a community of practice.

Just to be clear, I want to close in defense of my education and alma mater (to which I will always be true or whatever). I was taught of these things (well, some of them), but not in any great detail; something that would be near impossible in the context of a broad-based 1-2 year LIS program. It’s worth noting that I was in a generic public library track and may have learned more about these issues in a more specialized setting. I also should clarify that I’m hardly an expert in most if any of these topics and languages; there may be some better resources and explanations out there so please share in the comments and/or via twitter.

What was/has been your experience with your MLIS program? Did/do you feel prepared for a professional position coming out of grad school? What would you add to this list?

Adding a Featured Image Gallery to Omeka Using GalleryView

E. Bell — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:39:39 +0000

Following on my previous entry on adding an image Lightbox to Omeka, today I’ll run through the steps it takes to get a featured image gallery running on your Omeka homepage. I searched for awhile to find a gallery plugin that a.) looks good, b.) works well and c.) is not too complicated for me to figure out. Fitting the bill nicely, I found GalleryView, a fairly lightweight jQuery plugin with lots of options for your tweaking enjoyment. It’s a bit more challenging to implement than Lightbox and requires a fair amount of CSS knowledge to prettify, but this should help you get started.

Step One: Download and Install GalleryView (and edit the GalleryView CSS)

Download the GalleryView package and place it in your theme’s /common/ directory. Be sure that you have placed the whole shebang directly inside the /common/ directory and renamed the outer folder galleryview (if you use the default galleryview-2.1.1 name, you’ll need to adjust the scripts below to match). Go into your theme to common/galleryview/galleryview.css and edit the first id, changing it from #photos to #featured-gallery (or something else if you prefer, see below for details).

Step Two: Edit your Header (Scripts and Configurations)

The code below will work as is if you are using the popular Berlin theme, but if not simply replace the word berlin below with the name of your Omeka theme. Be sure the paths below match with where you actually placed your files in the previous step.

*** To save hours of confusion, watch out for typos and try using your browser’s “view source” feature to ensure that your links are reaching their destination.

 echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/berlin/common/galleryview/galleryview.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

That final, multi-line script above initializes GalleryView and contains your configurations. You can change them however you like according to the GalleryView documentation, but here I’m setting the dimensions, timing, theme, etc. There are a couple other things worth highlighting here if you are not familiar with JavaScript. First of all, the string containing #featured-gallery is setting up the gallery to run automatically on images displayed in the html div with the id of “featured-gallery” – you can change this to whatever you like, but remember that it needs to match the outer div on your index page in the next step. Also worth noting, the script generally runs on a generic placeholder function called $, but in order to get around the conflict with the Prototype library (which also uses $ as a generic placeholder), I’ve included the jQuery.noConflict() line and replaced $ with jQuery.

Step Three: Edit your Index Page (Looping Items and Calling GalleryView)

The code below uses a custom loop to retrieve the images. As noted, the outer div uses the id “featured-gallery”, as well as a required class, “galleryview” — #featured-gallery is the only id or class that you can change below!

	<h2>Featured Itemsh2>
	<div id="featured-gallery" class="galleryview">
	<ul id="gallery">
		< ?php 
		//this loops the 5 most recent featured items
		$items = get_items(array('featured'=>true, 'recent'=>true), 5);
		set_items_for_loop($items);
		while(loop_items()):
		?>
			< ?php $index = 0; ?>
			< ?php while ($file = loop_files_for_item()): ?>
			    < ?php if ($file->hasThumbnail()): ?>
			    
			        < ?php if ($index == 0): ?>
		    	       < ?php echo /*Image URL*/'.item_file('square thumbnail uri').'"/>'; ?>
		    	    < ?php endif; ?>
			    < ?php endif; ?>
			< ?php endwhile;?>
			< ?php
			echo '';
			echo /*Item Title*/''.item('Dublin Core', 'Title').'
';
			echo /*Item Description Excerpt*/''.item('Dublin Core', 'Description',array('snippet'=>175));
			echo /*Link to Item*/ link_to_item(' ...more ').'
';
			?>
			< ?php endwhile; ?>

I’ve added some comments inline with the code above to describe what it’s doing, so if they make sense to you, you can probably figure out any changes you might need (for example, looping more or fewer images meeting whatever Omeka-friendly criteria you like).

