XmasB Quotes
This plugin/widget lets you add and show random quotes to your WordPress blog with ease. The plugin uses MySQL to store quotes. You can specify an image for each quote, default image for quotes, and the option to disable images altogether.
Installation
This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working.
- Upload directory «xmasb_quotes» to the
/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Add the widget to your sidebar
- That’s it!
By default the plugin looks for an image in the folder named «images» with a name that matches the author and extension «.gif», eg. if the author is «Bart», the plugin will look for the file named «bart.gif». If an image is found it is used, else the quotes is shown without an image or default image if specified.
You can add, edit and delete quotes under Edit – XmasB Quotes. The options for each quote:
Quote – The actual quote. Author – The author of the quote. This is optional. Image – The image to be used. If left blank, the name of the author will be used to search for an image. If not found, and default image is specified, the default image will be used. Visible – Set this to «No» if you want to hide a quote without deleting it.
Set more general options under «Options – XmasB Quotes». Options available:
Show Images – Uncheck this to disable images shown with quotes. Default Image – If specified this image will be used if no image is found for author or specified image for quote. If left blank, quotes without images will not show an image. Show link to author – Shows a link to xmasb.com and my plugin in the widget. Turn off if you want to.
The title for the Widget is set directly in the Widget under «Presentation – Widgets». Title – The title to show with the Widget. Default is XmasB Quotes.
For easier management of version and statistics the plugin is hosted at WordPress.org.
This blog is using the Widget as you can see to the right.
You can also take a look at at the readme file for the plugin.
Stumble it!
Is there anyway to display the quotes on a page. My client would like to have a viewable archive of all the quotes
Sorry, no. The only page showing all the quotes are found in the dashboard for the moment. I might add this though, as it is fairly simple to implement.
The quote shows up on all of my page sidebars. Is there a way to limit it to the the main blog page. I have a plugin for doing that but it doesn’t seem to have a setting for your plugin.
@Tom Martin Currently this is not possible. At least not from plugin itself. It is however not hard to implement either. I will try to include this (and a few other features) in the next update.
This might be an easy fix: Widget Context
cool plugin
Hi. Great plug in! I tried several and this is the only one which doesn’t give js error messages upon activation. Thanks. Sorry I probably didn’t fill in the form right, I only speak English and what you want is written in Norwegian.
Using WP 3.0 and your latest, 1.3.4.
When I have to use an apostrophe in a quote it adds a back slash like this: couldn\’t
Any idea how to stop that? My boss writes the quotes so it’s not like I can avoid apostrophes, LOL.
Also, are you available for hire to tweak your code to do what we’d like it to with images?
Thanks!
No problem with English here, I have a separate page for the Norwegians.
The problem with the apostrophe should be an easy fix. I have located the problem, but I don’t have access to the code before next week (I’m on holiday). I will fix this when I can, hopefully within a week or so.
See my mail regarding hired work.
Thanks for using my plugin!
Thanks for fixing your terrific plug in so fast! I’m glad you confirmed that I was right when I thought it was a server side issue and not your very clean code.
I’ve installed your new version 1.3.5 and it works PERFECTLY with the version of PHP that our hosting company is running on the server.
Thank you! You ROCK!
No problem, Skully. I will look into your other questions soon. Just got back to work, so I need to prioritize, but think I can give you something soon. And I will probably make it a public change, so you don’t need to tweak your example of the code every time there’s an update.
Hei Yngve! I have added your neat plugin to my WP site http://www.lillebjorn.no It works fine; except for the missing pictures!
I have everything installed by your book. But no pics.
My work-around: Since I have my WP installation in a subdirectory /WP I added an extra httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/xmasb-quotes/images to the root. All directories empty except for /images. This works. But I do not like the clutter. Where can I adjust the path to wp/wp-content… etc in your plugin to avoid this work-around?
@Lillebjorn Thanks for letting me know. This should have been fixed in version 1.3.9. Please let me know if you still experience problems.
I’ve been using your plugin for a couple of years and it works great! Only issue I have is that everytime I automatically upgrade it, I lose all my images. I have my images saved in a different folder now, and when the upgrade is complete I just copy them back to the images folder, but it would be nice to automate this so any added images are kept.
Thanks!
This is the best of the best «quotes» plug-in! I have been looking for a way to connect images to quotes for a long time. Thank you for creating this! The only thing missing (for me anyway) is the ability to place it where you wish, outside of a sidebar. It would be a nice addition to an otherwise superb quotes plug-in.
@Carlos I’m working on a fix for this. I will try to get a fix out soon!
@Chris Try the shortcut [XmasBRandomQuote]. If you need to use php, there is a function «xmasb_print_random_quote()» for this. Be sure to test if the function exists before calling it, so you won’t get problems if you should disable or uninstall the plugin later.
I will add a shortcut for easy adding of quotes as well in a later version.It seems I had already done this!Hi,
I’ve translated your plugin to Dutch, any email address where I can send the translation files to ? thx!
Hi Rene,
I’ve sent you an email with my details. Thanks in advance!
Hello Yngve,
I have translated your plugin to Spanish. Let me know how to email it your way.
Thanks a lot, Carlos! I have sent you an email you can reply to.
great plugin !!
Thanks, Martin! Glad you like it.
Hi Yngve, first off great plug-in. I do have one little problem you could consider. I sometimes have a theme where I can make multible sidebars, and most other sidebar widgets can be pulled over and used in several sidebars. But the Xmas quote plug-in can only be used in one sidebar.
It would be great if it was possible for at to be used on more than one sidebar.
If not possible still great work and thanks for a great plug-in.
Best regards Thomas Frost
I did a little research today, and found that WordPress has added a new API for Widgets back in version 2.8. This makes the functions I’ve used deprecated, so I will try to update the code soon. Multiple Widgets should then be available as well.
