Scott Rosenberg wrote last week about the “mutability of online content” and the challenges news organizations face in handling changes and corrections to stories, and concluded that versioning made sense in journalism as a way to build trust. Readers can see all of the changes since publication so that there’s no sense of something being swept under the rug. The Drupal CMS has modules for making revisions publicly viewable, and of course this is a key feature of Wikipedia.

Scott noted that WordPress already stores revisions, and suggested a plugin could make old versions accessible to visitors. Looking to demo the idea on his blog, he later asked if any WordPress developers were intrigued. At first I was only intrigued enough to dig up an existing plugin by D’Arcy Norman that did some of what he was looking for: “Post Revision Display,” but gradually became invested in the challenge of making this thing happen. And here it is!

What It Does

It’s pretty simple. Drop the post-revision-display.php file into your plugins dir and activate it, and you’ll see a list of post-publication revisions at the end of single post pages:

Click on the link for a revision, and you’ll get a page showing that revision along with the “diffs” between the old revision and the current revision:

If you have the standard <?php wp_head() ?> hook in your theme’s header.php file, the plugin will add to the page header when an old revision is displayed:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />

To prevent indexing by search engines. (This is what Wikipedia does on its revision pages and I think is a good idea here as well.)

CSS

The note at the top uses <p class="revision-header">. For example, I styled mine with:

.revision-header {
	background-color: yellow;
	border: 1px solid #3a8b8c;
	padding: 10px; }

The revision list uses:

<div class="post-revisions">
<h4>Post Revisions:</h4>
<ul class="post-revisions">

And the changes section has <div id="revision-diffs">, along with inline styles for the <pre> block (“overflow: auto”) and colored text. It’s an id instead of a class to allow the anchor jump “See below for differences.”

Download

The plugin has been tested with WordPress 3.0 and is licensed with the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

Notes / Acknowledgments

• I don’t plan on using this right now on my site, so you’ll have to go to Scott’s Wordyard blog to see it in action. (Maybe not until a few days after this post.) And for more examples, please leave a note in the comments if you decide to try it!
• The default behavior of WordPress is to save all revisions, but can be modified to save only the most recent “N” revisions. If used for the “trust factor,” it would be best to save all revisions, don’t you think?
• The markup generated by the plugin validates as HTML5, and very possibly will also pass as Transitional XHTML 1.0.
• This thing is built on the Post Revision Display plugin, but with extensive changes, so let’s consider it new and experimental. I tried to take care with security checks so that only post-publication versions of public posts can be viewed. It seems that WordPress’s security mostly carries the day. If there are private posts, only those with access should be able to see revisions. However, caveat emptor. Please let me know if you find any problems, with security or otherwise.
• Speaking of Mr. Norman’s work on the original plugin, how cool is free software? I find that no matter how much I work with “free as in freedom” stuff, I still get a kick out of the way this works. We should all be free to build on each other’s work. It’s a culture of cooperation. Without the boost from the original, I likely wouldn’t have done this. (Thanks, D’Arcy!)
• Depending on how D’Arcy wants to proceed, I’ll work on getting the wordpress.org plugin page updated, or rename this as a new project and try to get a different “official” page going.
• I found a nice PHP implementation of the Unix “diff” utility written by Daniel Unterberger and Nils Knappmeier, PHPDiff, which I modified for use here. (More wonderful free software at work.) But, then I saw where WordPress already has a great built-in diff viewer for revisions, which is more Wikipedia-like in the way it shows changes. A future enhancement for me or you will be to figure out how to use this outside of the admin pages.
• Thanks to Scott R. for starting the ball rolling. I enjoyed working on this little project and doing my part to save the credibility of journalism in the digital age.

Month Grid Archive

I wanted to be able to display my monthly archives in a grid:

With post counts for each month, but wasn’t finding a plugin for it. I did find Rob Marsh’s Compact Archives plugin which gave me a good place to start from. (Thanks Rob!)

