Category LiveBookmarks Plugin

Published Monday, May 29, 2006 @ 11:10 am • 17 Responses

UPDATE: New version of Category LiveBookmarks now available! →

Already familiar with Firefox’s Live Bookmarks and WordPress RSS feeds? Well then skip the intro and jump to the good stuff »

Enthusiastic Firefox users enjoy the luxury of Live Bookmarks, a feature of Firefox that automatically discovers and updates RSS feeds. Web pages with available feeds are indicated by the orange feed icon located in the browser’s address bar. Clicking the feed icon presents a list of all available feeds for that particular webpage. Users then select which feeds they would like Firefox to bookmark, track, and automatically update. Very handy indeed.

Providing these Live Bookmark feeds to your readers is as easy as adding “link” tags for each feed to the head section of each webpage. Then, simply set the “type” attribute to application/atom+xml or application/rss+xml, and away you go. Not so bad, but a bit tedious, perhaps.

WordPress users typically transmit RSS feeds for both comments and posts, and frequently provide individual category feeds. Further, each feeds may be provided via a variety of formats, including RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, and Atom. Manually adding the feed links to the header.php file works if you don’t care about context sensitivity, because the same links would appear for all pages, whether the feeds were actually available from there or not. Fortunately, there is a more sophisticated method for managing your Live Bookmark feeds…

Introducing Category LiveBookmarks, a WordPress plugin designed to simplify the process of adding complete Live Bookmark functionality to your website. Category LiveBookmarks (CLB) seamlessly generates “Live-Bookmark” feed links for each of your WordPress blog categories. It will generate feed links for all categories on your main blog page, and only relevant feeds on single-post-view pages. Also, CLB automatically omits feeds with zero posts, and excludes subcategory feeds. CLB is designed for Firefox’s Live Bookmarks and Opera’s Livemarks. Generates strictly valid XHTML markup. Tested and verified with WordPress 2.0+. Should work with WP 1.5+ as well (no guarantees).

This plugin has been adapted from ArunRocks plugin, Livemarks. Many important modifications have been made to the original, such as are summarized here.

Installation and Usage:

Unzip file, add to wp-content/plugins directory, upload, activate, and enjoy! There are also two options within the PHP file itself that you will probably want to customize: Comment feed links and blog title.

Download Category LiveBookmarks [ version 1.0.1 | ~4KB | .zip | 921 downloads ]

UPDATE: New version of Category LiveBookmarks now available! →

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About this article

This is article #141, posted by Jeff Starr on Monday, May 29, 2006 @ 11:10am. Categorized as WordPress & tagged with bookmarks, browser, download, feeds, plugins, plus, rss, WordPress, xml. Updated on April 29, 2008. Visited 18233 times.

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17 Responses Jump to comment form

1 • Chris

May 31, 2006 at 7:07 pm

Hello. I have downloaded and installed livebookmarks on WP 2.0.2. I have activated in the admin panel. How do i get something to show on my index page? I assume i should have a rss icon next to my categories? Your instructions do not say what to do next. Thanks for any help

Chris

2 • Ryan

June 1, 2006 at 7:40 am

I have a created a site for the community over at somethingawful where the users can post their podcasts. What i am looking for is a plugin that allows readers to subscribe to RSS feeds from certain authors. I thought it would be nice if I were able to have wordpress create RSS feeds that were organized according to the authors and the users could then subscribe to the ones they liked for the podcasts. Is this a plugin you would be willing to write or do you know of someone I could ask about it?

3 • Perishable

June 4, 2006 at 3:08 pm

Chris, you are confused. The CLB plugin does not add any icons to your webpages. The plugin writes feed links to the head of your source code, thereby enabling Firefox and Opera browsers to automatically detect any available feeds. After the plugin is installed and activated, use Firefox or Opera to open your WP index page. Look for the small, orange RSS feed icon in the address bar, and click on it. You should see a list of all non-empty feeds available from that page.

