Projects

The Redmine Meta plugin comes with support for Twitter Cards since version version:0.2.0. But, as I [[Wiki|have noticed]], adding support is not enough for them to work... Twitter won’t display your cards until their usage for you domain will be approved by Twitter staff.

Therefore, right after putting the plugin on my website I sent the request to Twitter for approving my domain (using this page). Usually I deploy the plugin to the site in some time before I release it (to test, how it works in the real environment), so I hoped to get approved before the release. But Twitter guys appeared to be slow in this – I released the fixed version:0.2.1 and the domain was not approved yet. Eventually, I stopped expecting the approvement to be done... But today, finally, I got an email notifying, that my domain had been approved!

So now, for the case, if you were wondering, what exactly this feature does, you can check this using my website!

For example, check this tweet, which links to this news item:

By default, the Twitter "summary" card won’t be shown and you will need to click on the "View summary" link to see it. The new block, which will appear after you do this, is the Twitter card.

Alternatively you can add the tweet:

Want to know, what does the Meta plugin for #Redmine and @ChiliProject do? Check the View summary link on this tweet! http://projects.andriylesyuk.com/news/64

To check the Twitter card in your Twitter account (and to promote the Meta plugin ).

The Twitter Cards support was not yet available in the Meta plugin, when I was writing the Mastering Redmine book (and was not even planned). And this is sad, as this feature greatly supplements the plugin. Anyway, you can find many other interesting things in the book. Check the Mastering Redmine project, if you have read the book or are interesting in reading it.

You can subscribe to further news regarding the Meta plugin using the Subscription form on the sidebar.

Download Like Button 0.1.0

This version changes the default settings of the Like button. Usually, you should not care though... You should, if you have not saved the configuration of the button and it uses the default settings. Thus, if your configuration is:

• The button is shown on the sidebar;
• The button does not include faces;
• The text on the button is "Like" or similar text in other languages;
• The button uses the light color scheme.

It can be, that the plugin still uses the default settings... In this case to preserve them you need to go to Administration → Plugins → Configure (to the right from the "Like button" title) and just click "Apply". This should be done before the upgrade!

Earlier this plugin was coming with 6 modified core view files! So you needed either to use them or to remove them and patch core view files on your own... Luckily previous versions of Redmine were much similar, so pre-patched view files were not too complicated to maintain. But things changed with Redmine 2.x.x.

Recent versions of Redmine are too much different! Maintaining pre-patched view files appeared to be a huge headache – some files were impossible to make compatible with all versions, so I needed to keep copies of these files for different versions (as for the Redmine Meta, see here). This way the installation of the plugin were going to be quite complicated. So I needed a better solution.

And I found it – it’s JavaScript! Instead of adding hooks to the places, where the "Like" button should appear, now I add the button, where I’m able to, and move it to the right place using JavaScript!

This way I succeeded to drop 5 pre-patched files. But one file still remains... It’s the news index page. Luckily it’s not critical to have the "Like" button on this page. Therefore, to enable the button there you need to patch the corresponding core view file manually:

• Copy app/views/news/index.html.erb (or index.rhtml on older Redmine and ChiliProject) into the plugins/like/app/views/news directory.
• Add:
  

  1 <%= call_hook(:view_news_index_left, :news => news) %>
  

• After:
  

  1 <div class="wiki">
  2 <%= textilizable(news, :description) %>
  3 </div>

See also [[Wiki#Installation|this page]].

If you don’t do this, the button won’t appear on the news list page (so it’s safe to leave things as they are).

This version also includes translations:

• Japanese – thanks Kazuki Tsuchiya;
• Portuguese – thanks Mario Luzeiro;
• Bulgarian – thanks Ivan Cenov;
• Turkish – thanks Ismail Sezen.

Taking the opportunity I also want to mention, that I plan to rename this plugin to something like "Social buttons" as soon as I add support for at least one other social network (see #1782).

