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- Updated many outdated, depricated and unrecommended codes.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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[...] Reading Redux 6.5 ReleasedJan 012012 The latest version of WordPress plugin Now Reading Redux was released on New Year’s eve. It has many awaited features that should prove very [...]
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Hello there,
I would really love to use the Now Reading Redux plugin, but currently have the Now Reading Reloaded plugin on my blog. I don’t feel confident to change the template files myself and could really do with someone to look at it and do it for me! Would anyone be able to possibly help me out?
Also, I can’t seem to get the Widget to display on my blog at the moment. It just disappeared one day and hasn’t come back – I don’t know what this could be. My blog is http://deanroberts.net so if someone could get in touch with me then I’d be really grateful.
Thanks
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Hi,
You really don’t need to change the template, unless you have a heavily customized version, which I don’t see evidence for from my short visit to your library page. Redux is virtually 100% compatible with previous releases. The templates are updated and modified, but now they are also managed from the options page, so you’ll be able to customize the template by changing a few options without editing the files directly.
You should go ahead and disable the old plugin and install the new one. Go to the Redux options and make sure you set every setting you care about. Most settings will be preserved, but not all, from your current setup. If you get any issues, I’ll be happy to help. Good luck.
-Ash
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Dear Ash,
Thank you for your quick reply – definitely the quickest response I’ve ever had to a WordPress Question! My WordPress theme is heavily customised. I did have a go at changing the plugin to the Redux one, but it looked very messed up when I activated it. Also, the widget isn’t showing in my sidebar either (neither on Now Reading Reloaded or Redux).
Any suggestions?!
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If you have a heavily customized template, then you will either upgrade and redo the customization (hopefully it won’t be all that much work, but as a result you’ll get the benefit of the new version) or you just have to forgo the upgrade altogether.
As a compromise, you can save your template and replace the default ones with your customized ones, it should work, but you won’t get the benefits of the new options-based customizability in the latest version. Another alternative (probably not applicable in your case, but I’ll put it on the table anyway) is to use a theme that has the ability to use its own template when one is found and override a plugin’s version. Suffusion, which I’m using does just that. So plugins are updated without a problem and if I need customization I just create a template in suffusion and it’ll use that instead of the plugin’s stock version.
I’m sorry, but customization is just that; a special version that is bound to require continuous tending upon plugin updates.
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Thanks, Ash.
Any ideas on why the widget isn’t appearing? It won’t appear with Now Reading Reloaded or Redux
I think I may have to get someone and pay them to customise the template and styling for me so that I can have Redux.
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The widgets are known to have that issue. The workaround is to reset them and/or remove and add again. I’ve read about this issue upon upgrading. To be safe, remove the widget before disabling the old plugin, install and activate Redux, then add the widget again. The issue may be because the widget belongs to the old plugin which you must disable before enabling Redux, therefore it won’t show as it’s owner plugin is disabled.
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Thanks, Ash. You’re very kind.
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I’m having a problem with this plugin not being able to save anything. I was using Now Reading Reloaded before but I started having this issue with that, so I switched to your plugin to see if that would fix the problem but it didn’t. Basically if I try to save the options or edit a book or add a new book, it just takes me to a 404 not found page. I’ve already talked to my host about this and they said it doesn’t seem to be a server issue and that “the 404 is generating an end of script headers error when you attempt to use that update button.” Any ideas why this is happening and how to fix it?
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Hi Emily,
It’s a bit hard to tell what’s going on, but it seems it’s a setup issue. Can you open the page that shows 404 in a new tab (just copy/paste the URL in a new tab and load it)? You probably can’t save the options, but try to enable the Debug flag in NRR and see if that gives you more information on what’s going on. Either way, ping me again and I’ll try to help figure this out.
Also, has this issue been the case since day-one when you installed NRR or it’s something new? Do you have any other plugins that suffer similar ailments?
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No, it won’t let me save the options page. This is the page that gives me a 404: http://themomalog.com/wp-content/plugins/now-reading-redux/admin/options.php, but I checked and that file is there. Same thing happens when I try to add a book it says the admin/add.php file isn’t there but it is.
I just tried downloading a new copy of the plugin and reinstalling in case something was wrong with the files, but that didn’t seem to help.
Originally I was using the now reading reloaded and that worked fine when I first installed it, but then it randomly stopped working one day and that’s when I tried installing your version to see if it would fix it.
I was also having a problem with being able to search for books, but I got my host to allow fopen or whatever and that fixed that problem. So now I can search for books, but when I try to add the book, I get that 404 not found error.
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Emily,
The URL you have is indeed invalid!
The correct URL for the options page is: http://themomalog.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nr_options
Two things to notice here, first that the root directory is wp-admin and not wp-content (reasonable enough, as the plugin options is administrative and not content). Second, notice how the actual php file is different? It’s standard WP php file, not specific to any plugin.
This leads me to suspect that your WordPress installation is old or has something seriously wrong with it. Please first check that you are using WP 3.0 or newer (preferably the very latest).
-Ash
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Yep, it’s 3.3.1. I always update it as soon as there’s a new version. I have no idea how it could have something wrong with it! The site is only about a year old.
The only thing I can think is that it’s some kind of outlying issue having to do with the server it was on? I was having TONS of WordPress problems on the old server, basically nothing was working right, I was getting those 404 not found errors all the time (trying to upload photos, adding posts, updating the theme files) and I always assumed that was the reason that this plugin didn’t work either. But after much complaining, my host finally admitted that the server had “legacy software” (whatever that means) and they upgraded me to a new server a few weeks ago and since then all of my WP problems went away except for the problem with this plugin. That’s when they told me they can’t troubleshoot WP plugins and I should ask you about it.
Anyway, when I go to the options page in the WP admin, it’s the URL you said it’s supposed to be (http://themomalog.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nr_options), it’s just when I hit the update button that it goes to that incorrect URL. Any ideas why it would be redirecting like that?
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I’m not sure if this is important or not, but I was previously unable to search for books (on both the old server and the upgraded one). I kept getting this error: WARNING IsterXmlExpatNonValid->parse(): expat: no element found [-1/0/1]
My host added the suPHP config path to the .htaccess and they also uploaded a php.ini file. The search works now but I still get a 404 error when I try to add the book. Could something in that php.ini file be causing the weird URL redirects? It’s a really big file, so I’m not sure what they changed from the default configurations.
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Thanks for the into. I’m looking into this. Will get back to you.
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First off, I want to thank you for keeping this project alive. I’ve been using Now Reading since the original and am happy to see that it is still being actively updated.
This isn’t a bug exactly, rather a feature request. I found was a book being sold and published in Kindle format only. So it doesn’t have an ISBN. It only has an ASIN. Wondering if in the future we could have the ability to search by ASIN or ISBN. It isn’t a big deal, and I was still able to add my book manually. I was even able to link it to the correct Amazon page, but I wasn’t able to add it via the search page. Which meant I had to add the image manually.
By the way, the book is located here if you want to check it out. http://www.amazon.com/Sky-Pirates-ebook/dp/B0071MPFIM/
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Interesting point. I’ll add a Todo entry. Thanks!
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