It didn’t seem like it should be “that hard” to figure out the database tables that handled the user-group relationship and create a WordPress plugin that would automatically join a new user to the appropriate tables. I’m not sure why, exactly, I assumed this — but that’s the premise I was working off of. The following is the actual plugin and details for anyone that wants to implement it as-is. There’s plenty more work that would need to be done to “release it”.

It’s important to mention that EVERY user that logs into your WordPress instance will be added to a SINGLE group. There’s no way to exclude any users (without adding code for that explicit purpose). This isn’t a problem for my implementation, but I can understand that this may be an issue for some people. Either way, I’m sure this should be adequate for most people’s use.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Auto Add Users To Mingle
Plugin URI: http://mikebrum.com/
Description: This plugin automatically joins any user to a defined group ID so they can make forum posts
Version: 0.1
Author: Mike Brum
Author URI: http://mikebrum.com/
License: Freestuffz
*/

/*
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. Please test it in a way that will not
expose you to the loss of data if any problems are encountered.
*/

class forumAdder {
function add2forum() {
global $current_user, $wpdb;
$current_user = wp_get_current_user();
$cuid = $current_user->ID;

# check db to see if they’re part of “the group”
$id_query = “SELECT id, user_id FROM wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroup2user WHERE user_id = ‘$cuid’”;
$my_id = $wpdb->get_row($id_query, ARRAY_N);

# if not, then add them
if ( (! $my_id[1] ) && ($cuid != ’0′) && ($cuid != ”) ){
$wpdb->insert( ‘wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroup2user‘,
array( ‘user_id’ => $cuid, ‘group’ => 2 ),
array( ‘%d’, ‘%s’ )
);
}
}
}

$myForumAdder = new forumAdder();
add_action(‘shutdown’, array($myForumAdder, ‘add2forum’));
?>

So the first thing that you’ll need to do is copy the code above to a file and put it in your plugins dir for WordPress. I called it “auto_add_users_to_mingle.php”. Seemed appropriate.

There’s two things that you need to change:

wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroup2user — this is the Mingle ‘forum_usergroup2user’ table. Given the WordPress table prefix for the blog I was added it to is “wp_mauimtg_”, this is how we get this full table name. If you look in your wp-config.php file and look at your $table_prefix variable, it should be obvious what this should be changed to. It’ll basically be: $table_prefix + ‘forum_usergroup2user’

For reference, my exact line from wp-config.php is:

$table_prefix  = ‘wp_mauimtg_’;

The other important thing that needs to change is the line:

array( ‘user_id’ => $cuid, ‘group’ => 2 ),

Specifically, the number “2″ (the rest of the line needs to stay exactly the same).

Now, there’s no “easy” way to figure out what this number is supposed to be. You’re going to have to log into your database and figure out what that number is.

Here’s a straight forward way to figure it out (using the table names that I’m looking at as defined by my $table_prefix):

1) look at all entries in the table wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroups and find the group that you want everyone to be added to. There’s a column called “name” that will actually display the group name, so there’s no real guessing involved once you spit out the contents of wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroups.

2) the value in the “id” column is the number that you’re going to want to specify in the above line.

For example, if you have a group called “Family” that you wanted everyone added to and you looked that row up in your wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroups table and found that it had an id of “15″, then the line would need to be changed to:

array( ‘user_id’ => $cuid, ‘group’ => 15 ),

Once you’ve made the 2x table name changes and the 1x number change, you should be ready to activate the plugin.

If you get an error, you’ve probably screwed up the PHP syntax and should fine-tooth-comb the changes you made.

As I mentioned, this is my first plugin, so I’m sure there’s a number of things I could do to improve it. For instance, I’d imagine there’s a way to pull out the value of $table_prefix and do the string concatenation and I could make an admin panel for the plugin that brings up the list of groups in wp_mauimtg_forum_usergroups and lets you select one from a pull-down instead of having to hack at it by hand.

But both of these enhancements are for another day.

I just wanted to contribute the code if it can help others. Hope you have luck implementing it.

You can download a zip file directly: auto_add_users_to_mingle.0.1.zip

On one hand, it’s only 11pm here because work is pegged to EDT and I’m in HST. The bad thing is that I’m also pretty tied to EDT and wake up at 5am or earlier. If I were still on the East Coast, it’d be 5am and I’d have been up from the night prior, with work starting at 11:30pm. But given that I’m still waking up really early, the fact that it’s only 11pm is somewhat immaterial — especially when you consider how long I’ve been working today. The raw hours are a bit scary.

From my last trip to Oahu, I had a leftover “5 Hour Energy” drink that I never ended up needing. It was the first time I had bought one, but figured since I’d be up really late, it was probably worth having it just in case. Well, ‘in case’ never came so it traveled back with me to sit in my medicine cabinet. Around 8pm, I could tell that I was starting to get a tad slower. I was far from “tired”, but I knew I was going to be feeling it in a few hours despite the copious amounts of Coke that I’ve been consuming all day long. With that realization, I went to the medicine cabinet and cracked open the tiny bottle.

