WordPress All Consuming Widget
Here’s a widget for adding a list of books/albums/movies/whatever from AllConsuming to your WordPress sidebar. Set up should be simple, just upload the widget_allconsuming.php file to your plugins directory and activate it. The widget only has a few options:
- Title
- Self explanatory, I think.
- Username
- Your username. Obviously you need to have an account at AllConsuming for the widget to work.
- Number of items
- The number of items that you’d like to have in the list
- Tags
- You can show items with only certain tags if you wish. Enter as many tags as you like, separated by commas. If you want to show everything enter
all - Suppress header
- Turns on/off the the “I am consuming …” header.
- Completed items
- If this box is checked the widget will display items that you have finished consuming. Note that for this to work you will need to enter the date that you completed the item in All Consuming. Kudos to Chris Merriman for figuring that out and to Tristan Havelick for incorporating it into the widget.
And that’s it.
UPDATE: I’ve altered the widget so that it is now a multi-widget so that you can create multiple different lists using tags. For example, one widget could display books, the other could display music.
UPDATE 2: Tristan Havelick has updated the widget so that it can now display completed items.
Download the widget here.
If you want to change the way the list looks, it’s best to do that with CSS. In fact it’s the only way…
A example of the code for the list that the widget produces is below, to help you along the way.
<div id='ac-javascript'>
<h4>
I am consuming
<a href='http://allconsuming.net/person/hassan006'>
8 things
</a>
including…
</h4>
<p class='ac-item'>
<a href='http://allconsuming.net/item/view/39201'>
<img src='http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002W4T6M.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg' border='0' />
</a>
<br />
<strong class='ac-title'>
<a href='http://allconsuming.net/item/view/39201'>
Eveningland
</a>
</strong>
</p>
<div align='right' class='ac-logo'>
<a href='http://www.allconsuming.net'>
<img src='http://www.allconsuming.net/images/ac-tiny.gif'>
</a>
</div>
</div>
[…] We hear from Ali Hassan that he has written a new widget for the All Consuming media catalog service. It looks pretty sharp in his sidebar, displaying his Currently Listening and Recent Reads lists. […]
Nice plugin! How exactly do I set it to show books that I have already read? (I’m assuming you are using this plugin to display those books on your sidebar.)
Actually, the books are done using a LibraryThing widget … I’m in the process of switching those over to the AllConsuming widget at the moment.
You can get the widget to display completed items, but you will need to modify the code. You need to replace
/js/with/completed_js/.More details on the using the completed items script can be found in the AllConsuming FAQ.
thanks, i went with the original from the allconsuming site, though. you can see it here: http://www.constantskeptic.com/wordpress
Thanks for making the widget, totally useable for a first-timer such as myself.
Just wondering if you can help with a question though: I’d like to display the completed items, and i’ve modified the script according to the allconsuming page, but it no longer displays the actual list, or photos. Is there a way around this?
Thanks SO much.
Hmm, you’re right — that doesn’t seem to work. I’ll look into it further and get back to you. Sorry I can’t be more helpful but I don’t quite understand why it doesn’t work.
Nice widget, many thanks. I’ve only just discovered All Consuming, looks like it could be interesting.
Just wondered if you could point me in the right direction, I wanted to have a recently read section, like yours.
I’m no coder, but can happily play with/bodge coding where necessary.
Is it as simple as a tag, or do I need to put something more complicated in?
Many thanks,
ChrisM
ummm…
OK, I’ll tattoo “Read other comments before posting” on the inside of my eyelids later…
Sorry about that :>
(It was the spam about car insurance that made me skip right to the end…)
re. the problems mentioned above just above my post… It looks like “”/completed_js”” only displays items that have a definite completion date set. I tried changing it to “”/completed_js/all””, but no joy.
See my site for an example, I’ve currently only set a date on one of the books, so only one is displayed.
If I renamed the php file, and upload it, do you think it would work as a 2nd independent widget? I was going to have one for ‘current’ and one for ‘completed’
Sorry if my analysis turns out to be faulty, but thought I’d let you know…
OK, last comment for a while, sorry.
Just to let you know of another work around, if you don’t want to remember/make up the date you finished each book, you can instead use a tag of ‘completed’ or something similair, then you can use this fine widget’s tag function to display any book you’ve already marked as completed.
Thanks for the widget, most interesting.
http://www.chrismerriman.com
Where do I set the options? I suppose I could hard code them, but that hardly seems like the right way to do it
I figured out how to set the options. I had to install the widget plugin, then I was able to configure it under presentation
[…] I’m new to WordPress, and I happened upon Ali Hassan’s Wordperss Widget for AllConsuming.net. Its a great little widget, but I found that you had to modify the source to show completed items, and there wasn’t a good way to show both completed and incomplete items. So, I decided to add ‘Completed’ as an option in the widget. You can download the plugin below. For those that haven’t used it before, here is how to install it: […]
[…] I’m new to WordPress, and I happened upon Ali Hassan’s Wordperss Widget for AllConsuming.net. Its a great little widget, but I found that you had to modify the source to show completed items, and there wasn’t a good way to show both completed and incomplete items. So, I decided to add ‘Completed’ as an option in the widget. You can download the plugin here. For those that haven’t used it before, here is how to install it: […]
I’ve made a little update to this code to allow an option for “Completed” so you don’t have to edit the source manually. Details here: http://www.tristanhavelick.com/upgrade-of-allconsuming-widget/
Ali – any chance you could update the version downloadable from here so everyone can benefit from my work?
brilliance
thanks for this ali-I set it up to work as a widget.
btw-how did you get yours looking so dope-when I tried mine it was a kind of ugly list, rather than just the covers laid out as you have.
