Now Reading Redux
A WordPress plugin to track and share the books read, in progress and a wishlist of future books to read, with cover art fetched automatically from Amazon. Tracks and graphs reading statistics.
Now Reading Redux is a resurrection of the Now Reading Reloaded project by Ben Gunnink 5.1.3.2 codebase, which was itself a fork/re-enlivening of Rob Miller’s original Now Reading plugin. It is forked from Rob’s code as of 4.4.4svn, in order to update its interface to work with WordPress 2.7 and above.
With it, you can manage a library of your current books, as well as historical and planned books.
NRR depends on jQuery and assumes it already loaded by WP or your theme. Please use a sufficiently recent version, say 1.4 or newer, preferably the latest. The graph is generated using TufteGraph which depends on Raphaël. All necessary files are included, no additional libraries necessary (beyond jQuery).
Status: active.
Version: 6.5.0.0 Stable.
Role: Maintainer.
License: GPLv2.
WordPress: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/now-reading-redux.
Download: downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/now-reading-redux.zip.
Source: github.com/Ashod/Now-Reading-Redux
Report issues and feature requests here please. You may leave thank yous and generals comments on this page.
Changelog
6.5.0.0
- WordPress 3.3 support.
- Romanian translation courtesy of Alexander Ovsov Web Geek Sciense.
- New option: Wishlist link. An optional link to a wishlist page shown in the sidebar.
- New options: Per shelf library, search and sidebar options to control appearence and style and more.
- Redesigned sidebar, library and search templates.
- Restructured and reorganized the Options page and grouped options.
- Changed the default Amazon Associates ID to thevoid0f-20. This can be changed from the options.
- Fixed: Library search was broken.
- Updated many outdated, depricated and unrecommended codes.
6.1.0.0
- New feature: Reading statistics and graph shown in the library page by calling print_book_stats(). Uses TafteGraph/Raphaël.
- Updated and included Suffusion NRR templates.
6.0.9.0
- New option: Hides Added dates in Manager and Book Edit pages.
- Authors and Statuses are linked to filter the books shown in the Manager.
6.0.8.0
- New option: Controls the default number of books displayed. Primarily controls the sidebar book count.
- The ‘reading’ and ‘unread’ lists are now shown in random order, the ‘read’ list is shown last read first.
- ‘View Full Library’ is now hidden in the library page. Search button is centered.
6.0.6.0
- New option: Set book visibility as private or public. Private books are not shown to anyone but the owner. Note: admins may be able to view them!
- Templates updated to improve utility.
6.0.4.0
- New option: Ignores time in timestamps, showing only dates.
6.0.3.0
- Started and Finished timestamps are automatically set when changing the status from ‘yet to read’ to ‘currently reading’ and from ‘currently reading’ to ‘finished’, respectively, only when the user leaves these fields blank. NRR no longer overwrites the user’s set values.
6.0.2.0
- Added sorting support to the Book Manager table.
6.0.0.0
- Initial import of Now Reading Reloaded 5.1.3.2
- Added this README file and renamed the old one to readme.old.
Super glad you are keeping this plugin going! I’ve been patching the original for way too long and finally it was too broken.
The one issue I’m having is with Permalinks. When a custom permalink structure is enabled it doesn’t seem to recognize the library unless I resave permalinks. Once I do that however, I get PHP errors.
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Hello. I am in the process of heavily modding this plugin; however, as I am sorting through the code and observing functionality, I have notice that the “Post Options” – “Add Link to Post” “Transclude Post Content” and “Redirect to Post” seem to have no effect – they all redirect to the blog post. I’m not sure what they are supposed to do, but they all appear to do the same thing or, perhaps, they are deprecated. Please let me know any info that might help. Thanks!
Scott
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[...] Reading Library er en meget kraftig ændring af Nu Reading Redux plugin ved Ashod Nakashian der er en opstandelse af de nu læser Reloaded plugin af Ben Gunnink som er en fork af den nu [...]