4 • Perishable

June 4, 2006 at 3:43 pm

Ryan, you don't need a plugin for this. Simply use either the list_authors or wp_list_authors function, and employ the feed parameter. There are also parameters for full names, empty feeds, and option counts. You may read more at the WordPress Codex.

5 • Vanessa

June 8, 2006 at 10:15 am

Hi, I am new to the bloging world.
I have made a blog site and now I want users to bes able to subscribe to rss feeds from my main index page. It seems that my word press is spitting out version 0.92 which can not be read by my yahoo rss reader. Do you know how it can spit out 2.0?

6 • Perishable

June 11, 2006 at 1:41 pm

Vanessa, looks like you already found a solution, as your source code currently specifies RSS 2.0 for all feed links. Nonetheless, the Category LiveBookmarks plugin invokes RSS-2.0 XML by default, and actually makes no reference to RSS 0.92.

The problem you were having most likely resulted from the native WP function, bloginfo()1, which is commonly called from within the <head> (for implicit links), or from within the <body> (for explicit links). Each call to bloginfo() will invoke RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0 (RDF), RSS 2.0, or Atom, depending on which parameter is used2. Although each of these syndication formats is available for your WP posts, only the RSS 2.0 format is available for comments.

Thus, if you want only implicit RSS-2.0 feeds available via LiveBookmarks, edit your <head> by adding <?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?> (for post feeds), and <?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?> (for comment feeds). Then, be sure to delete any calls to bloginfo('rdf_url'), bloginfo('rss_url'), or bloginfo('atom_url').

To provide explicit feeds (in any format) from the sidebar, footer, or elsewhere within the <body>, simply call bloginfo() and use the appropriate function parameter (e.g., rss2_url or atom_url).

References:

1 About bloginfo() at the WordPress Codex
2 About WordPress Feeds at the WordPress Codex

7 • August

June 13, 2006 at 8:25 am

FYI, the link in this post that points to a summary of the "many important modifications" seems broken. I tried following the link and ended up pretty much nowhere. Just thought you should know..

8 • Perishable

June 13, 2006 at 8:31 am

Thanks, August, I will deploy the goon squad to "fix" the problem.

9 • DLa

June 13, 2006 at 8:38 am

Apparently, the arunrocks site hasn't been updated for several weeks. Perhaps you would be so kind as to post the changes here as a comment?

10 • Perishable

June 13, 2006 at 9:23 am

The original Livemarks plugin suffered from invalid XHTML, improper "type" attributes, and (in my opinion) sloppy PHP authorship. In addition to resolving these issues, the new CLB plugin automatically omits empty categories and subcategories, as well as providing contextually relevant feed links for category views. Finally, the new CLB plugin enables users to customize the "title" attribute of their feed links.

11 • August Klotz

June 13, 2006 at 9:37 am

Muchas gracias, Perecedero!

12 • Perishable

August 7, 2006 at 1:02 am

Thanks for the idea, Avery J. Parker! The Category LiveBookmarks plugin has just been updated to provide optional category feed links in the footer, sidebar, or anywhere else you could possibly imagine. Now, with one easy plugin, you can have your RSS feeds autodiscovered and provided as links within your site.

13 • Luther Blissett

March 19, 2007 at 12:56 pm

I’ve been using this plugin and really like it. One (minor) problem I’ve discovered that I’d like your advice on - on pages (which can’t be categorized) it’s making a feed link to an Uncategorized feed, which doesn’t exist (this generates 404 errors in our link-checking system). Is there a way to have the plugin not take effect on pages (as opposed to posts) since there will never be any categories there anyway?

Thanks!

14 • Perishable

March 19, 2007 at 1:28 pm

Luther,

Yes, try replacing any instances of the default function call such as:

<?php clb_plus() ?> or
<?php if (function_exists('clb_plus')) { clb_plus(); } ?>

..with the following conditional call:

<?php if (!is_page()) {
if (function_exists('clb_plus')) { clb_plus(); }
} ?>

..then, only non-pages will be served the CLB function, thereby eliminating those nasty 404’s.

