Very frustrating indeed. So? So, I’ve made the bold decision to blog (a lot) less and to start being creative (again) and to get things done: meaning among others that I should read less about designing and developing and actually start designing and develeoping.
I’m already occupied with two humble projects at the same time and I should get those finished first.

This article kind of gave me the last push to make the decision: Stop Launching Blogs, Start Contributing. If I should need to promote one of my projects, I think it would be more productive if I do that via another blog, which has a decent amount of audience and gets promoted already by the community.
See how I already got rid of all these ‘social’ save and bookmark buttons?

So? So, I heavily customized the Portfolio theme you’re looking at now and made the projects the homepage: The focus is clearly on the projects and I’m not looking for traffic spikes (any more), but trying to get things done.
Expect less blogs (unless project related) and expect more humble projects, which do get finished on the homepage.

I’m actually quite relieved, that I can spent all this time and energy on actually delivering ‘new stuff’ instead of ‘just another blog’.

For some live demo and examples check out the sub categories, sub stats, tags or any single posts at the Fan-tas-tic! Inspiration Galleries: click on the Google Buzz button and see what the buzz is about!

As you may have noticed from de demo above I’ve got my social sharing and bookmark stuff also outside the loop, which makes this a bit trickier than it should.

That’s why my code is centrally in the functions.php of my WordPress theme. And here’s how full code behind the Google Buzz button looks like:

Let’s dissect the code for a quick analysis.

The URL

Line 1 contains the URL you want to buzz; the variable $share_link is the URL you want to pass through. You can replace this with the_permalink() if you are on a single post page.
I use the Buzz button also on other pages than the single post page. Therefore I need to use the following function in the functions.php:

function ftt_get_currenturl(){ return 'http://'.$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]; }

The title

Line 2 contains the title we want to buzz: although you can use the_title() when on a single post page, I use wp_title(), because I use the Buzz button also on other pages.

The thumbnail

Line 3 contains the actual image we want to buzz, along with some optional text.
Already somewhere above this you should have the following statement to get the proper thumbnail for the current post (when on a single page) or the last thumbnail/post on the page, which should be satisfactory too:

$thumbnail = wp_get_attachment_image_src(get_post_thumbnail_id(), 'thumbnail');

The Result

That should do the trick! Now, when you click on the Google Buzz, you should get something like this:

You can play around and adjust stuff to your liking. Let me know in the comments, whether this works for your (gallery) site.

UPDATE

Note that something is messing the code displayed in this post! Maybe because I’ve just upgraded to WP 2.9.2!?
So I had to resort to screenshots…

AZIndex is just great, but the following mini-hack will make it simply perfect. By adding a simple yet necessary feature: generating an URL for the groupheaders: see http://fan-tas-tic.com/artists/ for a live demo and imagine you can’t click the author names for an example of the original plugin without this lill’ hack.

The general assumption is that the plugin is abandoned by its original author, since there hasn’t been any reaction on the official AZIndex plugin feedback page by the author. So I had to it myself. Again.

The following instructions makes sure a groupheader (tags, author or categy) has an accompanying link (when a subheader is selected).
The most recent version (0.8.1) has been used for this hack, but you should be able to implement it also in older or newer versions following the next steps:
0. Make your backups or try this on a local installation as always with hacks (although I’ve got a nasty habit myself of hacking directly on my live sites but do as I say, not as I do)
1. Get the original plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.
2a. Either unzip the plugin and edit az-index-content.php
2b. Or upload the unzipped plugin directly and open az-index-content.php via the plugin-editor
3. Apply the following changes:
a. Find around rownumber 172 the following statement:

$link = get_permalink($item['id']);

b. Add the next statements beneath this line:

//aytemir.com: start mini-hack
$groupheader='';
$groupheader=$index->head;
if ($groupheader=='author') {
  $groupheader_id=get_userdatabylogin($item['head']);
  $groupheader_url=get_bloginfo('url').'/?author='.$groupheader_id->ID;
} elseif ($groupheader=='cats') {
  $groupheader_id=get_cat_id($item['head']);
  $groupheader_url=get_bloginfo('url').'/?cat='.$groupheader_id;
} elseif ($groupheader=='tags') {
  $groupheader_id=$item['head'];
  $groupheader_url=get_bloginfo('url').'/?tag='.$groupheader_id;
}
//aytemir.com: end mini-hack

c. The code is self-explanatory, I think: just get the header you want to sort/order by, retieve the accompanying ID and generate an URL and apply URL in case of tag, category or author.
d. Find (around rownumber 203) the following statement:

