SuperCatLister greatly extends the abilities of Wordpress as a content management system. It does this by giving site designers the ability to insert links or content from posts in specified categories into other posts. SuperCatLister differs from other category listing solutions because it gives enormous control over the formatting of the included content. Its power is further extended by allowing global defaults, which are set in the plugin's administration screen, to be overridden in specific posts by shortcodes. This allows ease of use combined with enormous flexibility of design. Multiple options can be set for each list. Lists can be inserted anywhere in posts and multiple lists can be inserted into posts.

You can download and install it here.

If you use it or have comments or suggestions, please drop me a line!

The article is written by Howard Greenstein and appears on Mashable.

Thanks Howard!

Crocker talks about the culture of openness that was built into the process from the beginning:

[The internet's founding documents] ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough consensus and running code.” Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.

It's that openness that laid the foundation for the free and innovative net we have today.  No one owns it, and no one entity can dictate how it works.

I've always thought that we're incredibly lucky the internet developed the way it has.  Sure, there are problems:  Insufficient security, potential bottlenecks, whatever.  But imagine how things could have developed.  What if the internet had been run by AT&T?  Or worse, by the US government?  (I know the government provided early funding, but they didn't try to impose rules as to how things worked.)  Is it even possible that such a network would have grown to contain the enormous quantities of content and services we have today?  Fat chance!

Crocker also gives some advice for the wider economy:

As we rebuild our economy, I do hope we keep in mind the value of openness, especially in industries that have rarely had it. Whether it’s in health care reform or energy innovation, the largest payoffs will come not from what the stimulus package pays for directly, but from the huge vistas we open up for others to explore.

Here here!

Here's a list of the problems and the solutions. All involve editing the file "TweetSuite.php" which should be located in the main plugin directory. (As always, when making changes to code, be sure to type them exactly as they appear here, including capitalization.  And be sure to back everything up before messing with it!)

Problem: Widgets don't update, or only update occasionally.

Solution: I detailed the fix for this problem here.

Problem: Tweetback buttons appear on single pages, but not on posts on the blog home page.

Solution:  This seems to have been a conscious choice on Dan's part, since the code is written to explicitly act this way.  I would suggest that it eventually be made configurable.  In the meantime, if you'd like Tweetback buttons to appear with posts on home pages, make the following adjustment:

In 'TweetSuite.php' search for:

function addTweetBacks($content) {

It should be around line 137.

Directly below that, you should see a line that reads:

if( is_single() ) {

Change it to:

if( is_single() or 1==1) {

That should do it.  The way this works is simple.  The 'if' statement, in the original, is checking if Wordpress is generating a single page.  (That's what 'is_single()' does.)  If it is, it runs the code between the if statement's brackets.  By adding 'or 1==1' my change ensures that the code will always run, since, in this universe at least, 1 always equals 1.  This may look a little silly, but it seems the easiest way to implement the change while make the minimum impact on the original code.

Problem: 'RetweetThis' button doesn't appear/creates a broken link

Solution: It looks like TweetSuite is intended to have the ability to display a very nice 'RetweetThis' graphic, with the number of existing retweets embedded in the image.  The problem is that, to do this, Dan is relying on a module that is not included with every build of PHP.  (PHP is the programming language Wordpress uses.)   If your server doesn't provide that module, you're probably seeing one of two things, depending on your browser:  In Explorer, you'll see the dreaded 'broken image' graphic.  In Firefox and its cousins, you'll see nothing.

The following fix just simplifies the whole thing.  It displays the graphic, without trying to embed the existing retweet count.  For my own purposes, that's fine. 

Here's how to do it:

Search for the following code:

if(!$float) { $float = 'left'; }

It should be around line 185.

Directly below it, before the next line of code, insert the following:

$src = WP_CONTENT_URL.'/plugins/'.plugin_basename(dirname(__FILE__))."/rt_this.gif";

Now the plugin will just add the 'rt_this.gif' graphic, without trying any sophisticated image manipulation.

If you stop there, you should see the 'RetweetThis' button at the start of each post.  If you applied the fix above (under Problem: Tweetback buttons appear on single pages, but not on posts on the blog home page) you'll see it with the posts on the home page and on the permalink pages.  Otherwise, just on the permalink pages.