*** I’m using square thumbnails in my loop because they’re easy, but you may need to adjust the max thumbnail size in your Omeka settings to avoid blurry images.

Step Four: Season to Taste

Though the example above works pretty nicely “out of the box” in a two column homepage theme, the GalleryView documentation contains a list of configuration options, so you will probably want to fool around with those, as well as your CSS, to integrate GalleryView properly into your theme’s overall aesthetic. You might also want to customize the loop in Omeka (personally, I’m not a huge fan of the one used above, but haven’t figured out a better one just yet).

Hope this has helped a few folks out there who, like me, are working near the edges of their skill set. As always, feel free to share your comments, questions, suggestions, critiques, etc. I’ll try to keep this updated as needed.

By the way, I’m planning to release a new Omeka theme that incorporates both Lightbox and GalleryView, as well as some other fun stuff, so stay tuned.

Adding an Image Lightbox in Omeka

E. Bell — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:21 +0000

Maybe it’s just me, but I had a heckuva time trying to figure out how to implement Lightbox 2 in Omeka. After piecing together info and code from here and there, then adding my own little improvements, I’ve constructed a simple little 4-step guide to document the process and, hopefully, help make this process a little less vexing for others out there who aren’t PHP and Java Script pros.

Step One: Get the Lightbox Package

The first step is to get the latest LightBox 2 package here, where you will find a quick explanation of how it works and how to get started.

Step Two: Modify and Upload the LightBox Package

Once you have the package, make sure it’s in a folder called “lightbox” and upload it to your Omeka theme directory inside the “common” directory where your header and footer files are located. Take the image files and copy them to your theme’s “images” directory.

Inside common/lightbox/js directory, find the file called “lightbox.js” and set your configurations. This is where you set your lightbox behaviors (overlayOpacity, animate, resizeSpeed, borderSize, etc.) and also where you tell LightBox how to find the images and labels to display Close and Loading. When setting the former, you can fiddle with the defaults to get the style you need, it’s pretty easy to understand. For the latter (image locations), you can use either a relative or a direct URL. If a relative location (e.g. ‘../images/loading.gif’) does not work for you, try using the direct URL (e.g. ‘http://www.yoursite.com/omeka/themes/themename/images/loading.gif’). My impression is that Omeka requires the direct URL for some reason. You could probably leave the images in the “lightbox” directory and point to them there as well.

Step Three: Modify your Omeka Theme Header

Add the script to your theme header (be sure to modify with your actual theme name):

Pretty basic.

Also, you’ll want to either copy the LightBox CSS styles into your theme’s stylesheet or move it to the theme styles directory and link to it in your header. Either way, be sure to double check that your images are properly linked. I find that having the LightBox styles included in a single stylesheet is preferable, but if you want, you can use something like this after moving lightbox.css to your theme directory:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

Step Four: Modify Your Omeka Items-Show Page

This is where I got hung up. The site I was working on has multiple file types — not just images, but also audio and video. I was lucky enough to find a starting point on the Omeka Dev Google Group as well as on the Omeka Forums, but the code was written for item pages with a single image file. Since I’m not great with arrays, it took me a while to come up with the imperfect code below.

	
	<div id="itemfiles" class="element">
	    <h3>Filesh3>
		<div class="element-text">
		    < ?php 
		    if (item_has_thumbnail()) 
					{
					echo 'Click the Image for Full Size';
					echo display_files_for_item(array('linkAttributes'=>array('rel'=>'lightbox[group]'))); 
										}
			else
				{
				echo display_files_for_item();
				}
			?>
 
		div>
 
	div>

This script will test if the item has a thumbnail (i.e. “is it an image?”). If it does, it will display the files as square thumbnails and give them ‘rel=”lightbox[group]“‘ – clicking on images with the “lightbox” relation in the URL will prompt the light box; if there are two or more images associated with the file, the ‘[group]‘ part will kick in to add the Next and Previous buttons. If the item file is not an image, the script calls the generic Omeka function display_files_for_item(), which will automatically call the media player (for audio and video) if needed.

A pretty easy process when you have it all right in front of you. Hope this will be helpful to someone out there.

NOTE: I’ll continue to update this post with any improvements. If you have a problem, fix, or improvement to share, please add it in the comments or catch me on Twitter (@ebellempire). I’ve also cross-posted this tutorial in the documentation wiki at Omeka.org, so feel free to contribute there as well.

