Plugin: TinyPNG

Posted by onSaturday, October 29. 2016 No comments

Update October 29, 2016

The plugin is now available at spartacus so you can install it easily in your serendipity backend.

Original Article from September 21, 2016

There are some ways to compress images. There are also some webservices to do that. TinyPNG is one of them. You can send your pictures to an API and get the compressed image back. TinyPNG promises to do the compression without remarkable loose of quality.

To come to serendipity; core developer Onli made a new plugin to automaticly use TinyPNG when uploading your images to the media library. The plugin isn't available on spartacus yet, because it needs some more testing before going there. If you want to give it a try, you can download it from the forum. Just unpack the tarball and put the resulting directory in the 'plugins' directory of your serendipity installation. After that you can install the plugin in your backend.

(Disclaimer: If you don't understand what I'm even talking about above, just wait for the plugin to be available on Spartacus. )

If you want to use the plugin, you have to create a developer API on the TinyPNG website which is pretty easy. The API is free to use whith 500 compressions a day. If you want to compress more images you can use one of their paid plans. After getting an API code just put it in the settings of the plugin and you're done.

If you have issues testing the plugin or feature requests to the developer, please provide feedback at the corresponding entry at the forum.

Plugin: Share Buttons

Posted by onWednesday, September 7. 2016 3 Comments

Update September 7, 2016

As Thomas stated in the comments, the newest Version 0.11 of the plugin now implements the OpenGraph metatags wich are used by Facebook, Twitter Cards and other social networks. In the settings there is a new parameter "Fallback Image" where you can set the image shown on Twitter and Facebok if the entry contains no own image. Set to "none" to deacivate.

Also in an earlier update the possibility to use the Shariff Backend was added. With these feature you can show a counter number on the sharing buttons for several networks which shows how often the article was liked, shared or "plused" there. You can download the backend and store it on your webspace. Then you have to set the plugin parameter "Backend for sharecounter" to the path where you stored it. The default of that setting points to a backend which is hosted on a webspace of a serendipity community member. You can use this backend but if you want to make changes to the configuration or if you have perfomance issues it is necessary to use your own. If you don't want sharecounters at all just set the parameter to "none".

Update June 22, 2016

The plugin provides all services that are shipped with Shariff. If you want more services to be supported you can get in contact with the Shariff project on Github. If they update their tool it will be implemented in the plugin periodically.

Original Article from June 22, 2016

Sharing is caring. To help your readers to share your blogposts with several social networks and other services there is a new Serendipity plugin called "Share Buttons" (serendipity_event_social). This plugin will add some share buttons for the networks and services you choose in the configuration of the plugin.

The plugin uses the free tool Shariff which is provided by the german computer magazin c't. This tool cares about the strong data protection laws in Germany an the EU. So there is no data transfered to the external sites until you click on the buttons.

The following services are supported for the moment:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Xing
• WhatsApp
• Mail
• AddThis
• Tumblr
• Flattr
• Diaspora
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon
• Threema

And this is how it can show up in your blog:

You can also see the plugin working live here in this blog.

So if you wish to allow your readers to easily share your posts, install "Share Buttons" and give it a try. It is available via Spartacus. If you find some bugs or have some suggestions to the developers, feel free to give feedback at the user forum.

Plugin: serendipity_event_entrypaging

Posted by onWednesday, June 8. 2016 No comments

Sometimes you want your readers to have the ability to go to the next or previous articel when reading your blog. When they scroll through the timeline that is no problem. But if they're reading a single articel there is no chance to do so.

Here comes the plugin "Links to next/previous entry" (serendipity_event_entrypaging). Once installed you have several options to configurate it.

First you can place the links to next/previous on top or bottom of the articel. You can also use smarty to place it wherever you want in your own template. When you don't name the link titles, the title of the next/previous articel will be displayed. With the last option you can toggle weather you want only articels of the same category shall be displayed as link. Thats all, save it and see the links displayed in your articel pages.