You can easily change the settings including font colors and sizes and all also it support WP widget.

Just download and install into your ‘wp-content/plugins’ folder and activate it and add a entry from the widgets management screen.

Pretty simple and very nice plugin !

If you want to add the cloud in the middle of a blog, use below.

[wp-cumulus]

Cheers to Roy!

Wordpress Plugin:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/
Author website: http://www.roytanck.com/

Thank you for visiting Hana & Sarah’s Freeware Blog.

Related posts:

1. Flash Tag Cloud
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. [WP Plugin] HANA-XML-STAT

I just released v1.7 of Hana Flv Player WP plugin. The latest version has two improvements. One is to handle more advanced options of the FlowPlayer and FLV Player. (Unfortunately OS FLV does not have enough options to implement) The other is for showing FLV movie in the template theme files outside of the blog article by using a new method.

More options for the players

By using ‘more_2′ and ‘more_3′ attributes, you can use advanced features of the each player. There are tons of other options for the customization. You can use most of the options through these attributes. You can start testing by using the javascript generated provided in the settings menu.

It is mainly focused on the interface design option. After selecting the options you want, you can click the ‘Generate’ button to generate the sample usage in the output textarea.

Here are the examples from the predefined samples.
Flow: Simple Black Control Bar

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, showMenu: false, controlBarBackgroundColor: 0"
/]

Flow: Controls over Video with Auto-Hide

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showVolumeSlider: false, controlsOverVideo: 'ease',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1, controlBarGloss: 'low' "
/]

Flow: Minimalist Look

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="2"
more_2="showStopButton: false, showScrubber: false, showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, showFullScreenButton: false, showMenu: false,
controlsOverVideo: 'locked',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1,controlBarGloss: 'none',
usePlayOverlay: false "
/]

Flv: Showing Custom Logo

[hana-flv-player
video="http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
player="3"
more_3="top1=http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/logo.png|30|20"
/]

Insert flv into template theme files (such as sidebar.php)

Okay, here is the function that you can use in the theme template files to show FLV movie. Basically you need to use hana_flv_player_template_call method. The method takes a single argument. The argument should be just the string of the attributes of the regular usage. Just copy below code into your theme template file and edit $hana_arg colored attributes accordingly.

<?php
if (function_exists('hana_flv_player_template_call')){
	$hana_arg=" 
video='http://www.neox.net/w/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv'
player='2'
width='180'
height='150'
more_2=\"showStopButton: false, showScrubber: false, showVolumeSlider: false,showMuteVolumeButton: false, 
showFullScreenButton: false, showMenu: false, controlsOverVideo: 'locked',controlBarBackgroundColor: -1,
controlBarGloss: 'none', usePlayOverlay:false \"
";
	echo hana_flv_player_template_call($hana_arg);	
}
?>

And here is the screen capture image showing FLV movie in the sidebar.

Let me know if you have any question.

Related posts:

1. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. [WP Plugin] HANA-XML-STAT

Inserting some javascript or Html codes in the middle of an article is not an easy task. It’s hard to copy and paste bunch of codes into the article whenever you write an article. Sometimes, the code breaks and doesn’t work as intended because WordPress encodes HTML entities.

So I decided to come up with the plugin that will help me insert that AdSense or Paypal Donation code into the middle of article.

Now with my plugin, Hana Code Insert, you can easily insert any complicated HTML and JAVASCRIPT code or even custom PHP output in your Wordpress article. Useful for adding AdSense and Paypal donation code in the middle of the WP article. You can manage multiple code entries.

After the plugin installation, you would setup the HTML or Javascript entries in the ‘Hana Code Insert’ Settings menu. Simply define a unique name and paste the complicated codes copied from AdSense or Paypal into the textarea. Then click on the ‘Create a new entry’ button.

After the creation, you can find that the newly added entry is shown in the bottom. Copy the usage code example and insert it in your article. That’s all.

Basically, you can place the specific tag element [hana-code-insert name='...' /] in your wordpress article to show the codes. The ‘name’ attribute is mandatory where you use the name of the code entry that you want to show.