I believe, that the Like button plugin should always be installed with the Redmine Meta plugin. The latter makes the liked page look much more nicer in Facebook! But the latter recently also introduced support for the Facebook Open Graph protocol, what makes Redmine pages handled by Facebook even better. See the appropriate news of the Meta plugin.

In fact, the Redmine Meta was initially written especially for the Like button plugin. But I believe, that the work done by the Meta plugin is so important that I even review it as an essential plugin in my recently published book "Mastering Redmine". You can find more details about this book here as well as here (the project dedicated to the book).

One of the next versions of this plugin is going to include other sharing buttons for other social networks. Consider subscribing to this project using the subscription form on the sidebar to catch that moment.

Download Download Button 0.1.0

As you know the "Download" button can be generated using the macro, which supports the version argument. This way you can put the "Download" button for a version into, e.g., news. However, I found it confusing, that the button for an older version looked the same as for the recent version... Really, how do users know, that a button points to the actual version of the project? Therefore, since version:0.1.0 buttons for outdated versions will have new look and feel (defined by the old-version CSS class).

Download previous version 0.0.3

The previous version of the "Download" button came with the pre-patched view file for the new file form (for displaying warnings). In version:0.1.0 I refactored this code, so patching the core view file is not needed anymore!

But the main feature of this release is that it finally comes with support for Redmine 1.4.x, 2.0.x, 2.1.x and 2.2.x.

My colleague in Kayako accidentally discovered a bug by simply removing the file, which was explicitly associated with the "Download" button. After that every project page, which comes with the button, was giving the 500 internal server error. This release comes with the fix for this awful bug.

The release also comes with Turkish and Korean translations submitted by Ismail Sezen and Ki Won Kim correspondingly. Thanks, guys!

Hence I will try to keep this plugin up-to-date and compatible with recent versions of Redmine. So, if you are interesting in future updates of this plugin, consider subscribing to it using the subscription form on the sidebar (you will be receiving nothing but the selected project updates, if you do).

Long time I worked on the "Mastering Redmine" book, which can now be purchased, for example, here. I have also created this project on my website to support readers of the book. Besides submitting errata this project allows to check the table of contents and the sample chapter.

Download Meta 0.2.1

The previous version of the Meta plugin contained several bugs, the majority of which were related to the Open Graph protocol.

• Open Graph Meta tags article and profile were mistakenly started with og: prefix, what made them unrecognizable by Facebook debugger.
• The article:author Meta tag contained author’s full name instead of author’s profile URL.
• Instead of the fb:app_id Meta tag the plugin generated another fb:admins tag with the app identifier as the value.
• Wiki page URLs were rendered incorrectly for Open Graph and Twitter Cards under Redmine 1.0.x.

All these issues were fixed in the version version:0.2.1.

This news was sent to subscribers of this project (to ones, who chose "News" under the "Subscription" title on the sidebar). The same way some users got notifications about new files added to the project, the version closure, and so on. You can get such notifications too – just subscribe to the project with the "Subscription" block, which can be found on the sidebar.

My book Mastering Redmine got the project on my site with the same name. There you can check the table of contents and the sample chapter or submit errata or other feedback.

There should be a place, where readers can come in a case of doubts, questions, for clarification or specification, and so on. The Mastering Redmine project is such place for readers of the Mastering Redmine book, which was authored by me and published on January 25 by Packt Publishing.

I’m quite sure, that this book and this project will bring new users to my website. I hope, that such users will read this particular news, where I’m going to describe, what you can find on the website and in this particular project...

This website is built on... Redmine! On this website, at the moment of writing these words, I share my Redmine plugins mostly. None of these plugins have a special usage in any organization, I work in. Well, some of them are used on the Kayako Forge (and I work in Kayako)... But, what I’m trying to tell is that this work is totally volunteer (and was done before I entered Kayako). And one of the main goals of this website is sharing – sharing the code, ideas, views and so on. This way anything this website uses is available for download and free usage! Thus, the theme of the website is available in the Redmine Red-Andy Theme project, Redmine customizations are available in the Projects project, and customizations for this particular project (e.g., how did I add the "Table of contents" and "Sample chapter" tabs) are available under the "Repository" tab of this project.

That’s was a short story about the website. Now let’s talk about this project:

The book has the official book page on the publisher’s site, where you can leave a review, submit errata and so on. All this will go to the publisher and the appropriate requests will be forwarded to me. So anyway this will be me, with who you will discuss Redmine issues or technical details from the book. Therefore, to establish a direct channel between you, as readers, and me, as the author, I created this project. It is aimed to be the first source of the technical information related to the book.

So here you will be able:

• Submit errata, request for clarification or specification using the issue tracking feature (and trackers: "Erratum", "Omission" for things, which you believe are missing, and "Improvement" for any other things, that need clarification or specification).
• Familiarize yourself with the table of contents of the book under the Table of contents tab.
• Read the sample chapter of the book (which is Chapter №3, Configuring Redmine) under the Sample chapter tab. This tab also contains bookmarks for quick access to subsections.
• Gain access to some statistics related to the book... Thus, at the moment you can check the [[Mentioned-projects-and-people|not-yet-complete list of mentions]] of people, organizations and projects, which can be found in the book.
• Discuss the book and its content with me and other readers in the Discussion forum.
• Post reviews, thank you’s, hate you’s or any other feedback in the Reviews forum.
• Check how did I implement "Table of contents" and "Sample chapter" tabs in the project’s repository.
• And more.

For quick news regarding the book (not such huge ones as this one) you can also:

• Like the official book page on Facebook.
• "+1" (follow) the official book page on Google+.
• Follow me on Twitter (if you don’t mind my other stuff, which is not related to the book).

Download Extended Profile 1.2.0

There were two reasons for starting work on this new release: a) Redmine 2.2.x was released and b) bug #2115 (and #2116) was found in Redmine Extended Fields. The plugin appeared to work fine under Redmine 2.2.x without any changes (have not gotten something like this for a long time), so you don’t have to update it specially for Redmine 2.2.x. Therefore, this release comes only with fixes for the Redmine Extended Fields bugs.

Some time ago I added another extended field to user profiles on my website – Github. Also I wanted to add Google+... The stopping factor for including these fields into a plugin’s release was that not all plugin’s users may want these fields. But then I came to a simple solution:

This release comes with support of "Github" and "Google Plus" extended custom fields, which, however, do not get created automatically and, therefore, should be created manually, but only if you want them to appear in your user profiles (check [[Supported-custom-fields|this page]] for parameters of these custom fields). It is quite safe not to create these fields – the plugin will work fine without them! In fact, any of the existing custom fields, which are used by the plugin and get created automatically on the plugin installation, can be safely removed without any damage to your Redmine and the plugin (and they won’t get recreated on upgrade).

This approach will be preserved in future versions of the plugin (Yeah! I think, I will continue improving it!) – new supported fields will need to be added manually, if you’ll want to have them.

The previous version of the plugin (which was version:1.1.0) was about to include the Twitter Follow button instead of just link in the user profile. But then I thought, that this would make it impossible just to check tweets of the user, before following him/her. So I rolled back my changes (see also news for the previous version and #1953)...

But, in fact, the idea of the "Follow" button is not bad at all! So this release comes with it along with the Facebook Follow button (which lets you send a friend request to the user). But instead both buttons appear on the sidebar, which gets added to the user profile. So it’s still possible just to load Facebook and Twitter pages (without subscribing to or following them).

I also wanted to add the Google+ "Add to circles" button, but it appeared to occupy too much space. Could not make it smaller.

I doubt you have not noticed the big ad to the right from the page... Yeah, I wrote a book! This book have nothing to do with the Extended Profile, but does mention its base plugin – Redmine Extended Fields. It’s needless to say, that by buying this book you "donate" to me as to its author. But in addition you also donate to the Redmine team, authors of an open source application, which this book describes (see here, what do I mean).

