Ping: the music social network
The Call It Electronic Mail
Smiles
Trying out ping. It came out this week. I just really started using my 5 year old ipod this year even though I’ve downloaded over 50,000 songs from iTunes.
We’ll see how it goes with Ping. I’ll report back. So far the sign up process had one bug I noticed but all in all simple. I see a lot of potential but hate that it’s within iTunes. Would like to see it in a website because the last thing i need is having iTunes open.
I’m having a tough time with Wootheme’s Canvas and child themes. For one, I’m having trouble with adapting it to Buddypress and multisite. Where before I was strictly Freshnews and plussing out the custom.css and sharing headers out to other themes for sites on the network, and I was loving that.
Now. Child themes have me going in circles. Some of my old bad habits still work but some willy nilly-ness is going on with a couple of functions and I miss my old custom.css. Any one know how to get a custom.css to work.
No not a sequel announcement for the 80 mouse movie. It’s the return of me to this site.
I’ve been off learning about buddypress and wp3. I did have a semi-framework installed here before but with 3.0wp I felt it was time to readjust some things and begin some practices I wasn’t using before. Like child themes, post types, and hooks. Yea hooks.
So I’m refitting the site with the Canvas theme (child theme) and going to apply as many as the scripts I had on the previous MU framework along with Buddypress of course. I have the videos site and photos site that are going to be beast but we’ll see how they get folded back in. It should be fun.
So you’ll see some jankiness but its just me pulling out all the engine parts. Guaranteed, after putting it back together there’ll be some left over.
Here’s how I added length limiting to my post box in Buddypress.
Open the activity/post-form.php and add this near top. I put it under the avatar, don’t remember right now if there was a reason for that.
<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- Begin
function limitText(limitField, limitCount, limitNum) {
if (limitField.value.length > limitNum) {
limitField.value = limitField.value.substring(0, limitNum);
} else {
limitCount.value = limitNum - limitField.value.length;
}
}
// End -->
</script>
Add this next clip right afterwards or depending where you want it to display the number counter, you can move around as you please with #numbCount or whatever you’d like to call it in your style sheet. Change the value number according to how many characters you want to allow, i’ve place 148 (sounded like a good number)
<input readonly type="text" name="countdown" size="3" value="148" id="numbCount">
Next replace the following
<textarea name="whats-new" id="whats-new" cols="50" rows="10"><?php if ( isset( $_GET['r'] ) ) : ?>@<?php echo esc_attr( $_GET['r'] ) ?> <?php endif; ?></textarea>
with the following, remember to include the value after where it says countdown.
<textarea id="whats-new" cols="50" rows="10" name="limitedtextarea" onKeyDown= "limitText(this.form.limitedtextarea,this.form.countdown,148);" onKeyUp="limitText(this.form.limitedtextarea,this.form.countdown,148);"" /><?php if ( isset( $_GET['r'] ) ) : ?>@<?php echo esc_attr( $_GET['r'] ) ?> <?php endif; ?></textarea>
That’s how i got it to work. Any suggestions on how to optimize or make it better, leave me a note. Like for instance, I think users can copy and paste text longer than the limit and it’ll accept it…I haven’t looked into it as it doesn’t happen that often, but if you know please share.
The time has come. The era of wrangling social media is over. I will begin shutting down accounts across the board starting with some of the first accounts I started. Myspace you will be first to go. I’ve already deleted facebook twice in the last 5 years…i’m not scared of a third.
I’ve been thinking of doing this for some time now. There are profiles that I just don’t need to have any longer. What can I do there that I can’t already do here on my site. If someone needs to find me. Google me.
Will be starting soon, my final test of the social networking sites. Delete Account.
I’m going hyperlocal now.
I don’t spend much time on the major social networks any more and if you look at my mighty little twitter widget on my sidebar it’s been more than 80 days (as of 4/26) since I tweeted. These last 6-12 months have been torture witnessing the mass absorption of social media but it wasn’t the absorption as much as the showcasing that became a little annoying – “hey look at me I are being social media!” – it became the web’s bluetooth ear piece.