For example, after you setup a code entry in the admin Settings with the name ‘AdSense’, you can invoke the code by using below element in your article.

[hana-code-insert name='AdSense' /]

Below is the Admin Settings (Options) Screen for ‘Hana Code Insert’. Four code entries are defined.

Here are the actual working samples.

[hana-code-insert name='donation' /]

[hana-code-insert name='donation with amount' /]

Did you enjoy my article or software? Thank you for the donation.

US $ 1 2 5 10 20 ?

[hana-code-insert name='adsense' /]

Now this is an actual example showing the current local time. If you refresh the page, you can see that the time changes and reflecting the latest time. This is not javascript, but created by PHP codes inserted in the middle of this blog! (Note that if you have Super Cache plugin installed and enabled, this PHP code may not work correctly.)

Result

Here is the actual code used when setting up in the Settings/Options page with name “php example”.

print "<div style='border:1px dotted red; padding: 5px;'>";
print date("m/d/Y H:i:s"); 
print "</div>";

And here is the text inserted in the middle of the article.

[hana-code-insert name='php example' /]

If you have any question, leave in the comment section.

Thank you.

Related posts:

1. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin
2. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin v1.7
3. WP Tag Cloud Plugin – WP Cumulus

Change Log

• V 2.0 (7/23/2009) :
  1. For easier Hana Flv Video tag creation, new popup dialog is added. You can directly define the values using the form and click OK to create the tag. Please see the screenshot 4 for the example. The buttons in the editor will only appear for WP v2.5+

  

• v 1.8 (7/21/2009) :
  1. Fixed Minor bug with FlowPlayer v2 . It was not properly showing under IE7.
  2. FlowPlayer v3.1.1 player is added. Originally intended to upgrade the old version, but decided to leave old version due to some minor differences.
• v 1.7: Adding additional attributes for the players more advanced options. Also added a method to show FLV movie within the theme template files (such as sidebar.php)
• v 1.5: Adding FLV Player Maxi
• v 1.1: Lots of debuging.
• v 1.0: Initial Release with OS FLV (GPL) , FlowPlayer (GPL) flv players

Now you can easily embed the FLV Flash videos in your WordPress Blog. I have packaged the two GPL FLV Flash player, OS FLV and FlowPlayer. So you can use them freely without worries even for the commercial purpose unlike the JW player – If you have AdSense or display ads showing , you should purchase the player according to its website.

Flv Player MAXI

FlowPlayer V2

OS FLV

Flow Player V3

Installation

1. Download and unzip the zip file. Upload hana-flv-player folder with all of its contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the `Plugins` menu in WordPress Admin Interface.
3. Adjust the default settings in the ‘Settings’ menu in the Admin Interface if you want to.
4. Use [hana-flv-player video=’…’ /]in your blog article. Attribute `video` is the only mandatory item where you define the video file. It can be full URL or absolute or relatvie path.

If you want a quick test and see if it’s working fine, goto Hana Flv Player settings admin page and copy the example shown in the bottom and paste in your blog article.

How to use

When you write an article , you can use [hana-flv-player /] tag to embed the flash video player. The ‘video’ attribute is mandatory to indicate the video file . There are other optional attributes and the default values for the options can be defined in the Admin settings page. See the below for the example.

This is minimum usage format.

[hana-flv-player video="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv" /]

This is usage with all attributes defined.

[hana-flv-player
    video="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/babyhana.flv"
    width="400"
    height="320"
    clickurl="http://yourwebsite.com/"
    player="2"
    autoplay="false"
    loop="false"
    autorewind="true"
    splashimage="http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/hana-flv-player/splash.jpg"
/]

Attributes explained:

• video: URL of the flv video file. This is mandatory.
• width: Width of the Flash player.
• height: Height of the Flash player.
• clickurl: If you want to open a website when a user clicks on the video, you can define the target website URL here.
• player: If set to “1″ , OS FLV will be used. If set to “2″, FlowPlayer V2 will be used. “3″ is for FLV Player Maxi. “4″ is the new FlowPlayer V3.
• autoload: If true, the movie will be loaded (downloaded). If false, the starting screen will be blank since no video is downloaded.
• autoplay: If true, the movie will play automatically when the page is loaded.
• loop: If Loop is true, the movie will replay itself constantly.
• autorewind: If AutoRewind is true, the cursor will be reset to the start of the movie when the movie is ended.
• splashimage: Only works with FlowPlayer. When autoload is off, this splash image will be shown in the player. It only supports JPEG images.