Creating a Blog Topics Directory in WPMU 2.8 + BuddyPress 1.1

E. Bell — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:28:12 +0000

I recently set up an installation of WordPress MultiUser (WPmu) + BuddyPress for the History Department where I work. We have a number of different user groups on the site, including Courses, Workshops, and Projects. Eventually we will also have Personal sites (for students, staff, and faculty in the dept.) and perhaps some small organizations and campus groups. Right now the site is small, so it would be reasonable to manually create and maintain a topical directory. As the site grows, however, this could become a burden to say the least. Nobody likes to do that kind of crap – not even graduate assistants. So with the help of an outdated plug-in and a couple of tiny hacks, I easily created a directory of Blogs by Topic so I never need to hand code the directory. Read on to find out how.

To begin with, I’m using Deanna Schneider’s very handy Blog Topics For WPMU. Basically, Blog Topics creates a field in the relevant Settings, Registration and BuddyPress areas in which your users choose from a drop-down of admin-defined topics. They cannot create new topics, they must use the ones you set, so keep that in mind. The Site Admin can manually set the Topic for any blog at any time; this might be necessary if you already have a handful of blogs on your site (or you could demand that your users do it themselves because this is all about being lazy). Some users might misfile their site in the wrong category, but you can always go in and edit any blog’s Topic; they probably won’t even notice.

You might be wondering why I would write a tutorial for installing a plug-in. Well, I’m not sure if the plug-in code has some deprecated elements or if it just doesn’t play nice with the new BuddyPress theme structure, but it’s actually a bit more complicated than just installing the plug-in. For whatever reason, the documentation for this plug-in is pretty weak and some of it just doesn’t seem to work without some tweaks. That’s where I come in to sum up my hours of frustration with what now seems like an obvious process.

Here’s the drill…

Install the plug-in in your wp-content/plugins folder and activate it on your parent site. The plug-in comes with a nice little widget for your MU child sites, but it won’t help you here so consider it optional.
Inside the wp-content/plugins/blog-topics directory, you will find the file cets_blog_topics_page.php (a WordPress page template). Copy this file to the root of your site’s parent theme file. If you are using BuddyPress 1.1, that means themes/bp-sn-parent.
Now, take that file and mess it all up according to the instructions below. Unfortunately, in the plug-in’s current state (v. 0.3.2), the default file just doesn’t work, but after digging around in the code, I found some functions that work quite nicely and can be easily integrated into your BuddyPress directories. Again, you will need to save this to the root of your theme.
Create a page called Blog Topics Directory (or whatever) and apply the Blog Topics Page template you just created.

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Blog Topics Page
*/
?>
< ?php get_header(); ?>
 
	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
 
		< ?php do_action( 'bp_before_directory_blogs_content' ) ?>
 
		<div class="page" id="blog-page">
 
			< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 
				<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php the_title(); ?>h2>
 
                                
 
					<ul id="topic-list">
					<li><a href="#topic1">Topic 1a>li>
					<li><a href="#topic2">Topic 2a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic3">Topic 3a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic4">Topic 4a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic5">Topic 5a>li>	
					ul>					
 
	
 

<a name="topic1">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('1') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('1'); ?>
 

<a name="topic2">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('2') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('2'); ?>
 

<a name="topic3">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('3') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('3'); ?>
 

<a name="topic4">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('4') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('4'); ?>
 

<a name="topic5">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('5') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('5'); ?>
 
 
 
 
			< ?php endwhile; endif; ?>
 
		div>
 
		< ?php do_action( 'bp_after_directory_blogs_content' ) ?>
 
	div>
 
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 
< ?php get_footer(); ?>

You could probably find any number of ways to integrate this into your theme’s Blog Directory. Although I might eventually change it, right now, I’ve just added a link to the Blog Directory sidebar which users can… use… to Browse Blogs by Topic. If it helps, here’s a link to the site where this code is being used. Again, it needs some tweaking but this should get you started. Hope this quick fix has helped.

