One of the best things about working with TextMate is the powerful bundle system it includes. I have been using it a lot lately with the CodeIgniter bundle. Here are two that are worth looking at:

• TextMate Codeigniter 1.6.3 Bundle
• CodeIgniter Textmate Bundle

Either one of those cover pretty much everything except the automatic creation of models and controllers. Since models and controllers require you to have the class name the same as the file name it would make sense and be a lot easier to just have this automatically happen when you call the bundle.

For my projects I created a new command that would do this automatically for you. Here is how I did it.

Step 1.

Open the textmate bundle editor and add a “new command”:

New Command

Step 2.

Now on the right side of the bundle editor set it up like this screen shot:

Edit Command

Step 3.

The final step is to now insert the code to create the model for you. Here is the code I used:

• CodeIgniter TextMate Model Snippet
• CodeIgniter TextMate Controller Snippet

If you look at those you will notice I am just using the global TM_FILENAME and then using php to process it into a workable format. Pretty easy but a huge time saver. If you have TextMate tips or improvements for this code please be sure and comment below.

Download

Here is a direct download of the bundle for this tutorial which includes the model, controller, and one for the end of the file:

This is just a quick update to let every one know I am in the process of moving all the code on this site over to github. The main reason for this is because it is a whole lot easier to create repositories for each different line of code I have. And the fact that git seems pretty awesome to work with.

Most of you want see any difference as the code will still remain the same but will allow me to better track each individual project. Plus I will no longer be sharing one single Google Code repository as I am now. I hated setting it up this way and has been a pain to manage. The reason I initially went with one repository was because I didn’t see the need to go through all the steps to create a whole bunch when some of my releases are just one or two files.

That is where github is so nice. Now it is a simple as adding the name then committing. If you are interesting in using git for your own work I highly recommend checking out this git article from nettuts.

As I learn more about it myself I am sure I will write a few tips that I come across but the basics are pretty simple as long as you follow the instructions. If any one is a git user please leave a comment with any tips or tutorials that you have found useful.

Happy Coding!

This past April, the owner of a local bicycle store was paralyzed in a motorcycle wreck. He had stopped behind a dump truck, waiting for the car ahead of it to turn left. The person driving the jeep behind him failed to stop and hit him from behind. More info >>

He was airlifted to a local hospital where he spent the next 12 weeks having multiple surgeries and getting to a point where he could get back home. The hospital stay alone cost over $200,000. This doesn’t include the operations, rehabilitation, medicine, etc. From what I understand, he passed $1M months ago.

The driver of the jeep was underinsured. The amount the Cherry’s owe is staggering. Through all this, Bill is still his same old self. He’s got an amazing attitude.

More info »
More info »

THE AUCTION

This afternoon at four o’ clock, there’s an auction in our town to raise money for the Cherry’s. Local merchants have donated a variety of items to be bid on. Blair and I want to participate. So, here it is -

What we’re auctioning:

• 1 68 Classifieds Developer license. ($249.99)
• a year of free hosting ($360)
• installation ($49.99)
• any and every module we offer ($115)
• template conversion (pick a template you like from ThemeForest , we’ll convert it to a 68 Classifieds template bundle.) ($200 estimate)
• Templatecodes will give a copy of their system of 8 templates, the numerous add-ons and the Checkout Plus system to the successful bidder.
• Also includes a copy of the Gallery View Module. ($30.00)

HOW TO BID:

Reply to this forum thread with the amount you would like to offer for the license and services above. Current bid is $200 $500 $600.

AUCTION END:

The auction ends at 5p.m. Eastern, October 15th.

All monies collected from the winning bidder will be sent to the Cherry’s.

If you’re not interested in bidding but would still like to make a donation, please visit Belmont Bicycles and click on the Donate button there.

THANK YOU!!!!

As many of the readers here probably know I like to change themes. So far this is my forth revision just this year. This time around I decided to go back to a template I picked up from ThemeForest and use the Thesis WordPress framework.

I have been hearing how great Thesis is and from all the testimonials is the reason I decided to go with it. Plus they offer a developer license which I can use on some of my other sites.

For those using Thesis or are interested in it here is a list of resources that I found most beneficial:

• 4 Great Ways I Customized my Thesis Theme
• Thesis 404 pages
• Thesis User Guide
• 100 Resources for Thesis Wordpress Theme Users

Thesis Benefits

With this being my first real try at customizing Thesis I wanted to share some of the benefits.

Number 1 – The custom stylesheet and custom class <body class="custom"> which allows you over ride almost any style by adding .custom to it. This is a live saver and pretty genius on their part. I think in the future I will use a method like this on my new templates.

Number 2 – A custom functions file which allows you to use their filters and hooks to change things around. This was a little confusing to me at first but after reading a few tutorials it is pretty simple to do almost anything you can ever want.

Number 3 – Is an affiliate program that any one can join and it pays 33% commission on all sales.

Finally number 4 – they include a lot of functionality that you do not have to use custom plugins for. I prefer to keep my plugins to a minimum and by them including a lot of the important ones it makes keeping everything up to date so much easier.

Thesis Cons

I have no complaints about the framework itself. My only complaint is that pretty much every Thesis site looks similar and you can pick one out in a crowd easier than finding a gothapotamus. (Yea I just wanted to use that in a sentence)

Over all I happy I decided to go with Thesis and would recommend it.

I have been using Versions App for a few months now and I am loving the simplicity of the app. However as much as I love it I kept going back to my old svn client when I needed to branch or tag. I never could get my head around how it was done in Versions and the user guide wasn’t very helpful to me. Although it does explain it clearly.

So if you use Versions and want to quickly create a tag just go to the remote svn folder. Hold down the option key and drag the trunk into the tags folder. Next a dialog prompt will display and ask you for the new folder name and finally to commit it. The tricky part for me was the option key. I seemed to always miss that step.

This tutorial is meant to show you how to include SimplePie into your 68 Classifieds site.

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ’simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’. Flexible enough to suit beginners and veterans alike, SimplePie is focused on speed, ease of use, compatibility and standards compliance.

Step 1.

Download SimplePie. For this tutorial I used v1.2

Step 2.

Upload simplepie.inc to “includes/simplepie” directory. If this folder does not exist you should create it. Next make the cache directory in your sites root writable.

Step 3.

Now we are going to do the actual integration. For the purpose of this tutorial we will just hard code into the index.php file so it is only available on the home page. Of course you can put this in init or a plugin to make it global. But we are going for simple.

Open index.php file and add this to process the feed with SimplePie:

include_once('includes/simplepie/simplepie.inc');
$feed = new SimplePie();
$feed->set_feed_url('http://feeds.feedburner.com/EricLBarnes');
$success = $feed->init();
$feed->handle_content_type();
foreach($feed->get_items() as $item)
{
	$rss['title'] =  $item->get_title();
	$rss['link'] =  $item->get_link();
	$rss['date'] =  $item->get_date();
	$items[] = $rss;
}
$class_tpl->assign('rss_feed', $items);

The code above pulls in the rss for this site and loops through the items and assigns it to the “$items” array. Finally it assigns $items to the template as a variable named $rss_feed. You can change $feed->set_feed_url to your own rss feed.

Step 4.

Now open your home.tpl template file and at the bottom add this code:

<h3>Feed</h3>
<ul>
{foreach from=$rss_feed item="entry"}
    <li>
    <a href="{$entry.link}">{$entry.title}</a> - {$entry.date}
    </li>
{/foreach}
</ul>

Once that is added you can save the template and then view your sites home page. Hopefully you will have a nice list of latest entries from the rss feed. Of course you can format it better and also pull out more information than what is shown. If you wish for more details please consult the SimplePie Documentation.

I am proud to announce my latest 68 Classifieds module. This is a module that integrates with Campaign Monitors API and automatically syncs your newsletter subscribers to your Campaign Monitor mailing list.

It is set up to use 68 Classifieds internal cron job so it will sync users once daily.

Requirements

In order to use this module you must use 68 Classifieds v4.1.x and above. As well as have an account with Campaign Monitor.

