Google Spell Checker

30th Mar 2006 Danny

Installation for v1.6 "Alpha"

Three Easy Steps

Information: The extraction will result in a single file, named _googlespell.plugin.php and a directory, named googlespell_plugin.

The directory contains three files and another directory, named rsc. The file named "README.hmtl", provides summary, installation & usage information.

DOWNLOAD: GoogleSpell V 1.6 (zip) and unzip it locally.
UPLOAD: _googlespell.plugin.php (the file) and googlespell.plugin (the folder) into the /plugins directory of your b2evolution (v1.6 "Alpha") installation, on your host server.

** NOTE ** (The _googlespell.plugin.php FILE does not go into the googlespell.plugin FOLDER. Instead, like the FOLDER, it should be placed in the /plugins directory.)
INSTALL: Login to the Back Office and head to: Settings Tab -> Plug-ins Tab -> Looking for "Google Spell Checker" in the Available plug-ins list. Click [Install], to install it.

That's it! Installation is complete. "Google Spell" is now available through the Back Office. If you don't want to add spell checking capabilities to your comment form, then you can skip ahead to the "Usage" page. However, if you wish to allow visitors to utilize spell check against their comments, read on.

(OPTIONAL) Let Visitors use Google Spell for Comments

EDIT: the <head> section of the main template for your skin(s) "_main.php", by adding the following code:
PHP:
<?php $Plugins->call_by_code( 'goospel', array() ); ?>

How painless is that? "Google Spell" is now available to your visitors and hopefully, they'll use it.

From here, you'll probably want to have a quick read of Usage & Styling, where we cover the basics of using this feature and also a couple of settings that you might find useful.

Contents

Tags: back office, comments, spelling

69524 views · leave a comment ( 36 )

36 comments

Comment from: spot dimler

finally ... the blog works :|

05/31/06 @ 21:22

Comment from: ¥åßßå

lol, born a comedian huh? :P

¥

05/31/06 @ 22:07

Comment from: dAniel hAhler

Here's a bug report for the 1.8-cvs version (0.3):

it does googie1.decorateTextarea("itemform_post_content",..., but that does not work for the "Edit Comment" textarea, which has another ID. You could now use $params['target_type'] in AdminDisplayEditorButton (which is "Comment" or "Item"), but the easiest and cleanest solution is to use the JS var b2evoCanvas instead, which holds the name of the textarea ID for the item's and comment's form.

06/10/06 @ 17:23

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Thanks for the heads up Blueyed, I'll hopefully implement all the changes you've suggested later on today. :D

¥

*edit*
I've implemented your suggestions and the 1.8 zip has now been updated.

Blueyed : I couldn't use b2evoCanvas for comments though as it's not available.

06/12/06 @ 11:02

Comment from: Dave

Looks like Google has killed the ability to use their toolbar for spell check. Next!

06/14/06 @ 19:25

Comment from: stk

Just notced tht the plugn is reprting: "no splling erors" acrss teh board??

06/16/06 @ 18:18

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Google, in it's infinite wisdon, has moved the api url to an https url. Unfortunately ssl is unavailable on this server which kind of makes it a smidge tough to connect to the new url.

Looks like we need to find another source.

¥

06/17/06 @ 09:33

Comment from: stk

Okay ... we need to get SSL support on the AM server, then the demo will work again.

The plugin still works for anyone whose host provides SSL support. (Works on my blog). Yay!

If you haven't done it already, people just need to change line 19 of the "xmlproxy.php" file, replacing the "http" with a "https". (The file is in /plugins/googlespell_plugin/rsc folder).

Why does Google do stuff like this? Odd.

-stk

06/22/06 @ 18:01

Comment from: ¥åßßå

The zip files have both had the amendment made to them.

I also implemented the js changes sent to us by John McKnight (I don't have a url for him so I can't provide any linkage).