If you want to try the plugin quickly, you can just copy and paste the tag Example showing in the Plugin Setting page. The plugin comes with a small FLV file for testing so you will be able to see it.

Leave comment if you have any questions.

Have a nice day.

There are more samples for the advanced options.

Here are some useful books on Wordpress Plugin and SEO.

WordPress Plugin Development (Beginner’s Guide)
From the reader’s review :
This book talks about the why and how of WordPress plugin development with heavy emphasis on the “how”. The book’s tagline “Learn by doing: less theory, more results” describes the book quite well. There is an introductory chapter that talks about the many benefits of learning WordPress plugin development. After that, the book immediately jumps right into showing you how to develop a series of 6 increasingly challenging WordPress plugins from scratch. It then finishes up by talking about plugin localization, promotion, and support tips.

WordPress for Business Bloggers: Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO
From the reader’s review: I have purchased and studied many technical books, this is the first book I felt a need to write a review. I find it well organized and understandable. The information concerning plug ins and the proper process is extremely valuable. I have only read about half way through the book, but I understand more about WordPress than I thought possible. The ability shown how to design the blog on your own computer and then upload it to your host is priceless. I highly recommend this book!

Related posts:

1. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin v1.7
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. How to add Streaming Video in your website 2 – embed Flash Video Player

Most of them are based on the FFmpeg LGPL software and other open source utilities. FFmpeg is a great piece of software, but it contains only console commands and does not come with any fancy Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). Basically these freewares that I will initroduce act as a the front GUI for FFmpeg. So FFmpeg is not for a casual innocent PC user.

I tried several freewares. Some are worthless to mention and some are very nice. There are the three finalists.

• MediaCoder
• Any Video Converter
• Super

MediaCoder

This is probaly the most powerful video format converter with the every options that you will ever need.
You can drag and drop the source files just like Any Video Converter. And you can play around with the option contol in the lower pane. Note that it shows nice little summery of the output file format and expected size if you click on the ‘Summery’ tab. When you’re done with changing the options, you click on the ‘Start’ Button to execute the conversion. The output file will be created in the same folder where the original source file is located by default.

Here is the description from the website.

MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.

And Here are the supported formats ( * supported as input only)

MP3, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+v2, MusePack, Speex, AMR, WMA, RealAudio, mp3PRO*
FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, TTA, WAV/PCM, Waveform
H.264, XviD, DivX, MPEG 1/2/4, Theora, Flash Video, Dirac, 3ivx*, RealVideo*, Windows Media Video
AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, PMP, RealMedia*, ASF, Quicktime*, OGM*
CD, DVD, VCD, SVCD, CUESheet*, HTTP*, FTP*, RTSP*, UDP*

When I tried to convert wmv to avi, it did work fine. But when I tried wmv to flv conversion. ffmpeg.exe has crashed and MediaCoder did not respond properly so I had to close it.

• Interface: 7 of 10
• Easy to use: 5 of 10
• Available functions/options: 10 of 10
• Stability: 6 of 10
• To Flv conversion: Didn’t work
• Final Verdict: It’s OK if you want to control all the details of the output video.

Any Video Converter

As I metioned in my article on creating a flv file, Any Video Coverter has pretty and easy to use interface. It says to support DVD (mpg), MPEG-I (mpg), MPEG-II (mpg), Flash Video(flv), mobile MPEG-4 (mp4), AVI, and WMV. You can cross convert any way you want among the mentioned endodings. You can just drag and drop source files into the left large pane and select the target encoding types and optinally video and audio options (such as resolution and framerates) and click on the Encode button. Viola! and your done.
Also it has a capability to convert video from YouTube directly and store it in to local hard drive in the format you want.

