Those with a keen eye may have noticed that my tweets / status updates didn’t start with “is” until recently that’s because posts that appeared here on my blog would look stupid and out of context, who starts a post “is” ???

To solve the problem attached is a small plugin for Alex Kings Twitter Tools, it’s a simple WordPress filter which prepends posts which begin with “is” with the author name, example:

is testing his new WP plugin.

Nick is testing his new WP plugin.

If I get some positive feedback I might publish this in WP’s plugin directory.

Installation is easy, rename twitter-tools-is.txt to twitter-tools-is.php and save it in your wp-content/plugins directory, enable the plug-in the “normal” way and job done, no further configuration required!

WordPress Plug-in Order

Whilst playing with my bad-behavior callback function, I noticed something quite crucial; plug-ins load in alphabetical order!.

I noticed that every time a new version of BB is released / upgraded I had to re-paste my callback function into bad-behavior-wordpress.php – DOH!

To get around this I decided to create a new plug-in called linickx-bb-callback.php, but I noted that the counter wasn’t increasing. Changing the file name to aaa_linickx-bb-callback.php fixed the issue, sweeeeet!

Bad Behaviour and Akismet Blocked Counters for WordPress

The Bad Behaviour plug-in for WordPress comes with a weekly counter in the admin dashboard, but do you want a wicked footer like mine?

106,386 dodgy geezas have been blocked by Bad Behaviour and 36,926 spams were eaten by Akismet.

Akismet comes with a counter you can use in themes/plugins…

$akcount = get_option('akismet_spam_count'); $akcount = number_format($akcount); echo $akcount;

But with Bad Behaviour you have to do a little more work. To start with you need to get BB to record in the database each time it blocks someone, this is done by adding a function to ~/wp-content/plugins/bad-behavior/bad-behavior-wordpress.php , add the following code…..

// Bad Behavior callback functions.
function  bb2_banned_callback() {

        $counter = get_option('bad_behavior_spam_count');
        $counter = $counter + 1;
        update_option( 'bad_behavior_spam_count', $counter );

}

Now BB will store an incrementing number in the WP database for you to use in your theme..

$bbcount = get_option('bad_behavior_spam_count'); $bbcount = number_format($bbcount); echo $bbcount;

Now you can track how many inter-twats your blocking!

phpbb_recent_topics version 0.4.1

UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please download the update from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/, and please comment on the new post, thanks.

This is a small update, it incorporates the patch submitted by toni to fix the widget, thanks toni

The old information still applies…

phpBB Recent Topics Admin interface in WordPress

Admin GUI

If you’re happy with v0.4 and have it running fine then don’t bother, in fact edit phpbb_recent_topics.php so that WordPress stops complaining about finding a newer version.

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4.1 from wordpress.org

What’s New?

The widget patch mentioned above!

What’s Old?

Most importantly I have tested this plugin with phpBB3 and WP2.5 so I’ve updated the readme.txt to reflect this.
I finally quashed the install bug where by phpbb-recent-topics was confused with phpbb_recent_topics.
Sidebar Widget, yus for all you non-php people you have a widget to play with.
Edit the Time & Date layout – leave blank to remove it completely

The Installation

Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Settings’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
The following Settings are required:
- * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
- * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
- * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
- * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
- * The Date Formatting, i.e. “d/M/y – g:i a” similar to the WordPress “General Settings”
Hit ‘Update Options”
To output the list of topics in a page or post…
- * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…
- * click “design” in the dashboard
- * click “widgets”
- * next to phpBB Recent Topics click “add”
- * click “save changes”
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…
- * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…
```
<?php
if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
phpbb_topics();
}
?>
```

A bit about Database configuration.
If wordpress & phpBB share a DB already then set $PHPBBDB to DB_NAME and everything will be fine, else you’re going to need to GRANT the wordpress user read access to phpBB.

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is phpbb3 supported?
- yes.
Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
- Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
  if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
  phpbb_topics(3);
  }
  ?>
Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
- In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.
Why is the date config under settings not in the widget configuration?
- The date settings effect both the template tag and the widget

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you tag wordpress forum posts with “phpbb-recent-topics” I’ll reply to you there, but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

Link for posting in the correct phpbb-recent-topics forum

Finally Subversion
You also might be interested to know that I’ve been getting to grips with the wordpress plug-ins svn, so you can get work directly from here; and when wordpress.org re-crawls my readme the latest version will also be available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Missing argument 1 for phpbb_topics()

I thought I’d write a post about this error message as it’s pretty much the main reason that I ever receive comments or e-mails from the WordPress community. Sadly the complaints I receive from the community out weigh the complements, but I guess that’s life

Thank you to all those who have downloaded and enjoyed my plug-in and all those who have taken to say something nice.

