Here’re two extensions I use to run PHP code (one which just executes it and shows the result in Growl, and one which copies the result to the clipboard), and an extension that runs a snippet of C code. Of course, it wouldn’t take much to make extensions for many other languages, too.

Execute PHP Code.alfredextension

Execute PHP Code, Copy Result.alfredextension

Run C code.alfredextension

This doesn’t help at all if you’re looking for something in particular – It’s a much better idea to show the post within the context of the search query, as real search engines do.

See it in practice here.

This is a fairly easy thing to actually get working in WordPress. It’ll take just a couple of minutes, and will make a big difference to blog visitors. Here’s how I did it.

Creating a search result page

If your theme doesn’t already have one, you’ll need to construct a template within your theme that WordPress will use for search results. By default, WordPress will use your index.php template, so that’s usually a good place to start with, for normal themes.

Duplicate index.php, and call it search.php.

If you already have a search.php, you’re all set.

A note about theme engines

A special case here is for theme engines like Thematic (which I use for this blog). For Thematic, it’s a matter of un-hooking the provided search ‘loop’ from within your child theme, and replacing it with your own.

In my case, with a Thematic child theme, this takes place within functions.php. First, one needs an ‘init’ action, to remove the existing hooks.

function mytheme_init() {
   remove_action('thematic_searchloop', 'thematic_search_loop');
}
...
add_action('init', 'mytheme_init', 10);

Then, it needs a replacement function to perform the search result loop:

function mytheme_search_loop() {
  while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
 
    <div id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>" class="<?php thematic_post_class() ?>">
      <?php thematic_postheader(); ?>
      <div class="entry-content">
        <?php thematic_content(); /* We will replace this next */ ?>
 
      </div>
      <?php thematic_postfooter(); ?>
  </div><!-- .post -->
 
  <?php endwhile;
}
...
add_action('thematic_searchloop', 'mytheme_search_loop');

Some smarts to show context

What I did was replace the content of each post displayed with some code that constructs and displays some context around the search terms found in the post.

In your search.php (or your search loop function, if you’re using a theme engine), look for the line that inserts the post content. Chances are, it’ll look something like <?php the_content('Keep reading'); ?>. In the case of the Thematic child theme above, it’s <php thematic_content(); ?>.

Delete that line, and replace it with the following (here’s a plain-text version, if that’s easier):

<?php
// Configuration
$max_length = 400; // Max length in characters
$min_padding = 30; // Min length in characters of the context to place around found search terms
 
// Load content as plain text
global $wp_query, $post;
$content = (!post_password_required($post) ? strip_tags(preg_replace(array("/\r?\n/", '@<\s*(p|br\s*/?)\s*>@'), array(' ', "\n"), apply_filters('the_content', $post->post_content))) : '');
 
// Search content for terms
$terms = $wp_query->query_vars['search_terms'];
if ( preg_match_all('/'.str_replace('/', '\/', join('|', $terms)).'/i', $content, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE) ) {
    $padding = max($min_padding, $max_length / (2*count($matches[0])));
 
  // Construct extract containing context for each term
  $output = '';
  $last_offset = 0;
  foreach ( $matches[0] as $match ) {
    list($string, $offset) = $match;
    $start  = $offset-$padding;
    $end = $offset+strlen($string)+$padding;
    // Preserve whole words
    while ( $start > 1 && preg_match('/[A-Za-z0-9\'"-]/', $content{$start-1}) ) $start--;
    while ( $end < strlen($content)-1 && preg_match('/[A-Za-z0-9\'"-]/', $content{$end}) ) $end++;
    $start = max($start, $last_offset);
    $context = substr($content, $start, $end-$start);
    if ( $start > $last_offset ) $context = '...'.$context;
    $output .= $context;
    $last_offset = $end;
  }
 
  if ( $last_offset != strlen($content)-1 ) $output .= '...';
} else {
  $output = $content;
}
 
if ( strlen($output) > $max_length ) {
  $end = $max_length-3;
  while ( $end > 1 && preg_match('/[A-Za-z0-9\'"-]/', $output{$end-1}) ) $end--;
  $output = substr($output, 0, $end) . '...';
}
 
// Highlight matches
$context = nl2br(preg_replace('/'.str_replace('/', '\/', join('|', $terms)).'/i', '<strong>$0</strong>', $output));
?>
 
<p class="search_result_context">
  <?php echo $context ?>
</p>
<p>
  <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark">Read this entry</a>
</p>

Save, and search for something on your blog — you should see contextual search results, now.

