Now available: Add Attribution for FeedWordPress(posted on 14 July 2009)

I am happy to announce the initial release (2009.0714) of Add Attribution for FeedWordPress, an open-source add-on module for the FeedWordPress feed syndication tool. Add Attribution provides a user-friendly interface for adding boilerplate text to be displayed as part of the title, excerpt, or content of posts that FeedWordPress has syndicated from other sources, which you can use to display attribution for the source of your post without having to edit your WordPress theme.

Please note that the front-end interface for Add Attribution requires some just-completed updates to FeedWordPress’s add-on architecture. In order to use it, you will need to install an upgrade to FeedWordPress version 2009.0713 or later. Right now, that means upgrading the current development snapshot of FeedWordPress rather than the current public release. (The current development snapshot is tested and safe for your use, but the next public release is likely to wait until early August as I work on a couple of feature enhancements.) In order to download a development snapshot, go to the Other Versions download page for FeedWordPress and choose the Development Version to download and install.

Once you have upgraded FeedWordPress to a version that will support Add Attribution, download the Add Attribution installation package and install the contents in your WordPress plugins directory. Then log into the WordPress administrative interface and activate Add Attribution for FeedWordPress under the Plugins page. Once activated, Add Attribution should be ready to use — to set your boilerplate text, go to Syndication –> Posts & Links and find the new Attribution Boilerplate settings panel. To add new rules, click on the link and begin filling in boilerplate to add to your post content or to tack onto post titles. You can use the following shortcodes to insert information about the source that the current post was syndicated from:

  • [source] = a link to the source you syndicated the post from

  • [source-name] = the name of the source you syndicated the post from

  • [source-url] = the URL of the source you syndicated the post from

  • [author] = the name of the author who wrote the post

  • [feed-setting key="setting-name"] = the value of a custom feed setting (named setting-name) for the feed.

    You can set custom settings for feed using the Custom Feed Settings (for use in templates) panel under the feed’s settings page — just click on the feed’s name under Syndicated Sites and scroll down to the bottom of the settings page.

Download and enjoy! As always, you have any issues with the release, or if there is anything that you would like to see included in a future release, please use the comments form or drop me a line to let me know about it.

posted by Rad Geek @ 1:47 pm | talk back

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16 replies to Now available: Add Attribution for FeedWordPress | Use a feed to Follow replies to this article | TrackBack URI

  1. Ted Mann says: /# 9:22 pm • 18 July 2009

    Put simply, awesome! This is such a great new feature. I’ve got it in action on one of my sites that does a lot of post syndicating: http://cherryhill.injersey.com

    The only problem I have is that, since this is a WPMU site, and FeedWordPress is having some kind of conflict with the latest version 2.8.1, I can’t add any more feeds. But for the feeds I already have in there, the attribution functionality works like a charm.

    Follow Up

  2. Ato says: /# 5:29 am • 19 July 2009

    dont’ work #

    [source] [source-name] [source-url]

    give all = output.. the domain of the site http://www.example.com

    [author] give me a php error..

    and [feed-setting key=”setting-name”] don’t work at all

    why? ;(

    Follow Up

  3. Stephanie says: /# 5:42 am • 23 July 2009

    Hey! First of all I’ve been waiting for an attribution feature for a while. I’m not a coder so I can’t modify template files well so the new plugin should come in handy. Hopefully you’ll also add a way to display an author’s picture and bio information. That would be awesome!

    Anyway the new plug gives an error on all post pages:

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function gettheauthorlink() in /home/scandav4/publichtml/wp-content/plugins/add-attribution-feedwordpress/add-attribution-feedwordpress.php on line 237

    Can you help me with that?

    xoxoxoxo

    Stephanie

    Follow Up

    • Rad Geek says: /# 9:38 am • 24 July 2009

      Stephanie,

      Thanks for the heads-up about the problem with [author]. It was a stupid error on my part. If you download the most recent update of Add Attribution, this issue should now be fixed.

