Vote Here

Thanks!

I’ve created a PHP & HTML5 Boilerplate script that is hosted on Google Code.

Features

• HTML5 front-end template based off the great HTML5 Boilerplate
• Most configuration options are in /includes/config.php
• A TON of helper functions within /includes/helper.php
• All PHP is documented with PHPDoc style comments
• Built in MySQL support if needed (not required to work)

I will try and get documentation up at the Wiki page as soon as I can.

Group buy sites have been a hot topic over the last year, and last month I decided to get into the fray by creating a “Local Deal Aggregator” called BuyDeals.in. I am really happy with the way the site turned out, but aI realized early on that there were next to no articles describing any of the major “deal” sites, their affiliate programs and the best way to grab their deals.

HINT: I’ve created a great page that shows some metrics on how each of these deal sites stack up to each other. This page gets updated on a daily basis, just as BuyDeals.in does.

GROUPON

Far and away the largest of the group buying sites, Groupon has the most deals available in the most cities. The available deals is more than twice it’s closest competitor (LivingSocial).

Affiliate Program

Groupon has two competing affiliate programs. The first is through Commission Junction while the other is through their in-house API using a referral code(link to it is at the bottom of the page labeled ‘Developers / API’). Note: You don’t have to use their API to use the referral code you are given within your account – it just makes life 100 times easier when you use their API. Just using the referral code will net you $10 for every new signup you send to Groupon.

API

Groupon has a great API service that lists everything you will ever need to know about the deal you are pulling, but they are lacking one very important thing: You cannot pull every deal off their API in on request. You need to use their Divisions method to create a list of all their regions, then programically cycle through each division and pull their available deals using the Deals method. This takes a lot of overhead time, but it does work.

Payout

When you use CJ.com as the affiliate program of choice, you can get paid in cash using their default cashout method. If you use their in-house API/referral program, you only get paid in Groupon credit (Groupon Bucks) – meaning you can only use the cash you earn towards buying more Groupons.

LIVINGSOCIAL

LivingSocial is the second largest local deal site behind Groupon and is probably the second most popular service like this out there.

Affiliate Program

LivingSocial has two different affiliate programs as well. The first you have access to right away when you signup for an account: You get $5 for each new sign-up you refer to their service (called Deal Bucks). The second is an affiliate program that you have to be accepted into (link to it is at the bottom of the page labeled ‘Affiliates’).

API

LivingSocial does not have an true API, but when you are accepted into their affiliate program, you are given an RSS feed of every deal available in their database. You can then append a special string including your affiliate ID to make it an affiliate link. This way is great – it only takes seconds for me to fetch all the deals in their system. The only downside here is that they are missing a couple fields that I would have liked, such as “Coupon Expiration” date, but that’s a minor issue.

Payout

Deal Bucks are credit towards purchases of LivingSocial deals while their affiliate program gives you cash that you can then transfer out.

DAILY DEALSTER

Daily Dealster has a lot of deals within a good number of markets, and is pretty comparible to LivingSocial in size. Their deals seem to be the Sams Club version of the deal sites. Most deals allow you to get better discounts the more of that particular coupon you buy.

Affiliate Program

Just like most other programs, Daily Dealster has a referral link you can share as well as an in-house affiliate program.

API

Great service. Daily Dealster uses the same white-label service to handle their affiliate program as Tippr and LivingSocial. They too offer one feed that gives you all deals in their system. They also give you a string to append all deal links to turn them into active affiliate links.

Payout

As with most services, referral earnings can only be used on DailyDealster deals, and affiliate earnings can be cashed out.

HOMERUN

HomeRun, according to my data, has some of the best deals (discount %), but it has the close to the least of any service on my list.

Affiliate Program

Just like most other programs, HomeRun has a referral link you can share as well as an in-house affiliate program.

API

HomeRun has a great json feed that allows you to pull all deals in their system. This feed is easy to parse and has everything that I needed to post the deals to BuyDeals.in.