Along the way, it seemed like it would be nice to have post count totals for each year and a grand total. I think this table gives readers a nice snapshot of posting activity over the years.

It’s simple to use: put the_french_archives.php in your plugin dir, activate it, and put <?php month_grid_archive(); ?> in your theme file.

All Posts Archive

Inspired by the nice look of Leo Babauta’s Archives page, I also wanted to have an archives page to show all posts, like this:

For this, I found some helpful template code from Wessley Roche. I made it into a function, added the option to use a table instead of a list (now the default), added comment counts, and used “rowspan” to group multiple entries in the same day.

This one is called from your theme file with <?php all_posts_archive(); ?>.

Note on Styles

I used several of my personal classes and some inline styling. This may be suitable for you, or maybe you’ll prefer to tweak with your own stylesheet classes.

<table class="simple-table w100">
<th class="lft arch-hdr" colspan="14" style="padding: 6px;">
<th class="small-text">
<td class="rgt less-small-text">
<!-- etcetera -->

Memory Error

I haven’t had any problems on my web host, but the “all posts” archive caused this error with my local dev instance of WordPress:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 64 bytes) in /home/scarpent/yada/yada/www/wp-includes/meta.php on line 307

One solution I found suggested adding to my wp-config.php file:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

Which fixed the problem for me.

Download

“The French Archives” plugin has been tested with WordPress 3.0 and is licensed with the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

I think with WordPress being v2 only, the plugin has to be v2 also. But if WordPress ever goes to v3 or higher, or if you use this code for something else, then I’d say v2+ should apply.

Driving to Akaroa, by Trey Ratcliff

License: Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike

I like this plugin, even if very few people around here can be bothered to actually click on a link to see my random quotes. Really, it’s okay. It’s just fine if you don’t give a rat’s ass about my collected pearls of wit, wisdom, and pop culture ephemera. (You probably won’t care to read my old YARQ post either.)

It appears that the plugin hasn’t been actively maintained, but through the miracle of free software I’ve been able to make my own fixes and enhancements, and now I can share them with you and the world. (I did get in contact with Christian, so we’ll see what we can do about updating the official plugin page.)

YARQ v3.0 works with WordPress 3.0 (for me, anyway), and I suspect will work with WP 2.5 and up. Please let me know how it goes for you. I can’t promise anything for time commitment, but I’d like to keep this thing alive so I welcome feedback and will try to fix reported problems.

Download

YARQ is licensed with the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

Usage

• Upload yarq.php to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
• Add your own quotes via the admin page, Tools → Quotes.
• Display the quotes by placing <php yarq_display(); ?> in your template, or using the widget (which I don’t use so haven’t confirmed if it works okay).

• You can control the formatting of the quote in Settings → YARQ. For example, I use:

  %quote%
<p>%author%%opt_separator%%source%</p>

  Where the %placeholders% will be replaced with the corresponding part of the quote. (These should be self-explanatory, except for %opt_separator% which is a new feature in this version and explained below.)

Fixes for Previous Official Version

• The “Add Quote” form stopped working at some WordPress upgrade along the way. (I upgraded from 2.0 to 2.9 so it’s hard to say exactly when this broke.)
• The admin page wasn’t showing the sources for the quotes.

Changes in v3.0

• You can edit quotes!
• “Add Quote” form moved to top, and “QID” (Quote ID) field added for editing existing quotes.
• Author is now optional. If neither author nor source is given, then the %author placeholder will be replaced with “unknown”.
• If a quote has both an author and a source, %opt_separator% will be replaced with the separator value set in YARQ options. (For example: a comma and a space.) Otherwise it will be replaced by an empty string.

• Going against the random nature of this plugin, you can show a specific quote via a GET parameter in the URL, e.g.:

  http://www.movingtofreedom.org/random-quote/?qid=76

  You and your readers can find the ID for a displayed quote by looking at the page source, which will show something like this near the quote: <!-- id = 76 -->

  (intval is used to make sure only a numeric quote ID can be passed in, preventing a SQL injection attack.)