To be among the first, who receives news about this plugin, subscribe to it using the "Subscription" block on the sidebar.

Download Role Shift 0.1.0b

The Role Shift plugin is one of the newest, but also one of the most wanted. While I’m still not sure how popular is it, its functionality seems to be much needed. For this reason I mention this plugin in my book (see the right side), and for the latter reason I also hurried to make this release.

This release, however, does not bring any new functionality – it just makes the plugin usable under Redmine 1.4.x, 2.0.x, 2.1.x and 2.2.x. The plugin also does not loose the "b" (beta) marker as I’m not sure, that it works without issues (remember – use more restrictive roles as base roles and less restrictive ones as shifts).

To be familiar with events related to the plugin (e.g., to know about new features coming with its new versions) subscribe to the project using the "Subscription" block on the sidebar. Under this block you can also select types of events, you are interested in.

To buy the book, in which this plugin is mentioned along with many other plugins and iteresting things, use this link or the "Buy the book" button on the right side of the page (by the way, two buttons (Facebook’s and Google’s ones) beneath it allow you to subscribe to the book’s news).

Download Meta 0.2.0

Sometimes I get stuck with a plugin’s functionality and the plugin seems not going to have any new features. The Meta plugin used to be such. Other times such plugins appear to literally require more features to be really useful. And the Meta plugin appeared to be such too...

I believe, that the Meta plugin is an underestimated one, as I think, it is essential for any public Redmine installation. Otherwise Redmine will fail to provide useful structured information to social networks and search engines, what is extremely important nowadays. For this reason I review this plugin in my just published book Mastering Redmine. And because the book (with its review) was just published I hurried to carry out this release, which includes the lacking support for recent Redmine versions and some interesting new features...

As it was [[Wiki|mentioned before]], this plugin provides "description" and "keywords" Meta tags, which were used in the past to show the short summary of the page in search engine results. Yet still these tags are widely used by social networks. In addition, to get more social-friendly data some social networks introduce their own Meta tags:

• Thus, Facebook announced support for the Open Graph protocol, which allows to provide more data about web pages for social networks.
• Twitter, providing more specific social functionality, developed its own Meta tags named Twitter Cards, which are, actually, based on Open Graph.

Looks like Twitter Cards must be enabled for your domain by Twitter. To send the appropriate approval request to Twitter use this link (certainly, do this after you have installed the plugin).

Both these technologies are now supported by the Meta plugin!

So, let’s see how do they work?..

This is this particular news added to Facebook:

While, generally, it looks the same, as if we were using just "description" and "keywords" Meta tags (which existed till version:0.2.0), the actual difference is inside. Thus, when I add the news to Facebook, the social network suggests to use only images, which are actually in the news article. But this feature has more power, which is invisible to the end user.

The Twitter, on the other hand, suffers more visible impact (if the domain is approved – mine is not yet):

As you see, a link powered with Twitter Cards tags gets "embedded" into the tweet view with such info as the author’s Twitter username and so on.

As you might be unwilling to include Open Graph and Twitter Cards and as they can come with some specific data, which should be configured, this version of the plugin also comes with the configuration, which can be found in Administration → Plugins → Meta tags → Configure:

The configuration of the plugin also includes settings for Facebook:

• Administrators can be set to one or more Facebook user IDs (e.g., "andriy.lesyuk" or "100000066953233"), in which case the corresponding Facebook users will get access to the statistics regarding likes, and so on.
• App identifier allows the same, but should be used for the cases, when the particular Redmine installation is represented as an app in Facebook (see here).

However, a Facebook user to be able to administer the resource must first "like" this resource, even if his/her username is set as an administrator in the meta tag. So in order to use this functionality you also need the Redmine Like Button plugin.