One final tweak: Results per page

WordPress has a setting for the number of posts to show per page. You may want to use a different number of search results per page, given that each result is now shorter than a full post.

To override this ‘posts per page’ setting, you’ll want to find the line just before the search loop. It’ll probably look like <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>, or, if your theme doesn’t bother with that part, <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>.

Before that line, insert the following:

<?php global $wp_query; $v = $wp_query->query_vars; $v['posts_per_page'] = 10; query_posts($v); ?>

This will take the current query (including the search phrase, page number, etc.), add a ‘posts per page’ parameter, then pass it back to WordPress’s query engine.

There’s been some talk about the issue, with one suggested solution being to manually set the ‘posted’ date of every photo to the ‘taken’ date. A utility exists to do this, but it has some major limitations, including a difficult user interface and limitation that causes the process to fail if you have any photos that were taken before the date you set up your Flickr account.

So, I’ve made a utility specifically for sorting a Flickr photostream. It should be fairly user friendly, and provides the ability to backup and restore your photo metadata, in case you ever want to revert.

Check it out here: SortMyPhotostream

Leave a comment below if it’s useful to you.

• Flickr RSS feeds
• Photostream
• Filtering by tag
• One or more photosets
• Favorites
• Displaying random items

Other features:

• Choose from three different thumbnail types
• Lightbox/Thickbox are supported
• Data is cached locally to lower server load
• Secure Flickr API used, to eliminate the risk of damage to your server, unlike some other Flickr widgets
• Flickrpress is a multi-widget, so you can use more than one instance (e.g., one in your sidebar, one in your footer)
• Use as a shortcode to insert into posts and pages — multiple instances supported in the one entry

Flickrpress uses the excellent phpFlickr library.

My latest project:

Download

Download Flickrpress at the WordPress site.

If you like Flickrpress, please consider buying one of my products.

Installation

1. Unzip the package, and upload flickrpress to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Add the ‘Flickr Widget’ to your sidebar and configure, or see the ‘Shortcodes’ section for information on use in pages and posts

If you wish to use content from anything but an RSS feed, you will need a Flickr API key. This can be obtained from Flickr

If you wish to use Lightbox, you must first install the Lightbox plugin.

Shortcode

Shortcodes are snippets of text that can be inserted into pages and posts. These snippets are replaced by various generated content. Flickrpress provides a ‘flickrpress’ shortcode to display images from Flickr within a page/post.

Available parameters:

Example:

  [flickrpress type="photostream" api_key="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" account="michaeltyson" count="30" paging="true" lightbox="true"]

Styling

Flickrpress comes with CSS styling, but if you wish to modify its appearance, such as adding frame borders, simply style the “flickrpress-container” class. See style.css for more.

FAQ

I’m seeing “Flickr is currently unavailable” messages

You may have an incorrect setting: To see the actual error message, open your server’s error log and look for Flickrpress messages. How you do that depends on your host – on mine, Site5, the error log appears in the WordPress folder; on others, you access it through a web interface). If you can’t get to it, open up the file includes/interface.php in the plugin’s folder, and change error_log on line 22 to echo – then any messages will be printed to the screen. You’ll want to change it back afterwards so your visitors don’t see those messages.