The problem with this error message Missing argument 1 for phpbb_topics() is that I don’t actually know how to fix it. If you look in the source code you’ll see that I’ve tried to trap “empty variables”…

if (is_null($LIMIT)) {
                $LIMIT = 5;
}

Now this approach seems to work on my server(s), and works for some people, but there are a number of people whom is doesn’t work for; unfortunately the majority of the WP community are no more technical than myself and I have never received any feedback on how to fix this.

I’m not a programmer, I’ve never claimed to be a PHP guru; as I don’t know how to fix this problem in the latest version of phpbb-recent-topics I tried to combat the problem by introducing a widget. The widget it aimed at people who don’t know php, it allows you to “drag” the list of recent topics into your sidebar, but for some reason people still prefer to edit their sidebar.php :confused:

I would to remind all readers that it quite clearly states on my announcement :

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you tag wordpress forum posts with “phpbb-recent-topics” I’ll reply to you there, but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

Currently the only solution I can offer to anyone suffering from this error message is to replace phpbb_topics() with phpbb_topics(”5″), if that doesn’t work then please accept my apologies.

If anyone would like to offer a patch for my plugin I would gladly include it and accredit appropriately.

Thanks for Reading!

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin v0.4

UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please download the update from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/, and please comment on the new post, thanks.

Admin GUI

It’s been a year since the last release so perhaps this version should be called “about time!” v0.4 has primarily been released as a bugfix version, if you’re happy with v0.3 and have it running fine then don’t bother, in fact edit phpbb_recent_topics.php so that WordPress stops complaining about finding a newer version.

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4 from wordpress.org

What’s New?

Most importantly I have tested this plugin with phpBB3 and WP2.5 so I’ve updated the readme.txt to reflect this.
I finally quashed the install bug where by phpbb-recent-topics was confused with phpbb_recent_topics.
Sidebar Widget, yus for all you non-php people you have a widget to play with.
Edit the Time & Date layout – leave blank to remove it completely

What’s Old? – aka: Installation

Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Settings’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
The following Settings are required:
- * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
- * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
- * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
- * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
- * The Date Formatting, i.e. “d/M/y – g:i a” similar to the WordPress “General Settings”
Hit ‘Update Options”
To output the list of topics in a page or post…
- * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…
- * click “design” in the dashboard
- * click “widgets”
- * next to phpBB Recent Topics click “add”
- * click “save changes”
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…
- * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…
```
<?php
if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
phpbb_topics();
}
?>
```

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is phpbb3 supported?
- yes.
Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
- Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
  if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
  phpbb_topics(3);
  }
  ?>
Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
- In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.
Why is the date config under settings not in the widget configuration?
- The date settings effect both the template tag and the widget

EDIT: Found a link for posting in the correct phpbb-recent-topics forum

Call to undefined function: register_sidebar_widget

So WP2.5 is out, and I figured it was about time I squashed that load bug on phpbb_recent_topics, while I’m at it I figure I’ll wigetize it.

The problem is that the example on the automattic site doesn’t actually work! If you paste…

function widget_myuniquewidget($args) {
    extract($args);
?>
        <?php echo $before_widget; ?>
            <?php echo $before_title
                . 'My Unique Widget'
                . $after_title; ?>
            Hello, World!
        <?php echo $after_widget; ?>
<?php
}
register_sidebar_widget('My Unique Widget','widget_myuniquewidget');

Into a blank plugin you get this in your logs…

PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function:  register_sidebar_widget()

Now I’ve not been bothered to dig out the exact reason why yet, something to do with the sidebar loading, but you need to wrap the whole lot up in an init function, so try this instead…

function widget_init_myuniquewidget() {
	// Check for required functions
	if (!function_exists('register_sidebar_widget'))
		return;

	function widget_myuniquewidget($args) {
	    extract($args);
	?>
	        <?php echo $before_widget; ?>
	            <?php echo $before_title
	                . 'My Unique Widget'
	                . $after_title; ?>
	            Hello, World!
	        <?php echo $after_widget; ?>
	<?php
	}
}

// Delay plugin execution until sidebar is loaded
add_action('widgets_init', 'widget_init_myuniquewidget');

I just need to work out now, how to add wiget options to the wp-admin panel and the next verions of my plugin will be done

PHP – Simple Validate E-Mail function.

I found this by accident, but thought it was useful to take a note as my regular expression knowledge is basic to say the least…

function ValidateEmail($e,$v=-1) { global $verbose; /* Return codes: 0: appears to be a valid email 1: didn't match pattern of a valid email */ if ($v==-1) { $v=$verbose; } if (!preg_match("/^[a-z0-9.+-_]+@([a-z0-9-]+(.[a-z0-9-]+)+)$/i", $e, $grab)) { return 1; } return 0; }

Usage is simple….

if(!(empty($_POST['email']))){ $email = ValidateEmail($_POST['email'],$v=-1); } // check E-Mail Syntax if ($email == 1) { echo "Incorrect Email Address Submitted. "; }

Thanks Shane Marriott

Whoops! – Files back online.

