TubePress 2.2.5 Has Landed

Posted by on Jul 5, 2011

I’m very pleased to announce that TubePress 2.2.5 is available for download! Along with a number of bug fixes and version bumps, this version features the following exciting new features…

  • “Lazy” play
    In the past, your users were forced to click twice just to watch a video from your TubePress gallery. Now they can simply click the thumbnail and the video will autoplay on its own; just like on youtube.com
  • More flexibility in custom themes
    You now have full control over the HTML that TubePress is used after a user clicks a thumbnail. In the past, you were restricted to just showing the title.
  • Mixed YouTube and Vimeo galleries
    TubePress Pro users can now enjoy galleries comprised of both Vimeo and YouTube. Very cool!
  •  New “detached” player location
    With TubePress Pro, you can now split up the thumbnail gallery from the embedded player. This gives you complete control over the layout of your site, and greatly expands the options for TubePress integration.
  • EmbedPlus Support
    YouTube galleries now have the option to use EmbedPlus: an embedded player that adds a ton of features to the YouTube video experience.

As usual, please report any issues in the forum. I hope you enjoy this new version!

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Autoplay Madness

Posted by on Jun 2, 2011

Final Update
The latest news from YouTube is that the problem has been resolved.

I wanted to let folks know that the Players engineering team was able to push out an immediate fix to this issue, and setting autoplay=0 should no longer result in the video autoplaying. Apologies again for any inconvenience this temporary issue caused.

Cheers,
-Jeff Posnick, YouTube API Team

Update

Some official word from YouTube…

Thanks for reporting this behavior; and apologies for the unexpected change. The Players engineering team is aware of the issue, but given our push schedule it is possible it might be a week before the behavior changes back in production. If this is affecting you now, I’d recommend leaving out autoplay=0 entirely and relying on the default behavior, as Claude mentions. If that doesn’t stop the autoplay behavior, please let us know in this thread.

Cheers,
-Jeff Posnick, YouTube API Team

Using TubePress 2.2.0? As of yesterday, your YouTube videos are playing without permission or user intervention. This appears to be an internal change on YouTube’s side that has effectively ignored the autoplay=0 parameter supplied to the video’s iframe.

Here are two options for a quick fix:

  1. Replace the file at tubepress/sys/classes/org/tubepress/impl/embedded/strategies/AbstractYouTubeEmbeddedStrategy.class.php with the one found here: https://gist.github.com/1004603
  2. Simply comment out line 54 of that file in your TubePress installation

I’m hesitant to issue an actual TubePress release for this fix before we get some official word back from the folks at YouTube. This could very well be a temporary bug on their end. I’ll be updating this post when we have more information. In the meantime, here are some additional resources:

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Two Exciting Announcements

Posted by on Apr 4, 2011

First, TubePress Pro 2.2.0 has been released! This release brings a slew of bug fixes and new features, including

  • Interactive video search! Your users can search all of YouTube or Vimeo without ever leaving your site.
  • YouTube iframe player. This style of embedded player works on nearly any device that supports Flash or HTML5, which means that your video galleries will behave the same for virtually all of your users. There’s no longer a need to use a mobile-only gallery template!
  • WordPress users can now selectively load TubePress’s JS/CSS resources. Make’s your blog leaner and meaner.
  • Greatly improved HTTP transport subsystem provides faster and more reliable feed transfers. It’s an under-the-hood improvement, but you may notice that your galleries feel a bit snappier.

Finally, I’m happy to formally announce the arrival of the Feature Showcase. This demo tool has been in the works for a long time, as I’ve always wanted a way to let users actually experience all the cool features of TubePress. Give it a whirl today!

If you haven’t already, please grab TubePress 2.2.0 from the downloads page. Report any issues either in the forum or as a support ticket. And most importantly, enjoy!

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TubePress 2.2.0 Release Candidate 1

Posted by on Mar 3, 2011

Grab it from here!