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Thanks for the share!
Nancy.R
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Hello,
I got the below error trying to search for a book by ISBN. I get the same error searching on Title.
I’m running WordPress 3.2.1, this is a new installation.
I would have left this issue on git hub, but I’m not willing to create an account there just to tell you about this issue.
I enabled the debug option on your option page and it does show me that the information is collected from Amazon.
Seems like this might be a file rights issue, but I my user account has full access to the file mentioned in the error.
Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /data/18/2/120/140/2609629/user/2862558/htdocs/ths/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/amazon.php on line 345
Warning: file_get_contents(http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFAN2V73OMEWJFJA&AssociateTag=&IdType=ISBN&ItemId=0312867131&Operation=ItemLookup&ResponseGroup=Large&SearchIndex=Books&Service=AWSECommerceService&Timestamp=2011-10-23T22:17:20Z&Version=2009-01-06&Signature=1RDfPPTwari8u7EAKacy4rncyvwtKqvWYatChOniS5Q%3D) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /data/18/2/120/140/2609629/user/2862558/htdocs/ths/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/amazon.php on line 345
WARNING IsterXmlExpatNonValid->parse(): expat: Invalid document end [0/1/1]
Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /data/18/2/120/140/2609629/user/2862558/htdocs/ths/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/amazon.php on line 203
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Hi Tom,
Thanks for the report. This is a security issue. The PHP file_get_contents() function reads primarily file contents, but it also has the ability to read stream/files from a URL. This is how NRR reads the amazon search response.
PHP, however, needs to be told that this function can be used to read files/streams from a URL in addition to disk. Please see here on how to configure your PHP.ini to allow this function access to the internet. And here is the docs for the file_get_contents() in case you need more info about it.
I hope this resolves the issue. Let me know if you need more help.
-Ash
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Hi! How do I get rid of “Planned Books” and “Recent Books”? I only want to show Current.
Thanks!
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Lauren,
Planned Books and Recent Books show in the Library and SideBar. So, basically, all you have to do is go to the ‘templates’ folder within the NRR plugin folder and edit library.php and sidebar.php. You need to find the headings “Planned Books” and “Recent Books” and remove everything starting from the heading (H2 or H3) until the start of a new heading/section.
Notice that if you’re using a theme that has custom NRR templates that override the standard ones you’ll need to find them and change those.
Let me know if you need more info.
Cheers!
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Oh my goodness what a quick reply! Thank you! Worked perfectly.
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I thought I left a message already–but it’s not showing. I am wondering if there is a way to use NRR within a post, not a sidebar widget. When writing a book review, want to be able to link book jacket pic to Amazon.
Thanks!
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That’s not readily supported by the current version. But I’m working on a feature to integrate NRR’s review with posts such that you won’t need to refer from one to the other. It’s still not ready, but I felt it’d be a useful thing to have and hope others would benefit. Keep an eye on the updates.
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Hi
Does this plugin preserve the old library if you have Now Reading Reloaded installed? If not, is there any way of migrating the content?
Thanks.
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Rex,
Yes it does preserve the old library. You should make a backup of the DB just in case, but it should work as expected. All you need to do is disable the old plugin then install and enable this one. It should work as expected.
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I love how your sidebar looks here, with the 3 categories and 3 book jackets across. I’d like mine to be similar, but I need “Currently Reading”, “Currently Listening” (which I think I can just accomplish by changing the “Up Next” title to “Currently Listening”) and “Recently Finished”, and I’d like recently finished to show more than 3 books.
Right now, “Currently Reading” is working fine, but the book jackets don’t show up at all in the other categories. Any ideas why this might happen?
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Hi Lauren,
The template I’m using isn’t the standard one. It’s customized for Suffiusion, the theme I’m using. You can find the template in suffusion/sidebar.php.
You can easily rename the titles for each section by editing the sidebar.php file’s headers. Each section has an H3 tag, just change it to whatever you like or delete it completely if you don’t want to have it.
To customize the number of books shown in each section you have two methods. First, there is an option called “Default number of books displayed”. If you change this you’ll change the number of books shown in the sidebar. But this setting will change the value for all sections. To change them individually you’ll have to change the query string in the section in question. If you like to change the number of finished books, under the Recently Finished header you’ll find something like this: have_books(‘status=read&orderby=finished&order=desc’)
This is a PHP function call (named have_books) and the string between the quotes is the query string. To change the number of books returned by this call simply add “&num=5″ (without the double quotes.) Here I chose to return 5 books, but you can set it to any number. If you set it to -1 you’ll get all books!
Here is how you may set it to return 10 books: have_books(‘status=read&orderby=finished&order=desc&num=10′)
As for the jackets not showing, please make sure that they are showing fine in the library page. There is no reason that they won’t show in the sidebar if they show in the library page. If they don’t show there either, then you need to check your links. If you’re hot-linking, the images may have been removed. Consider uploading to your server or use a CDN.
HTH.
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Lauren, the next version will resolve all issues with library jackets and page presentation. Wait for an update soon.
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They are showing on the Library page…
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It does seem to be a problem in the sidebar template. Expect a new release soon with an overhauled sidebar template.
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Also, my library page is totally warped–the content area is too wide, knocking out my sidebar, and the text is super small, but I can’t figure out what CSS to alter.
with this oddly named class…
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks\
Lauren
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Could you share the link so I can see the result and make suggestions based on that?
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Gish–I am so sorry to be such a pain! But I have another question!
I really want the books in the sidebar to link to a review post.
I see this line here:
If you wish, you can link this book to a blog entry by entering that entry’s ID here. The entry will be linked to from the book’s library page.
But I am not sure what you mean by the entry’s ID, because it won’t take a permalink.
Thanks.
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Currently, there is no way to link the jackets to posts. What you can do is add a link in the book page. You need to figure out the post ID, it’s a number. Put that number where it’s asking for an entry ID. To figure out the ID of a post, click on the Get Shortlink button in the post editing page and you’ll see the ID at the end of the link.
I’m working on a feature to give the user the option to replace the book page with a post, such that the jacket would link to a post rather than the book page.
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Howdy, I’ve been tinkering with NRR and really like it. I am switching away from Amazon EMdia Manager, and have figured everything out on my local box, but when I set up the plugin in production, I run into an issue. The issue appears to be related to the location of wp-config.php. I can load the NRR Options page, but as soon as I save the changes, the next page throws a few errors:
Warning: require(../../../../wp-config.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path to www dir]l/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/admin/options.php on line 8Warning: require(../../../../wp-config.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path to www dir]/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/admin/options.php on line 8
Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required '../../../../wp-config.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in [path to www dir]/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/admin/options.php on line 8
I follow one of the WP hardening techniques that encourages moving wp-config.php out of the Web root. When I moved wp-config up to the Web root, NRR works without a problem. I really like NRR, but I don't want to reduce my site's security. Could you update the plugin so it can find wp-config.php?
Thanks,
Alex
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Alex,
You’re absolutely right, these explicit includes shouldn’t be there. They are a legacy that speak of the history of this plugin. I tried to do a quick cleanup of the options page (although this isn’t the only place suffering from this malpractice,) in an attempt to cram it in the next release. Unfortunately there are many side-effects and inter dependencies that made me back out.
I’ve added a todo item and will most certainly get to cleaning up legacy and outdated parts of the plugin. Meanwhile, I’m happy to announce that a new version will arrive before the new year with some nice features. It’s currently in private beta.
Cheers!
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Thanks for the quick reply Ashod. I fully understand the complexity of maintaining a legacy plugin, though of course, I’m sorry I can’t use it yet.
Please feel free to reach out to me should you want an extra person testing the plugin once you’ve made the wo-config path changes.
Cheers.
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