wordpress-plugin: gapingvoid
Posted on | May 5, 2006 | 15 Comments
I’m a big fan of hugh macleod’s daily sketches at gapingvoid.com… and since hugh has shown interest in the idea of offering a “gapingvoid-widget” in a recent episode of the gillmore gang, I set down yesterday night and cobbled together a little wordpress-plugin which displays the latest of hugh’s sketches. you can see it in action right next to this post in the sidebar 
the plugin is very minimalistic (doesn’t even use an RSS-parser), but it’s a start. your welcome to integrate it into your blog or to modify the code to your needs (it’S GPL’ed)! if you like it, please drop me a line in the comments…
unix: gapingvoid.tar.gz
installation notes: just unpack the archive into the ./wp-content/plugins directory of your wordpress installation. in the source (gapingvoid.php) you find the line:
var $imgWidth = 197;
this can be used to adjust the widgets width, everything else should work out of the box. since the script caches the gapingvoid-feed and the image for 60 minutes, your webserver needs write-permissions in ./wp-content/plugins/gapingvoid .
to display the widget in the sidebar, add this code in the theme-editor:
<?php $gp = new gapingvoid(); $gp->gapingvoidSidebarWidget() ?>
I also want to mention kosso’s widget, which was released before mine… it’s implemented in javascript does a nice fading slideshows of recent sketches
most of all: bigup hugh for making us smile every day!
Comments
15 Responses to “wordpress-plugin: gapingvoid”
Leave a Reply
May 5th, 2006 @ 9:20 pm
Hi,
You might also want to consider travelsbylight.blogspot.com
May 12th, 2006 @ 3:50 pm
Erm, I can’t make it work, I’m a bit of a techno-dummy. I’ve got all permissions on the php file at 7 but the site says:
“recently at gapingvoid.com…
Couldn’t write to cache-file (cache.rss)!”
How do I fix?
May 12th, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
@Vanessa: it’s important to grant write-permissions to the _folder_ “gapingvoid”, cause the plugin caches the gapingvoid-feed and -image inside it. try to put ./wp-content/plugins/gapingvoid to 7, I think that should solve your problem.
May 13th, 2006 @ 7:58 am
Thank you! All sorted.
May 18th, 2006 @ 1:38 pm
[...] wordpress-plugin: gapingvoid [...]
June 8th, 2006 @ 5:56 am
The plugin works great most of the time. On my archive pages I only get the top and bottom linked text without the image. I noticed it happens on this site when you click on a link in your tag cloud. I love the plugin and thought you might want to know of the potential bug.
June 8th, 2006 @ 9:50 am
@patrick: thx for your hint, just fixed that bug! (just download the new version 0.2 at http://nonsmokingarea.com/blog/?p=17)
June 12th, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
Are you still working on this plugin?
I get this error when I activate it
I am running Wordpress 1.5.1.2
What am I doing wrong?
Help me please!
June 15th, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
@toolvicarious: sorry, I haven’t tried it out but I guess my plugin works only with wordpres 2.x…
I’ld recommend updating, wordpress improved a lot!
ps: sorry the late answering, ur post was caught in the spam-filter somehow
November 16th, 2006 @ 5:35 am
Hello, I’m trying your plugin on my site and I’m getting this error. I’ve already given write access to the folder but still the error. Could you please advice me the solution.
PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in ….\wp-content\plugins\gapingvoid\gapingvoid.php on line 136
You can see that error on my site bottom of home page.
Thanks.
November 16th, 2006 @ 10:52 am
hi, I fixed a minor bug & updated the .zip / .tar.gz files… please try to update.
if the error still shows up, check if you find cache.rss & cache.jpg in the plugins/gapingvoid directory…
good luck!
November 17th, 2006 @ 12:11 am
Hey I’ve updated with your new file but the error still the same and now in line 137
There is no cache.rss and cache.jpg in the plugins/gapinvoid directory either.
Thanks.
November 17th, 2006 @ 8:42 pm
hm, sorry I’m clueles… looks to me like the script isn’t able to fetch the feed from its source. can it be that you php-config is restricted from opening foreigen URLs? (some shared hosting providers do that). otherwise, get in contact (michael.kamleitner@play.fm) and maybe I can sort you out with a special debug-version…
May 20th, 2007 @ 8:52 am
[...] Visit [...]
July 14th, 2008 @ 11:57 am
[...] wordpress-plugin: gapingvoid :: nonsmokingarea.comScrobbler; less stats: Automattic Stats; wordpress-plugin: Tiger Administration cause the plugin caches the gapingvoid-feed and -image inside it. try to put ./wp [...]