I used to having FlashFXP as my default FTP client. It’s fast (so I thought), easy to use and I feel comfortable using it because I know some keyboard shourtcuts.
Even in my workplace where FileZilla was the default FTP client that everyone used, I insisted on bringing my disk-on-key with a portable version of FlashFXP.
When you start using a particular FTP client it’s very hard to say goodbye. You already have all the usernames,passwords and hosts laying there ordered just as you like it. You don’t even think about moving the whole list to another client one by one. Another thing that keeps you from changing your FTP client is that FTP access is very sensitive and you don’t want to transfer/rename/delete files by accident. Deleting or overwriting a certain file that has no backup can cost you a lot of valuable time.
So why did I change my client software? There were two major differences between FileZilla and FlashFXP that convinced me to switch.
- The speed, oh the speed. With FlashFXP you can’t transfer two files at the same time while using FileZilla you can transfer up to 10(!) files simultaneously. This improves the transfer time of say… a WordPress install in hundreds of percents.
- Simultaneous file editing.When using FlashFXP to edit files you can only edit one file at a certain time. While editing that file you can do nothing until you commit the file and after committing the file, if you wish to continue editing it you need to close your text editor and reopen the file. Luckily FileZilla improves the file editing experience and brings it into a new level. In FileZilla you can edit as many files as you want at the same time, you can do whatever you want while editing (Such as browsing folders, refreshing the file list,committing other files and so on…) and you don’t have to close and reopen the file each time you make a change.
This was my experience using FTP clients, as for the FTP accounts list, I just add them one by one each time I need to log in to a certain website.
I have received a request from someone that wants even more from my WordPress Custom Fields Plugin. He has a category called “videos” which has posts with YouTube videos embedded with some plugin. He wants to put the videos thumbnail as the post’s thumbnail.
First, how is the video embedded in the post? It uses the following syntax:
[youtube $video_key]
Now you can embed it like you would normally do.
Second, how do we get the thumbnail itself after we extracted the video key? We build the image’s URL with the following syntax:
http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/$video_key/default.jpg
Now, how do we put all of this together into a plugin that inserts the thumbnails?
You don’t have to because I have already done it for you.
- Visit the plugin page of YouTube Thumbnailer
- Download the plugin here
- Unzip it’s contents
- Upload the folder you unzipped to
/wp-content/plugins/using your favorite FTP client. - Go to your admin panel and activate the plugin called “Youtube Thumbnailer”
This plugin runs through the posts in your blog and if it finds a YouTube video embedded in a post it sets the thumbnail to be the video’s thumbnail.
That’s it, have fun playing with the configuration.
If you encounter any issues please comment/contact me.
I’m now writing this post while I really should package my bag instead but never mind :).
Tomorrow in 8 o’clock I will be on a bus on my long way south to Eilat with my friends and we are going to stay there for four days until Sunday. We hired an apartment for those three nights and we split the rent between all of us (We are six).
Mainly I wanna say that I’m not gonna be here for some time so I’ll answer the pile of mails only when I get back. You can still send email just don’t expect to get a replay anytime soon.
How can I publish this post without some useless map from Google Maps:
I have to say that Black Eyed Peas ready succeed in their awesome comeback.
First they unleashed the addictive party beat “Boom Boom Pow” that I couldn’t stop listening to and now just at the right time when I got tired of “Boom Boom Pow” they released “I Gotta Feeling”.
“Boom Boom Pow” By Black Eyed Peas
“I Gotta Feeling” By Black Eyed Peas
Another great song that I would like to share with you is a song by Jason Mraz, called “I’m Yours”
As you can see that this time I didn’t embed the tracks from YouTube, I used another amazing website called GrooveShark that lets you create your own play list from music all around the world and hear it for a symbolic fee of… nothing! For free!
That’s it, I hope you enjoy them and have a nice weekend.
As you can see in the plugin‘s stats page, It currently has 1050 downloads!
Although the number may be not as big as other plugins (All in On SEO got over 2.5 million downloads), it means a lot to me. Every time you see numbers on the internet you don’t really think about them as you would outside the monitor. When viewing YouTube videos, if I see a video that has less then 5k views most of the times I won’t enter it and try to find another one with millions of views.
But when you think about the actual numbers it’s a huge amount of people sitting on their chair at home or at work, entering YouTube and watching the video. The same goes to plugin downloads, It’s really cool to know that my plugin helped over 300 (?) other people around the world that have their own website.
Update: It how has over 3000 downloads!