For a list of what’s new, please see the changelog. As usual, please report any issues either as a bug report or in the forum. While this release candidate is being tested, I’ll be working on

  1. Pushing out a TubePress Pro release candidate in the next day or so
  2. Updating the docs to reflect all the new features in 2.2.0
  3. Preparing a formal release announcement

Looking forward to your feedback!

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TubePress 2.1.1 is Out!

Posted by on Nov 28, 2010

Today I’m happy to officially announce the release of version 2.1.1. It’s been 7 months since the last official release, which is way longer than I liked. I can assure you that during that time I was busy at work fixing bugs and adding the features the community has been pining for. Here are the headline features that’s new in this version:

  • Lightweight theming support!
    You now have better, upgrade-proof control of the HTML/CSS output of TubePress.
  • Ability to create galleries from multiple video sources!
    A highly requested feature, this allows you to create a single, seamless gallery from as many sources as you’d like. Powerful!
  • Improved searching functionality.
    You can now perform exact-phrase searches, and use boolean operators like OR and AND to fine tune your search-based galleries.
  • “Fluid” thumbnails that are auto-position themselves.
    Inspired by some fine work from sohtanaka.com. Try resizing your browser window while view the standalone PHP demo to see this in action.
  • Drastically improved mobile experience.
    Vimeo users now benefit from Vimeo’s “universal player” which works correctly on just about any platform (including those that don’t support Flash). YouTube users also will have a smoother experience with this upgrade.

The TubePress documentation has been updated to reflect all these new features. If you are using a pre-2.1.0 custom HTML template (using the template shortcode attribute), you’ll need to perform a one-time upgrade procedure described here. As always, please use the discussion forum if you need help with anything. I hope you enjoy this new version. Thanks for using TubePress!

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How to fix your Vimeo gallery (and why it’s broken)

Posted by on Nov 3, 2010

EDIT: This post is no longer relevant! Please refer to the Vimeo API setup instructions instead

Today is my 30th birthday. On my way out to lunch, I got this note from Vimeo

Hi Eric,

Just wanted to let you know that we’ve disabled your Tubepress application on Vimeo because we discovered that you are hardcoding the API key and secret into the app.

The result? Every single TubePress Vimeo gallery in the world now shows up completely blank. Happy birthday!

Here’s the deal. Every time TubePress, or any 3rd-party app, contacts Vimeo, it needs to authenticate itself using a pre-shared secret. This is in place to prevent abuse of their API, and in principle I understand their need for a safeguard like this. But my goal has always been to make it easy for you, my customers, to get up and running with Vimeo quickly. Thus, I indeed hard-coded a Vimeo “key” into TubePress. Today this key was disabled.

It’ll take me some time to put in an elegant solution, but here’s how to get your gallery up and running right now.

  1. Log in to Vimeo. You’ll have to create an account if you don’t have one
  2. Click here to register yourself a new key. Here’s what my registration form looks like (click to enlarge)

  3. Make a note of your “consumer key” and your “consumer secret”. Here’s what mine looks like

  4. Edit tubepress/classes/org/tubepress/url/VimeoUrlBuilder.class.php. You’ll want to insert your consumer key and secret into lines 152 and 171, respectively. Just replace the keys that are there now. Here’s what the lines look like

Is this a hassle? Absolutely. Am I peeved about this? Hell yes. Is there anything else I can do? Not that I can think of. These are the rules set out by Vimeo, and unfortunately if we want to use their service we will have to comply.

Please use the support forum if you need assistance with any of this. As per usual, TubePress Pro users will get priority support. I’m sorry for the service disruption, but I hope you’ll agree that I did what I did to make it easier for you to use TubePress.

Now, I need a beer.

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Growing Pains, Part 1: A New Discussion Forum

Posted by on Sep 6, 2010

Recently I posted about how I was having trouble keeping up with the discussion forum. Unfortunately I was becoming more and more overwhelmed with supporting users. It was hurting development (because I never had time) and I was starting to resent TubePress for clogging my inbox.