$output .= '<li'.$charlink.($odd ? ' class="azalt"' : '').'><span class="head">'.$item['head'].$cont.'</span>'.$cr;

e. And replace it with the following statement:

//aytemir.com: start mini-hack
if ($groupheader=='author' || $groupheader=='cats' || $groupheader=='tags') {
  $output .= '<li'.$charlink.($odd ? ' class="azalt"' : '').'><span class="head"><a href="'.$groupheader_url.'">'.$item['head'].$cont.'</a></span>'.$cr;
} else {
  $output .= '<li'.$charlink.($odd ? ' class="azalt"' : '').'><span class="head">'.$item['head'].$cont.'</span>'.$cr;
}
//aytemir.com: end mini-hack

5. Save and test it (locally) and let me know if it works for you.

Don’t want to bother ‘hacking’ yourself? You could also download the fully zipped version with the hack already implemented:
1. Download this hacked version, which I doped 0.8.2
2. Upload, activate and test the plugin.

For usage and configuration instructions please refer to the original plugin site.

If you should run into issues regarding this specific hack, please let me know in the comments.

The TDO Mini Forms WordPress Plugin is simply one of these plugins you’ll end up using, when you’ll be using WordPress for more than ‘just another blog’.

For my upcoming project I was looking for a fully customizable end user form and after having tried a bunch, TDO mini forms was simply the best.
I still don’t understand why it is called ‘mini’ because it has a ton of options and almost all of them very useful.

The only issue I got with it was with the file/image upload widget: It was putting the uploaded files in wp-content/uploads/subfolder where I wanted them in wp-content/uploads/year/month.

Although there are usefull hints in the support forum, they wont get you there exactly. So here is the hack to solve this issue:
In the plugins folder replace line 552 (up until the line “// store info about files on post”) in file tdomf-upload-functions.php from this

$postdir = $options['path'].DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$post_ID;

to this

$yearID=date("Y");
$monthID=date("m");

$postdir = $options['path'].$yearID.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$monthID;
$postdir2 = $options['url'].$yearID."/".$monthID;

tdomf_recursive_mkdir($postdir,TDOMF_UPLOAD_PERMS);
tdomf_recursive_mkdir($postdir2,TDOMF_UPLOAD_PERMS);
$newpath = $postdir.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$theirfiles[$i]['name'];
$newpath2 = $postdir2.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$theirfiles[$i]['name'];

if(rename($theirfiles[$i]['path'], $newpath)) {

        $newpath = realpath($newpath);
        $newpath2 = realpath($newpath2);

Note that a variable 2 is added, just after the original.
Also note, that I’ve replaced the variable DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR in $postdir2 into “/”, cause it was giving me headaches.

In line 564 in the same file add just beneath this line

add_post_meta($post_ID,TDOMF_KEY_DOWNLOAD_PATH.$i, $wpdb->escape($newpath),true);

the following

add_post_meta($post_ID,ftt_path,$postdir2,true);

Make sure you do use $postdir2 here again. Will be using ftt_path to retrieve the stored URL, so remember what name you give it here.

And now we’ll be calling the uploaded files via the URL like this

get_post_meta($post->ID, "ftt_path",true);

instead of this, which will give you only the absolute path

get_post_meta($post->ID, "_tdomf_download_name_0",true);

This way it’s not even necessary to check ‘Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders’ at your Miscellaneous Settings.

Hope this helps others out also. If you have any other issues with TDO Mini forms, please refer to the original support form.

UPGRADE warnings

Remember that automatically upgrading the plugin to the newest version will overwrite the hacks above…so make sure to actually backup before you upgrade!

So why did I bother then? Well I’ve got three reasons for that:

1. I want for all my WordPress powered projects one common commenting system. Although not many of my visitors may register, some of them will be automatically registered when they’ve got an Intense Debate account already. This should encourage them to participate more interactively.

2. I’m expecting Automatticto fully integrate Intense Debate into WordPress in the near future. It is a logical next step and I would not be surprised if they do this well before version 2.8. The acquisition by Automattic is also the reason that for example Disqus is no more an option for me.

3. It saves me a lot of development and design time when I decide to use a free WP template, which does not support gravatars and threaded comment. The Unstandard theme is a good example of this. Although you can’t design it fully to your own taste, it still is flexible enough.

So if you should also run into troubles with the newest version of Intense Debate and the support team is not able to help you out, like in my case, you should consider using the old plugin/version. And take the lack of some features for granted, I’m afraid.

UPDATE

Ironically on 23th January 2009 the Intense Debate site is down. And another con for using a third party commenting system is beeing illustrated very typical with this: it slows down my site significantly and when a post has been loaded, you can not comment!
I’ll give them yet another chance…for now.