Creative-Commons-Configurator WordPress Plugin

This is the historical homepage of the Creative-Commons-Configurator plugin for WordPress, which lets you easily license your content and media under a Creative Commons or other license.

This plugin intends to become the only tool a user will need in order to set a Creative Commons License on a WordPress blog and control the inclusion or display of the license information into the blog pages or the syndication feeds. All configuration is done from a page in the administration panel. Template tags are also available for those who need customization.

Features

These are the plugin’s features in short:

  • Configuration page in the WordPress administration panel. No manual editing of files is needed for basic usage.
  • License selction by using the web-based license selection engine from CreativeCommons.org.
  • The license information can be reset at any time. This action also removes the options that are stored in the WordPress database.
  • Adds license information to:
    • The HTML head area of the every blog page (this is for search engine bots only – Not visible to human visitors).
    • The Atom, RSS 2.0 and RDF (aka RSS 1.0) feeds through the Creative Commons RSS module, which validates properly. This option is compatible only with WordPress 2 or newer due to technical reasons. It will not appear on versions older than 2.0.
    • Displays a block with license information under the published content. Basic customization (license information and formatting) is available through the configuration panel.
  • Some template tags are provided for use in your theme templates.
  • The plugin is ready for localization.

Installation

Copy the cc-configurator.php file in your /wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate the plugin through the administration panel.

The license configuration can be done from within the administration panel. Go to:

Administration Panel -> Options -> License

Compatibility

For full functionality, this plugin requires WordPress 2 or newer. If you use it with older versions of WordPress, the option to include licensing info in the feeds will not appear in the configuration page.

License

Creative-Commons-Configurator is an open-source project, released as Free Software under the terms of the Apache License version 2.

Downloads, Issue Tracking, Support

For the latest releases of Creative-Commons-Configurator please visit the Creative-Commons-Configurator development web site.

This plugin is also available at the WordPress Plugin Repository from where you can automatically receive the updated releases.

The development website also hosts an issue tracking facility, where you can check the current feature requests and bug reports.

Development Status

This plugin has been discontinued.

Creative-Commons-Configurator WordPress Plugin by George Notaras is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2006 - Some Rights Reserved

39 responses on “Creative-Commons-Configurator WordPress Plugin

  1. Cover Permalink →

    You have really done a good job on this. Keep it up!

  2. Josh Wilkins Permalink →

    Just wanted to say thanks for the great plugin!

  3. John Holman Permalink →

    Just a note of caution: I am no expert so this might be due to something I did. But part of my site went down after I installed your plugin — I run WP 2.04 and a modified K2 091. The home page was there and correct but all other pages lost some their formatting and appeared corrupt. I de-installed your plugin but that didn’t change a thing. I then went into the database and deleted the wp-option stuff your plugin inserts. After that all worked well again. Sorry, as I said maybe it was just me and my site (template) but I thought I’d mention it….

    Regards
    John

  4. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Hello John,
    Reporting such issues is the right thing to do, so you shouldn’t be sorry about that.

    First of all, some info about the options. The following are the options that this plugin adds to the wp_options table whenever a CC license is set:

    bccl_body_extra
    bccl_body
    bccl_html
    bccl_rdf
    bccl_header
    bccl_feed
    

    All these options are removed whenever the license is reset from the admin interface (options->license tab). For example, when you press the “Reset License” button, the above options are removed. If you de-activate the plugin without previously reseting the license, the above options will remain in the wp_options table, but they are not used for anything else and they cannot interfere with any of the blog’s functions. They just take some storage space in the database table.

    Here are some possible reasons that the problems you mentioned might have happened:

    || The home page was there and correct but all other pages lost some their formatting and appeared corrupt.

    There might be some problem between the default message’s (license info) HTML code, that appears under each post, and your theme’s HTML code. Probably not all HTML tags are closed properly and generally a HTML related issue.

    || I de-installed your plugin but that didn’t change a thing.

    This is something I do not understand. This plugin works without requiring any manual theme editing. It uses the available hooks to add the license info in the post body, feed, or page head.
    An issue could rise only in the case that the user has manually used the template tags that this plugin offeres, so to add license information to any place the user likes. In this case, if the plugin’s functions are called from within the theme, but the plugin has been de-activated, the blog would simply not work. This is normal behaviour. It can be avoided by using function_exists when calling a function.