I decided that what TubePress needed was a discussion forum with more features and more ability to be controlled. I’m not the only one that wasn’t happy with Google Groups. Their spam control is terrible, and I know that many users found actually searching the forums to be difficult.

Here’s the punchline: TubePress’s discussion forum is now located at http://tubepress.org/forum and powered by the (fully featured) phpBB software. As you can see, it’s broken into two main sections: public and TubePress Pro. Anyone can post in the public area (though some forums there require free user registration). The TubePress Pro forums will be monitored by me, your developer, and I’ll focus my support there.

If you’re already a TubePress Pro user, you can get instructions for logging in here. Please contact me if you need assistance.

Don’t forget that anyone can register on tubepress.org and gain access to the free forums! I hope you’ll find the new forum more useful than the old. Thanks for using TubePress!

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How to get help in the discussion forum

Posted by on Jul 8, 2010

The discussion forum is your best source for getting help with TubePress. The volume of messages in there has been increasing over time, and to that end it’s become more of a challenge to make sure that everyone that has a question gets answered. I simply can’t keep up with making sure that every single user gets a response from me (your developer). So how do you increase your chances of getting attention?

  1. Include a link to your gallery. This is by far the most useful piece of information you can provide. If it’s a client-side problem, we can use FireBug to diagnose. For server-side problems, we can use TubePress’s debugging mode. But without a link to your gallery we can’t do anything.
  2. If your gallery is nested somewhere on your site, please don’t send a link to your home page and make us search for the gallery. Instead send a direct link to your gallery.
  3. Describe the problem in as much detail as possible. Reports along the lines of “It’s not working” or “I’m getting some error message” are simply not enough to go on. Please copy/paste any error messages and include them in the post.

If you follow these guidelines, I promise I will make a best effort to help you out. Please remember that I don’t get paid to offer this kind of support – I do it because I’m dedicated to keeping TubePress as the leading video gallery integration tool.

Here are some things that I can pretty much guarantee won’t get a response…

  1. Asking a question that’s been answered already in the forum. Please do your homework and search before asking!
  2. Asking a question that’s answered in the documentation. See above.
  3. Sending me a personal email with a question that should be asked in the forum. I can’t keep up with all my email as it is. If you have a legitimate reason to send me a private message, I’ll do my best to respond.
  4. Being rude. Nuff said

Thanks, and I’ll see you in the forum.

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Hello, Vimeo

Posted by on Apr 19, 2010

TubePress 2.0.0 has just been released, and the headlining new feature in this version is full Vimeo support! Vimeo users now can enjoy the dozens of TubePress features that have thus far been limited to YouTube videos. Choose from 8 different Vimeo sources to populate your galleries. Check out this sample gallery…

Other new features in this release include

  • Brought back ability to play each video from a gallery in a new window by itself (closes
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TubePress 1.8.9 – Embed individual videos with meta information!

Posted by on Jan 31, 2010

I’m happy to report that TubePress 1.8.9 has just been released. This version comes chock full of bug fixes and upgrades, along with one powerful new feature: the ability to embed individual videos along with all of their meta info (description, author, keywords, etc). To use it, you can simply use the video shortcode attribute to identify the video. e.g. [tubepress video="J51kfduN5aA"] will produce…

Help for Addicted Doctors - Dr. Rodney Hough on CBS 21
Runtime
3:29
Description
My father, Dr. Rodney Hough, interviewed by CBS back in 2007 regarding his recovery from addiction to pain pills. This aired on CBS 21 News, which servers central Pennsylvania, in February 2008.

You can even customize the HTML structure for the embedded videos using the existing template shortcode attribute. Here are the full docs on how to use this new feature.

As usual, you can grab the latest version of TubePress from the downloads page. Please feel free to report any issues or feature requests, and remember that feedback of all kinds is always welcome. Enjoy!

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