When you first run the software, make sure to set the output folder by click on ‘File’ and ‘Set Output Folder’ menus. Whenever you convert the videos, the output files will be stored in this default Output Folder you define here.

Make sure you check the output options everytime you run the software. These settings are memorized and loaded by Any Video Converter and will be used as default options. So when you set the output resolution very low the last time then you will end up with the low resolution again if you don’t change them properly.

One thing I hated about this software is that whenever the conversion is completed, you get a popup dialog asking you to try pro version. But hey I can live with that.

• Interface: 10 of 10
• Easy to use: 9 of 10
• Available functions/options: 5 of 10
• Stability: 9 of 10
• To Flv conversion: works great.
• Final Verdict: Very Good!

Super

When you run the app, you will most like to see this warning popup messages. It may say that few requirements do not meet. I got this impression that I may not be able to use this software, but please try . It usually works even it you see this warning messages. However, it seems that SUPER does use some large amount of computer memory during the conversion. The warning message says 176 additional free memory is required.

SUPER supports lot of converting options , more than Any Video Converter, but less than MediaCoder. It supports various types of format including ususal WMV, MPEG, MP4, AVI, FLV, ASF, and so on. But this one supports output format of unusual ones such as MOV, OGG, 3GP,and more. Also , it has automode that you can convert files for iPod, Zune, Nintendo DS, and Sony PS3! That’s a great help! But unfortuantely I do not have any of those devices. If I had one, I could have done the testings.

You should first select the output folder by right clicking and selecting ‘Output File Saving Management’. All the converted output files will be stored this default output folder. Now you are ready to convert some video files.

First select the output file format you want. And optinally change the Video and Audio options. They fairly easy to change. Then drag and drop the source files in the lower pane. And finally click on the Encode Button.

It appears little unstable even though it does the work. It seems that the SUPER uses up too much system resources during the conversion because I had hard time working with other softwares. Also the output data quality seems a little lower than what I defined in the options panel. I am not really sure.

Some notes. I am telling you that I had difficult time to find the download link. I guess the creator wanted you to read what he has to say about the software and the introductions. When you visit the website, search for “downloading” keyword and it will bring you to the download link directly.

Also, the main window automatically moved into the center of the screen whenever I changed the option or click buttons. That bugged me a lot.

• Interface: 8 of 10
• Easy to use: 7 of 10
• Available functions/options: 8 of 10
• Stability: 7 of 10
• To Flv conversion: did work
• Final Verdict: Nice if you want support for uncommon formats or easy conversion for the other media divces.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want something easy to use for just simple format conversion, such as AVI or WMV to FLV , then use Any Video Converter. If you want to find out detailed specification abou the video files and want to have all the access to the options, MediaCoder is your solution. If you want non common video conversion for handheld devices such as iPod or Sony PSP, probably SUPER is the best option. (I think you can also do the conversion for handheld devices with MediaCoder through the presets.)

My favorite is Any Video Converter for I am a simple minded person

I hope this information helps you to end your quest for the free video conversion software , too.

Related posts:

1. How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV
2. How to add Streaming Video in your website 2 – embed Flash Video Player
3. PrimoPDF – Free PDF converter

Here is the Yahoo widget that I created . It’s my first Yahoo! Widget and it is for WordPress Blog Stats Monitoring.

Features
Basically it shows below six information of your WordPress blog.

1. Total number of spams caught by Akismet
2. Number of spams in moderation
3. Number of comments in moderation
4. Number of posts
5. Number of comments
6. Number of categories

Optionally number of unique hits for today and yesterday only if wp-shorstat or wp-slimstat plugin is installed.

The below image is the About menu of the Widget.

Requirements

• You do have Yahoo! Widget installed , right?
• You must have a WordPress Blog.
• You need to install and enable HANA-XML-STAT plugin that I created
• You need to enable Akismet Spam Blocker plugin. In fact, you don’t have to enable it , but then you won’t be able to see the related statistics.
• Optionally, you might want to install wp-shortstat or wp-slimstat for hit counter.