If you’re wondering why this post has a giant image of Brak (among other notable “buddies”) at the top, or if you just need a break from all this BuddyPress nonsense, you might need to listen to this…

Brak sings Yeah Buddy (via brakbuddy.ytmnd.com)

Building a WordPress Static Homepage with Dynamic Elements

E. Bell — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:07:30 +0000

One of the nice features of WordPress is the ability to create static homepages. While most blogs use the standard configuration, where users scroll vertically from the most recent to older blog posts, it often makes sense to use a static homepage instead — especially if you are looking to create a more professional looking site, or are using WordPress as a Content Management System. I recently tackled a project where we needed to create a static homepage with the following features

The homepage needed to look “homepagey” (i.e. not “bloggy”)
Client needed room for a short introductory text, which could be edited/updated on the fly without disrupting the homepage layout
The homepage needed to highlight the many features on the site, so that users could quickly scan the page, see what the site had to offer, and quickly find the latest update in each area.

This quick tutorial will share some code for reproducing something that meets all or some of those criteria. You don’t need to know much code to complete this tutorial, but a little helps. Once you create and implement your homepage template, you will need to use CSS to add styles and adjust the layout.

The Basics of Creating a Homepage Template

This is pretty well-documented elsewhere, but here’s what you need to know on the most basic level. If you are using a prefab theme, find that theme’s page.php file. Now take that file and make a copy called homepage.php (or really, whatever you like). Next, add the five lines below to the very top of the page (before the header and sidebar calls):

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Home Page
*/
?>

Now, when you edit or create the page you want to use as Home, you can choose the Home Page template and set it as the static homepage for your site in Settings >> Reading. But this won’t get you far. As is, this template just replicates the behavior of any page on your site. That’s not very exciting. Instead, let’s try adding some dynamic content to the template.

Note on custom theme_excerpt() function used below

Before you get all crazy and just copy-paste from the homepage code below, note that I am using a custom function to generate post excerpts. To use that function you must first create a file called functions.php and add the following code:

< ?php
function theme_excerpt($num) {
	global $more;
	$more = 1;
	$link = get_permalink();
	$limit = $num+1;
	$excerpt = explode(' ', strip_tags(get_the_content()), $limit);
	array_pop($excerpt);
	$excerpt = implode(" ",$excerpt).'...';
	$excerpt = preg_replace('`\[[^\]]*\]`','',$excerpt);
	echo ''.$excerpt.'';
	$more = 0;
}
?>

This will get you a more flexible excerpt function than the default WordPress one, the_excerpt(). I think I stole this from the Feed Me Seymour theme. You can call the function with theme_excerpt(n) where n is the number of words in the excerpt.

I’m going to break this up into sections, so if you are copy-pasting, you will need to copy all the sections below or pick and choose carefully, otherwise you might end up with some unclosed tags.

Preserving the Page text
Most of the text in a dynamic homepage is generated from feeds, posts, and database queries (i.e. not by adding it manually to the page called Home in your WordPress page list). In some cases, your Home page could be totally blank when accessed from the default page editor. However, you may want to give yourself the option of manually adding and updating text somewhere on your homepage. In the example below, we keep the WordPress page text intact by calling The Loop.

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Home Page
*/
?>
 
< ?php get_header(); ?>
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 

 

         < ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		
 
			
				< ?php the_content(); ?>
			
				  < ?php endwhile; endif; ?>

An Internal Category Feed
Below we have the latest one post from the ‘News’ category. You can repeat this with other categories as needed. This is especially useful if you use the Category Visibility plug-in or some other means to hide/show certain category posts in certain areas of your site. In a recent project, for example, we created additional page templates for displaying posts in certain categories (Calendar Events, Timeline Events, Lesson Plans), but excluded them from the blog loop.




 
 

News
         < ?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=news&showposts=1'); while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>
 
                
    		
    		
                 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/news">All News »  
                
 
    		Latest News
 
                
		 the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to < ?php the_title(); ?>">< ?php the_title(); ?>
			
                		
				< ?php echo theme_excerpt(30); ?> 
			
		
  < ?php endwhile; ?>

An External Feed
This code uses the WordPress core functionality that brings feeds into your Dashboard. I’m just pulling the title and link here, but you can do more. This is especially useful if your site incorporates another platform besides WordPress. In the example below, I use a feed from the Omeka platform (omeka.org), which I had tucked into my root directory, masquerading as a native section of the site.