Payout

As with most services, referral earnings can only be used on HomeRun deals, and affiliate earnings can be cashed out.

TIPPR

Tippr was my third choice to sign up with after Groupon and LivingSocial, and they have good deals, albeit in a limited number of cities.

Affiliate Program

Just like most other programs, Tippr has a referral link you can share as well as an in-house affiliate program.

API

Great service. Tippr uses the same white-label service to handle their affiliate program as Daily Dealster and LivingSocial. They too offer one feed that gives you all deals in their system. They also give you a string to append all deal links to turn them into active affiliate links.

Payout

As with most services, referral earnings can only be used on Tippr deals, and affiliate earnings can be cashed out.

TOWNHOG

TownHog has a bad API/RSS feed service, but the one thing it does have going for it is it’s affiliation with a lot of CBS websites. I came across TownHog thru my local CBS station KDKA.

Affiliate Program

Just like most other programs, TownHog has a referral link you can share as well as an in-house affiliate program.

API

Townhog doesn’t have an API or all-deal feed service, but they do offer RSS feeds for each city. The problem is that their RSS feeds give you next to no fields that you can really use when creating a mashup.

Payout

From what I can tell, all earnings at Townhog give you credit to buy more TownHog deals.

BUYWITHME

BuyWithMe seems to be in the top 5 or 6 of local deal providers, but their affiliate programs and feeds way below par here. I rate these guys easily last in all my comparisons.

Affiliate Program

BuyWithMe only uses Commission Junction as their affiliate provider. They do also have a referral earning program that is not in CJ – $10 for each new signup and subsequent purchase.

API

They do not have an API, however they do have RSS feeds for each region, but there is no easy way to cycle thru and pull each city’s feed. On top of that, their feed is next to useless because it only has a link, title and description; not the kind of specialized data that is needed to create a good mashup.

Installation Instructions

To install, you just place all the plugin’s files and folders directly into the /plugins/ folder of your GetSimple 2.01+ installation. Any plugin you add will automatically get activated.

All my plugins can be downloaded from my GetSimple Extend page.

My Plugins

• Admin Header & Footer
  This plugin allows you to add any code to the <head> and footer sections of your GetSimple control panel. Both take javascript and PHP code while the header also takes anything else usually reserved for the <head> section.

• Author vCard
  This plugin allows you to add your contact information into a screen that then feeds a vCard generator for visitors of your site.

• Branded Login
  With this plugin you can re-brand the login page to your GetSimple control panel with a logo.

• Plugin Insight
  This plugin will mostly be used by developers. It shows all plugin “hooks” being called by the installed plugins and also all the information of those installed plugins.

• Salt Regeneration
  GetSimple uses a unique string to “salt” the login security and also the file upload security functions. This plugin allows you to regenerate that “salt” on demand.

• Custom Admin CSS
  Want your GetSimple control panel to have a different style? This plugin is for you.

• GS-Socialize
  This plugin adds some of the more popular social media links to the bottom of all your posts & pages.

• Exec-PHP
  This plugin allows you to execute PHP code within your posts & pages.

When creating a new project of mine, I needed a way to protect certain page ids from being deleted because I was hard coding them into my WPMU themes. I was using the WPMU Blog Templates plugin, and after figuring out what IDs those new “pre-setup” pages were, I needed a way to protect them from ever being deleted by my users.

This plugin does just that – protects a list of post or page ids. It also gives you the ability to change the error message they see when trying to delete one of these protected pages.

Download

Download the latest from WordPress Extend…

Screenshot of Administrator Panel

Introducing the Silk Companion II Icon Pack. While developing a new CKEditor skin for GetSimple, I had a need for some extra Silk icons developed by Mark James at FamFamFam. Out came 64 new silk-inspired icons. These icons are released under the same Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License as the originals.

Damien Guard created the first set of the Silk Companion icons, so thanks to him for setting me on the track to get these completed.

