mark.bockenstedt.net » mu

More mu Updates Coming

Mark — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:35:48 +0000

Look up – directly above this text. See it? That’s one of mu’s newest features. I decided that as a gesture of convenience, mu will now create a short link anytime you publish a post. Since it usually already does it anyway, I decided to make it automatic and give you the chance to display it wherever you want on your posts.

All you’ll have to do is make a small change to the posts table in your database to add a place for this link. When you publish a post, mu will grab the short link (from the service of your choosing) and hang onto it so your readers don’t have to waste time getting one themselves. Hooray convenience!

There will be two functions in the next release of mu, one that returns the text and one that displays it directly. The other treat in store for mu 0.4b* will be URL shortening using Cli.gs. I’ve decided to build it in and give you a place to enter your API key rather than make you figure out the API call by using the Custom option.

Look for the update next week – I’d like to make sure it’s working correctly over the weekend before I release it.

* There will also be a few small bug fixes included because I’m an idiot

mu Updated

Mark — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:53:04 +0000

I was informed of a small flaw in the code that controls the URLs for your microblogging account settings pages (thanks Katie). It was a pretty small fix, and it’s been sent off to the SVN repo so you should be prompted to update soon.

At some point I also moved the options page from the Manage menu to the Settings menu. I also added the SQL for the database tables I forgot to include that in the initial release, so some people might have had issues with updates not getting sent out. Instructions for installation are in the README.

You can get mu here if you’re interested.

Official Beta Page for mu

Mark — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:54:33 +0000

I put mu up on the WordPress plugins site yesterday and it looks like everything’s working now. This post will serve as the central point of contact for all things mu in beta stage. If you’ve got any questions, comments, suggestions, or need help, this is the place to post it. For a description of mu or to see its progression, check out the mu tag.

mu Approved by WordPress

Mark — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:24:12 +0000

I’ve applied to have mu hosted on the official WordPress plugins directory, and was approved this morning. In the next few days I’ll be working on getting everything uploaded to that site, and hopefully mu will be more visible on the official plugin page. Stay tuned, mu watchers, we’re nearing the initial release date. No we’re not, there isn’t one. Stay tuned anyway.

mu Goes Beta

Mark — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:45:45 +0000

I’ve finally reached a point where I’m comfortable dropping the source code for mu. mu’s project home will be hosted on Google Code because it’s much easier than setting up a repo and Trac. Everything you need to know will be over there, and I’ll update the blog accordingly when something noteworthy comes out.

If you want to beta test mu, you are free to download the source or check out the SVN trunk. I advise using the SVN method because it’ll make updating painless (literally ‘svn up’ to update). If you prefer source, it’s not that hard to do it that way either. If you so incline, please send me a direct message on Twitter or Plurk, or send an email to mark \at\ bockenstedt \dot\ net of your intention to use the plugin.

mu Update

Mark — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:34:22 +0000

I may have finally figured out how to handle future posts and call a plugin when the post goes live. I was previously using the ‘publish_post’ action hook, but that doesn’t work for future posts. I figured that there are a lot of bloggers who publish their posts in the future, so this became a critical feature that I wanted mu to have from the beginning.

Another thing I’ve done to mu is to cut out Pownce support. I decided that I don’t want to distribute my API key, which is the only way I could get Pownce to accept messages sent to it. I still haven’t integrated ping.fm into the plugin, and I’m not entirely convinced that I want to. I personally don’t use it, but if there’s enough community support for it, I can look into it at a later date.

The final major update to mu is the inclusion of multiple URL shortening services. Every person has their preference of which service to use, so I’ve included TinyURL, bit.ly, is.gd, snurl, and ri.ms into mu. The user has the choice of which service (if any) to use in the default mu options. If there are others, they can be added pretty easily, but this should be a sufficient set for now.

As for things I’ve yet to accomplish, the last pieces of the puzzle are to verify login credentials when they’re entered and to report errors when posting. If one of the updates goes awry, it will alert the user while still sending out updates to other services.

State of the mu, July 15

Mark — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:04:34 +0000

mu is clipping right along now, and I’m trying to trim it down so I’m not relying on third party APIs. The reason I’m doing this is so I can avoid problems that I had with Plurk Updater. The only requirements mu will have are the cURL and XML-RPC packages for PHP. It’s my hope that mu will run as efficiently and elegantly as possible.

Here’s my current to-do:

Verify login upon entering account details
Report if an update doesn’t go through (using HTTP status code 200 as a benchmark)
Queue posts if service is down, or send to similar service (twitbin, etc)
Limit amount of time each service has to send updates
Allow user to publish post at a later date and send update at that time

I’ve had some issues today with duplicate posting, but I think I’ve got that pegged down. Luckily, I didn’t have to make many changes upon WordPress 2.6 being released. I’m going to shoot to have mu finished by month’s end, which feels like a long way off right now. At the very least, I’d like to get items 1 and 2 included in the initial release, and would like to see 5 included ASAP. Keep waiting patiently – as always, comments and suggestions are encouraged.

Tentative mu Feature List

Mark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:00:28 +0000

I’ve been working on mu for the past few days and have it running pretty well. It’s been pushing out updates to my social networks on each post I’ve made for the past 3 or 4 days, so I’m convinced that part of it works. Here’s a set of features that mu will have:

Publish to a wide variety of social networks
Be able to queue your updates for when you actually publish your post (ie post scheduling)
Authenticate each service as you provide account info
Return error messages when farming out updates so you know if something went wrong
Error checking and time limiting for each update to occur (to keep the mean time to post down)
Smart farming of posts – ie if you send to ping.fm, it will grab your list of services and prevent duplication of updates

Through mu, you will be able to update the following microblogs: Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca, FriendFeed, ping.fm, Jaiku, and Pownce. Pownce may get the axe because I have to provide my API key in the plugin and I don’t want to send that to other people. Also, Jaiku is having problems with their API so that one might get cut also. mu should cover most of the major social networks. If all else fails, just send it to ping.fm and it’ll farm it out to all your services there.

There’s no timetable for mu yet, but I think it’s about a week or two away. If there’s anything you want to see added to mu, let me know in the comments.

mu is coming…

Mark — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:38:12 +0000

I recently created a plugin to send an update to your Plurk account (Plurk Updater). It was at that point that I decided that I really needed a plugin that allowed me to specify on a post-by-post basis if I actually wanted to send the update to either Plurk or Twitter. Thus, mu was born.

mu stands for “Microblog Updater”. It is a conglomeration of my Plurk Updater and Twitter Updater. I thought, why stop there? Currently, mu works with Twitter, Plurk and FriendFeed, and partially with Jaiku (they’re having API issues). I have aspirations to extend mu to work with Identi.ca and possibly ping.fm. This will make mu a powerful, all in one solution for updating all your microblogs without any extra intervention on your part.

One great thing about mu is that it will allow the user to build a list of default services mu will send updates to. If, while they’re writing the post, a user decides that the default list doesn’t suit the post, they’ll simply have to scroll down to the services box and check the services they want and don’t want. mu will be a true plugin, and there won’t be any code modification or hacking that needs to be done by the end user.

The other cool thing mu takes care of is update formatting. Each service has their own recommended format updates should appear in, and mu handles them all. Twitter’s format is different from Plurk’s, which is similar to FriendFeeds, but is different from Jaiku’s. mu handles the headache so you don’t have to. It just appears without you worrying about it.

If you have suggestions for additional services you’d like to see in mu, leave them in the comments.

Here’s a few screenshots of what mu looks like:

Options Page

Account details page:

Services Options (on edit page):

mark.bockenstedt.net » mu

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