• Auto-formatting is performed on the quote when adding it to, so that:

  One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel
  And the next it’s rolling over me

  I can get back on
  I can get back on

  Goes into the database as:

  <p>One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel<br />
  And the next it’s rolling over me</p>

  <p>I can get back on<br />
  I can get back on</p>

  If you edit the quote, it’s mostly smart enough to preserve br and p tags as they are and add new ones where necessary. With the nifty new edit feature, you can easily experiment to see how smart or dumb it is.

  You probably won’t get very good results with tags like ul or ol. Maybe we’ll need to add a checkbox to disable auto-formatting on the fly, but this handles most of my quoting needs. You can disable it altogether by commenting out this line in yarq.php:

  $quo = format_quote($quo);

• Escape slashes are now hidden everywhere. \"Fred\'s\" may be stored in DB, but will be displayed as "Fred's".

“Off-Road” Features

I think these might be useful for others, but they’re experimental and individualized to my needs, so I used functions.php to separate out the custom parts. The plugin will check to see if the functions exist before trying to call them. If you don’t feel comfortable mucking around with the code, or you just simply don’t want to use them, no problem. Just ignore this and the plugin will work normally.

The Features

• More fun with GET parameters in the URL! You can pick a random quote from a specific author (“who”) or source (“src”), e.g.:

  …/random-quote/?who=martin-sexton
  …/random-quote/?src=calvin-and-hobbes

  However! I wanted to limit this to authors and sources where I have more than one or two quotes. Also! When a quote is displayed from one of these “included” authors or sources, there will be a link from the name to look up another one.

  Remember, this is kind of half-baked. More work is needed to handle authors/sources that contain HTML, quote marks, ampersands, and etcetera. But! I think it’s safe and robust within its limitations, and it works for my purposes, which counts for a lot. :-)

• I have an imbalance of Rush lyric excerpts, so I reduced the odds of getting a Rush quote. You may similarly want to cheat the gods of probability, or modify the SQL “where” clause in some other way.

The Code

In yarq.php, the yarq_display function makes these calls

/* ... */
if (function_exists('yarq_get_where_clause')) { $where = yarq_get_where_clause(); }
/* ... */
if (function_exists('yarq_get_author')) { yarq_get_author($quote->author, $output); }
if (function_exists('yarq_get_source')) { yarq_get_source($quote->source, $output); }
/* ... */

And in your theme’s functions.php file, you can create the functions like so:

yarq_get_where_clause()

Checks the URL GET parameters for author and source. Calls yarq_get_author and yarq_get_source to see if they are “included” (and buffer against using the raw GET data in the SQL query).

Also there is the probability manipulation with setting the odds of getting Neil Peart’s poetry at 1 in 8.

function yarq_get_where_clause()
{
	if (isset($_GET['who']) && function_exists('yarq_get_author')) {
		$author = yarq_get_author($_GET['who'], $output);
	}
	if (isset($_GET['src']) && function_exists('yarq_get_source')) {
		$source = yarq_get_source($_GET['src'], $output);
	}
	if (empty($author) && empty($source)) {
		// reduce the odds of getting Rush
		$rnd = rand(1,8);
		if ($rnd == 1) {
			$author = 'Rush';
		} else {
			$author_not = 'Rush';
		}
	}
	if (!empty($author)) {
		$where = " WHERE author = '$author'";
	} elseif (!empty($author_not)) {
		$where = " WHERE author != '$author_not'";
	} elseif (!empty($source)) {
		$where = " WHERE source = '$source' ";
	}
	return $where;
}

yarq_get_author()

