Here’s some of the stuff you’ll find unique to this theme:

• Clean bright looks (all existing themes are on the “dark” side, no not of the Force!)
• Ajax comments & comment refresh (New comments appear directly on screen, no more accidental double posting because users don’t see their comments!)
• Valid xHTML/CSS
• Lightweight & Cross browser friendly coding
• Scores 70+/100 (C) according to Yahoo’s performance checks! (All other PHPmotion themes score F!)*
• Super sexy success/error messages! (Unfortunately PHPmotion defaults are very basic)

These aren’t the only cool things about the theme but I wouldn’t want to spoil the suprise, I’ll post a link once there’s a demo!

* Please note, I’m not saying anything is wrong with any of the existing PHPmotion themes simply that this one is highly optimized for performance!

This solution is probably only best suited to those with quite a few videos already uploaded as it applies the changes to any video. If you are working on a new site it may be simpler to clean the tags on upload.

First step, open up your favorite text editor, create a blank file and name it functions.php. Then copy/paste the following code into it:

function clean_tags($field,&$value)
{
/**
	Remove unwanted breaks, etc..
**/
	$clean = strip_tags(str_replace(array('<br>','<br />','<br/>',"\r\n"),'',$value));
	$value = sentence_spacing($clean);
}

function sentence_spacing($the_string)
{
/**
	When breaks are removed it can squish all together, add spaces in correct places.
	May or may not be the same for all languages.
**/
	$patterns = array("/!/","/\s,/","/\?/","/\./");

	$replacement = array("! ",", ","? ",". ");

	$the_string = preg_replace($patterns,$replacement,$the_string);

	$the_string = str_replace('  ',' ',$the_string);

	return $the_string;
}

Basically the first function clean_tags does… you guessed it remove unwanted tags and line breaks from the string. Whilst the sentence_spacing function helps make sure that it doesn’t all turn into one big string of words stuck together. By using the preg_replace function it adds an extra space if needed after characters like: ?, !, ., etc..

Anyway once that file is created and saved upload it into your classes/ folder. Now in classes/config.inc.php add the following line to make the functions available to the script:

require_once('functions.php');

This can be placed pretty much anywhere within the php tags. Now upload that file. This is where you get to start using the cool new functions we’ve just made. Open up the template file of the page which is displaying the problem and find for example the following (from inner_index.htm):

<!--[blkfeatured.description;block=div;ope=max:45;comm]-->

Now change it to this:

<!--[blkfeatured.description;block=div;ope=max:45;onformat=clean_tags;comm]-->

Now if all went well after uploading the template all <br/> problems should have disappeared from that block. You just need to add this to any other place you start seeing this problem pop up.

Did this help or didn’t it work? Please leave a comment below or post in the forum to let me know!

That’s something I’ve decided to work on in my spare time, a new 100% hand coded, CSS styled, speed optimized theme for PHPmotion. How optimized?

According to this website page analyzer, a lot!

Have a look at some stats below (I’ll show the link to the theme once it’s more complete. These stats are currently only based on the home page).

Default theme:

• Total http requests: 65
• Total size: 525kB
• Download time (T1): 15.85s

New theme:

• Total http requests: 13
• Total size: 92kB
• Download time (T1): 3.10s

Now we all know computer generated stats can be a bit un-explanatory so here’s an easier to understand result. On my slow 1024kbps DSL connection at home that works out at*: default theme - 24.17s, new theme - 5.83s. Who’s site would I rather be on?

* Results after clearing browser cache for each test.

I wasn’t planning on going anywhere but I got an offer I can’t refuse a free trip to Portugal with a friend of mine all I have to do is help paint their house over there. Sounds fair to me, anyway once I get back I’ll catch up with everything and hopefully finish the phpBB/PHPmotion bridge I’ve been working on for so long.

Unfortunately I won’t have much Internet access, so I’ve momentarily disabled installation services for the phpmotion addons to avoid any problems. If you have any problems/questions you can still email me & I’ll try and get back to you asap.

phpBB3 Integration is so very nearly complete! I think I’ve pretty much covered everything code related & now I just need to make the phpBB theme match the default PHPmotion one.

So hopefully this means that it will be available for purchase in the next few days! Isn’t that just cool?

Feel free to sign up & test! The quicker the bugs are found and fixed the quicker the addon will be released!

A few days ago I released an update to the seo pack available for PHPmotion v2 and everyone was happy. Then someone gave me a few suggestions for new features, so I thought why wait…

Since I didn’t even have time to post about the previous update I’ll give you a quick list of the new features now.

• Rewritten member pages (members audio,video & favorites)
• 301 redirects for search engines when they visit the old links.
• 404 page not found feature (replacing the original not so 404, 404 feature included in PHPmotion)
• An admin area!! (Yes, you can now easily change the settings from your web browser)
• Reworked meta layout system! You now have a lot more freedom in setting up your meta tags!

That’s about it for the previous update, excluding the fact that it was also debugged & now fully compatible with PHPmotion V2 stable.

And now for the latest update:

• Rewritten tag links
• Reworked the pagination to include seo friendly links.
• Rewritten category link for home page videos.

I also have 2 more bits of good news for those reading… I will hopefully be writing some form of documentation on the seo pack as a few have requested it. And… the phpBB3/PHPmotion integration is now complete! All I have left to do is put the demo online so you can all test it and then pack it up & add it to the store!

So, if you’re looking for somewhere to host your video site, blog or whatever other sites you own take a look here you won’t regret it!

PS. Their support is the best I’ve ever seen, I used the ticket system for a few questions I had & usually it was solved within minutes! I’d definitely recommend them if you need someone to walk you through the first steps!!