To scratch an itch, I’ve hacked a simple plugin, that makes it easier to link to friends and category topics.
When enclosing the name of a friend, a friend’s blog name, or a category name, in {}, the plugin takes care of turning it into a link, including XFN link relations for friends. If a category or link isn’t found for a particular name, a warning will be shown above the post preview in the administration interface, but the text will be left alone.
Now, whenever I link to Danny Ayers, all I have to do is write his name within curly brackets: {Danny Ayers}. Same goes for my {RSS} category: RSS.
Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that, a few prerequisites need to be in order. Luckily, they coincide with the requirements of my FOAF output hack:
- Categories must have only a URI in their description.
- Link URIs must be to the weblog of the person.
- Link name must be the name of the weblog.
- Link description must be the name of the person.
Download the plugin: Linkifier (rename to linkifier.php and place it in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory)
View source: Linkifier Source
Cool!
I’ve only got as far as a basic WP installation (complete with magic quotes to break the RSS!) but I’ll add this tool to the list. Anything else you’d recommend?
/me checks his RSS…
Hmm, I can’t see why the RSS should be borked by the magic quotes, it looks fine?
As for other “enhancements” to WP, I think I’ve pretty much described them all, except for activating the google-hilite plugin and installing the acronym plugin.
I’m working on building standards for a Local Names infrastructure.
That is, so that blogs can publish lists of their local names, and neighbors can subscribe to them. Or from wiki, you could link to local-named blog entries, or a blog could link to a wiki’s local names. Or so you could label a mailing list thread with local names, and refer to threads by the subject line, or whatever. Name-spacing is all figured out, and you can default name spaces as well.
I’d really like to talk with you some time!
Local names sound interesting, but even though you state that “Name-spacing is all figured out”, I’m not sure how you’d handle conflicts. It may end up at QNames, but that’s still URIs – at least to a certain extent.
I’m not sure I understand your question.
We have no conflicts, because namespace defaulting follows a list. We say: “If the name isn’t found here, then check over there, and then check over there, and then check over here, and then check over here.”
But suppose you want to link to something that is shadowed by some other namespace- In that case, you can explicitely name the path. You can say, “No, not CommunityWiki’s definition of OneBigSoup- I want IntComm wiki’s definition of OneBigSoup.”
Does this work with WordPress 1.5?
Hi tala,
I haven’t tested it (yet), but I don’t think there should be any problems.
I’ve been using Linkifer 1.4 for sometime now with my WP 1.5.2 install w/out problems. Though tonight I noticed Linkifier stops making links out of any link marked in WP as Visible=No. Any chance of an update to correct that?
I’ve installed it and tested it, and it seems to work fine, except I get an error returned into the post.
Have I done something wrong??
Aurelius,
I think it’s likely because of a the new WordPress version you’re running.
There’s a new release of the plugin now — 2.0 — please try that instead.