What happened to the Socialvibe Widget? (Thickbox)
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Does anyone know what happened to the socialvibe widget? Like a lot of people I used this because it allowed access to the thickbox ability. (The reason why this isn’t a standard feature still baffles me.) Well, as I look today I noticed the widget is missing, meaning everything on my site that used thickbox (See, every post) Now isn’t functioning the way it was designed to. What’s going on here?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Well, I just discovered via some searching that it looks like the widget service was shut down. *sigh* There isn’t an alternative, is there? I really don’t want to switch over to self-hosting. It’s such a pain.
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The SocialVibe widget was, if I recall, for charity fundraising. You could always link to the charity you support in a text widget in the sidebar instead, with a link to their donate page. http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/socialvibe/
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Well, I’m a bit more concerned about having access to the thickbox ability. Linking to the red cross was sort of just a bonus in my book. ;)
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There were problems with using social vibe to get the thickbox effect anyway:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/thickbox-issues-new-windows-opening-instead?replies=19 -
What exactly were you doing with the thickbox class? Perhaps we can suggest a workaround instead. (I only see it in use in a text widget in your sidebar.)
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If many people were using the SocialVibe widget but NOT using it for charity purposes, I can see staff suspending it merely for that reason alone.
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@rain-Using the Socialvibe widget in order to use the thickbox class as a lightbox for images was quite a popular tip at the time. After looking at the Socialvibe site, it looks like they changed their implementation.
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Yes, but staff have already at least twice threatened to remove the Gigya shortcode, specifically BECAUSE it is being used for something other than that for which it was intended. And they’ve removed similar things for similar reasons before, although examples escape me at the moment.
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Well, it only worked properly if the reader was logged in. I think it lost its popularity once people realized that.
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Well, *kof*, we do know that people will use things in ways the developers perhaps didn’t intend. Leads to all kinds of unhappiness when it disappears or changes.
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Indeed. But you’re right, SocialVibe is off in a completely different direction. I think I remember staff saying they were looking into a replacement, but I doubt it would have the same tangential functionality.
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Basically I used thickbox for displaying images larger than the medium size I typically use as a header for each post. You probably aren’t seeing it in use lately simply because I haven’t been using it lately. I realize it wasn’t working when I tried to make it pop out a video player because they won’t embed when they’re part of the notice that appears at the top of the page with the iNove theme.
And I heard people complaining about thickbox not working when logged in, but I tested it logged in and not logged in and never found anything seriously wrong with its implementation.
*Sigh* I just find this entire thing frustrating. I’m happy to pay my registration fees every year, but when my stuff gets breaking because something got removed I become an unhappy camper.
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opinion/
Since WordPress.com is constantly changing, it doesn’t pay to extensively use a feature in a manner for which it wasn’t intended. As you noted, unhappiness ensues when it leaves.
/opinionSince I don’t have time right now to find a post where you were using this feature previously, I can’t make any suggestions. If you can give us an example with a direct link, I will try to look in later.
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Well if you’d like to offer suggestions, the page I had the most extensive usage of thickboxes is here: http://bashdl.com/usage-guides/how-to-play-report-a-bash-digital-league-game/
Though typically the way I used it is to provide an easy in browser way to expand any of the images I start my posts with, like this one: http://furluge.com/2011/01/15/alternate-control-points-for-airsoft-conquest-scenarios/
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I mean the pages aren’t /broken/ currently. But before, you would click on any image on my website, and the thickbox would appear over the page with the expanded image, as opposed to now when you click it loads up a new page with the image. I suppose I could alter all of my links to make the pictures open up in a new window, but it’s not nearly as elegant as the thickbox / lightbox solution.
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Since you are inserting images individually, you could use the attachment post URL link to have the image appear in a separate page using your theme.
Also, you could use the Gallery shortcode to get the Image Carousel / lightbox, but besides using “includes”, it would take a bit of extra coding to get the image to appear left-or right-aligned.
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I think I know what you’re talking about. And how exactly can you do what you’re describing the gallery? It seems to be pretty set in stone the way it works.
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Oh and when you say the attachment post URL I assume you mean something like this:http://furluge.com/2012/05/01/old-schooled-may-2012-secret-game-hint-1/secret-blurb/
Is there an easy way to get it do that / get that url since linking directly the image doesn’t do that
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Annddd, nevermind that last one I found it, I realized I just had to go into the media library to do that instead of editing the image directly.
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