Changelog

1.0.2

• Added Thickbox support
• Compatibility fix for PHP 4

1.0.1

• Bugfix in navigation javascript encountered when Lightbox isn’t installed

1.0

• Implemented AJAX-based navigation through pages of images
• Added shortcode documentation
• Caching for shortcode and php calls
• Removed ‘css’ option in favour of always including CSS
• Fixed conflict between shortcode and widget versions
• Fixed bug in loading all photostream items

0.3.2

• Fixed a warning when using shortcode

0.3.1

• Fixed a packaging snafu

0.3

• Support for use outside of sidebar

0.2.1

• Bugfix for displaying random favourites

0.2

• Now able to be styled as described in http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-decorative-gallery/. See style.css for more info.

0.1.1

• Bugfix for when only 1 random image shown

0.1

• Initial release

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Alternatively, in ‘inclusive’ mode specify a list of tags/categories to make public – all other tags/categories will remain hidden.

Download

Download the Private Tags plugin at the WordPress plugin page

If you like Private Tags, please consider buying one of my products.

Installation

1. Unzip the package, and upload private-tags to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Visit ‘Private Tags’ settings underneath WordPress settings to configure

Changes

0.1 – Initial release

For example:

This is a PHP framework that uses the common GD library to manipulate images.

It’s main interface is a content filter – give it HTML, containing images, and it will return the same HTML modified so that the images are now the converted versions, according to their ‘class’ attributes, with appropriate width/height attributes, etc. This makes it super easy to work with.

It stands alone, but it is also going to be a WordPress plugin (as you can see on this site, it’s already operational), a Joomla plugin, and I’m considering establishing a web service too, so those who don’t have adequate software on their server can still use it.

It has a plugin-based architecture so anyone can add new ‘themes’ (props to my partner Katherine for that beautiful wooden frame, by the way). I’m going to also implement a simple XML-based plugin schema, and possibly an interface to it, so that it’s easy to do so. I’m planning a ‘community’ style directory site to host contributed styles.

The base frame rendering code is such that it is trivially easy to add a new ‘theme’. It extracts segments from a single frame image, and handles seamless tiling to make the frame the right dimensions, so you don’t even have to worry about overlapping regions.

I will release it soon, after adding a little more content – keep your eyes peeled.

For now, check out the Michaelangelo showcase, which gives an idea of the different styles, and contains an interactive sampler to play with styles (IE users should stop being IE users to view this).

Doing my bit to beautify the web.

‘Nemik’ has created such a thing and kindly made it available. It was a bit elderly, and didn’t work with the new Facebook, so I jazzed it up a bit.

Put it on a webserver, configure it, and access the URL to view the RSS feed. Probably a very good idea to provide password protection, as well.

Use at your own risk, and Facebook, please don’t sue me.

Download the script here

• Dramatic Gritty Effect In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to add a dramatic, gritty, bronzed effect to your images.
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• Foreign Exchange Rates (FOREX) XML Feed or CSV Feed Free for commercial or non-commercial use, updated daily, XML/CSV format
• 10 Places To Publicize Your iPhone App A list of iPhone App review/gallery sites

• Configurable sidebars! Choose from no sidebar, a sidebar on the right (the standard layout), or a double sidebar on the right!
• Support for WP 2.7 paginated and threaded comments
• Support for a custom header image – just enter a URL to an image, typically a transparent PNG, and it will appear in the header instead of the text (SEO friendly)
• Some bug, compatibility and i18n fixes

<

p>Note: If you have problems with this theme, please post your question at the WordPress forums. Please don’t contact me directly, as I don’t have the resources to help you.

This can also manipulate content (through the preg_replace function, and configurable per-feed), such as removing names from Twitter entries. I’m using it on loopyapp.com to show all relevant items from both this blog and my Twitter feed automatically, as an alternative to creating a separate blog. I’m also using it on this blog, to incorporate blog entries and Twitter postings.

It uses the MagpieRSS RSS parser for PHP, which provides some nice functionality, including caching.

