15 replies to this topic

[Albert]

Dale Crum of Doc4 Design has created a WordPress AtariAge Dashboard Feed plug-in.  The RSS feed is from the front page of AtariAge, so whenever we post a news item on AtariAge, you'll see it in your WordPress Dashboard.  Here's a screenshot:



You can download the plug-in here:

WordPress AtariAge Dashboard Feed

Enjoy!

..Al

[shep]

Out of curiosity, what powers the AtariAge news anyways?   Just some custom PHP jazz?

[Albert]

shep, on Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:24 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, what powers the AtariAge news anyways?   Just some custom PHP jazz?

Yep, nothing special there--it's a relatively simple affair.  

..Al

[Albert]

Someone should have told me I spelled "Dashboard" wrong initially.

..Al

[Tweety]

Nice... Will try it out, Thanks !

[skr]

Yes, very nice. Just installed it at. Runs perfect with WP 2.6.3 (German Edition).

[Albert]

skr, on Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:01 PM, said:

Yes, very nice. Just installed it at. Runs perfect with WP 2.6.3 (German Edition).

Great, glad to hear that.    I know Dale made some improvements to it (such as including the AtariAge logo) after I initially started this thread..

..Al

[skr]

Albert, on Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:07 PM, said:

I know Dale made some improvements to it (such as including the AtariAge logo) after I initially started this thread...

I attached a screenshot where you can see how the current version does look like.

[Albert]

skr, on Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:20 AM, said:

Albert, on Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:07 PM, said:

I know Dale made some improvements to it (such as including the AtariAge logo) after I initially started this thread...

I attached a screenshot where you can see how the current version does look like.

That looks great, thanks for the screenshot.  Really do need to post news more often.  

..Al

[skr]

Albert, on Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:56 PM, said:

skr, on Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:20 AM, said:

Albert, on Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:07 PM, said:

I know Dale made some improvements to it (such as including the AtariAge logo) after I initially started this thread...

I attached a screenshot where you can see how the current version does look like.

That looks great, thanks for the screenshot.  Really do need to post news more often.  

..Al

There was an update for the Plug-In. But formatting still is incorrect. Before the update, the list just wasn´t showed. But now there are strange characters, but the list still isn´t shown as a list:

[monster angriff]

Thanks for the heads up on this. I will take a look today and hopefully get an update out soon. If anyone has suggestions to improve the plugin I'm all ears, especially when it comes to testing it out in other browsers.

Thanks for the nice words everyone.

[Albert]

Thanks for taking a look Dale and pointing out the oddball characters in that news submission.  Turns out the weird characters are caused from non-ASCII dashes and apostrophes being used.  This is from me copying the list of items for that news submission from someone who likely edited them in Microsoft Word.  They look okay when rendered in Firefox, but don't always display properly depending on where they are used.

As for that entry not displaying as a proper list, I'll leave that to Dale.  

..Al

[monster angriff]

The main issue here is that RSS isn't very intelligent and doesn't actually read html code. Therefore when displaying the <ul> ( unordered list ) or <li> ( line item ) tags to create the bullet list in a post, the rss feed strips all that out. The solution would be to use an rss to html editor to dynamically display the feed at the source which basically is leaving us at the mercy of the web master to decide how the feeds will be read.

I've spoken with Albert and at this point we feel we don't have a large enough user base to warrant making a gratuitous change such as this. It will take time and testing to set up and we are both busy, especially during the holiday season. However, this doesn't mean it won't happen in the future, if we have enough users interested in styling the descriptive output we will surely make this change.

At this point the reader is a convenience tool to quickly view any new updates at AtariAge and the option always exists to visit the site if you're having trouble reading the post. For now, Albert will be careful to remove any Word Document style encoding on copied text and we will both work together to make this plugin better in the future.

Thank you

Edited by monster angriff, Fri Dec 5, 2008 6:07 PM.

[monster angriff]

Updated the Atariage Dashbord Plugin for WordPress 2.8+ AtariAge Dashboard Plugin Please leave a comment either here or at Doc4: Plugin Page if you have any problems. The plugin currently states compatibility to 2.8.2 but because WordPress 2.8.3 & 2.8.4 were only security alterations the plugin works fine.

[monster angriff]

Recently updated the AtariAge Dashboard Feed plugin for WordPress. This is version 2.0 and works with WordPress 2.7 - 2.9.2 at this time. If you need a version for 2.7 and under download the 1.0 version from WordPress Extend.

This latest release makes a few aesthetic updates to the fonts in an effort to better match the WordPress dashboard. In addition I have included a configure button to adjust the number of feeds viewed, and whether or not the date and excerpt should be shown. Please let me know if you find any errors and I will fix them as soon as possible. More information can be found at the official plugin page.

[monster angriff]

Updated the plugin to version 2.5.1 which flows better with the overall look of WordPress' dashboard widgets. Other updates include an enlarged AtariAge logo which is now a link directly to AtariAge and the logo no longer appears on the "configure" screen which was a mistake that I didn't notice initially. Overall this update is meant to comply with the latest version 3.2.1 and alters the aesthetics for a more pleasing layout.

If anyone has suggestions on making this plugin better please let me know.

Download the plugin here: http://wordpress.org...dashboard-feed/
View a screenshot here: http://www.doc4desig...dashboard-feed/
( screenshot will be updated on Friday )