This is a plugin for gathering comments and submissions from your profile on Hacker News for display on your site. The only requirement is that you have the Action Streams plugin already installed in your Movable Type 4.x blogging system. If you’re a developer and would like to enhance this plugin, you can download the project directly from the repository. The project is also available in a .zip if you would like to simply download the project for immediate installation.

As already mentioned, it is assumed that you already have the Action Streams plugin. There are some nice examples of templates that come with that plugin which allow you to easily see how you can showcase your streams on your pages. The templates I used are very customized but the ones that Mark Pasc(Action Streams author) provides are pretty universal and not to mention, they look good. It’s pretty easy to insert them into a fresh new index template or an already made template. In order to display the icons and formatting found in the demo(the YCombinator logo), simply perform one of the following two options.

Take the image found in the ASHackerNews plugin’s mt-static folder and place it in the Action Stream’s mt-static/plugins/ActionStreams/images/services folder. Then add the following line to the action-streams.css which is already in use to style your present streams.

.service-hackernews {background-image: url(../images/ycomb.png);}

The other way you can do it is outlined in the included README file that comes with the ASHackerNews plugin. The directions there simply state to place the ycomb.png file into your mt-static/plugins/ASHackerNews/images folder(check the directory structure to see that this already in place). Then simply add the following line to your Movable Type’s main style sheet which substitutes the MT tags with your mt-static’s path.

.service-hackernews {background-image: url(plugins/ASHackerNews/images/ycomb.png);}

The second example above may look a bit more complicated, but that’s only because of the attention to formatting to fit this specific page’s width. Either example will work fine and are equally easy, coming down to your taste of where to put the picture file. The second option might be preferred due to the case of any updates that might be made to the Action Streams’ code.

Please keep in mind this plugin is not without faults. The README file indicates a few bugs that I’ve yet to completely work out. With respect to the lack of time I have starting this week with school reopening, I’ve brought the plugin to a working and stable release provided the directions are followed. If you have any questions or need assistance with this plugin I’m happy to help. The bugs are minor but it’s my goal to eventually resolve them as soon as possible as they can certainly be patched. If you’re brave enough to try this small piece of code, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Click the first picture to view the working demo and click the second and third pictures to view a larger version.

Presented on September 3, 2008