Changing the URL Shortener to kwn.me on IP.Board
By Default, IP.Board uses bit.ly as the default URL Shortener, now, this means when you make a status longer than 140 characters and select to tweet it, IP.Board adds a shortened URL linking to the full status to the end of the tweet. It uses Bit.ly by default to do this.
The same is true for the inbuilt “Share links” function in IP.Board, which lets you send a
‘synopsis’ or title of the thread to a bunch of social networks, twitter and facebook included, by default this ALSO uses bit.ly.
Now, I may be biased, having been responsible for my own shortening service with a great group of friends who help me code it (and mostly do more than me, better than I ever could) every step of the way, and a great bunch of TweetDeck users who I also consider friends who use the service, we’re all extremely proud of our little site, so I wanted to, instead of using bit.ly on my IP.Board powered communities, to use my own service, kwn.me.
I figured that those of you who already use kwn.me with TweetDeck might also be interested in using it with your IP.Board installation, so here is how.
- Download the kwn.me IPB API files here (thanks to Alan for helping with this part originally)
- Unpack and Upload the “kwnme” folder into /admin/sources/classes/url/apis/
- Edit /admin/sources/classes/twitter/connect.php
- Find:
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );
(line 218) and replace with
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );
- Edit /admin/sources/classes/facebook/connect.php
- Find:
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );
(line 439) and replace with
$data = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );
That’s it, it should work as normal, except using kwn.me as the default shortener, rather than bit.ly
Let me know in the comments if there are any problems 
Internet Brands Sue XenForo
This suit doesnt bode well for XenForo, the timing is a disaster for the company and as Internet Brands have , however, I do have a few questions on the wording of IB’s Announcement:
The suit is simple: we claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.
So, Internet Brands own Kier, Mike and Ashleys knowledge, and any knowledge that they gained whilst in the employ of Jelsoft? Such as, what Steves wife’s name is, or why wearing shoes is bad, m’kay?
Also, details like this in the opening post of the IB announcement are just not needed and are added in there as insult to injury.
Kier was paid a handsome bonus when Internet Brands bought the business, although no such payment was required.
The below line shows that even if they lose the copyright suit they’ll come back with something else.
We have numerous other claims against Xenforo that we believe are equally strong.
It looks to become a very messy drawn out process, of course, pending XenForo still goes on sale at around 10am tomorrow the 5th October 2010, I’ll still be buying a license, even if it is just to play with.
All said and done, I think that this can damage Internet Brands more than it will XenForo
SwitchToHTML5
So, the other day after playing with my HTML5 Template, and posting about it I got to thinking, what if someone doesnt want to have a navigation area, the <nav> tag wouldnt be needed.. same as if you didn’t need a sidebar, or any unrelated content, the <aside> section of my template would need removing.
That wasnt my goal at all when I made the template, I wanted something I could easily pick up and go, bam, I have the framework and now I can input my content.
That’s where SwitchToHTML5 sprung up from, a concept in my head for the last few days, now a reality, I’ve spent a long few hours getting my brain around what tags (elements) should be used in which way, and how they shouldnt be used, what is optional in HTML5, but used to be a requirement of XHTML/HTML4 – getting my head around most of the changes, I’ve read up on a few of the great HTML5 sites such as ‘HTML5Doctor’ and ‘Dive into HTML5′, as well as the official w3 documentation too, and then a few more hours have been put into coding the site; and the end result is something which works, is quite pleasing to the eye, and provides an ‘Instant Framework’ so you can effectively choose which elements you need, what options you want, and hit go, and “SwitchToHTML5″.
If you have a framework, all that is left is the content you need, and that’s not something which I can do for you :p. Right now the generator php file is coded and functional, I did have it in my head to attempt a converter php file, however that would be nigh on impossible due to the way that we’d have to get PHP to recognise which div should be made which corresponding HTML5 tag, I do know that it’s way out of my spectrum of knowledge anyway 
Also something which I think would be possible for me to do would be a css php file, which generates CSS for your document, but again, it would rely heavily on user input, unlike the generator php for the main site.
You can find the site, in a very .. beta phase at SwitchToHTML5.com – any bugs and such are probably me tinkering with the script, and if they are layout problems, I consider them minor, but probably know about them.
Playing with HTML5
In the last weeks I’ve been using, and indeed playing with HTML5 more and more, although I’ve not gotten into the <canvas> element or anything ‘exotic’ like that yet, I have been using it on sites such as baa.nu and also in general everyday html layouts. I’ve also noticed that my friends are using it more and more also, in sites such as mycoffeecupisempty.com. I see that HTML5 has also made it’s way into forum software and that, in fact, HTML5 is making it’s way into every modern web application, it’s the “Next Big Thing”.
Sites such as Dive Into HTML5 have been around for a while, but while they provide a complete comprehensive guide to HTML5 and it’s uses, I decided I needed a quicker way to create a framework for HTML5, so I created a starting template.. thing. Something I can just copy into gedit, or notepad++ (depending on whatever OS I’m on at the time), and work from there.
I’ve made the template web-accessible and you can find it here; mikeylicio.us/html5/. That also has a basic CSS structure and some handy reference links, feel free to bookmark it! Future plans include something like checkboxes to include or exclude tags, but thats for then