Simple Wakoopa List

Simple Wakoopa List is a WordPress plugin that displays a list of your software, using information provided by Wakoopa.

There are other plugins available for Wakoopa, and some available from their own website, but most of these are JavaScript-based image “buttons” – this provides an XHTML validated text version which is a lot more configurable.

Download

Download Simple Wakoopa List (v2.1, 17/11/2009)

Changelog

Version 1.0

• Initial release

Version 1.1

• Improved error messages and performance tweaks
• Wakoopa’s new API in now being used
• Added feed functionality – a new function can be used to fetch RSS file names or it can be returned from the main function

Version 1.2

• The returned feed URL was not in a valid XHTML acceptable format – the code was modified to correct for this

Version 2.0

• New parameter system – requires new format of function calling as a result
• Caching in use – Wakoopa feed is held locally for a specified amount of time
• Improved file system, which used Curl, where possible
• New parameters to alter link TARGET and to specify a NOFOLLOW tag

Version 2.1

• Improved backwards compatibility with pre 2.0 version
• Updated shared functions
• Code tidied

Installation

1. Upload the entire simple-wakoopa-list folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Ensure the cache folder within the plugins folder is fully writable – ie. change its permissions to 777.
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
4. There is no options screen – configuration is done in your code.

Configuration

Version 2 onwards of this plugin requires different code to access it – if you’ve used previous versions of this plugin then you will need to upgrade your code

Also please read the installation notes for ensuring that the new caching facility correctly works

You must be signed up to Wakoopa (http://www.wakoopa.com) to use this plugin.

To display your software list on your WordPress site you will need to insert the following code, where appropriate, into your theme…

<?php simple_wakoopa_list('paras'); ?>

Where paras is a list of parameters, separated by an ampersand..

user= : This is your Wakoopa username and is the only parameter you MUST specify
type= : This is the type of list that you wish to have displayed and should be 0 (most used – the default), 1 (recently used) or 2 (newly used)
limit= : The number of items on the list (default is 10)
link= : The software titles will be linked to and this defines what type of link should be used. 0 (the default) links to the home page of the software, whereas 1 links to the matching Wakoopa page.
height= : If you wish to display the software logo in front of each entry, you must specify the item height here. Leave it blank to exclude images.
cache= : Wakoopa data is cached locally for a number of hours – use this options to specify the number of hours that a cache should be used for. The default is 3. Specify NO to switch off caching.
nofollow= : If specified as ON this will turn on the NOFOLLOW attribute for the links. By default, this is switched off.
target= : Allows you to override the standard TARGET of _BLANK.

This will then display the list of software in a list (i.e. with <li> and </li> around each entry).

An example would be…

<?php simple_wakoopa_list('user=test&limit=20&height=12'); ?>

This would display a list of the 20 most used pieces of software for user “test”. It would also display an image of height 12 pixels next to each.

The following is an example of how it could be used, with a function_exists check so that it doesn’t cause problems if the plugin is not active…

<?php if (function_exists('simple_wakoopa_list')) : ?>
<h2>Top 10 Programs</h2>
<ul><?php simple_wakoopa_list('user=test&limit=20&height=12'); ?></ul>
<?php endif; ?>

You can also, at the same time as displaying the list, retrieve the RSS filename as well. Simply assign a variable to the call to simple_wakoopa_list. For example…

<?php $rss_filename=simple_wakoopa_list('user=test&limit=20&height=12'); ?>

This will place the equivalent RSS file name in $rss_filename, whilst still displaying the Wakoopa list as normal.

If, however, you’d like to get the RSS file name BEFORE displaying the list then you will need to make a call to a new routine. This only requires the first THREE parameters that you used with simple_wakoopa_list. The new routine is named simple_wakoopa_feed and does not display a Wakoopa list.

An example of its use is…

<?php $rss_filename=simple_wakoopa_feed('user=test&limit=20'); ?>

Changing the Style

At the moment, if you don’t wish the application list to be displayed as list items, then you will need to change the plugin.

I was thinking of being able to override this via the parameters, but this would add two extra parameters that I suspect few will use. However, if you would like to see this change then please let me know.

No other styles are applied.

Problems/Queries

Please report any problems, or suggestions for enhancements, to me either via my contact form or by commenting on the appropriate entries on my blog.

Updates

Updates to this and any other of my WordPress plugins will be published on this blog.

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