Instructions

Download the module and open campaignmonitor/hooks.php file. In this file find the following lines:

var $api_key = '';
var $client_id = '';
var $list_id = '';

Inside the single quotes add your ids. They can be found from the following sections in your Campaign Monitor Account:

• api_key – You can find your unique API key under Account Details in your Account Settings.
• client_id – You can find the API Client ID under Client Details on the Manage this Client page under Manage Clients.
• list_id – You can find the API Subscriber List ID under ‘edit list name/type’ on the Subscriber List page under Manage Subscribers. It’s the link next to the list name at the top.

Change Log

• v1.0.0 – August 27, 2009 – First release.

If you use this module please leave a comment letting me know how it works for you and if you can think of any features that need to be added.

v0.3 of my Classifieds Twitter Feeder module is now released and can be download here.

This release fixes a few bugs and also adds in new debugging options to help you pinpoint problems with it not posting to your Twitter account. All users should upgrade and the only file changed is the hooks.php.

This is an announcement post and if you wish to comment please do so in the original post.

I am happy to release my newest theme for bbPress. It is named snowski for really no reason other than a unique recommendation from Mohit Kumar.

This theme features a nice clean look and includes a jQuery slider for login and registration.

Only tested with bbPress v1.0.2

Instructions

Download the latest zip file and extract it to your computer. Next upload the “snowski” folder to your “my-templates” folder. Then visit admin and activate it.

If you want to change the text on the left column of the slider please edit the intro.php file.

Change log

Join my newsletter or RSS Feed to stay up to date with new releases

• v1.0.1 – October 29, 2009 – Moved to github. No changes
• v1.0.1 – October 02, 2009 – Fixed jQuery conflict.
• v1.0.0 – August 22, 2009 – First Release

Recently I needed a way of importing listings from another site into a 68 Classifieds site. As of right now 68 Classifieds doesn’t have an api so the only real way of doing it is to create some custom code to interact with the script. In this post I will outline how I got it working so if you ever have the need you can do it too. Keep in mind this is very crude and just enough to get the job I needed done.

The Data

The data you are importing needs to be a delmited file. I used a pipe delimited text file with the following lines:

OWNER|TITLE|SECTION|LINK|DESCRIPTION|PRICE|MAKE|MODEL|HOURS|SERIAL|LOCATION|
1|Test Import|1|http://yoursite.com|Test desc|2399|Ford|Taurus|55000|none|My Town
1|Test Import 2|1|http://yoursite.com|Test desc 2|2399|Toyota|Tundra|55000|none|My Town

The first line is just the header which is not used but I included it for reference. The next two lines are two different vehicles to import. The important step is to make sure the lines align with the heading line and to have each on their own line.

The Import Script

The import script is where all the processing will be. This file is designed to be saved in your 68 Classifieds root. You can view and download the full file from GitHub. I will go through all the sections below so you can see how to modify it suit your needs.

At the top of this file is this section:

$expiration = '30'; // Change 30 to the number of days these should expire.
$make_extra_field_id = 6; // The id of the make extra field
$model_extra_field_id = 7; // The id of the model extra field
$hours_extra_field_id = 8; // The id of the hours extra field
$serial_extra_field_id = 9; // The id of the serial extra field
$location_extra_field_id = 10; // The id of the location extra field

This allows you define what extra fields you are using and have them line up with your data.txt file. As you can see I am setting the expiration for 30 days, then defining the id of each extra field I am using.

The next part you will probably want to modify is the for loop. Inside this loop I am assigning out the data. This looks like this:

$data['owner'] = $arr[0];
$data['title'] = $arr[1];
$data['section'] = $arr[2];
$data['url'] = $arr[3];
$data['description'] = $arr[4];
$data['price'] = $arr[5];

Basically the $arr[number] is a map to the data file. So $arr[0] is the data in the first pipe and on on. Just remember it always starts with zero instead of one.

The final piece of data is the extra fields which look like this:

$extra['make'] = $arr[6];
extra_field($listingid, $make_extra_field_id, $extra['make']);

The first line $extra['make'] = $arr[6]; is just like above this maps to 5th deliminator in the data file. Next we call the function extra_field which takes the listingid, the extra field id, and finally the text as parameters.

The Full File

Wrap Up

Trying to explain this was actually a lot harder than I thought. So if you need any clarification on anything please comment below.