BuddyPress.org

Are there any updates on this plugin? If Nicola’s too busy, perhaps a few other people should take a look at it.

Hi guys the code is 70% completed, you know i’m in NYC so i can’t develope a lot, but anyway i stopped my development because External blogs will be built-in in next bp versions as the roadmap says..

i’ll share the code but is better to wait the builtin plugin

Here’s the code I use in the current version of my site – Kunal17 asked about it:

// Include the SimplePie library

require_once 'simplepie.inc';

require_once 'shorten.php';



// Because we're using multiple feeds, let's just set the headers here.

header('Content-type:text/html; charset=utf-8');



// These are the feeds we want to use

mysql_connect(localhost,$db_username,$db_password);

@mysql_select_db($db_name) or die( "Unable to select database");



$query = "SELECT id, email, firstname, surname, rssfeed FROM members WHERE rssfeed != ''";

$result = mysql_query($query);



$feeds = array();

$id_array = array();

$first = array();

$user = array();



$userinfo = array();



while ($cur_feed = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))

{

$feeds[] = $cur_feed['rssfeed'];

$userinfo[$cur_feed['rssfeed']] = $cur_feed;

}



// This array will hold the items we'll be grabbing.

$first_items = array();



// Let's go through the array, feed by feed, and store the items we want.

$ix = 0;



foreach ($feeds as $url)

{

$user_id = $id_array[$ix];

$firstname = $first[$ix];

$surname = $sur[$ix];

$email = $user[$ix];

$ix++;



// Use the long syntax

$feed = new SimplePie();

$feed->set_feed_url($url);

$feed->init();



// How many items per feed should we try to grab?

$items_per_feed = 1;



// As long as we're not trying to grab more items than the feed has, go through them one by one and add them to the array.

for ($x = 0; $x < $feed->get_item_quantity($items_per_feed); $x++)

{

$first_items[] = $feed->get_item($x);

}



// We're done with this feed, so let's release some memory.

unset($feed);

}



// We need to sort the items by date with a user-defined sorting function.  Since usort() won't accept "SimplePie::sort_items", we need to wrap it in a new function.

function sort_items($a, $b)

{

return SimplePie::sort_items($a, $b);

}



// Now we can sort $first_items with our custom sorting function.

usort($first_items, "sort_items");



$counter=0;

foreach($first_items as $item)

{

$feed = $item->get_feed();

$info = $userinfo[$item->feed->feed_url];



$counter++;

if($counter >= 7)

break;



if ($img_size = @getimagesize('members/img/avatars/'.$info['id'].'.jpg'))

$avatar_field = '<img src="members/img/avatars/'.$info['id'].'.jpg" alt="" />';

else

$avatar_field = '<img src="members/img/avatars/nopicture.png" alt="" />';



$picture = '<div id="feedpicture"><a href="members/member.php?id='.$info['id'].'" title="'.$info['firstname'].'\'s Member Page">'.$avatar_field.'</a></div>';



// Begin the (X)HTML page.

?>



<h3><?php echo $picture; ?><a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>" target="_blank"><?php echo html_entity_decode($item->get_title(), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'); ?></a></h3>



<!-- get_content() prefers full content over summaries -->

<? echo trim(substr((str_replace("\n", ' ', str_replace("\r", ' ', strip_tags($item->get_description())))),0,300)); ?>

... <i>more</i></a><br />



<p class="info"><a href="members/member.php?id=<?php echo $info['id']; ?>" title="<?php echo $info['firstname'].'\'s Member Page'; ?>"><?php echo $info['firstname'].' '.$info['surname']; ?></a> | <a href="<?php echo $feed->get_permalink(); ?>" target="_blank"><?php echo $feed->get_title(); ?></a> | <?php echo $item->get_date('M j, Y | g:i a'); ?></p>

<br />



<?php

}

?>

It shows the latest blog posts from members on a page, if they have an RSS feed in the database. It uses SimplePie. The code above is customized from regular SimplePie feed code. Member management in my current site is based on PunBB, not WordPress.

I’d have no clue how to modify this code for Buddypress. Can’t figure out member management in Buddypress for starters, with x-profile vs wpmu and similar data stored in different places. It all looks kinda messy and inconsistent to me.

Doubtful you should take this as starting point. I’ll wait for the integrated solution.

Thanks for sharing the code Peterverkooijen.

Mariusooms,

Thanks for working on this much required plugin. Does it allow you to associate external blogs as well as the ones within the current community?

Back from the dead, looks like this topic has resparked some interest. I suspect this will be less of a BuddyPress thing and more of a WPMU thing as it comes down the pipeline.

@Donnacha, looks like someone changed the status for you. Marking topics as resolved serves multiple purposes, and at that time it was fair to say development had begun and the request was resolved. Now that it’s not, it’s not. We’ll be sure to take your perpsective into account going forward though as it makes sense to approach feature requests like you suggest.

No one can answer on Nicola’s behalf, but it sounds like he’s abandoning development on this project to me, in lieu of it being a core feature eventually.

This would work not unlike the way wordpress.com allows you to map your blog to another domain. I suspect that would basically end up being this, or vice versa? That being said, it sounds like a WPMU feature that would have a piggy back panel for BuddyPress to me.

@ phuloxor Hey can i have the script that you used for flokka…to implement external blogs

I don’t see why this should be out-of-date. It is obvious that there is an interest in this type of functionality. What is wrong for a thread to go over for months -if (since) it still generates interest?

This isn’t a support question after all.

Wouldn’t this plugin cover what we need?

It seemlessly merges posts from an RSS feed with other posts in your blog. If there was a way to selectively offer this plugin to member blogs, that would solve it for me.

And perhaps some integration with Buddypress account areas to make it more idiot-proof; a field where members can enter their RSS feed, without having to go into the plugin back-end.

If members don’t create blogs, where would those external blogs appear then? In the member profile page? Do you mean we can already use Andy’s external blogs plugin for that?

Confused…

Why don’t you try it youself?

Because I know it’s on the roadmap, I think for version 1.3 – and I’m not really a programmer.

Maybe taking feedwordpress as starting point could save Andy and others some time?

I’ll look into this myself when I upgrade to 1.1, which is going to be a mess with all the amateurish hacking I’ve done…