I thought I’d post a quick note to say thanks Tobias for letting me know that my files download area was broken, I was playing with mod_rewrite over the weekend and forgot to check that – DOH !

Anywho, all is sorted now, sorry to those that couldn’t get to my wordpress goodies!

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin v0.3

UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please download the update from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/, and please comment on the new post, thanks.

phpBB recent topics admin interface in WP 2.3.x

Admin GUI

Another day, another plug-in update…..Version 0.2 never saw the light of day, after fixing my compatibility issue I moved straight into setting up the admin interface. So here we have it, a proper implementation

Download phpBB Recent Topics

Installation

Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
The following Settings are required:
- * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
- * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
- * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
- * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
Hit ‘Update Options”
To output the list of topics in a page or post…
- * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar…
- * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…
```
<?php
if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
phpbb_topics();
}
?>
```

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Upgrading from Version 0.1
Upgrading is optional. This version has two major changes: The first basically fixes the compatibility issue I have running two php ob_start processes in wordpress; the second is the introduction of a “proper” admin interface (rather than hacking the php file).
To upgrade, make a note of the following settings:

$PHPBBDB = "phpbb"; //phpBB db name
$TOPIC_TABLE = "phpbb_topics"; //phpbb topics table
$SITEURL = "http://www.mydomain.com/forum"; //Forum URL

Deactivate version 0.1, and follow the Installation instructions above

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
- Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
  if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
  phpbb_topics(3);
  }
  ?>
Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
- In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to
```
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");
```
  to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.

root cookie v1.2 (wordpress plugin)

UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please comment on the new post, thanks.

I’ve been a bit slow, aja pointed out the fault a few days ago, but I’ve been a bit slow off the mark

Anyway, here’s the official announcement,

root cookie version 1.2

This version primarily fixed the logout issue, and yup, I’ve learnt by my mistakes it loads it gently too

Compatability issues with phpbb recent topics plugin ?

I’ve recently run into a compatibility problem with my phpbb topic plugin, basically I tried to copy the code I did ( the ob_start / stop buffer thing ) and I found that the second time I ran the loop it didn’t work !

Anyway in lieu of working on an admin interface for setting up the phpbb connection I’m solving this, if anyone is having a similar issue please let me know.

Oh, and this might be of interest…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Nick
Date: 12-Mar-2007 11:38
Subject: Re: Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin
To: Paul Stokes

Hi Paul,

You can do this by playing with the SQL statement in the plugin, for example
SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $limit
would exclude topics from forum 1

hope that helps,
Nick

On 11/03/07, Paul Stokes wrote:

Hello,

First I must say what a great plug-in you have here!
Is there a way to keep the hidden forums topic hidden?
Thanks
-Paul

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin

UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, the latest version is available on wordpress.org please comment on the new post, thanks.

Written primarily for my wife to use in the future, but I’ve developed a pluging that allows you to post a list of recent phpBB threads/topics within wordpress.

If found this plugin by Brandon Alexander but it wasn’t right for my needs, firstly he looks up usernames from phpBB, now my phpBB & wordpress installs don’t share databases and I thought it was a bit of a security risk giving wordpress access to my users password hashes… and secondly that plugin gives a list of recent posts, not what I wanted, and wanted threads (topics).

This is the 1st version, the massive fault with it is that you have to edit the file (to tell it where to find phpBB), I’m not yet smart enough to include an admin interface.

Installation: Download phpbb_recent_topics.txt and save as phpbb_recent_topics.php in your wordpress plugins directory. Edit the file, and change these bits to your appropriate settings…

$PHPBBDB = "phpbb_database"; // phpBB db name
$TOPIC_TABLE = "phpbb_topics"; // phpbb topics table
$SITEURL = "http://www.domain.com/phpbb"; //Forum (phpbb) URL

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Plugin Usage.
The plugin can be used in two ways, for those who don’t like editing templates you can call (type)

{phpbb_recent_topics}

from any post or page, and it will be replaced with an list of the last 5 topics.

For those who want to include the list in a sidebar template or similar, call the following function: phpbb_topics(), something like

 if ( function_exists('phpbb_topics') ) { phpbb_topics(5); }

where by the number 5 can be replaced with anything less that 10, and that’ll be the number of topics returned.

Hopefully that all makes sense, feel free to contact me with problems.

UPDATE: Comments about combatability issues here please.

Tag Archives: PHP

Twitter Tools is for Twitter Tools

WordPress Plug-in Order

Bad Behaviour and Akismet Blocked Counters for WordPress

phpbb_recent_topics version 0.4.1

Missing argument 1 for phpbb_topics()

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin v0.4

Call to undefined function: register_sidebar_widget

PHP – Simple Validate E-Mail function.

Whoops! – Files back online.

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin v0.3

root cookie v1.2 (wordpress plugin)

Compatability issues with phpbb recent topics plugin ?

Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin