MODx + Wordpress + Zenphoto (Site Integration)

It is done.! If you pay any attention at all to the footer (bottom) of my web pages, then you have figured out that this site is powered by some powerful software. The main site is powered with MODx  CMF, Wordpress, and Zenphoto. Each of them are freely available open source software, heavy hitters in their respective fields, and highly configurable. You would think that making all these run together to deliver a single seamless platform (*.MrEaster.com – home, blog, media) would be easy. Wrong. Very wrong. In the end,

The method that did not work:

Source code

<?php
//http://codex.wordpress.org
 
require('/the/path/to/your/wp-blog-header.php');
?>
 
<?php
$posts = get_posts('numberposts=10&order=ASC&orderby=post_title');
foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
<?php the_date(); echo "<br />"; ?>
<?php the_title(); ?>    
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php
endforeach;
?>

This (or any form/derivative) will not work inside of MODx because the two will conflict when it come to routine calls and functions. It is explained better here. It does how ever work if you set it aside in its own folder (which is what Wordpress originally said to do). But that is not the way in which it will be used by this site.

The method that does work:

pieX – simple and effortless. pieX is the pluggin version of SimplePie for the MODx system. SimplePie works by displaying the RSS feed of any site that has a one. Bingo! Problem solved. Install the plugin, and effortlessly include blog content (or any content that supports RSS feeds).

So after going through all that trouble trying to get Wordpress integrated with this site*, … do you think I was going to go looking for a hack to include Zenphoto content?** Nope. As luck would have it, Zenphoto also supports the RSS feed method *Yay!* So the same concept was applied when including the content from *.mreaster.com – ‘media’. A method so simple, yet over looked. Check out the integrations on the home page, blog, and media sections of MrEaster.com!

*It was a lot of trouble, and sleepless nights!

**I’m sure there is some easy hack for Zenphoto integration, but who cares, I’ve already ‘found the light’.