Like I said before it’s been a couple of years now since I decided to stop being “social” in an attempt to hook on to whatever is going to be next. I spend much more time now working with open source platforms like WordPress and I’ve been exploring hyperlocal and niche networks – what will be the mom and pop networks of what was large social media. Large networks break off into smaller concentrated inter-micro-networks. I really believe that the social networks will in a sense implode if they haven’t already. Like any hot spot or popular gathering place, at some point it reaches critical mass. When everyone plus their mother starts showing up to your once exclusive spot it becomes too mainstream even for the mainstream, so layers begin to peel off.
I don’t use the major networks but I do observe how they are moving along. I login every so often to see what’s up and study the environment. It’s been in the past couple of months that I’ve noticed one very funny thing:
Myspace is cleaning up their space while Facebook is junking up theirs. Very funny. Once they were going in opposite directions and now it looks like they are turning back the other way. I think this is a sign that we are at a crossing point like what happens when the ghostbusters cross beams, well I think we’re seeing the result with these two guys. I noticed more and more that the myspace is committing to leaner layouts and design while the facebook has been adding more and more customization and distraction to their trademark minimal layout. Farmville? Pages? Junk.
It was supposed to be simple way connecting to family and friends. Pretty soon every single last of the rifraf will have “graduated” from myspace and will grace the pages of facebook that by then will have music and customization features just like the old myspace. And while they’re criss-crossing each other into a plateau – the new whatever will be here, whether it’s personal “blog” profiles, family networks, local networks or personal lifestream webpages, we are there – just need a snazzy name and a cute verb for it like social media and tweet.
Don’t know if this is the best way to go about doing it but it works for me.
If you want to ad advertisements – adsense or any other – try this. By modifying the activity-loop.php. You just need to house your ad code where you want and replace the filepath accordingly.
<?php /* Querystring is set via AJAX in _inc/ajax.php - bp_dtheme_activity_loop() */ ?>
<?php do_action( 'bp_before_activity_loop' ) ?>
<?php $counter = 0; ?>
<?php if ( bp_has_activities( bp_ajax_querystring( 'activity' )) ) : ?>
<?php /* Show pagination if JS is not enabled, since the "Load More" link will do nothing */ ?>
<noscript>
<div>
<div><?php bp_activity_pagination_count() ?></div>
<div><?php bp_activity_pagination_links() ?></div>
</div>
</noscript>
<?php if ( empty( $_POST['page'] ) ) : ?>
<ul id="activity-stream">
<?php endif; ?>
<?php while ( bp_activities() ) : bp_the_activity(); ?>
<?php $counter++; ?>
<?php include( locate_template( array( 'activity/entry.php' ), false ) ) ?>
<?php if ( BP_ACTIVITY_SLUG == bp_current_component() && bp_is_directory() ) : ?>
<?php if ( $counter == 5 ) { include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/ads/ad_728x90.php' ); } ?>
<?php if ( $counter == 10 ) { include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/ads/ad_728x90.php' ); } ?>
<?php if ( $counter == 15 ) { include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/ads/ad_728x90.php' ); } ?>
<?php endif;?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php if ( bp_get_activity_count() == bp_get_activity_per_page() ) : ?>
<li>
<a href="#more"><?php _e( 'Load More', 'buddypress' ) ?></a> <span></span>
</li>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php if ( empty( $_POST['page'] ) ) : ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<div id="message">
<p><?php _e( 'Sorry, there was no activity found. Please try a different filter.', 'buddypress' ) ?></p>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php do_action( 'bp_after_activity_loop' ) ?>
<form action="" name="activity-loop-form" id="activity-loop-form" method="post">
<?php wp_nonce_field( 'activity_filter', '_wpnonce_activity_filter' ) ?>
</form>
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