Plugins - 2 – Serendipity

Christian Boltz notified us and provided a patch to fix the spartacus plugin properly being able to retrieve remote files. This became necessary when SourceForge.net changed their underlying structure.

If you are using Spartacus, you have several possibilities to fix this issue for you:

1: Manually download the updated plugin file plugins/ serendipity_event_spartacus/ serendipity_event_spartacus.php from here: serendipity_event_spartacus.php for Serendipity 1.6 / Development, serendipity_event_spartacus.php for Serendipity 1.5.

2: You can also simply configure your spartacus plugin and enable the use of Netmirror.org, or you can enter a custom mirror: http://php-blog.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/php-blog/|http://netmirror.org/mirror/serendipity/

3: You can also simply edit your serendipity_event_spartacus.php file and replace all 2 occurences of the string *checkout* with viewvc.

Thanks to Christian for notifying us!

Thanks to Stefan Schurtz, who reported a XSS issue in the serendipity_event_freetag plugin (SSCHADV2011-004). The issue was fixed in version 3.22 of the plugin, you can fetch the update through Spartacus or download via Spartacus.s9y.org.

The bug was introduced in version 3.20 of the plugin. Users of the plugin should upgrade, as it allows malicious users to trick people into visiting a specially crafted link on your blog to steal cookie login information for example, if you click on such a link.

Even though the Disqus.com comment integration is easily integratable inside a serendipity template already, the need for a specific plugin was raised on the forums.

serendipity_event_disqus is now available on Spartacus and provides exactly this - a plug and play component to enable disqus comments on your blog, and it even allows you to only use this system for more recent blog entries, so that your old comments can be preserved.

Currently the plugin hides the Serendipity-internal comments and trackbacks through CSS. The plugin provides instructions on how to modify that, if you have a custom template.

Have fun using the plugin, and if you have issues or recommendations for it, feel free to discuss this on the Serendipity forums. :-)

The podcast plugin has recently been improved to offer a much more flexible configuration with custom player and HTML5 audio/video support. The flowplayer has been added as a new, more flexible flash-video player replacement.

You can now specify custom feed options, and the RSS podcast format should now be iTunes compatible., as well as the Flowplayer replacement for Flash-Videos. Also, custom feed options that you can add to the RSS-Feed (rss.php?podcast_format=XXX) allow you to filter the enclosures only to specific file extensions.

The update should be compatible to older versions so that you can simply use the new features. If you customized any of the player files, you can now do that much easier through the configuration; be sure to backup any files you might have changed before upgrading.

Please report any issues you might have with this updates on the forums!

It has come to our attention that the Cronjob-Plugin (serendipity_event_cronjob) has a bug that prevents it from properly detecting the next scheduled update time. This bug has been fixed in version 0.6, which should now be available through Spartacus and usual means.

If you use this plugin, this is a required update to ensure it's proper function. Thanks to Matthias2 from the forums for reporting this to us.

Flattr is a new service that is up and coming the last days in the blogosphere. Their service offers a social micropayment platform that lets you show love for the things you like..

The service allows normal people (consumers) to create an account, where they can deposit a certain amount of money. Whenever they appreciate a blog entry, an image, a video or any other content they see on a flattr-enabled website, they can easily click a link to add support to this website. At the end of a certain period, the deposited money is distributed among all the authors of things, that the consumers liked.

In first regard, this is not really a service to get paid from, but rather a service to spend money on. The modern web has become more and more of a place where people expect free high-quality content. Now it's time to remember, that quality content is not something that has been free for all people all of the time. This is a new phenomenon of the internet, and people work hard on offering this content, just on their own and to contribute to mankind. With flattr, you can show appreciation for those great deeds, by giving something back to things that wouldn't otherwise be there.

This is a bit in the spirit of the early Paypal-donation days, but with a twist: The distribution of a specific deposit and the easy way to "bookmark" interesting things to rembemer them once a fresh billing cycle arrives. It's a bold move in the opposite direction that Facebook just recently went with their global "I like" method. Flattr not only gathers the information, but enables the originating authors to notice that other people appreciated their work.

Much ado about something, a plugin to this Interface from within Serendipity is mandatory. Even though the API of Flattr is terribly easy to implement with a small javascriptlet, the Serendipity Plugin does have its unique usage scenarios:

• You can decide on a per-entry basis if you want to announce a blog entry for flattr.com appreciations.
• You can enter the metadata (language, category, description) seperately for each blog entry (inside the usual blog entry administration).
• If you don't provide specific information, the globally entered fallback will take effect and is used for flattr-submission. Like if you did not specificy a custom category for a blog title, the global category will be used.
• The flattr-Badges are integrated within the RSS-Feed (for javascript-enabled RSS readers)
• When using the Freetag-Plugin, its tags can be automatically used as flattr-tags - or you can override them with custom tags.
• The plugin allows you to place the badge either inside the entry footer, the entry body or even place it in a custom Smarty template variable so that you can place it anywhere.

The plugin is available now on Spartacus, or for direct download. Just unzip to your plugin directory, and enable the event plugin inside the Serendipity plugin management interface.

Feedback on how to improve the plugin is welcome, preferrable on the Serendipity Forums.