I’m no css head so I’m struggling.
cheers.
Hi Jack,
I’m afraid the only way to alter the style of the widget is through CSS. Feel free to inspect (and use) the CSS that I’m using to style my lists. The stylesheet is located here. The rules for the All Consuming widget are at the bottom of the page. Good luck!
cheers mate!
[…] WordPress All Consuming WidgetDownloads: 0 […]
Cheers for the credit on noticing a date completed was originally needed to display items. Most appreciated.
Would I be right in guessing you are a FireFox user? Only reason I ask is your site has the same problem/anomaly as mine – where the main post has text/images that are wider than the standard column width, the sidebar columns get shunted down to the end of the post.
As an example, open this page in Internet Explorer 7 or FireFox, then open it in Internet Explorer 6. FF/IE7 clip the offending image/text, where as IE6 displays it all and so loses the intended layout.
Haven’t yet downloaded the new version of your plug in, but next time I update my site, I’ll take a look, thanks again for all your hard work.
[…] AllConsuming […]
[…] All Consuming – This is responsible for showing which books I’ve read recently, and which I’m currently reading. I noticed a bug/feature in an earlier release, and the author kindly gave me credit for noticing how to fix the error. This problem has now been solved properly, but it was good to see my thoughts actually helped someone… […]
[…] 2. Word press ‘all consuming widget’ that can be found here […]
[…] Visit […]
So, once you leave library thing, is there a way using only all consuming, to show books and music? Right now I’m doing the same thing. Music coming from one site, books from another. It’d be great to manage this all through one site.
Jim,
That can be done very simply. In allconsuming, give everything you read a tag like “book” and every CD you listen to a tag like “music”.
Now, go back to your wordpress site and add two instances of the AllConsuming widget to your sidebar. (There’s a box at the bottom of the widgets page asking you how many you’d like). Add two AllConsuming widgets to your sidebar.
Set one to display items tagged “music” and the other to display items tagged “books”.
The only reason I’m not doing this myself is that the covers look slightly better from the librarything widget. I have no idea why.
Hey! Thanks so much for the help. That worked out great. One more question, this time about formatting…
You can see on my site, sadrhino.net, that the names of the books/music are under the pictures. I’d like to have them side by side (or maybe hidden like you’ve done)… I can’t however figure out where the formatting options are.
Any help is again so much appreciated!
I’m telling you, the one thing that I want someone to build someday (and maybe I’ll have to be the one to do it if I can find some spare time, and some PHP skills) is to have a plugin that would link up your All-Consuming (or Last.fm) lists with Amazon, allowing you to make additional monies from referrals.
[…] All Consuming – This is responsible for showing which books I’ve read recently, and which I’m currently reading. I noticed a bug/feature in an earlier release, and the author kindly gave me credit for noticing how to fix the error. This problem has now been solved properly, but it was good to see my thoughts actually helped someone… […]
[…] Ali Hassan’s AllConsuming Widget I like to use AllConsuming to handle my required blog “reading, listening, watching, playing” info since they have everything in one place and is much easier than doing say, Shelfari for books and Lastfm for music, etc… They have widgets on their site, however, the one I use was done by a user, and is a little more customizable. Only problem I’m having now is formatting the text to wrap around the images, but, it’s mainly because I’m too lazy to dig into the CSS. […]
Love this, but all I want to know is how to have the title of the book appear when you hover your mouse over it. This is driving me mad. Can anyone help me?
:o)
B
Hi Ali,
Thanks for the *great* widget.
Just a couple of quick questions – do you know of a good way in either CSS or the widget php itself to force the thumbnails to a standard size? I tried a couple of hacks to no avail.
Also, for the life of me the “tags” function doesn’t seem to be working properly. I don’t know if All Consuming has changed the way they handle things, or it’s a WordPress 2.3 issue – but any time I try to limit the wiget to specific tag(s) I get no results. Any thoughts?
Hi Brad,
I use the following code in CSS to set the size of the images:
.LTitem a img {width:75px;
height:125px;
}
If you check the CSS file for this site, you’ll be able to see all the CSS rules I use to style the list.
I have no idea what is up with the tags not working, I’m afraid. It *should* work …
Hi
I love this thanks! But I am having problems with changing the tag from all to one I want.
I am trying to set up 2 widgets as you suggested and have one for music and one for books simply by using tags “music’ and “books” and thought that was a great idea. However, I cannot do this. Whenever I change the all tag to music tag it displays no items at all. Checked the completed date etc and should all be ok. I have one widget set at the moment for my music and it is working all ok but I have that tag set to all and any books I have added I have made sure the completed date is set much later tht the items I want to display in my widget (until I can get this sorted at least). Can you suggest anything?
Cheers and thanks
Dawn
how do i make my widget look like yours with no titles or text? just album covers in two rows of three.
It seems like a workable widget. i would be gratified if you let me know how to upload the widget_allconsuming.php file to your plugins directory and to activate it.
i am lame about adding widgets and files.
thanks
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