Archive for WordPress
I didn’t see a lot of fanfare, but the release of the WordPress Video Solution Framework plugin, also called the WordPress.com Video Server, has the potential to be huge.
Some of you may wonder why I was interested in getting FFmpeg installed again. This is the reason why: Auttomatic has released code that makes it possible (with some work and knowhow) to turn a WordPress Mu platform into a video solution.
Features
- Video-Uploader: A program that will load raw video files into the transcoder without making the user wait
- Video-Transcoder
- Takes in raw video from the Uploader
- Transcodes the video into h.264
- Stores the video into an mp4 container
- Creates thumbnails
- Sends the files and meta data to the file server
- Video-FinalTouch
- Receives files and data from the Transcoder
- Copies the files into the source video’s folder
- Updates the database tables with new video information
- Can be customized to replicate or load files into a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Video-XML
- Reads in information from the video such as: caption, duration, and format
- Returns this information in XML format
- Caches information to ensure quick performance
- Video-AJAX: Displays the video when the transcoder has not completed processing the raw video data
- Includes a player written in ActionScript 3 that will handle proper display of the video based upon your configuration
Final Thoughts
The notes indicate that at least some work must be done in order to make everything function. Since I have yet to try everything out yet, I don’t know exactly how much work that would be. I’ll be sure to post about my experiences and hopefully have some examples soon.
The notes also indicate that you’ll need to have a working install of FFmpeg and qt-faststart (the readme.txt file says qu-faststart, but it’s actually qt-faststart). To install FFmpeg, see Install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on CentOS Easily.
One of the these days I’m going to have to start working with AJAX. To date, I haven’t really had a need, but I’m going to get way behind the curve unless I start working with it now. I recently stumbled on a page in the WordPress Codex called AJAX in Plugins. This will be my starting point for working with AJAX and WordPress. Hopefully I can start cranking out some cool new plugins with AJAX goodness soon. Once I do, I’ll blog with some more details about what hurdles, if any, I faced when developing WordPress plugins with AJAX support.
This time I have a plugin for the masses. WP Easy Uploader will make any WordPress user’s life easier. No longer will you have to rely on FTP to upload new plugins, themes, or random files. Now you can take care of those tasks quickly and easily from the admin screen of WordPress.
For full details, check out WP Easy Uploader’s release page.
Many clients have shared concerns with me about using the built-in Update Services feature of WordPress to automatically ping services like Ping-O-Matic. Why are they concerned? They have heard horror stories from fellow bloggers or read random stories you can find on the web about WordPress sites being blocked from these sites due to a variety of different reasons. Unfortunately, there is much more information out there about the problems and very little information about solutions. In this post, I aim to address the major concerns and provide solutions where solutions are needed. Continue reading “Can pinging get your WordPress site blocked?”