// used in two ways: 1) see if an author is marked for the link treatment and
//                      return name for use in SQL, and
//                   2) replace author in output string with the link
//
// assumes no single or double quotes or html already in author name; just plain text
// will have to enhance for other scenarios if/when necessary
function yarq_get_author($a, &$output)
{
	$author_param = str_replace(' ', '-', strtolower($a));
	switch($author_param) {
		case 'author-one':		$author = 'Author One';		break;
		case 'author-two':		$author = 'Author Two';		break;
		// etcetera
	}
	if (!empty($author)) {
		$output = str_replace($author, '<a href="?who=' . $author_param . '">' . $author . '</a>', $output);
	}
	return $author;
}

yarq_get_source()

(Same comments apply as for yarq_get_author.)

function yarq_get_source($s, &$output)
{
	$source_param = str_replace(' ', '-', strtolower($s));
	switch($source_param) {
		case 'source-one':		$author = 'Source One';		break;
		case 'source-two':		$author = 'Source Two';		break;
	}
	if (!empty($source)) {
		$output = str_replace($source, '<a href="?src=' . $source_param . '">' . $source . '</a>', $output);
	}

	return $source;
}

I’ve been helped the past couple of days by this passage from Emerson:

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine.

Belief and love — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the center of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.

The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

Why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and willful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.

I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which I would distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness, is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties.

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one, on that side all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other.

His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do something unique, and no man has any other call. The pretense that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward “signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.

By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work he unfolds himself.

It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.

Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”

   Edited. The full text can be found at Project Gutenberg:
   http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2944/2944.txt

I wonder if I’ve been laboring under the wrong call. A pretense…

Waipio Valley, Hawaii

Looking across the valley. In the larger image, you can see the switchback hiking trail zig-zagging up the other side.

Our visit recedes as a dream of paradise…

Bigger: 2816 x 2112
Shot with: 6 mega-pixel Canon SD600
Shared with: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

In the meantime, I kept asking for resumes and information on prospective guest bloggers, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said they were working hard on setting up their franchise process and I’d “just have to be patient.” And while I was impatient on behalf of my legions of faithful readers, the delay has been okay because I’m busy with a new job and summertime stuff.

And then Kurt called me right in the middle of my vacation this week and said he was in town and we had to meet ASAP. Like, right now! So I interrupted my long-planned project of building new display cases for my extensive collection of Hummel figurines to drive down to the Eagan Budget Host Inn. He apologized that his rental car had broken down so that we couldn’t meet closer to my house, yet he wouldn’t budge from a meeting time that had me out on the road at the height of rush hour. He said he had meeting room facilities booked for a special kick off presentation.

I parked next to an old Ford Fiesta in the hotel lot. Maybe a 1980′s model? Rust-enhanced red. A guy in a nice suit (as far as I could tell; I’m not a big fan of sartorial plumage) was leaning into the open hatchback, rummaging through a number of boxes and bags and loose debris. He came up with a laptop case, slammed the door shut, and with a look my way, managed to convey his disdain for my ’98 Saturn (also red; no rust).

I followed him inside. He sat down in the waiting area. I approached the front desk. When I started asking about the meeting room, Fiesta Suit Guy jumped up and was at the desk in a flash, cutting off the clerk’s response.

“Hello!” he said, thrusting his hand out. “You must be Mr. Carpenter! I’m Kurt Bill!” I shook his hand and he led me over to the chairs while the woman behind the desk frowned at him. “It’s so nice to meet you in person. Thank you for coming down on such short notice. Travel arrangements! You know how it is.” He nodded inclusively as if we belonged to the same elite club, sitting there in the Budget Host lobby. He gave no indication that he recognized me from the parking lot.

He glanced at the clerk and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, but there’s been a mixup with the meeting room. Double-booked.”

The woman said, “Sir, I told you, there are no conference amenities here.”

He opened his mouth as if to reply to her, but then smiled dismissively and forged ahead. “Anyway, I hope you don’t mind meeting here. I can still show you the presentation on my laptop.” He grabbed at one handle of the laptop bag and it fell open, spilling the computer, several cords, and some file folders and loose papers onto the floor. He set the laptop aside and hurriedly shoved everything else back into the bag.