Here’s the code: aggregate.zip

To use it, unzip it to somewhere in your webroot, then edit aggregate.php and possibly rss.php to set your configuration. Make sure that either the aggregate directory is writable, or create a ‘cache’ directory within and make that writeable, to enable caching. Point your web browser to the rss.php file to immediately view an RSS feed aggregating your supplied feeds. To add a link to the RSS from a website, add it in the header:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed" href="http://mysite.com/aggregate/rss.php" />

To include content in a website, the provided render_aggregate_items function will do most of the work, or you can write your own rendering code. You just have to include the file, use the functions to obtain and draw the content, and then provide your own CSS styling. Example:

<div class="items">
<?php
include("aggregate.php");
render_aggregate_items(aggregate_items());
?>
</div>

A more comprehensive example is in sample.php.

The code is GPL, so use it however you want – keep the header comments there, though.

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This gets rather tiresome, particularly if there’s a fair chunk of text to encode by hand.

I used the always-useful ThisService app with a short PHP script which does a htmlspecialchars() on whatever’s passed to it, to create a OS X service called ‘Encode HTML‘. Put it in your Library/Services directory, possibly log out and back in again, and you’ll be set.

Select the text to encode, click the system menu, Services, Encode HTML, and it’ll be automatically encoded in place.

Google AdSense shortcode

This is the simplest plugin, which provides an ‘adsense’ shortcode to output a Google ad. To use it, use Google’s tools to create the ad, then paste it into the php file where indicated, then put {adsense} (replace the curly braces with square brackets) in posts/pages where you want the ad to appear (remove the spaces around the square brackets).

adsense.php.zip

And now for a demo + shameless attempt at monetization:

Media player

This one is useful if you occasionally post a video file on your blog, and host it locally. If you use video more frequently, there are plugins that probably are more suited, but I personally didn’t want the overhead, and I wanted to store videos in the standard upload locations, instead of having a separate repository, which seems to be what other plugins do.

This one uses the JW FLV player, provided in the plugin. Use something like:

{media source="http://my.site.com/path/to/video.flv" width="400" height="308" preview="http://my.site.com/path/to/preview.jpg"}

(replace the curly braces with square brackets)

mediaplayer.zip

I used this just the other day on a post demonstrating the output of the simulator I’ve written for my PhD.

Music player

This is the plugin that renders the content for my music page, as well as providing mini-players for other posts. Give it a path to a directory, and it will display all mp3 files in that directory with flash players based on the XSPF Web Music Player. Recently-added mp3 files will be marked as ‘New’. Use something like:

{musiclist path="path/to/my/music"}

(replace the curly braces with square brackets; add optional nolink=”true” parameter to avoid linking to the mp3 files from their titles)

For just one track, use:

{audio source="path/to/audio.mp3"}

musicplayer.zip

Recently I released some code to discover and embed Twinkle images linked from Twitter postings, and released a modification to Ricardo González’s Twitter for WordPress plugin which uses it.

I’ve now implemented support for Twitpic as well.

Grab the modified WordPress plugin here:

twitter-for-wordpress-plus-images-v0.2.6.zip

After installation, add the widget and make sure ‘Discover images’ is ticked.

For non-Wordpress users, the base code is also available here:

TwitterImageUtil.class.php-v0.2.6.zip

Include it in your twitter list source code, and use it as a filter for the message content. Something like:

$message = TwitterImageUtil::processContent($message, $mysql_database_handle);

Some configuration is possible – see the header comments for more details.

The code will create a thumbnail of the image, and store it locally. It’ll also cache the results in a MySQL database for speed. It supports Lightbox, too – just supply the relevant flag to turn it on.

Updates

• Version 0.2.6: Bugfix for posts with both images and @mentions
• Version 0.2.5: Bugfix from prior version, plus compatibility fix for Twitpic changes
• Version 0.2.4: Updated to match Twitter for WordPress v1.9.2: Compatibility fix for WP 2.7
• Version 0.2.3: Another update, chasing the moving target that is Twitpic
• Version 0.2.2: Updated to match Twitpic’s new image storage using Amazon S3.