LINICKX LifeStream

LINICKX LifeStream is a plugin which allows you to lifestream any feed. Simply load up your RSS feeds into the plugin and posts will be created in wordpress.

A new post is created for each lifestream entry you can then use standard WordPress themes & plug-ins to customize these posts anyway you like.

How often are feeds checked ?

By default every 5 minutes, but you can change that.

Some users experience slowness on my website!

By default at the end of the 5minute period the next user to visit your site kicks off a “feed check” for that user it can take some time for your site to load as they have to wait for this to complete. Don’t worry tho’, by enabling cron mode you can fix this.

What is Cron Mode ?

You can configure Unix Cron to update your feeds, in the WordPress dashboard, Settings -> Lifestream, enable Cron updating, then configure cron to download http://you.com/WordPress/wp-content/linickx-lifestream/run.php

How do I configure Cron to update my Feeds ?

I’ve got a file called linickx-lifestream in /etc/cron.d with this in it…

*/5 * * * * nick wget -q --spider http://www.linickx.com/wp-content/plugins/linickx-lifestream/run.php 

your mileage may vary tho.

What is the “Database Size / Expiry” option ?

LINICKX LifeStream downloads your feeds and saves them to a database, you get to decide how much is stored

Where is the Feed Database ?

By default it goes into WordPress, but if you have lots of big feeds this could slow things down. To speed things up, change to a file database, make sure wp-content is writable and you’ll see your feeds saved in lnx_lifestream_feeddb.txt get created.

What does “To Use Cron Updating you must create config.php, see FAQ or Config.Sample.php for more details” Mean?

If you want to run linickx-lifestream from cron then the plugin needs to know how to find WordPress. To find WordPress the plugin looks for config.php in ~/wp-content/linickx-lifestream , with the package there is an example config.sample.php. Rename config.sample.php to config.php and change the variable $WPDIR to where your wordpress is instlled, there are a couple of examples in there.

What is the Post Fail-Safe ?

Version 0.1.x had a frustrating double-post bug where by some feed items would not be saved in the feed DB thus be posted to WP multiple times. I cannot work out if this is a Bug in my plugin, wordpress, simplepie or even PHP so I cam up with this fail-safe mechanism. As of 0.2 Lifestream posts will be created with some meta_data in a key called lnx_lifestream_id if a feed ID matches this key then a new post will not be created.

Can the Post Fail-Safe be overridden?

Just like in your fav action movie there is a manual override where by you can force these skipped posts to be created. You will need to be using Cron mode and web-broswe to domain.com/wp-content/plugins/linickx-lifestream/run.php?fsoverride=1 … remember to see what cron mode is doing enable the Verbose option in the dashboard.

Can I post the Full Content, not just links?

What you need is FeedWordPress 😉

0.3

• Admin Pg Updates, including Context Help.
• Fail without Bail for RSS Feeds.
• Post Format Support

0.2

• Troubleshooting Feature-Pack
  • Factory Reset
  • Datadump – URL/Feeds
  • Datadump – Lifestream DB
  • Verbose Cron Mode
• Double-Post Fail-Safe

0.1.3

• Fix WordPres AutoMagic Updates broken by 0.1.2
• Try to fix execution issues with max time and is_running check
• Introduce config.php to resolve upgrade issues

0.1.2

• Patch to fix cron error in dashboard

0.1.1

• Patch to fix error – include_once error

0.1

• Initial Release

1. Unzip linickx-lifestream.zip to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. In the WordPress dashboard, Settings -> Lifestream fill in the feed you want to stream, e.g. http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/5902742.rss
4. Wait 🙂 ….posts will be created in WordPress when the feed is updated.