He booted up the machine and made small talk as he searched for his presentation. “Hmm. Where did it go?” He tried calling his office to see if someone might have a copy of it, but no one answered his phone calls, texts, instant messages, and emails.

I said, “Let’s just talk. I don’t need to see the presentation right now.”

“Oh, no! I’ve come all this way and you’ve been waiting so patiently for this. Uncle Winston will be very unhappy if everything isn’t handled professionally and according to plan.”

“Really, it’s okay,” I said. “Do you have any leads for me? I want to get someone writing for the web site sooner than later. Things are getting pretty stale lately.” (See, readers, I’m on your side.)

He was shaking his head: no, no, no. “Scott. Man… Tell you what. Give me a day or two. I’ll try to get the presentation from our admin assistant and get things more organized for another meeting this week before I leave town. I should have my new rental car by then and can meet you on your side of town. Please give me another chance.”

(I didn’t have the heart to mention the Fiesta and ask which rental company handed out 25-year-old cars.)

He rebuffed all my attempts to put him at ease and have a casual conversation about the recruiting process. I explained that it wasn’t a big deal. I just wanted to find a good guest blogger. MGR didn’t have to make a big production out of this. They’re in the startup/pilot phase. I understood that everything wasn’t tuned and production ready yet. None of this helped his state of mind. He seemed almost on the verge of tears. I wasn’t thrilled about interrupting another vacation day, but I agreed we could meet again later in the week.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Scott. And please don’t say anything to Winston or the other partners before we get a chance to work through some more of the preliminaries.”

I said sure, whatever. I resented the wasted time, but felt sorry for him and tried not to show it.

And then he never called me back. He sent a brief email on Friday saying he was sorry, but he had to head “back to the ranch.” He again implored me to keep things between us, for now. Which is fine with me, for now, although I guess it depends on whether or not Winston J. Thorpleton III and the others are reading my blog.

In conclusion: it looks like it may be a while before we’ll get our new guest blogger. I guess we’ll “just have to be patient.” I’m willing to play along for now. As far as I know, this isn’t costing me anything, which is a key selling point. Let’s see what happens.

Thanks for your understanding. I’ll try to expedite things and post updates more often.

Waipio Valley, Hawaii

Bigger: 2816 x 2112
Shot with: 6 mega-pixel Canon SD600
Shared with: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

And here’s a 1920 x 1080 version, cropped for your convenience.

Or maybe your wallpaper needs are more in the 1280 x 800 dimension?

Or 1440 x 900?

Or 1650 x 1050?

It’s been a month since we lost Fritzi, and I want to apologize for being slow to start the search for the next guy. (Or “gal,” of course, but I think we can agree that guy is inclusive of anyone and anything, right?) Life has been intervening, as usual, and there was a certain amount of fatigue from the whirlwind tenure of Fritzi.

I haven’t been looking forward to all the interviewing and evaluating and decision-making. Having a guest blogger was supposed to make things easier. I want to sit back and let them do the work. The hiring process is just more work for me and tedious work at that. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork around here for acquiring headcount.

But! I’m committed to delivering you quality programming. For free! So I’m back on the job.

I decided against going the advertising route this time. Instead, I’ve retained the services of Mind Grapes Recruiting. (Although don’t let me fool you into thinking I was proactive about this. They came to me, oddly enough.)

More (occasional, possibly sporadic) updates to come!

For now you can read more about my new partnership with MGR on their page…

A simple kind mirror
To reflect upon our own.
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies.
Living in their pools,
They soon forget about the sea…

– Neil Peart, “Tide Pools”

This is on the east side of the island, in Puna, Hawaii.

Or, maybe, it’s a shot of… the Universe.

Bigger: 2816 x 2112
Shot with: 6 mega-pixel Canon SD600
Shared with: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Lyrics: “Natural Science” by Rush, from Permanent Waves