Tag: WordPress

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Screenshot of the telex WordPress AI interface. Showing a new block created.

I saw a link to Telex – AI-Assisted Authoring Environment for WordPress Blocks this week and thought I would give it a try.

A few (eek, 10) years ago I tried to make a plug-in for WordPress that would take a gif url and an audio url, it would then, on the fly, make a static version of the gif. Clicking that would play the gif and loop the audio. I did get it working, eventually adding a dialogue to search for gifs on giphy & audio on freesound. I even managed to incorporate it into the tinyMCE editor in WordPress. It never got finished, but it was fun. I didn’t see any make a site for it: GifMovie.

Making that plug-in involved a big effort on my part, and a ton of searching. I’ve occasionally thought it might make a WordPress block, but didn’t know where to start. I have baby steps, php, JavaScript and css. I’ve occasionally manages to add something to WordPress that I’ve needed mostly through creating shortcode. Simple stuff far short of creating a block.

Test Telex, I thought something similar might be an idea. I simplified a bit leaving out the freesound and giphy searches.

Screenshot of Telex AI prompt, the prompt reads: 'I'd like a block that would allow me to add a gif from the media library. It would allow me to choose a sound from the media library. When the block loads it would show a static image from the gif, generated on the fly with JavaScript with a play button. Clicking the static image would show the gif and loop the audio file.'

On opening Telex you are shown a typical ai prompt box. But behind that is a WordPress site. I am presuming this is WordPress playground, everything in the browser? I am not familiar enough with playground to be sure. I put in the prompt:

I’d like a block that would allow me to add a gif from the media library. It would allow me to choose a sound from the media library. When the block loads it would show a static image from the gif, generated on the fly with JavaScript with a play button. Clicking the static image would show the gif and loop the audio file.

And off the ai went, showing me some codes scrolling past and telling me how many lines of code it had written. After a while I had the block in the editor in front of me!

I could upload a gif and a mp3 to the block and it showed a preview. All looking good, I could preview the block right in the page. When I went to look at the published page, it looked ok, clicking the image started the sound, but the image vanished.

So I reported this and the ai offered a fix. At that point things went a bit wrong. The page stopped loading and restarting the whole thing failed to load the editor. After a few tries I gave up as I’d run out of time.

This evening I thought I’d try again, but a on a desktop rather than my now aging, 8th gen iPad. As this is all linked to my WordPress account I just opened the project. Getting the same problem I reported it to the ai and it fixed it again. To no avail. I repeated this a couple of times and tested each iteration. After a few goes everything just worked.

I downloaded the plug-in, uploaded it to a test site and it worked fine there too.

I also ran the plugin check plugin and almost no few errors. Presumably because this sort of plugin has fewer opportunities to make mistakes.

I guess this is as near to pure vibe coding as you get? I didn’t see any code at all in the process or discuss it with the ai. I just reported the problem. There is a code view where you can see all of the files created. They look as if they are very well organised and commented. I am sure if I was learning to make blocks this would help a lot.

The few times I’ve asked Claude.ai or chatGPT to do some coding I’ve had more of a view and understanding of what is going on. I’ve also noticed that if chatGPT tried to fix something it either manages straightaway or just repeatedly fails. Telex made a better job of fixing things on at least this one off.

I wonder if this will eventually make its way in to WordPress itself? What sort of overhead would having a bunch of extra block plugins added?

I guess that this could be a good learning tool, but that might require a bit more discipline in reading the code produced and other tutorials on creating blocks. I do feel I’ve learnt something when I’ve DIYed some simple stuff. Not that I’ve retained a lot, that would need more frequent application on my behalf.

I am looking forward to watching the progress with Telex and see where it goes if it gets out of the experimental phase.

Gif my own creation, ripped from video years ago. Sound from https://samplefocus.com

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Likes Learning WordPress All Over Again – And He Blogs by Andy Rush.

I’m finding that the simpler approach of FSE and the block editor is better. It may have had a bad start, but it has noticeably improved over the last few years. It may never please folks who will only use the “classic” editor. I understand. I’m going to be VERY conscious of those folks as I advocate for the “new” WordPress in the days to come. My hope is to demonstrate why it’s better in coming posts

I am looking forward to seeing these posts pop up in my reader.

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I’ve noticed that the old edutalk.cc domain is broken on Radio Edutalk. I had a a couple of hundred or so links on this site to the .cc domain. Just used Better Search Replace – WordPress plugin to change edutalk.cc to edutalk.info which reported:

During the search/replace, 1 tables were searched, with 435 cells changed in 260 updates.

. Seems to have done the trick, I limited the search to the post content. Very much appreciate the plugin authors.

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A screenshot of the result of the inaturalist plugin, a grid of images. Overlaid with shortcode and snippet of php

I’ve been playing a little with WordPress yesterday. A while back I made the very simplest plugin to display my latest iNaturalist submissions. iNaturalist has a API so I made a short code that would then use JavaScript to pull in the pictures once the page loaded.

The only problem with that is that when the page loaded it just displayed a div with ‘loading’ then replaced that with the images when a script pulled that in. This appeared in the RSS feed too.

I thought that it might be better to do this server side so the images would show in an RSS feed.

This worked out ok once I had remembered lines need to end in semi-colons in php. It was still very basic so I ran it past Claude.ai and asked for security and caching advice. It made a couple of suggestions which I read up a little about and implemented.

I’ve tried using AI for a few code ideas and I am beginning to see what does and doesn’t work. What doesn’t work for me is to ask it to build a whole idea. This has nearly always ended up in problems which seem to loop around. What does work is to ask for somethings specific. In this case I uploaded the plugin to Claude and asked it to find any security problems. It did and suggested some fixes. I am sure that these are simple things that any WordPress developer would carry out without thinking about.

I’ve also found getting basic information around a function works well with AI. For example Claude suggested using the transient to cache the data from the API. Asking ChatGPT to explain transient gave me a quick handle on the function. (I am sure Claude would have explained too).

Anyway I have made some progress.

This was a good day:

Meadow BrownBumble BeesRobinGrey HeronOspreyMeadow BrownLittle Egret

The above produced with this shortcode:

[[inaturalist user="troutcolor"  on="2024-07-30"]]

I’d now like to add some more ideas: names looking a little prettier than the description tooltip, maybe a lightbox view with more information and a link to iNaturalist. But I am not in any rush.

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WordLand 0.5.15 is out. New version of Dave Winer’s WordPress editor. Nicest feature for me is the

Choosing a site now remembers previous sites you’ve chosen

I seem to have 25 sites linked to my WordPress account.

I also listen to Dave’s podcast episode on WordLand earlier this week.

WordLand is a good editor. For some people who write in WordPress it will be a godsend, and for others, a revelation. There should be a lot of editors in this space, because there is no one editor that’s good for everyone.

A very interesting post & comments on Jeremy Herve‘s blog: WordPress, WordLand, and the Open Web. Where there a variery of takes.

Personally the idea of lots of editors really resonates with me, I used quite a few. WordLand for this post although I’ll probably nip into the editor to add some tags.

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In reply to Colophon (April 2025) by Aaron Davis.

As usual I am fascinated by your processes Aaron. Quite different from mine, so I have an itch to write my own colophon now.

I was also noticed you seem to have a taxonomy ‘series’ I’ve not noticed that else where. I am basing this on the links in the post meta.

I also wonder how you get on moving back and forth from classic to block on your two sites. To my surprise I am almost always in the block editor. Running some smoke tests on Glow Blogs at the weekend I was using classic for several posts and was a bit confused at times.

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A couple of new WordLand Links: First Drafting – Doc Searls Weblog & Joho the Blog » Trying out WordLand for blogging the second says:

It’s a web page that clears out all of WordPress’s cruft and gives you an interface  that’s so simple that it’s actually enjoyable.

….

 especially if  … Dave Winer, … lets us add tags. I am irrationally committed to tagging

I like tags too.

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I am still posting using WordLand from time to time. Dave Winer opened the service to everyone, on Friday. I’m reading round it as much as I can:

Aziz Poonawalla wrote a review to which Dave responded.

Andy Sylvester gave it a try, posting a video of his first use. Andy is thinking aloud, a process I always enjoy watching others do.

Manton noted:

its own RSS feeds outside of WordPress. The feeds have both HTML and Markdown. So you could build platforms (like Micro.blog!) that aggregate user feeds.

Manton Reece

Which points to the idea your blog could be, without the WordPress bit, an RSS feed that can be piped everywhere. For example: It could go to micro.blog and then be pushed on to lots of other places.

It has surprised me that WordPress does not have a bigger range of ways to post. I hope WordLand will start a trend. Personally I do not use one particular editor, depending on the type of post I am making.

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WordLand is where we start to boot up a simple social net using only RSS as the protocol connecting users. Rather than wait for ActivityPub and AT Proto to get their acts together. I think we can do it with feeds and start off with immediate interop without the complexity of federation. I call it the feediverse. It’s not a joke, although it may incite a smile and a giggle. And that’s ok

Scripting News: Saturday, February 22, 2025

Feediverse, what is not to like! WordLand, I’ve tested for a while. Something like that might be a good fit for Glow Blogs. A simple posting interface for busy teachers. See also pootlewriter.