That sounds awesome. Thumps up from Sveg, Sweden (100km from the border of Norway)
/Thomas
I can’t get the images to show with the quotes. I have tried everything. At first they were .jpgs then I changed them to .gifs. The I labelled them with first and last name like I have quote arthor. What should I do?
Sorry for the late reply. I assume you have the images in the «images» folder?
I see from your homepage that you have solved this. Good for you!
Can the optional image be a full path or do images have to be in the images folder. I want to show images that are not related to the author and need to reference other images.
In the current version (v1.5.2) only the images folder is being used. But I will put this on my todo-list. Can’t make any promises as the when I will implement this, but it should be fairly easy to solve. I will most likely test for url starting with «http» when deciding where to search for images. Just don’t hotlink images.
Just writing to thank you for making this plugin and keeping it free. It helps me display marketing messages to my readers.
Thanks, Abraham. If you make too much money from it, it is possible to donate…
You can find the link in the bottom of this post.
When I make profit online I will donate for sure.
At this time online business is just taking money from my pocket.
In that case I wish you good luck!
Hi! I am wondering if this has been mentioned before, I had this working and then I changed so now I have a child theme of thematic that I am developing on a subdomain, the images don’t seem to be working now, well, none of my quotes currently have images but I kind of expected the default.png to show in every quote, yes? I have not changed any settings from your default installation. Do I have to set paths or something?
Sorry for the late reply on this. I will test this as soon as I can. I use a child theme of Arras myself, but have turned images off, so it could be that I forgot to test this.
I will look more into this, and update accordingly. I have some other things to add as well.
I found a bug in my code. Should be fixed in version 1.5.4.
Thanks Yngve, works like a charm now!
Hello,
Love this widget! I don’t know if its possible, but is there any way to change the font color to white?
Any help would be greatly appreciated
The easiest way to achieve this is by editing the xmasbquotes.css file that comes with the plugin/widget.
Just add add «color: white;» like this:
.xmasb_quotes_quote { padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; color: white; }I see that this could be done better. If I find time I will update the plugin with an option for editing this in the settings. As of now it should just whatever settings your WordPress installation uses.
I am also going to add an option for using the same widget multiple times on a single blog, something you might have interest of?
Could you please add a feature to this that allows you to add the rotating quote in a post via a short code or include? It’d be appreciated!
Thanx, Dee
I’m pretty sure this is possible already. I’m on a vacation now, so I’m unable to investigate, but will check when I get home.
Hi Yngve!
I just translated the plugin to Swedish if you would like to add it to the language folder
Email me back and I´ll send them in an email to you!
Cheers Scott
Thank you, Scott! I have sent you an email you can reply to.
Hi, I love the plugin, but I was wondering, are only people with administrator rights able to add quotes? I wouldn’t want to give the authors admin rights just for that… Thanks! Julia
Glad you asked. I’ve just released version 1.6 that should sovle this for you by adding an option for setting which roles have permissions. Default is administrator, but you can now choose between Administrator, Editor Author and Contributor.
Hello, I’ve been using your lovely plugin for some time, and I know when you upgrade you have to reload the images back into the images directory. But this time, when I added the images back in, they are not visible. I’ve tried added a default image but that doesn’t work and also tried creating completely new quotes.
Can you help?
The site is http://www.h2index.com and the quotes appear in the right hand column as Clients Comments on every page except the home page.
Hi Sophie,
are you specifying the url for each quote, or using the default behaviour for finding images by their «author»?
[...] For support and questions please visit the plugin page [...]
I just upgraded to 1.61 and now none of the images are showing and I can’t add or edit quotes. What shoud I do? thanks Buddy
Hi Buddy, what version did you upgrade from, and what version of WordPress are you running? For editing you might want to check what settings the «Role for editig quotes» option is set to. you can find this under Settings – XmasB Quotes.
Version 3.4.1 of WordPress, I just took this site over to manage and it had to have been a much earlier version of XmasB Quotes as it had not been maintained for a year or two. I have it set to show images, and Role for Editing Quotes is Administrator, which I am. I fill out a new quote and click «add quote» and it seems to be saving it, but it does not show up. Thank you for such a quick answer and I sure hope you can help me get it working again. Would it help for you to get to the Dashboard? Buddy
I deleted plugin and reinstalled and now I can add and edit quoted but cannot get images to show. Images are in folder named images and are .gif. How do I get image to show? thanks again, Buddy
images are in wp-content/themes/disciple/images thanks, Buddy
Ok, I believe the problem could be that images should be in a subfolder of the plugin, such as «xmasbquotes/images». I see that this is unclear in the description.
Also, I have to admit the update of the plugin is not as smooth as I would like it be. When updating the images folder will be overwritten, so it is a good idea to keep this in a backup location.
Thank you so much! That did it, got it all back just like it ought to be. Plugin does a great job and your support is fantastic. Buddy
Glad you like it, and glad I could help!
Thanks for this great plugin , I’ve use it as a testimonial plugin
FYI Anyone who interested , to get this Widget on multiple toolbars at once
1) Set the Widget Title 2) Go into xmasbquotes.php
Find : register_sidebar_widget(‘XmasB Quotes’, ‘widget_xmasb_quotes’);
Change to :
wp_register_sidebar_widget((‘XmasB Quotes 1′),’XmasB Quotes’, ‘widget_xmasb_quotes’); wp_register_sidebar_widget((‘XmasB Quotes 2′),’XmasB Quotes’, ‘widget_xmasb_quotes’);
This will allow you to drag the Widget to multiple Widget Containers!
Thank you, Paris.
I’ve been planning to rewrite the entire plugin/widget from scratch to make it up to date with current version of WordPress and releases of PHP. Not sure when this will happen though… Stay tuned.