SDN Contributor Wordpress Widget

SDN Contributor is a sidebar widget for the Wordpress blogging platform. It shows the name and total number of contribution points in SDN. The name will get linked to your SDN Business Card and the points number to a members Contribution Points page.

SDN Contributor can also list latest SDN blog posts for a member. Parts of the visual appearance are configurable e.g. to publishing date and description for each blog post.

2008-17-09: Version 1.2

• Minor bug fix for a change in the SDN blog feed.

2008-31-07: Version 1.1

• Update for Wordpress 2.5+.
• Option “Links open in new window” added.

• V1.2 → wp_sdn_contributor_v1.2.zip Fix for SDN blog feed.

• V1.1 → wp_sdn_contributor_v1.1.zip for Wordpress 2.5+
• V1.0 → sdn_contributor_v1.0.zip tested with Wordpress 2.3.x

1. Get SDN Contributor zip file & unpack it.
2. Upload all included files to your wordpress plugin directory.
3. Activate the plugin from the Plugins tab.
4. Go to Presentation/Design → Widgets and add SDN Contributor to your sidebar.
5. Open the widget configuration and add your SDN BC id and/or your SDN blogger id.

• Widget Title: Defines the title of the widget.
  
• Your SDN BD id: Necessary to display your name on SDN and your total points. If left empty, your name on SDN and your total points won't be displayed.
  
• Your SDN Blog Id: Necessary to display your latest SDN blog posts. If left empty, your latest blog posts on SDN won't be displayed.
  
• Number of blog posts to show: Defines the number of blog posts to show up in the widget.
  
• Show blog post date?: If checked the post date gets added to each post.
  
• Show blog post description?: If checked the blog post description is printed.
  
• Links open new window?: If checked links to your BC card or blog posts open in a new window or tab.
  

The available information is pulled from two sources:

Each registered member of SDN has it's own Business Card (BC), that displays some personal information (name, company, etc.), provides access to contributions on SDN (latest blog posts, earned points) and shows other information about this member. A BC is public accessible by a specific URL, which includes the encoded BC id of a member:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.sdn.businesscard.SDNBusinessCard?u=Y%2BI6hLyjY7ryHiwIHenWYg%3D%3D

The first part of the URL up to the encoded parameter is fix to every BC. The value of the parameter “u” at the end is the BC id which is unique for every SDN member and which is needed by SDN Contributor to show the name and earned points on SDN.

Name and earned points are currently read from a site closely connected to the BC. It's called Contribution Points and it's also public accessible with a given BC id. The full URL to this site can be found on the Contributions Tab in a BC next to the number of total points.

Each registered member has the chance to become a blogger on SDN. Once a member has been approved he/she will get a blogger id and an own blogger page including a dedicated RSS feed for his/her blog posts only.

http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/q/weblog_rss_author?x-author=23911&x-ver=1.0&x-mimetype=application%2Frdf%2Bxml

This is an example URL to SDN blogger RSS feed. It contains the blogger id as value for the parameter “x-author”. SDN Contributor needs this blogger id to build a proper feed URL and show a members latest SDN blog posts.

Your SDN BC id encoded as the value of the only parameter “u” in its URL. To open your SDN BC, navigate to your profile page by clicking My Profile → Update Profile in the upper right corner of the SDN homepage. Its located next to your photo.

Your SDN blogger id encoded as the numeric part in the value of the only parameter “blog” in the URL to your public author page. To open your public author page navigate to Blogs (top navigation) → Post a Blog (left navigation) → Your Author Page (public url).

The original idea came from a blog post on SDN by Guillaume Garcia where he had build a Yahoo! Widget to show off SDN points on the desktop.

Because I didn't had any knowledge about PHP before this it was necessary to use sources available in the wild.

• WP-RSSImport4SDN is based on Frank Bueldges work on WP-RSSImport. Some minor changes where necessary to adopt it to my requirements.
• The basic plugin structure is based on del.icio.us widget by Automattic, Inc.

You can use this tiny URL to refer to the SDN Contributor Wordpress Widget.

tinyurl.com/sdn-contrib-wp