¥

06/26/06 @ 09:36

Comment from: balupton

Instead of adding [?php $Plugins->call_by_code( 'goospel', array() ); ?] to your _main skin file, why not use the SkinBeginHtmlHead event, and use that to contain that code, with a plugin setting to determine wether or not it should be used...

07/11/06 @ 09:09

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi Balupton,
At the time the 1.8 version was written that hook wasn't in the cvs. We've slowly been upgrading our plugins to work with the release version of 1.8.

The 1.8 version of the plugin has now been updated, so grab the latest version of the zip file ;)

¥

07/14/06 @ 08:24

Comment from: Kyle

In order to fix the https problem, I use a php proxy script from the original site. For anyone interested, you can check it out here:

http://orangoo.com/labs/uploads/sendReq.php

My thought is that instead of me pointing to this script for my installation, maybe the necessary code can be integrated into the plugin? It seems like this method will work for any server, but I haven't tested it. All I know is that with your default install, it failed, but after pointing it to that script, it worked perfectly.

This is just a suggestion/thought I had.

07/14/06 @ 20:16

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi Kyle,
Yeah I made a cockup and forgot the ssl bit when I changed the xmlproxy, this has now been rectified and both zips updated.

Thanks for catching that :D

¥

07/15/06 @ 07:55

Comment from: fulcrum

I am using Opera 9 and the Spell Checker controls don't show up. OK, let me be more specific: the controls don't show up on my site and they don't show up on this page (at the top in the 'Google Spell Demostration') however, they show up at the top of this comment text area. JavaScript is enabled so I am not sure what is going on? Any ideas?

07/25/06 @ 02:46

Comment from: stk

Fulcrum,

Why Demo Controls are Gone

We're in the process of upgrading this blog from CVS v1.8 to the newly-released v1.8 "Summer Beta". The fact that there was even a demo inside a blog post was a tad special and it used a plugin, which injected some javascript, to allow the demo). I'm not sure if it's the plugin or the JS code that's not functioning at the moment, but that's probably why the demo controls don't show up.

Comment Controls

The comment controls do, which is testimony that the plugin code functions and properly inserts the spell-check controls into the comments section (they're showing up in the backoffice too).

However ... neither work at the moment and this we blame (ultimately) on Google ...

Some time ago, they changed the spell check API to a secure server location (for some strange reason). Hey, they're Google, I guess they can do what they want. In any case, though the script has been modified to take the HTTPS URL change into account, THIS windows-based server that hosts our site, does not currently have SSL support. So, while the controls are there, the spell checking never happens (and we have to be very careful about our spelling).

So ... what version of b2evolution are you trying to use this with?

07/25/06 @ 04:30

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi Fulcrum,

I've updated the 1.8 zip, it should cure all your problems. If it doesn't then send me a link to your blog and I'll see if I can work out why.

¥

07/25/06 @ 10:52

Comment from: fulcrum

I downloaded the latest version of the plugin and everything seem to be working. Thank you for the quick turn-around!

07/26/06 @ 02:11

Comment from: Scott Kimler

it should cure ALL your problems.

LMAO ... that's a mighty big claim there, cowboy ¥! :p

07/26/06 @ 03:40

Comment from: Jeremy Bettis

It would be really nice if when the spellchecker failed, that it would notify the user instead of just saying "No errors found". Particulary for errors like failure to connect to google, or no SSL support in PHP, an error message would help get things fixed.

08/07/06 @ 22:01

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi Jeremy,
That's a really cool idea, but I figure it would be a tad tough to incorporate into this version of the plugin.

I'll have a root around in the code and see what I can do. If not then I'm sure it'll make it into the next version of the code ;)

¥

08/10/06 @ 08:35

Comment from: MrDav

I installed the plugin on my site, and I get an undefined error when trying to check a comment. So I thought I'd come here and whine. I tried your demo and all I get to see is the little wheel going round and round and not stopping. Is this a known issue? Oops, I just tried to check this comment and got the undefined error message again.

Meanwhile I am going to see if firefox produces the same error. :)

08/17/06 @ 18:07

Comment from: MrDav

It seems to work fine in firefox, but not in IE beta3. I guess I will have to turn it off till M$ or AM has a fix.

;)

08/17/06 @ 23:44

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi MrDav,
I should get chance over the next few days to play with the plugin so I'll see if I can cure your errors at the same time.

It doesn't work on this server because SSL isn't enabled which is needed to connect to google, but that's one of the other things I'm hoping to cure ;)

¥

08/18/06 @ 07:53

Comment from: Chim Bon

Excellent plugin!

I have it working in one blog but not in another. Both blogs are at different servers.
How can I tell wether the server with the blog that has the GoogieSpelling not working, has SSL enabled or not?
How do you enable it?

Thank you!

10/22/06 @ 14:47

Comment from: Chim Bon

How can I tell wether the server with the blog that has the GoogleSpelling not working, has SSL enabled or not?
How do you enable it?

Can you please answer.

11/12/06 @ 17:04

Comment from: Guillermo Casanova

¿Is there a way to establish a language by default? My blogs are in spanish and spanish are the people that comment on them. I want the Default language to be Spanish instead of english. Possible?

12/02/06 @ 01:18

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi,
If you read page 3 Usage and styling, there's a section all about changing the default language.

Chim Bon : You should be able to chack if you have ssl support by looking at your php_info();

¥

12/05/06 @ 06:33

Comment from: Guillermo Casanova

¥åßßå: Thank you! Problem solved.

12/07/06 @ 22:41

Comment from: khalid

I'm using b2ev 1.9.1 and install this plug-in but no check spelling button does not appear in either Write/Edit in the backoffice.

Where should this button be?

01/17/07 @ 07:12

Comment from: Khalid

Sorry, I forget to mention that I can't find a checkbox for spellcheck comments on the backoffice blogsetting for this pluhin even though I inserted the code in Step-4 in my skin _main.php.

01/21/07 @ 03:36

Comment from: ¥åßßå

Hi Kahlid,
Sorry, we don't do email support for our plugins as it defeats the purpose of having this blog where everyman and his dog can see the solutions to any problems that people may have.

Some of your problems are caused by the fact that this plugin was written a fair tad ago and has never been updated to 1.9.x as FF (the only browser to use ;) ) now has a built-in spell checker.

When I get a chance I'll install this on a 1.9.x blog and see if I can get it working, but it's a tad tough to check as this server doesn't (currently) have SSL support for php

¥

01/21/07 @ 13:16

Comment from: Nelson

I am using 1.9 and it works, nice work :)

02/17/07 @ 13:50

Comment from: Stephan

I'm using 1.9.2 and the spell checker doesn't work. It was fine when I was using 1.8+. The error is as simple as "error Encountered undefined". Now this could be as a result of IE7, but I'm not sure. But when I pushed "Check Spelling" on this commentm it's doing the same thing without the error message. The spiral just keeps spinning, so it may have something to do with IE7.

04/07/07 @ 02:47

Comment from: stk

Stephan,

Hmmm. I'm using 1.9.3 (minor difference) with IE7 and the spell checker works for me?

It does rely on a 3rd-party server (google) and a relatively undocumented API and (of course) Google changes the rules and access on a whim. We're not big on the plugin, for those reasons.

You might be interested to know that FireFox 2.0 has a built in spell checker, which you can use natively (no plugin required).

Hope this helps.

stk

05/02/07 @ 16:09

Comment from: Tristan

Great. I'm using 1.9 and it works =)

10/10/07 @ 20:32

Comment from: Oliver Sturm

I'm using b2evo with the latest version of this plugin and it works great in Firefox. But when I use IE, I can't get it to work - live checking doesn't work, the above mentioned error message comes up when I click the "check now" link, and the popup menu for the language switch appears halfway outside the window to the right. Any chances of a fix for this? Too many people using IE out there :-)

Thanks - great plugin!
Oliver

05/23/08 @ 23:16

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