Download the Silk Companion II Icon Pack

I haven’t posted here for a while because I’ve been working on a project called GetSimple. GetSimple is an XML based lite Content Management System. To go along with it’s best-in-class user interface, we have loaded it with features that every website needs, but with nothing it doesn’t. GetSimple is truly the simplest way to manage a small-business website.

Check out the site, download it and check it out! It’s taken 7 months of work to get to this point, and I’m extremely proud of it.

Main Features

1. Fast as XML
   We don’t use mySQL to store our information, but instead depend on the speed and accuracy of XML. By utilizing XML, we are able stay away from introducing an extra layer of slowness and complexity associated with connecting to a mySQL database. Because GetSimple was built specifically for the small-site market, we feel this is the absolutely best option for data storage.

2. You can “Undo” Almost Everything
   This feature was based off an eye-opening AListApart article explaining how warning messages never work as planned. Because of this, we’ve included “undo” into almost every action you can take on the site, giving you peace-of-mind for when you make those inevitable stupid mistakes.

3. Easy to Learn UI
   The top priority when designing our user-interface was to make it the best in it’s class. We had the luxury of trying and testing all the competing management systems before designing ours, so we took the best out of each one – then refined it.

4. Simple Installation
   The total time in setting up a website took a total of 5 minutes, from starting the FTP to finishing the setup procedure.

5. Simple Theme Customization
   We have a codex that shows which functions are available for theme customization. Our goal was not to bloat our software with hundreds of little-used theme functions, but to offer more than enough to allow for a fully customized theme.

6. Designed For the Small-Site Market
   This is one of the reasons GetSimple uses XML rather than a robust database such as mySQL. For most small businesses, their only real need is to be able to easily update their site without the need of a ton of extraneous rarely used features. GetSimple’s goal is to manage small websites efficiently and effectively.

WP-Components is a new WordPress plugin that allows theme developers to embed a short template tag instead of short bits of text and code that the website owner might want to change later on.

Before creating this plugin, if I had semi-static text within a theme I was developing (such as a short “About Me” blurb) I would either embed the text directly into the template page (sidebar.php) or I would create a “Page” within WordPress and use the iinclude plugin to “include” that page. That way, if the site owner ever wanted to change that text, he or she would just have to edit that particular page.

That worked OK, but there were a few quirks to it. First, the pages would show up in search results. I could get around it by installing a second plugin called Search Everything – that would allow you to exclude certain pages from the search results. But needing to use both these plugins wasn’t ideal for such a simple problem. That’s why I developed WP-Components

Download

Download latest stable version from WordPress Extend

Installation

1. Upload wp-coponents.php to your wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2. Go to Settings->WP-Components to set new components.
3. Add the template tag shown below into your theme’s template files.

Usage

Template tag syntax:

<?php get_component('component_slug'); ?>

Template tag “safe” syntax:

<?php if (function_exists('get_component')) { get_component('component_slug'); } ?>

• component_slug: [required] The slug given within this plugin’s settings page.

Requirements

• Only tested on WordPress 2.5+, but there is no reason it should not work on any older versions.

FAQ

• Where can this template tag go within my theme?
  Anywhere. Literally…

• How can I ensure this plugin doesnt break my theme?
  The best way would be to use the safe template tag that first checks to see if the function exists before it calls it. See “Usage” above for details.

Version Changelog

• Ver 0.7 – 2/23/2009 – Fixed javascript issues with the WP image uploader and other plugins.
• Ver 0.5 – 12/11/2008 – Added Expand/Collapse features for each component, and a few minor style fixes for both the 2.7 and the 2.5.X versions of WordPress.
• Ver 0.2 – 12/7/2008 – Added deletion confirmation, components are sorted properly, and an ‘undo’ function in case of an oops.
• Ver 0.1 – 12/5/2008 – Plugin developed

ToDo List

• TinyMCE – Add TinyMCE support for those that have enabled it within their profiles.
• Nonce – Add nonce protection to all procedures.
• i18n Support – Add internationalization support for the plugin.