One problem with this behavior:  I'd prefer the RetweetThis graphic on it's own line, at the end of the posts.  Here's what to change to achieve this:

Directly below the line you just inserted, you should see:

$content = "<a href='$tweetthis'><img border='0' style='float:$float; margin-right:5px;' src='$src'></a>".$content;

Erase that line.  Replace it with the following:

$content = $content."<a href='$tweetthis'><img border='0'  src='$src'></a>";

Now the graphic should appear directly after your post.  (I've removed 'float:$float' since it wasn't working anyway.)

Problem: Posts always say "Be the first to Tweet this post" and give a count of zero, even when posts have been ReTweeted

Solution: If you added the fix above, you should now have a very nice 'RetweetThis' graphic accompanying your posts.  As far as I'm concerned, once that's working, you don't really need the 'Be the first to Tweet this post' text.  So my solution is to just remove it.  Here's how:

Search for:

return $content . $output;

It should be around line 189.

Erase it and replace it with:

return $content;

That circumvents the whole process.  The extra line is never added, and the posts look nice.

That's it!  Enjoy using TweetSuite, and here's hoping Dan finishes it up soon.

TweetSuite acomplishes a few things:

-It automatically creates a Tweet on your Twitter account when you post to your blog (with an automatically generated tiny url).  This works fine.

-It creates a link to allow your readers to tweetback your post.  This feature has some problems.  First, the tweetback links only seem to appear on the posts' permalinks, not the blog's home page.  I'm not sure if this is accidental or by design.  (This may have to do with the template I'm running, which I will test soon.)  Second, the link is initially phrased 'Be the first to Tweet this post'.  But even after several tweetbacks are created, that phrase stays the same.  Related, there is a message that says 'No TweetBack Yet' which does not update, even after tweetbacks are created.  I will look into creating a fix for this, if it's not too hard.

-It creates sidebar widgets that track various twitter feeds on your blog.  I'm most interested in the My Tweets widget, which displays my personal Twitter stream.  Out-of-the-box, I had a problem with it, which is that it only updated when I reset the settings in the Tweetsuite admin screen. 

Fortunately, it turned out to be easy to fix this.

Fix to make TweetSuite 'My Tweets' widget update properly

-In a text editor, open the file 'TweetSuite.php'

-Insert the cursor just below the line that reads:

add_action( 'tweetsuite_5mins_hook', 'tweetsuite_5mins' );

(This should be around line 40.)

-Type the following:

add_action('plugins_loaded','tweetsuite_hourly');

-That's it!

For those who are interested, here's how it works.  'add_action' is a way to tell Wordpress to run functions at the time that certain actions happen.  The first parameter after the parentheses specifies the action, in this case 'plugins_loaded'.  That means, do the following function at the time that Wordpress loads plugins.  The second parameter tells the name of the function to run, in this case 'tweetsuite_hourly', which you can see a little further down in the 'TweetSuite.php' file, around line 88.

It seems like the original intention was to run certain database updates on an hourly basis.  But, for whatever reasons, there's some sort of problem with the time stamp, and they were never running at all.  By inserting the 'add_action' line above, we tell Wordpress to do the updates every time plugins are loaded.  In other words, before the page is generated, every time.  This insures that the widget always has the latest Tweet.

I suppose this fix could make things slower, since now we need to interface with the Twitter API and update the database every time a page is generated.  But unless your blog has very high traffic, it shouldn't be serious.  And it really is important that Tweets show up in real time, otherwise, what's the point?

Overall, I love TweetSuite, and I look forward to the finished product.

UPDATE, 3/31/09

I've detailed several more TweetSuite fixes, including:

-Tweetback buttons appear on single pages, but not on posts on the blog home page.

-‘RetweetThis’ button doesn’t appear/creates a broken link

-Posts always say “Be the first to Tweet this post” and give a count of zero, even when posts have been ReTweeted

,

For instance, lets say the url of your blog is

http://www.myblog.com

If you write a post with the title ‘Great Movie I Saw’, under the default structure the permalink will be something  like:

http://www.myblog.com/?p=22

Pretty ugly and, even worse, meaningless to search engines.  It would be much better to make it something like:

http://www.myblog.com/great-movie-i-saw

Anyone who sees that url will know what it means immediately, and search engines will be able to index it more easily.

Here’s where you can find detailed information about on nice permalink structure in Wordpress blogs.

We’re very happy to meet you!