While the name of the plugin was "Meta Tags" the main its goal was search engine and social media optimization. Currently this is done using just meta tags, but in future releases it is also planned to generate SEO-friendly links (see #1986) and so on. Therefore, I was thinking about renaming the plugin with one of future releases... But, currently, decided to drop "tags", so the name would be just "Meta" (this way technically the plugin has not been renamed). This name, of course, has nothing to do with SEO-friendly links, but.

Due to this change, anyway, users, who use the SVN repository of the project, need to update the repository path as follows:

$ svn switch --relocate http://svn.s-andy.com/redmine-meta http://svn.s-andy.com/meta

To be sure you’ll be among of the first, who will be notified about the next felease, which is going to include some really cool features (see the issue list), subscribe to the Redmine Meta project using the "Subscription" form on the sidebar.

To buy the "Mastering Redmine" book, in which the Meta plugin is mentioned along with other interesting plugins and many other useful features and secrets of Redmine, use this link. Note, that buying this book you also donate to my plugins development (as, certainly, I get royalties from its sales) and to Redmine development (as the Redmine team will get royalties as well – see details).

Download OpenID Fix 0.1.0

First, I would like to thank Rostislav, who drew my attention to a possible serious vulnerability in the OpenID Fix plugin (see #2045). The fix for this issue comes with version:0.1.0.

In fact, before Rostislav reported the issue I had discussions with a few other users on, for example, why don’t I allow activation by email for OpenID registration. All these questions (including the Rostislav’s issue) made me revise the behavior of the plugin and, therefore, as a solution, this release comes with the plugin’s configuration, which contains just one setting:

This setting allows to override the self-registration configuration for OpenID users. To use the default system setting (which can be found in Administration → Settings → Authentication) select "(No change)" here.

By default the OpenID Fix plugin preserves the old behavior, that is, uses the manual activation, if it is selected in Redmine settings, and the automatic activation otherwise. So you should not worry, that the behavior will change on the plugin’s update.

In addition to the above things this release comes with a long-waited support for Redmine 1.4.x, 2.0.x, 2.1.x and 2.2.x (yeah, it was a long time I did not update the plugin).

Also taking the opportunity, I want to draw your attention to the feature, which can come with one of next releases – see #2113. It’s about restricting access to OpenID providers, that is, about controlling, which OpenID providers are allowed to be used by your users for logging in. Please share your thoughts on it!

Generally, you have, perhaps, noticed, that my work on my Redmine plugins has slowed down dramatically recently. The reason for the slow-down was my work on another project for Redmine – I was working on the "Mastering Redmine" book, which was just published and which can be bought now using this link. Now I got back to work on the plugins!

Also reminding you, that you can be among the first, who will know about major events on the OpenID Fix project, by subscribing to it using the subscription form on the sidebar.

Download Extended Fields 0.2.1

When Redmine 2.2.x came out, I just started the editing phase of my book (see the announcement). So I needed to learn new features quickly and to update the book accordingly. Thus, since that time I was not able to work on plugins (the book was published recently). And this is the first my plugin, which comes with Redmine 2.2.x support.

When releasing version:0.2.0b I felt too unsure about the stability of the plugin (see the appropriate news). And this feeling appeared to be correct – version:0.2.0b was quite buggy (so the "b" in the version is very appropriately). This fact was the main reason for starting preparing the updated version. Another reason – Redmine 2.2.x came later.

Many people helped me to discover issues, fixes for which you will get with this release! But Alexander Kuznecov went deeper and suggested changes to the code. This helped me much! Thanks, Alexander!

Let me remind you, that you can get notifications about new releases of this plugin (and news, if you want) by "subscribing" to this project using the "Subscription" form on the sidebar (to the right).

Also you can now order my book about Redmine, titled "Mastering Redmine" and published by Packt Publishing, using this link, or Amazon, or your Kindle device. Using the book page on Packt Publishing website you can also check the table of contents and the sample chapter.