While bringing it to my mouth to drink, I paused and read the “instructions”. Basically, they said “drink half of the bottle if you want 1/2 the energy in the bottle, but drink the whole thing if you want super energy”. I knew I had at least 5-6 hours of work ahead of me, so I figured it was both safe and prudent to go all in.

Here’s where disappointment sets in — it’s only 3 hours later (I’m still working) and I feel exactly like I would have had I not taken that drink. I have to do a lot of out-of-hours work and get woken up in the middle of the night with phone calls, so I’ve got a pretty good bead on how I react to sleep and sleep deprivation.

My loose assumption is that my body is pretty well tuned to break down stimulants given my diet that consists of a large amount of sugar and caffeine sources. I’m one of those people that can drink soda right up to going to bed and my eyes still shut when I hit the pillow. Maybe this should have flavored my expectation of efficacy, but given the explicit goal of the drink, I was hoping for more.

Next time, I’ll just take an afternoon nap.

We did manage to get a bunch of beach and snorkeling time in, hence the sore legs.

Since I work at home and Corinne just got a job (and works alone while there), we haven’t really had the opportunity to meet a lot of new people yet. I know it’s only a matter of time, but it doesn’t change how odd it feels. It’ll definitely change over time though.

There’s a really good reason why:

In a month, I’m moving to Hawaii.

See, told ya.

After I get settled, I plan on getting back w/ the updates. I’ll also have fun stuffs to talk about and hopefully tons of pictures to post.

Until then, do the Facebook thing if you need to know the day-to-day nonsense.

Aloha, bitches.

While flipping around, I came across the show Alone In The Wild. It’s absolutely amazing. Here’s the basic idea:

Alone in the Wild follows the survival adventure of Ed Wardle as he treks across the Yukon territory for three months.

Short and sweet, right? On its surface, you’d think it sounds a bit like Man vs Wild or Survivorman, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve only seen 1 episode, but what an impact. Besides the constant struggle to find food and stress over things like bears, Ed’s biggest challenge may be simply being alone with nobody around and nobody to talk to. He frequently talks about how much he misses people and is frequently seen crying — either due to stress or loneliness.

It’s definitely not on the brighter end of “entertainment”.

Ultimately, Ed had to get airlifted out of the wilderness after 50 days because he was basically dying of starvation. While he didn’t meet his 90 day goal, I can’t imagine most people would fare much better.

This is a partial paraphrase of something Ed said earlier in the episode, but there’s a huge difference between living and surviving… and watching just one episode is a very sobering reminder of that.

I realized that, yet again, I’ve been very bad at updating. Facebook gets all the love simply due to it being very easy. Twitter even gets some action. The breakdown is somewhat odd — facebook gets nonsense and links, twitter gets MMA and M:tG posts (oddly incongruous) and my blog gets rambling. I need to find a better way to get the lot integrated.

I’m still playing M:tG regularly. I need to focus some of that as well since it’s kind of all over the place and I’m sure I could be improving more if I looked at my play habits. I’m tired of playing and being “about average” and not taking home any prizes. I’d really like to get to a point where the hobby starts to support itself. While paying for it doesn’t bother me, I’d still like to get something back for the time and money investment.

And work… got lots of that and it’s been a very strange month. The next two will likely be strange too. We’ll see what happens.

When something exciting happens, I’ll be sure to holler.

I’m a fairly recent UFC convert, but I’ve been really enjoying the sport. I have some friends in town from Portland, OR that are big fans and have been to events in the past, so we ponied up the cash for tix and set in to watch some fights. We had good seats and a nice view of the action. A pair of cheap binoculars really helped when there was an unobstructed view to get a great shot of the action.

Not all of our picks won, but it was still worth it.

The Couture v Toney fight ended pretty much exactly as expected and was hilarious to watch. The Lauzon fight was great and the crowd was totally in his corner.

If UFC ever comes back to Boston or is having an event somewhere nearby, I’ll def by looking for tickets.

I’ve been meaning to post an update for a while, but simply haven’t gotten around to it.

While I come up with a more content-rich update, know that I just uploaded 15 new images to my Underwater Gallery. We were able to get out to the Isle of Shoals this year, similar to last year. Definitely a great dive with some amazing animals!

I’ll update more later – promise!

I don’t depart tomorrow until 4:45, so I should be totally fine as long as I don’t sleep until 3.

Beyond “dealing with the weather”, it’s a very open trip.

Not looking forward to the flight, but I’m happy that it’s a non-stop flight from BOS to PDX. Could be a lot worse.

Later, if this goes smoothly, I’ll figure out how it works with images. Definitely neat!