Jeff

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Tons of Firewalls

Tuesday, 7 October 2008, 1:45 am

Recently overheard on conservative talk radio (instructing listeners how to obtain a free promotional video from their new website):

“This website has tons and tons of firewalls, so you have to use your real email address to download the video..”

The Quiet Search Revolution

Monday, 6 October 2008, 12:15 pm

Just a thought.. As awesome as Google is these days, it would suck if they ended up owning the entire search-engine business. When they get to the point where all competition is impossible (due to their sheer size, financial resources, media influence, etc.), how many alternate search engines will have the resources for continuous improvement and top-quality search results? When this happens, we will have no choice but to do exactly what Google tells us to do.

As deeply ingrained as it is for everyone to instinctively and unthinkingly turn to Google for their search activity, it is time to leave a few alternate search tabs open for as much use as possible. Instead of using Google just because that’s what you always do, try your search on MSN, Yahoo, Ask, or any of the other independent search engines instead. Sharing traffic with other search engines is a nice, quiet way to keep the competitive spirit alive and well in the search-engine business.

Disappearing WordPress Posts

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 7:50 pm

Today I experienced difficulties while trying to publish or even save new posts in WordPress. I would compose the post as usual, add all of the keywords, tags, meta tags, and so on, but as soon as I clicked the “Publish” or “Save” button, the post would just disappear from existence.

The weird thing is that during the drafting process, WordPress’ default auto-save feature showed that the post had been saved at expected intervals. Unfortunately, after trying to publish several different posts, WordPress showed absolutely no record of the posts ever being created. They simply vanished into thin air.

Fortunately, a little investigation revealed the culprit. If you should find yourself dealing with this same issue, here are some different things that you should try. First, re-upload fresh copies of your entire WordPress installation. I don’t know why exactly, but apparently various files can either go stale or completely disappear from the server. Overwriting or writing fresh files may do the trick.

If that doesn’t work, check your WordPress database for errors. In my case, a little investigation revealed that something had caused a couple of fatal errors in the wp_posts table. Fortunately, checking and repairing the table solved the issue.

Tumblr Battles

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 5:30 pm

Please excuse the duplicate Tumbr posts.. seems there is no way to ping Tumblr to refresh/rebuild the RSS feed according to changes in post content. So, to resolve the issue I have discussed now like two or three times regarding paragraph elements and proper feed formatting, I have no choice but to repost a majority of my text posts.

This is necessary for the proper import and display of my Tumblr feed into WordPress. Currently, there are five items displayed at once, each styled according to proper inclusion of paragraph tags. Thus, whenever the Tumblr feed “forgets” to enclose single-paragraph posts with the proper tags, the result is an unstyled post entry displayed on my site.

Assuming that makes sense, you will please excuse my dust while I repost a few older entries in an attempt to reconstruct (the hard way) a properly formatted Tumblr feed.

More Optimization Measures

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 5:27 pm

Another important step in improving the performance of my recent redesign involves the optimization of both CSS and JavaScript content. During development there were around 15 server requests for these two types of files, 10 JavaScript files and 5 CSS files. This was okay for my own use, but would not work for production purposes.

Optimizing these file types involves consolidation, compression, and caching. Consolidation of 10 JavaScript files into three is huge improvement. Now I deliver one JS file for the functionality of the site, one for Mint, and another for Analytics. Likewise for the stylesheets; after consolidation, a single stylesheet is delivered to all modern browsers. There are two additional stylesheets as well, but they are targeted at IE6 and mobile browsers and will not load elsewhere.

Once the files were consolidated as much as possible, it was time to optimize or “crunch” them. Using the sexy Flumpcakes CSS optimizer, I was able to reduce my stylesheets by around 25%. Likewise for JavaScript, I used xtreeme.com’s optimizer to shave an additional 20% off the size of my JS content.

Finally, once I had consolidated and compressed my JS and CSS files as much as possible, I wanted to further my optimization efforts by ensuring that these files were cached by the browser. By setting far-future Expires headers for everything but the statistical files, my site gains an additional performance boost by eliminating the need to reload preexisting content.

Read more on Tumblr..

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