      As for adding a photo and tagline or bio information for the author, the best way to do that will depend a bit on how your syndication sources are set up. If a syndicated feed has only one author on it, you could very easily implement this using the [feed-setting] shortcode and the Custom Feed Settings feature in FeedWordPress. What you’d want to do is bring up the settings page for the feed that you want to edit, scroll down to the bottom, where you should see a box entitled Custom Feed Settings (for use in templates). Create a new feed setting with a name that you choose (let’s call it, say, “author bio”), and set the value to the HTML blurb that you want to add for each author (which can include text, images, whatever). Then, back in Attribution Boilerplate, add the following text to your boilerplate:

       [feed-setting key="author bio"]

      That should now be replaced by the HTML bio that you set up for that feed.

      If you have multiple authors on a single feed, then the problem becomes significantly more complex, if that’s the nature of your problem, let me know, and I’ll spend some time thinking about possible solutions.

  4. Rad Geek’s Projects » Add Attribution 2009.0724 fixes bug in [author] shortcode says: /# 9:19 am • 24 July 2009

    […] release fixes a bug in the initial release, reported by Stephanie, which caused PHP to throw a fatal error if you attempted to use the [author] shortcode in your […]

    Follow Up

  5. JulieCA says: /# 12:45 pm • 19 August 2009

    AH – thanks very much. This solves a lot of problems. I will definitely be making a donation.

    Two questions:

    1. Is there a way to limit the number of items syndicated with each updated?

    2. Is there a way to make the [original-url] a link?

    Follow Up

  6. coba says: /# 2:50 am • 23 August 2009

    Hi, I’ve problem on FeedWordpress add-on, all links on my posts links to author site even in no-comment, how to fix this?

    Follow Up

  7. Jay says: /# 12:59 pm • 17 December 2009

    It would be nice … if feed wordpress could do this on it own.. via a format;

    content (your-code) (more-stuff)

    Follow Up

    • Rad Geek says: /# 12:59 pm • 20 May 2010

      Jay,

      There are some general technical reasons why I don’t plan to build that kind of functionality into the FeedWordPress core. However, if you’re interested in such a feature, I am currently in the process of working on an add-on for FeedWordPress which would allow you to lay out the entire content of posts according to simple templates like what you suggest, using shortcodes and an interface very similar to Add Attribution’s. If you’re interested in this add-on, please feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to give you a preliminary version to test drive and some notices about its status.

  8. JohnH says: /# 3:33 am • 6 January 2010

    I’m trying to display the various author’s images from a Twitter search RSS feed. In the atom file it looks like:

    It’s not making it into the database so I’m guessing (I’m not a coder) it has something to do with Magpie. If someone could point me in the right direction I’d be very grateful.

    Follow Up

  9. Tiger says: /# 4:57 am • 23 February 2010

    Can we use standard HTML in the attribution boilerplate?

    Follow Up

  10. Rick says: /# 3:08 pm • 27 June 2010

    I up graded to WP 3.0 and since have had to disable add attribution plug-in . I am getting this Fatal error: “Call to undefined function if_syndicated()” , I have tried a few things to no avail. It killed the whole site. Your plug-in is one of my favorite plug-ins, now I cant use. Any Ideas ?

    Follow Up

  11. kanishka kashyap says: /# 5:19 am • 26 July 2010

    Hi! Such contribution to the leading aggregator plugin is really appreciated. It would be great if you include these functionalities too . I have seen such in the other aggregators and if the code exists and I see no wrong in implementing it here as well. 1. Automatic thumbnail from the post syndicated.

    1. An snippet to show .. Count of previous posts from the same author.

    2. The “number of comments count” from the syndication source. It should show that how many comments have been made on the source website on the particular post. And if possible a sidebar widget to display the comment excerpts from all the syndicated sites.

    4 The avatar of the user imported from their account avatar.com.

    As far as I know, we lack such features.

    Follow Up

  12. Carlos says: /# 11:51 pm • 15 February 2014

    Is there a shortcode to display the title of the post???

    Follow Up

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