This plugin has a new home. It will now permanently be hosted on Wordpress.org:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vimeo-badge-widget/

If you downloaded it off my site, you may want to re-download it from Wordpress.org. One person who was trying to use the plugin was running into problems because their server didn’t have cURL installed. I found wp_remote_get() in the Wordpress Codex. Sadly, it’s not documented at all.

So, if you’d like to make a call to another server, it looks like wp_remote_get would be the function to use. It checks to see what is available on the server and then uses the appropriate function. You can use it as so:

$response = wp_remote_get($remote_url, array('timeout' => 60));


About a week or two ago I was building a blog for a client who asked if a Vimeo Badge could be added to their sidebar. I expected there to be a plethora available. However, I was stunned to find that this was not the case. I tried Vimeo RSS, but I wasn’t really satisfied.

This afternoon I decided to write my own. Just a simple widget that allows a user to select the number of videos, and then grab the videos for a user, a users album, a group or even a channel.

It was also my first venture into Widgets since Wordpress released 2.8 and their new Widget API. I must say, I’m really impressed with the new API. For someone who has never used it before, I was able to develop a widget in under two hours. It’s nice, simple and very intuitive.

I’ve submitted it to Wordpress and hopefully it will be in their repository soon. In the mean time, you can grab it here: http://tylercraft.com/vimeo-badge-widget.zip

Tylr Slidr has been updated and is now at 1.5.

The latest release has had the following updates:

• Tested for 2.8.
• Upgraded swfobject from 2.1 to 2.2.
• Using Flickr slideshow swf version 71649

Download it here.

Over the weekend I made a minor update to Tylr Slidr. We had a project at work that used drop downs for the navigation. This caused a problem when a post using Tylr Slidr was near the top of the page. By default, browsers place Flash on top of all HTML elements on the page; regardless of z-index.

Per Adobe’s recommendation, the wmode on the .swf should be set to transparent. The most recent update to Tylr Slidr now has an option allowing this functionality. A simple checkbox allows it to be set.

I just updated this version of Wordpress from 2.7.0 to 2.7.1. I don’t really notice anything different. I’m assuming it primarily features tweaks that are under the hood.

However, I did this upgrade from within Wordpress. This is the first time I didn’t download a new version of Wordpress and the upload it (after I backed everything up of course) via FTP. In total, this new workflow took all of 5 seconds.

Color me impressed!

Well, I finally did it. This blog is now running on Wordpress 2.7. I will say that I am quite happy with the new interface. It is by no means perfect, but a definate improvement, and in my opinion leaps and bounds ahead of any other CMS/Blog platform.

After using it for a week or so, I think I only have two issues:

1. I get tired of having to close the nav sections on the left. Just because I needed to edit a plugins settings doesn’t mean I need the settings nav left open from here on out. After doing a couple things I end up having 3-4 nav sections open for no reason.
2. Speed. While this looks great.. it can get pretty slow (on multiple hosts.. so it’s not just mine). Hopefully they’ll use 2.8 and 2.9 to make it more efficient.

Just before New Years I updated Tylr Slidr to 1.2. It was a small update that consisted of testing it in 2.7 and making some small CSS tweaks. If anyone has any problems please let me know.

Also, as people use it, please feel free to let me know if there are any ways that I could improve it. Be it usability or feature updates.

Check it out at http://tylrslidr.com/ and download it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tylr-slidr/

I just released version 1.1 of Tylr Slidr. Updates include the use of Flickr’s latest slideshow app which does a much better job of scaling photos. It will also insert the slideshow using SWFObject instead of an iframe as it previously did.

The quicktags it adds to the post are slightly different than before, but it should be backwards compatible.

So go update your blogs! Or if you haven’t, go download it from wordpress:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tylr-slidr/

Or, check out the site I just made for it (with great thanks to Jay David for help on design): http://tylrslidr.com

I’ve finally written my very own Wordpress plugin!

It makes the process of adding a flickr slideshow to your site much easier. I’ve been trying to use FlickrSlidr with Wordpress for a while, but it was always a pain to use. Especially when trying to tell a non technical person how to use it, or when coming back to edit a post that had a slideshow in it.

So this takes all that pain away.

So if you are interested in downloading it, go to my project page here: Tylr Slidr.

Here is an example of what it can do: