WBCE CMS Forum

kswanson

Member

Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

I have encountered significant difficulties uploading a new plugin for OPF and have invested an excessive amount of time attempting to resolve the issue. Despite leveraging debugging assistance from AI tools such as GitHub Copilot and Google AI, my efforts to identify and solve every conceivable problem have been unsuccessful.

Success with Link Words
I was able to successfully modify the Link Words plugin to enable support for phrases rather than just individual words. However, I was unable to create and install a new Link Phrases plugin alongside the original Link Words plugin. As a workaround, I edited the “filter” file with the updated code and uploaded it via FTP, effectively overwriting the existing file. Although this approach worked, it is not an ideal or recommended method for managing OPF plugins.

In my view, the OPF platform is significantly underutilized. I can easily envision numerous ways to leverage this feature, yet I am unable to upload newly created plugins. While I do not claim to be an expert programmer, I am capable of following instructions precisely. Nevertheless, even with extensive hours spent and assistance from various AI tools, I have been unable to achieve success.

Installation through the OPF dashboard has never worked for me, leading me to rely on FTP for uploading files and folders. Unfortunately, resetting the cache after FTP uploads does not resolve the issue either.

It is disappointing, as I am close to abandoning this project despite the considerable potential for new plugins. There must be a more efficient and straightforward method for creating and installing new plugins within OPF.

florian

Administrator

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

I'm really sorry to hear that.
There are two ways to add output filters, either in the OPF backend or as a module. Did both ways not work?
Would you like to share your work, also the files you created, and describe your work steps, error messages or entries in the error log etc. more precisely?
AI instructions always sound very promising and conclusively, but in the end, you need to spend a lot of time in prompt engineering. Specially with a not so popular CMS like this one, where no or only few code examples exist from which a LLM could learn. So it starts to halluzinate and mix up code from Wordpress etc. or supposes precumstances which actually do not exist.
To be honest, I cannot promise if I can help you, since I have litlle knowledge of the OPF system and how it's actually working, but maybe we can wake up its developers from their hibernation ;-)

Last edited by florian (26.09.2025 00:23:18)

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kswanson

Member

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

Thank you Florian.  I'd be happy to share my work, I'm all about contributing to the community especially with a top notch platform such as WBCE.

Server Error Messages
No errors recorded on the server.

[1] Upload Zip File - Preferred Method
Admin tools --> OPF Dashboard --> Upload Plugin button --> select .zip file
Error Msg: Upload Failed.  This is not an Output Filter plugin file.

[2] FTP/cPanel Upload - Alternate Method
1. Upload folder (mine is called 'tooltip_words') and the files contained within the folder
-- Location to upload is: /modules/outputfilter_dashboard/plugins/
-- After uploading the folder structure should look like this: /modules/outputfilter_dashboard/plugins/tooltip_words
2. Refresh module database
  AddOns --> click "Advanced" at upper right. --> select "Modules" checkbox --> click "Reload" button
3. Go back and check the OPF Dashboard to see if the plugin has been detected and installed.

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Since neither method worked for me it was time to troubleshoot my files and code.

A - Folder/File Structure
tooltip_words/
    filter.php
    index.php
    plugin_info.php
    plugin_install.php

**Unlike Modules, both the "info" and "install" file names must be preceded by "plugin_" when creating Plugins for OPF.

• plugin_info.php

• plugin_install.php

B - Zip File Method Upload via OPF Dashboard
⋄ When unzipped, you should see the `tooltip_words` folder (not the individual files).
⋄ Make sure all files are saved as UTF-8, (without BOM).

C - FTP/cPanel Method
⋄ Location to upload is: /modules/outputfilter_dashboard/plugins/
⋄ Make sure file permissions are correct after upload (folders 755**, **files 644)

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Since both methods failed it's time for more troubleshooting.  Before proceeding, go back to the server and delete the folder called "tooltip_words".  This avoids potential conflicts in the next steps of troubleshooting.
(to follow)

florian

Administrator

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

Hm, strange.
What should I say, it worked like a charme in my test environment...

What did I do?

1. I unzipped the attached file and had a look at the files inside of the directory /tooltip_words.

2. I removed the ~ backup files.

3. I zipped the contents of that directory.

4. I went to Admin Tools > Output Filter Dashboard > upload filter (plugin)

5. I selected the zip and clicked on upload

and ta-daah the filter appeared ...
I created a wysiwyg page with an appearance of the phrase
and ta-daah the output was modified accordingly.
Since I was to lazy to implement a real tooltip script I modified it to use the HTML <dfn> tag with a title.

Last edited by florian (26.09.2025 16:06:18)

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Sorgen sind wie Nudeln: man macht sich meist zu viele.

kswanson

Member

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

Thank you for testing out the files, Florian, this helps me out a great deal.  Instead of debugging lines of code within the files I can switch gears and focus on the server environment.  My hosting company is looking into it now.

Slugger

Member

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

Hello,
Thank you for this very useful little tool.

It's practically a way to create your own dictionary for your website.

It's just a shame that it doesn't take German umlauts into account when creating the filter.

Please note:
The first word before | is not converted as üöä

Is there already a CSS file for a more attractive display, or what instructions do I need to use?

Example:
https://planet-pp.de/pages/posts/opf-to … ter-21.php

Last edited by Slugger (28.09.2025 15:32:45)

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florian

Administrator

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

The content of wysiwyg sections (and everywhere else where the CKeditor is used) is saved with entities instead of Umlauts, e.g. B&uuml;cher instead of Bücher. So the trigger has to be written the same way.
Regarding the style - there's a bunch of jquery tooltip scripts, have a look at https://www.jqueryscript.net/tooltip/
These ones look promising:
https://www.jqueryscript.net/tooltip/AR … Query.html
https://www.jqueryscript.net/tooltip/mi … e-jph.html
Note: The integration of the scripts have to be realized in the template or a snippet.

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Sorgen sind wie Nudeln: man macht sich meist zu viele.

kswanson

Member

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

It's practically a way to create your own dictionary for your website.

My original intention was to create a dictionary (glossary, ontology) by utilizing several tools in combination. 

[1] The first tool being the Link_Words download, which I modified to Link_Phrases by using a pipe "|" delimiter in place of the original space " " to accommodate multiple-word links.  Example: (nice link|https://addons.wbce.org/pages/output-filter.php)
To change the original version to Link_Phrases replace the original "filter.php" file with the file attached.

[2] The second tool was to be the Tooltip_Words OPF Plugin we've been discussing here.  I never could get it to work on my installation so I did not bother making it pretty by adding CSS styling.  Florian's suggesting of using jQuery instead of OPF seems the way to go to me.  I've had to abandon the Tooltip_Words OPF Plugin idea, even the experts at my hosting company could not debug the problem with my plugin.

**The combination of Links and Tooltips provides the "semantic connections" of a dictionary, but you still have to lay the foundation.

[3] The last element of the dictionary is to create the terms themselves.  This is the tricky part.
Structure is the key to it all and it often requires a good deal of planning ahead.  A small dictionary is relatively easy to organize but a larger dictionary may require various sections, categories, and tags.  To complicate matters you'll also likely need to incorporate a number of HTML elements as part of the planning process.  WBCE provides a number of very good tools and features that provide that needed Structure and if you plan ahead you can make use of these tools when creating your dictionary terms.

kswanson

Member

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

I'll try to attach the above mentioned "filter.php" again.

Last edited by kswanson (29.09.2025 13:46:17)

florian

Administrator

Re: Issues Creating New OPF Plugins

Hm, I don't know if an OPF is actually the best way to create a dictionary. You will end with a lot of plain text lines for each definition, this will become very hard to manage if you have more than just a bunch of definitions.
I would suggest to have a look at the real modules like Members or OneForAll which seem to me much more suitable for this kind of content. They also have sorting features.
Of course, I neither know which kind of dictionary you're planing, nor the context, but it seems to me also from the user's pont of view not very usable to hover / tap on each word I'd like to know (what placing the explanation in a tooltip ballon would lead to).

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Sorgen sind wie Nudeln: man macht sich meist zu viele.