    In your case, I assume that either the wordpress cache or any other caching mechanism you may use was the reason that the page remained the same, even after the de-activation of the plugin.

    || I then went into the database and deleted the wp-option stuff your plugin inserts. After that all worked well again.

    As I explained earlier, the stored options cannot produce any problem by themselves. They are just some options, prefixed with bccl_. It’s also very unlikely that some other plugin has the same options so to conflict.

    Generally, I cannot provide any other explanation about your issue. I believe that the problem is only the default license message’s HTML code or any additional HTML code that is added to it through the admin panel. When I have the time, I’ll re-examine the plugin in a new test blog to determine if there is an issue with it.

    Thanks for your feedback.

  5. John Holman Permalink →

    Thanks for your fast feedback. I might get brave and try it again today. I only know enough about this stuff to be dangerous but my thoughts about it were also to do with something like and unclosed div or some html stuff. It installed well, and only went ape after I chose putting cc in the header and RSS! BTW just for accuracy, when I said I de-installed, that was not a correct statement. I deleted it via ftp so I suppose it didn’t deactivate and maybe I exacerbated my problem. Told you I was dangerous :-)

  6. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    John: I had some free time today and, after upgrading to WP v2.0.5, I checked this plugin a bit. You were absolutely right about the corruption of the HTML code. It happens when the extra license message field is filled with HTML code. New versions of wordpress escape this code, which produces the results you mentioned in your comment.

    Plus another bug with the administration panel have been corrected in version 0.5 of the plugin.

    Thanks for your feedback.

  7. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Hello Albert,

    This would be a nice and useful feature, but sincerely I do not know how much time and effort it will require in order to implement it. I have never studied the code that has to do with user management in wordpress.

    On the other hand, I expect that support for CC licenses becomes part of wordpress itself because, as you have mentioned, licences are very important.

    I would like to extend this plugin’s functionality by making it possible to define a CC licence on a per-post basis and, after yor request, on a per-author basis. The problem is that I have no free time at the moment and there is absolutely nothing that can be done for this right now or in the next 2-3 months. Sorry.

    Moreover, I would encourage you to file a request for support for CC licences in the wordpress trac.

    Best Regards,
    George

  8. Albert Permalink →

    We’re working with wordpress now for over 3 months. As a company that puts value on a worldwide change of view on ways of licencing we are searching for an option to give each of the writers for our blog a choice between licences for their piece, ranging from strict copyright too the most loose form of public domain. In this CC-licencing can play a big role, cause they have them all.
    What I now miss with this plugin is just that, give the writers their own form of licencing to pick within the ‘write-post’ section throug a drop down or checkbox functionality.

    Is there anyway you guys allready working on this. And if not, is there any way we can encourage you guys to do so :)

    Hope to hear from you soon.
    Sincerely,
    Albert

  9. Daddo Permalink →

    Hi,
    Plug works without any problems, nifty little thing,
    I’m not so familiar with php but would like to include the license image like you have over here in my footer, how would I go about this ?
    THX

  10. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Hi, the plugin provides some template_tags which you can use in your theme templates. To display an image hyperlink of your current licence you can use the following:

    <?php bccl_license_image_hyperlink() ?>
    

    For more info, please read the advanced section of the plugin’s configuration panel.

  11. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Support for creative commons v3 licenses has been added.

    A new release will be available later today.

    Stay tuned ;)

  12. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Version 0.6 of the plugins has been released. This was a quick fix in order to support the new Creative Commons v3.0 licenses, which would not work with the previous version of the plugin. I would like to thank Dave for reporting this issue.

    How to update:
    – Download and extract the new version of the plugin.
    – Overwrite the old file with the new one.
    – Go to Options->License configuration panel and reset the license (this will also clean the database from any old options)
    – Now follow the instructions in order to add the new license code. Actually this involves pasting the code that you have generated from the creative commons website.

    A new version, which will contain cleaner code will be available in the following weeks. If you encounter any issues with the current 0.6 version, please report them ASAP.

    Thank you

  13. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    The latest and greatest version 1.0 is out.

    This is an almost new plugin! Just try it out! :)

    Upgrade instructions:

    – Reset your current license
    – Install the new version of the plugin by overwriting the old file
    – Go to Options -> License and select your license and options.