 

Collections & Exhibits 
    		
    		 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/omeka">View the Archive »
			
             
             
			< ?php  
			require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');  
			$rss = @fetch_rss('http://www.myurl.org/omeka/items/browse?output=rss2');  
			if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {  
			?>  
			Latest Additions
			  
			< ?php  
			$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0,7);  
			foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {  
 			?>  
			 
			 echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']);?>">
			< ?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?>  
			  
			  
			< ?php } ?>  
			  
			< ?php } ?>  
			
 
		
  < ?php endwhile; ?>

A Special Plugin Feed (Simple:Press)
Lots of plugins generate their own feed. Here we have an internal feed from the Simple:Press forum plugin (simplepressforum.com). Such plug-ins generally use custom functions, such as the one below, the rules for which are defined in the plug-in documentation.



Discussions
    		
    		 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/forum">View Forums »
			
			Latest Topics
				
				< ?php sf_recent_posts_tag(3, false, true, true, true, 0, false); ?>

Listing all Pages
Normally, you should list all your pages in the header navigation, but in this case I had too many pages to list there, some of which didn’t belong in the navigation. I listed only the pages that were not part of the header navigation or the footer (About, Contact) in this section. You can find more info about wp_list_pages() here.


<li>
<h2>Moreh2>
 
    	<div class="post" id="more-list">
			<ul>
			<h3>< ?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=2exclude=1,2,3,4,5,6') ;?>h3>
			ul>
	div>
li>

If you are copy-pasting, don’t forget to add the footer to end your page

< ?php get_footer(); ?>

Of course, there are plenty more tricks out there. Frankly, these aren’t that special, but they seem fundamental. If this helps you, let us know in the comments.

Podcasts for History Teachers and Students

E. Bell — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:41:05 +0000

I’m one of those people who listens to NPR all day. In the shower, in the car, while cooking, as a Sunday morning activity with my partner. I almost never watch television, but I love passively listening to smart people talk, which is not really substantially different than watching dumb people swap wives when you get down to it. Though I suppose it’s also not unlike sitting in an undergrad history lecture. The point is, I like to be entertained and I also like to learn. And I like doing it with my ears, so I can use my eyes and hands for other things. What follows is an incomplete list of high-quality podcasts dealing with various topics in history.

BackStory: BackStory is one of my favorite podcasts in any genre. “On each show, renowned U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths.” In addition to the hosts’ impressive knowledge, the show has NPR quality production values and a great sense of humor and relevance. The show is a product of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, who produce a couple other shows (which I’ve yet to hear) through their VFH Radio project.

StuffYouMissedInHistoryClass: This one is produced by HowStuffWorks.com, which initially made me a bit skeptical. I was quickly won over though. Historians Candace Gibson and Jane McGrath investigate “the stories behind the lines of your textbooks.” The topics range from esoteric (e.g. the history of happiness) to topical (“Historically inaccurate movies”) to explanations (“How the Marshall Plan worked”) and conversations appropriate for younger students (“Did Betsy Ross really make the first American Flag?”).

BingeThinkingHistory: While the previous two podcasts are conversational and focus on American history, this project – a one man show by Tony Cocks - is oriented toward British and European history. Since I know very little about European history, I am both intrigued and confounded by the subject matter. Luckily the host has a dignified English voice and a knack for telling history in a narrative, documentary style that makes good use of music and background audio (e.g. the sounds of battlefield artillery). So I like it, even though I don’t really know what he’s talking about.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a wide selection of “eminent historians discussing major topics in American history”, which they release as audio podcasts. My first impression of the project site was that this would be a stuffy, old-school academic series wherein pokey old coots discussed their own greatness by way of displaying their mad lecture skillz. I also thought it would cater primarily to college students and other academics. In fact, there are some really interesting and informative lectures here, and it serves as a really great resource for pretty much any group above maybe middle school. I noticed a handful of high school teacher comments on the project site, reminding me that some teachers actually challenge their students to do real historical thinking. Imagine that.

HistoryPodcast/HistoryOnAir … “Jason Watts is the host of History Podcast and an amateur historian. It should be noted that he is not a professional.” That’s what it says on the site, but ignore that (or sit and quietly appreciate it). Jason does a good job of documenting his sources and telling historical stories, and has been doing it since 2005. This is actually a nice little operation, and it looks like Jason is beginning to use video and visualization tools so this is one to watch. Users can submit topics, ideas, and even scripts for new episodes. Also of note is the provision of transcripts and citations for each episode, which is handy for students who might want to explore a topic in more detail. There’s also a big list of additional podcasts you might want to check out.