WP-SocialCount is a WordPress plugin that displays the number of adds/saves from within a social network for any particular URL. Since this plugin allows you to specify the URL that you want to pull the data for, it means that you can display any social number for any URL of your choosing. We also attach no style to the data the plugin returns – so you are free to style and use the data in any way you see fit.

Download

Download latest stable version from WordPress Extend

Installation

1. Upload wpsocialcount.php to your wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2. Backup your WordPress Installation. I haven’t seen any problems yet, but since this install creates a new db table, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
3. Activate the plugin.
4. Go to Options->WP-SocialCount to set some of the variables for the plugin (not required for basic usage).
5. Add the template tag shown below into your theme’s template files.

Usage

Template tag syntax:

<?php wpsocialcount('social-network', 'data-format', 'url'); ?>

• social-network: [required] Either ‘delicious’, ‘digg’ or ‘youtube’ for now
• data-format: [required] The type and format of the data you want
  • data-format options for Del.ico.us
    • link – Echos the link to add the URL to Del.ico.us. Also includes the amount of ‘saves’ if available.
    • empty – Returns the amount of ‘saves’ of the specified URL.
  • data-format options for Digg
  • link – Echos the link to digg the URL. Also includes the amount of diggs and comments if available.
  • comments – Returns the amount of ‘comments’ of the specified URL.
  • diggs – Returns the amount of ‘diggs’ of the specified URL.
  • data-format options for YouTube
  • link – Embeds the video and echos a link to visit the YouTube URL via it’s title. Also includes the amount of views, comments and it’s rating.
  • views – Returns the amount of ‘views’ the specified video has had.
  • title – Returns the ‘title’ of the specified video.
  • comments – Returns the amount of ‘comments’ of the specified video.
  • rating – Returns the ‘rating’ of the specified video.
• url: [required] Use full URL including ‘http://’

Examples

Demo Page. Also, visit adClustr. In the top right it shows a customized version of a Del.icio.us link.

Requirements

• Only tested on WordPress 2.0+, but there is no reason it should not work on any versions of WP 2.0 or above.
• PHP 5.2.0 or greater for need of JSON support.

FAQ

• Can it work with other social networks?
  I am in the process of adding more API support as I find the time and code for it.

• What can I do with this?
  You can create and customize any “Add my post to Del.icio.us”, “View YouTube Video” or “Digg This” badge that your mind can possibly create with CSS. This plugin gives you complete control over the add-to link’s appearance.

• Can I add more than one wpsocialcount function to my templates?
  Yes. As far as I can tell, there is no limit on the number of wpsocialcount tags that can be added to any one theme. However, certain sites will throttle your website’s usage of it if it believes you are abusing the API with too many queries in too short of a timeframe. This plugin tries to stop this from happening by caching the data it fetches into a database table and only checking for updates at most once an hour.

Version Changelog

• Ver 0.5 – July 24th, 2008 – Added support for YouTube. I also fixed a few of the SQL injection vulnerabilities that were discovered in the way WP plugins handle user input. I also major;y cleaned and optimized the code.
• Ver 0.4 – March 12th, 2008 – Added support for StumbleUpon. Added administration panel in WordPress to collect values needed for StumbleUpon usage and other variables. Update: StumbleUpon must have caught on, and this now does not work.
• Ver 0.3 – Not released to public. Added support for Digg. Also added database caching to try and prevent del.ico.us from throttling users.
• Ver 0.2 – Not released to public. Changed to pull data from Del.icio.us api. Plugin now requires PHP 5.2.0 because of it’s support of JSON.
• Ver 0.1 – Not released to public. It was a plugin that hacked the Del.icio.us bookmark count from the tagometer badge that Del.icio.us provides.

Credits

These are some of the places I used for help when creating this plugin. I owe a big ‘Thank You’ to everyone on this list!

• Joost de Valk – For help with understanding the del.icio.us JSON code
• SplitBrain – For help in getting around the whole no-StumbleUpon api thing
• Digg API – Much better documented than any other api so far