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New Easy Method for Embedding Videos

It came to my attention that the Unfiltered MU plugin we were using to allow Tripawds Supporters to embed YouTube movies in their blogs, posed a security risk for the entire Tripawds Blogs Community. Apparently it could be used to embed rogue code for the nefarious purpose of stealing login cookies, among other things. And we don’t want any impersonated impersonated users running around here wreaking havoc. It’s not that we don’t trust our members, but we do spend an awful lot of time fighting spam blog registrations.

So, Supporters won’t find Unfiltered MU in their plugins menu anymore. But don’t worry, we’ve already implemented an even easier way to embed movies from all your favorite video sharing sites. And you no longer need to copy the entire embed code or use the HTML editor. Just visit your blog Dashboard -> Plugins -> Installed  -> and Select Viper’s Video QuickTags -> then click Activate. You will then notice a new row of buttons in your Post Editor the next time you update your blog. Simply put your cursor where you want the video to appear — in a new paragraph by itself is recommended — and click the button for your video sharing website. You can then enter the view page and and click Okay. The Viper’s Video QuickTags plugin will do the rest, inserting a quicktag where the video will appear.

A quicktag is a simple snippet of code. In this case, one that will embed a movie from the video’s view page URL entered using the embed buttons. This code will show in your post editor where the video will appear. The video will then display once the post is previewed or published.

Viper’s plugin has detailed online help on your Dashboard -> Settings -> Video Quicktags page which lets you configure preferences for all the different video sharing websites, including what buttons you want displayed in your editor, the default size of embedded videos, and much more. If you still have questions after reading the online help, or need assistance getting the plugin working, please ask in this Tech Support forum topic about how to embed videos.

Please note that all previous blog posts you may have that include an embedded Flash object, like a YouTube or MySpace video, will continue to display the video just fine. That is, until you edit the post! Editing any existing post will strip out the object embed code. You would then need to re-embed the video using the new, easier Quicktags method.

Embedding videos in blog posts is just one of the many enhanced features available to Tripawds Supporter Blogs, made possible with the WPMU Dev Premium Supporter plugin. More details about that coming soon, like how it lets us automatically remove banner ads from Supporter blogs upon upgrade. Any Tripawds Blog can be upgraded via PayPal subscription by visiting your blog Dashboard -> Supporter Tab. Thank you for your continued Support.

New Tripawds Friends Function, Etc.

Been doing quite a bit behind the scenes here the past couple days. Some tests resulted in not so good results, but other tweaking means we have a new feature to announce and feedback to request.

The WordPress MU gurus over at WPMU Dev Premium informed us about their exciting new Global Site Search plugin. This would allow readers of Jerry’s main three legged dog blog to search for key words or phrases and get results from all Tripawds Blogs. Great! It just didn’t play nice* with our SimplePress Forums plugin, so we’ll be awaiting the next update before trying that again.

I’m happy to say, however that the new Tripawds Friends feature seems to be functioning just fine, thanks to our new WPMU Dev Premium Friends plugin! All Tripawds Bloggers will now notice two new items in their dashboard. The Friends tab will let members search for friends by username, and then add them to their own Friends list. Also from this tab, you can enable or disable email notifications for when another member adds you as a friend.

Under the Appearance -> Widgets tab, there is also a new Friends widget which lets members display their list of friends in the sidebar of their blog. Friends can be displayed as a list, or a nifty mosaic of user avatars. And now for the feedback part …

  1. Do you find this fun, or is it just getting way too Twitter?
  2. Should we enable an authorization feature which would require your approval of another member’s friend request before they could friend you?
  3. And finally, would you like to see a new Inbox feature for sending friends messages from your dashboard? (We did not enable this because the Tripawd Discussion Forums already have a robust Private Messaging feature.)

*Note to any SimplePress users / WPMU Dev Premium Members out there: Can you replicate forum pages not rendering with Global Site Search enabled?

Behind the Scenes is brought to you by Tripawds.
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