So there’s a brief list. I actually have a backlog of additional podcasts in my iTunes library that I haven’t had time to review, so I may add more to this post or continue the topic in a new post as I find more quality podcasts. Please use the comments section to suggest some others you like.

The Brief Etymology of a Gay Bash

E. Bell — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:55:19 +0000

I went to library school because I am what some people call “intellectually restless” – constantly moving from one interest to the next. Honest people call this phenomenon by other names, such as “uncommitted,” “easily distracted” or “lazy,” but I prefer the more aristocratic “intellectually restless.” In any case, given my training and varied interests, I will occasionally pose imaginary questions on this site to give myself micro-research and reference problems. Please feel free to submit a real question and I’ll do my best to answer, and provide citations to any relevant digital sources (sorry, I will not read or find books in your library).

The inaugural Jefferson’s Newspaper Reference question was submitted by the curious 13 year old Latino boy that lives in my subconscious. His name is Martin. Martin asks, “What’s the deal with the word maricón? Why does it mean gay?”

Martin, let me tell you right now, I will be using Wiktionary. Deal with it.

Maricón is derived from marica, the Spanish language word for magpie – an Australian bird. The base of the word is Maria or Mary (the English word magpie is derived from another variation of Mary, Margaret), with the addition of the suffix -ica, which is diminutive and often derogotory. In other words, maricón translates into both “littly Mary” and “little bird.”

If you’re into gay bashing and/or Spanish language insults, this may come as no surprise. Mary is another slang word used to describe gay men — most often used by gay men. Gay men are also often referred to in terms that suggest aviation — fairy, for example, or another Spanish language word, pajarito, which has a couple connotations. Pajarito is a diminutive form of pájaro, meaning bird or sometimes parrot. In Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela, pájaro also means penis. Thus, pajarito means both little bird and little penis. Another double whammy.

Now, why are homosexuals so often equated to tiny virginal flying peckers? I have no idea. It’s very uncool and someone should get to the bottom of it.

But back to the question. I promised a solid source to Martin, and my Wiktionary-gleamed musings are not going to cut it.

In Marginalization of alternative gender and sexual identities: The role of normative discursive practices in Chilean society (2005), linguist Sara Balder describes use of the term as such:

A diachronic approach shows that maricón is derived from the proper name Maria. Accordingly, this female origin qualifies the term to connotatively recall feminine gender attributes such as weakness and submissiveness. Another parallel is that the term indicates submission not only in the social sense, but also in the sense of sexual passivity. In practice, this term is polysemous, and is primarily used to denote an effeminate and/or homosexual male, making it roughly synonymous with ‘effeminate sodomite’. I will refer to this primary meaning as (maricón 1).

Additionally, this term can also be used secondarily in reference to a bad, wretched, or harmful person (maricón 2). The relationship between these two senses can be best explained by the chaining approach (see Lakoff 1987), whereby maricón2 developed as a derivative of some of the characteristics of maricón 1. The characteristics, specifically, are those that give maricón 1 its negative connotation: maricón 1, which denotes an effeminate homosexual male, is connotatively negative in that homosexuals are considered bad, wrong, weak, deviant, and contemptible by dominant society. The chaining involved in the relationship of maricón 1 to
maricón 2 can be conceptualized as such:

maricón 1: effeminate passive
homosexual male
↓
effeminacy, passivity, and homosexuality
are bad, deviant, and wrong
↓
a maricón is a bad, deviant person
who commits wrongful acts
↓
maricón 2: a bad, wretched,
or harmful person

The resultant polysemous outcome is that a term used for homosexuals can also be used for other people who are disreputable, odious wrongdoers (maricón 2), even if they have normative gender and sexual orientation.

Read the full text here [PDF]. No mention of magpies, though.

Maricón In the News: Bill Richardson uses the term on the Don Imus Show, hampering his presidential bid and dampening his reputation as a strong supporter of gay and lesbian rights (2007): link

Maricón In the History: Fidel Castro, preeminent among gay-bashing jerks, allegedley sent his pal, writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to leaders of both Panama and Spain with one brief spoken message: “Dice Fidel que usted es un maricón” (“Fidel says you are a faggot”): link (hover for citation)