History
10/22/2007 – v0.4
Some bugs with XMLDOM routines so errors occur when there is no child node exists (No values)
v0.3
DockIcon Function Added for Yahoo! Widget Version 4. Akismet, Comment in moderation, Hit counts are displayed.
v0.2
Initial Release.

Install & Setup

1. Download and double click the ‘hana-wp-stat.widget’ to open the widget. You will see the popup window to set the wordpress URL in the preferences menu.
2. Open preference menu and provide the URL of your wordpress. Please make sure that you need to set the correct wordpress URL. The prefix ‘http://’ is needed, too.
3. WordPress Userid & Password are required only if (1) you want to use the ‘Recheck comments for SPAM’ menu or (2) if you set ‘hana-xml-stat’ wp plugin option for only signed in user to access the data.
4. By using Update Interval Slider , you can set the time period that the widget will acesss the statistics data. The default is 1 min, and the maximum value is 60 mins which is an hour.

Some Notes

When there are some comments in moderation, you will be able to use ‘Recheck comments for Spam’ menu. ( Or little red ‘X’ icon ) What it really does is to check the comments with Akismet again.

It is found that there is a time that some spams fall into the comments moderation section when the Akismet plugin timeouts connecting to Akismet spam server. It usaully happens when the network is slow and busy.

So by just checking again, you can make sure that there is no spam lurking in your comments moderation box.

Related posts:

1. [WP Plugin] HANA-XML-STAT
2. Spam caught over 10000
3. Desktop Widget Comparison

When I checked the widget.yahoo.com, there was only a single result,a widget showing only UNIQUE HITS. But that’s not good enough for me. When I searched the google.com, I was overwhelmed by the confusing results that were all about WordPress sidebar Widgets.

So I decided to create a Yahoo! Widget & WordPress plugin. This plugin provides a XML feed access point and function that can be used in the template to show statistics summery.

You can create a PHP script or a Yahoo! or even a Vista Widget to monitor your blogs through HANA-XML-STAT plugin. In fact, if you have multiple blogs to monitor, you can monitor several WordPress website from a single PHP script or Widget. Maybe, I will try to create one later on.

Basically , this HANA-XML-STAT plugin shows six blog statistics.

• Total number of Spam caught by Akismet
• Number of spams in Moderation (Akismet)
• Number of comments in Moderation
• Total number of posts
• Total number of comments
• Total number of categories

Additional hit counters are shown if you have wp-shortstat, wp-slimstat, or any derived plugin installed.

• Today and Yesterday’s total hit counter
• Today and Yesterday’s unique hit counter

You will be able to control the visibility of the first three items in the Admin Options Page. Also, you can allow only login user to view the status.

• hana-xml-stat.tar.gz

History
v0.4 – 10/23/2007

• Fixed bugs occurred with wp-slimstat

v0.3 – 10/22/2007

• Just some updates for WP 2.3. No new functions

v0.2

• Hit counters are added to show if wp-shotstat or wp-slimstat is installed.

v0.1

• Initial creation. Six basic stats are shown in XML format.

Installation

1. Upload `hana-xml-stat` folder with all of its contents to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress Admin Interface.
3. Place `<?php hana_xml_stat_side(”<li>”); ?>` in your templates. It takes two arguments. They are not mandatory, but the first argument is the prefix and the second argument is the postfix.
4. Adjust settings in the ‘Options’ menu in the Admin Interface if you want to.

The full URL is shown at the bottom of the Admin Optins Page. For example, if you WordPress URL is “www.yourblog.com/wordpress”, below would be your XML feed URL.
http://www.yourblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/hana-xml-stat/feed.php

This is the example output of the hana_xml_stat_side() function used in the sidebar.php of my current template.

Here is a screen capture of the Yahoo Widget that I am currently working on. There are few admin functions that can work directly with WordPress without visiting the website. I will post this in this blog within few days.

Sorry, I threw away this one.

http://www.neox.net/w/2007/05/02/hana-wp-stat/

Related posts:

1. [Yahoo Widget] HANA-WP-STAT
2. Hana Code Insert WordPress Plugin
3. Hana Flv Player WordPress Plugin