Well I noticed their http://www.unblocka.com website is down. So I searched Google and downloaded it from the Internet. But then this dialog shows up saying that ‘UnBlocka has timed out download a new version from www.unblocka.com Tuning has been disabled’.

Then on the main window, the ‘Tune System’ button was disabled and I was not able to modify system! I really felt bad, sorry for the perfectly good software going down into the trash can. I don’t understand why the developer had to make the button disabled when his site is down. He shouldn’t have done that.

Any way, I decided to stick with unblocka instead of searching Internet for another similar software by using AutoHotKey. I just came up with a AutoHotKey executable that will enable the ‘Tune System’ Button. Just copy my ‘enable_unblocka.exe’ into the same folder where ‘unblocka.exe’ is. Then just run it.

See my script in action below.

Enjoy!

Download enable_unblocka.exe

Related posts:

1. Increase Internet Speed
2. PuTTY Auto Login Macro using AutoHotKey
3. Free EBAY auction tool – JBidwatcher

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

The most well-known free tool is ‘flvtool2′ which was created by Norman Timmler (http://www.inlet-media.de/flvtool2) .

It’s pretty easy to use. You just have to type the command with -U option 'flvtool2 -U sample.flv' in the Windows command console.

However, if you have multiple FLV files to work on, this can be rather boring repetitive work. Yes, you may create a batch file and execute them all at once, but still the task requires too much manual typing.

So I decided to create a simple front GUI frontend to embed Metadata for the multiple flv data with few clicks. And, here is my SarahFlvtool2. It is a Windows GUI helper for flvtool2.

1. Once you unzip the downloaded file, open the unzipped folder and run ’sarahflvtool2.exe’
2. Click the ‘Browse Flv’ button. And select .flv files. You can select multiple files by using ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ at the same time while clicking.
3. You can review the list of the flv files to embed Metadata. If you want to remove some from the listview, select the unwanted flv in the listview and right click then select ‘remove’.
4. Click on the ‘Run flvtool2.exe’ button. The embedding process will start and the status will be updated in the listview.
5. When all tasks are completed, a dialog box will appear to notify you the completion

Screen captures

Flv File Selection Dialog. You can select multiple files by clicking with ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ key pressed.

You can remove unwanted item from the listview with right mouse click.

Short alert before starting the embedding process.

The files are being embedded with Metadata. It is showing the status of each file.

Now the whole process is completed and you can upload the files into your webserver.

SarahFlvtool2 was created using AutoHotKey(Windows Macro Automation software which is free). And it is free to use my SaraFlvtool2.

Enjoy.

I will talk about how to setup streaming service in detail soon. Basically, you need additional software installed which I really didn’t like (too lazy and worried if I might break anything). But, I did find a somewhat easier way that can be done without installing any extra software. So come back soon!

Here is the sample of my streaming video! Try to move around the position cursor of the player.

Related posts:

1. How to add Streaming Video in your website 1 – create a Flash Video FLV
2. Easy Offline Microsoft Windows and Office Update
3. RocketDock – Windows App Launcher

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

So I have searched many Google pages and found this PuTTY Connection Manager which I explained details in my previous post. It is a very good software.

But somehow I wanted the auto login function without the extra programs. I wanted it to be done directly with PuTTY, not within the frame of PuTTY Connection Manager.

And I found this software called AutoHotKey (http://www.autohotkey.com/) which can automate keyboard and mouse actions. But I gave up to use it at that time because I was too lazy to read all the instructions and to come up with a script for the auto login.

But yesterday, I decided to take a look again and this time I successfully created the Auto Login script! To tell you the truth, it was not easy but it is worth it. I am proud of myself

So here is the script.

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; You need to define the full path where the putty.exe exists . 'putty_profile' should be existing profile name.
v_program=%A_ProgramFiles%\PuTTY\putty.exe -load putty_profile
v_userid=youruserid
v_passwd=yourpasswd
; msec to wait before sending userid
v_wait_userid=1000
; msec to wait before sending password
v_wait_passwd=500
 
;-------------------------------------------------
; To make modifier keys to work properly (such as Shift)
SetKeyDelay, 0, 10
 
run, %v_program% , , , newpid
 
;you need to wait a little for the window to initialize
;sleep, 100
winwait, ahk_pid %newpid%
 
;wait for the login prompt to appear
sleep, %v_wait_userid%
ControlSend, , %v_userid%{enter}, ahk_pid %newpid%
 
sleep, %v_wait_passwd%
ControlSend, , %v_passwd%{enter}, ahk_pid %newpid%
 
;create unique title so you won't be lost 
WinGetTitle, v_title, ahk_pid %newpid%
v_newtitle=%v_title% - %newpid%
WinSetTitle, ahk_pid %newpid%,,%v_newtitle%

If you want to try this yourself, you will need to change some information.

1. Install AutoHotKey software.
2. Create any file name with extension .ahk. For example ’ssh.ahk’ would be fine.
3. Copy & paste above code into the file. But need to change the values.
   v_program: PuTTY location with the -load option and connection profile name
   v_userid: userid
   v_passwd: passwd
   v_wait_userid : msec to wait before sending userid
   v_wait_passwd : msec to wait before sending passwd
4. Save it and double click on the file to execute it. And watch the PuTTY logging in the server automagically!

In fact, you can easily add additional commands at the end of the script to execute further commands.

Below is an example.

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;maybe you want to wait some seconds while initial welcome screen appears. Let's say 2 seconds.
sleep, 2000 
 
;cd upload
ControlSend,,cd upload{enter} , ahk_pid %newpid%
 
;You can send the folder list to your email account.
ControlSend,,ls|mail -s "Daily File Listing for Upload" your@emailaccount.com{enter}, ahk_pid %newpid%

Note that there is a little issue that the password is saved as plain text. But I can live with it for now.

Here is my script in action.

Come visit again for more information on PuTTY.

Related posts:

1. PuTTY Auto Login Macro – PuTTY Connection Manager
2. PuTTY : A Free Telnet/SSH Client
3. PuTTY: Exporting Profile Data for migration

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

But here is my original work that still works.

http://www.neox.net/ups/upsrate.php

Thank you for visiting my website and please leave some comments if you have any question.

Related posts:

1. [Yahoo Widget] HANA-WP-STAT