Tag: reading

DeadTrees 1.1: More Cover Sources

An update to DeadTrees, my WordPress plugin for sharing the books I read, is now live in the WordPress Plugin Repository. This update does one major thing: diversifies the sources of cover images.

What happened was Amazon introduced a quota on the API that the original DeadTrees was using to fetch cover art. The API quota is based on how many sales a user has, and I’m famous enough to have many sales, so my API access was eventually cut off. When I started posting my backlog of books I really wanted cover art, so I polished off the (very) dusty code and got to work.

Version 1.1 of DeadTrees maintains support for Amazon cover art and adds support for fetching cover art from OpenLibrary.org and LibraryThing. There’s a setting to try Amazon first or last, and the plugin tries to be smart about when to try OpenLibrary.org or LibraryThing, (it prefers OpenLibrary.org, as they seem to provide larger images, and don’t require an API key).

If you want to see DeadTrees in action take a look at the list of books I have read, which is powered by DeadTrees. For support post in the WordPress.org forum, and for bugs & feature requests post in the same forum or create a Github issue.

Happy Reading!

Announcing DeadTrees

Today I’m releasing DeadTrees, a WordPress plugin to share the books you read. Get it from wordpress.org or search for DeadTrees in the Plugins > Add section of your WordPress admin.

Features

DeadTrees lets you post the books you read, with or without writing about them, (really, does the internet need to know what you thought of the last mystery you read?). It generates Amazon affiliate links to those books so you, (or I), can make a little money if your readers buy the books, and it auto-fetches the books’ cover art from Amazon so things look cool.

Why?

I have been posting about books that I read for a while now, but ground to a halt when I got lazy & didn’t want to write a whole post about each book, and realized often it doesn’t matter what I think about a book. However, I did want to keep posting at least the te title & author of each book I read, (and so my sister can check to see what I’ve read before giving me a book).

Why write a plugin when there are other plugins to share the books I read? Because the other plugins didn’t do it how I wanted them to. I couldn’t find another plugin that uses WordPress’s Custom Post Types to store books I’ve read, and books are such a perfect use of CPTs that they’re even used as the example in the WordPress documentation!

Support & All That

I’ve put DeadTrees up at GitHub, if you have issues try to submit them there. My contact page is also always available to reach me.

See It Live

DeadTrees is up & running here. Take a look at the books I’ve read.