    Enjoy!
    :-)

  14. Sara Permalink →

    I really want to try this plugin but I am feeling completely dumb. I don’t understand the installation instructions. I have been blogging for 4 years but have never added any plugins. Where do I find the Administration Panel? Thanks!

  15. Dmitry Paskal Permalink →

    Thank you for your plugin, it’s simply must-have. Can you please make a small update for me?
    In it’s code it have all references to creative commons site by http but not https protocol – so on my https site I had an unsecured content error because of creative commons image loaded by unsecured protocol.
    https://creativecommons.org/ – creative commons site works well thru https, what I’m asking for is to replace http with https in your plugin.
    Again, thank you so much for your work!

  16. Dmitry Paskal Permalink →

    Dear sir,

    please change CC image location from http:// to https:// – it will cause no problems and that’s required to build secured site with all content loaded by https protocol.

    Thank you!

  17. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    @Dmitry: I will look into this for the next release. Thanks for your feedback.

  18. Limor Permalink →

    Hi, for some reason after going through the ‘new license’ process I get back to my site but receive a ‘page not found’ message. Any idea what this might be and how I can fix it? thanks in advance.

    1. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

      This must have to do with how the “exit_url“ is generated. I’ll look into this and and try to improve the generation of the URL in the next release.

      Thanks for your feedback.

  19. Peter Permalink →

    This is failing because the redirect is looking for “admin options general” this target no longer exists in 3.4.1

  20. Granpa Smurf Permalink →

    I just installed the plugin. I selected the Creative Commons license I prefer and continued. A 404 error page showed. When I return to Dashboard and select the plugin, it still shows the initial “new license” page. I tried limiting the license to US, but got the same result.

  21. Álvaro Permalink →

    Hello,

    Is there anyway to center the message created by the plugin? Its alignment is left at the bottom of my posts and I would like it to be centered.

    Thanks.

    1. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

      Hi Alvaro. You can format the box as you like by adding custom CSS for the cc-block and the cc-button classes. Also check out the setting that reads: ‘Disable the internal formatting of the license block.‘.

      Hope this helps. ;)

  22. Heiko Adams Permalink →

    Hi, the latest version has some issues with the new widget:
    1) The links to the license deed are broken because they’re starting with “http://http%253A/”
    2) The license name is not correctly decoded and has a “2520” before and after the license’s version number.

  23. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

    Hi Heiko,

    Thanks for your feedback.

    I cannot reproduce this behavior. Could you please reset the license and recheck the widget HTML code?

    Please consider cleaning the browser cache and deactivate any caching mechanisms you may use.

    George

    1. Heiko Permalink →

      Hi,
      I did some coding to fix this issue and I won! If you want, you can get my modified version of the bccl-settings.php from [Link reducted]

  24. Dario Permalink →

    Hi. I just installed your plugin. I wondered if

    1. there is a way to prevent the license to appear on specific pages/posts
    2. there is a widget I can use to display the license on a sidebar

    Thank you in advance.

  25. NetTim Permalink →

    Batch clean-up or modify feature may useful. For example, I want to remove/modify the CC option for a set of posts/pages.

    1. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

      Batch modification of the licensing information is not supported and currently there are no plans for such a feature. Of course, a patch that implementes this feature would be welcome.

      Thanks.

  26. Manuel Permalink →

    Hi,
    How can I tweak the code to make CC Configurator to default to no license (manual selection). For my workflow selecting which posts would require CC is the standard, but CC Configurator assigns the CC automatically. I need it the other way around (Maybe a feature for future release?!)
    Thanks for any help.

  27. ricardo Permalink →

    I cannot update the plugin, i get the following error:
    403 Forbidden
    Access to this resource on the server is denied!

  28. Ota Permalink →

    Hello, George! How to remove for the image of CC? And i want to make background transparent. How to? Anyway, thanks a lot for making useful plugin. Very nice!

    1. Ota Permalink →

      And i want to change font style to italic. Can i change this? I am beginner for PHP code. Thanks in advance

      1. George Notaras Post authorPermalink →

        Hi,

        Thanks for your kind words!

        The inclusion of the image can be configured in the settings. The styling of the license block can be changed by adding custom CSS. Please check the following example about customizing the CSS. This can also be done by adding an custom stylesheet to your theme. The class that should be overridden is: .cc-block

        If you need more help, please open an issue at the Github issue tracker.

        Kind Regards,
        George