First, WordPress plugin authors: Please don’t do this.
if ( isset($_GET['resource']) && !empty($_GET['resource']) ) {
$resources = array(
'icon1.png' => '... base 64 encoded code ...',
'icon2.png' => '... base 64 encoded code ...',
);
if ( array_key_exists($_GET['resource'], $resources) ) {
$content = base64_decode($resources[ $_GET['resource'] ]);
header('Content-Length: '.strlen($content));
header('Content-Type: image/png');
echo $content;
exit;
}
}I’ve seen a few different versions of this, and while the idea is nice, this is really the wrong way to go about it.
The idea is to include small icons or images in the plugin file itself, instead of as separate files. This sort of code then lets you reference them by calling a URL of ?resource=icon1.png or whatever. When that resource variable is detected, the plugin kicks in and serves up the image instead of the site.
Advantages to this sort of thing:
- No need for extra icon files
Disadvantages to this sort of thing:
- Now every http request to get an icon file on your admin page results in loading up the WordPress code, causing extra CPU usage.
Here’s a better way. It’s called the Data URI.
<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAAFCAYAAACNbyblAAAAHElEQVQI12P4//8/w38GIAXDIBKE0DHxgljNBAAO9TXL0Y4OHwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" alt="Red dot" />
Here’s that code in action, right here: 
Why this is better:
- Same benefits as before, no need for extra icon files
- No extra CPU load from loading WordPress to get that icon file
- No extra HTTP requests at all, in fact, since the data for the tiny icon is contained right there in the code
Disadvantage:
- Doesn’t work in IE7. You can work around this by detecting IE7 and serving up the image separately, if you really want. Or you can just ignore it like most people do. Seriously. IE7 is insecure (link, link) and nobody should be using it, anywhere. WordPress itself will probably drop IE7 support in the admin in the next couple of versions.
So use Data URIs for small images (under 32KB in size). They’re fast and easy. They’re an idea whose time has come.
SFC 1.0 – FB Comments Integration
Added a new feature that people have been asking me for since I created SFC to begin with: Comments Integration.
Facebook comments
When you make a post with SFC, the publisher plugin has the ability to push that post to either your Facebook Page or Profile. Up until now, the auto-publish feature has been doing this and storing meta-data with the post about the resulting “story” id that Facebook sends back. This data was stored, but not really used.
No longer. Now, if you auto-publish to Facebook, you have the option to pull comments back from that automatically published Facebook post and show them in the blog as if they were normal WordPress comments.
You can see this in action here on my own site. On the SFC 1.0 Photo Support post, you’ll find a comment at the bottom made by a user named “Kartsios Vasilis”. That comment wasn’t left here on this site, it was left on the Facebook story corresponding to that post. As you can see, the avatar for the user shows up on the comment, it’s styled differently (I felt the blue background sort of distinguished it), and it doesn’t have a reply link.
Since these aren’t “real” WP comments, and don’t live in the WP database, you can’t reply to them properly. So the reply link is automatically removed for them. I used a styling rule in the CSS to add the “This comment was originally made on Facebook, so replying to it here is not allowed.” message where the Reply link would normally be. Because this is just using a simple CSS style rule, you can make that message anything you like, or not have it at all. That’s up to you and your theme.
The new feature is relatively painless too. No configuration is needed. Every 6 hours (minimum), the plugin will retrieve the relevant comments from the Facebook posts, then store them as a transient. This reduces the amount of work since it doesn’t have to talk to Facebook every time. The comments are then integrated in with the normal comments for the post, and the comment count is updated to reflect the right number.
There’s still some minor detail work to be done.
Right now, for example, the comments are just added onto the end of the list of comments, and so they’re out of order. The final version will have the comments integrated in correctly by the date and time they were made. Edit: This is now working, comments are added in the proper order.If you want to use the beta version of SFC (currently marked as version 0.999) you can find it in the WordPress Plugins SVN repository.
Edit: The CSS to add this text, since people asked, is this:
li.comment.facebook .reply:before { content:"This comment was originally made on Facebook." }Simple, really.
Category: Code, Other | 21 Comments