Wordpress Rubik Plugin

Ever since the interest in the Rubik's cube started to grow around the millenium (aka the second Rubik's cube resurgence) speedcubing afficionados have created Rubik's cube websites. Searching for "Rubik's cube site" on Google at the time of writing already returns 973 results. Many sites have a tutorial or at least a list of move sequences, the so-called algorithms.

The Rubik's cube plugin for WordPress is a tool that can help you write Rubik's cube solutions online. A sequence of moves can be displayed in an article or comment using a simple code. It will either show an animated cube in a java applet, an image of what the cube looks like before the (solving) algorithm is applied, or a link that goes to an applet animation.

Usage

The general format is [ rubik name="value" name="value" ... ] (sans the spaces near the square brackets, otherwise you would now see an applet). Note that the quotes are mandatory. The default value of the type attribute is 'applet', meaning it will show an animation. However, not every browser can show applets, and they can also slow down a page when many of these applets are shown. Therefore an alternative is to show a PNG image of the cube using type="image". For this to work correctly your WordPress hosting company has to offer GD support. The final two types, iframe and link, will work on any page, since they don't actually run on your site, but instead use content of this website (vanderblonk.com).

Installation

Drop the zip file in your plugins folder
Go to Plugins in the WordPress admin
Activate the plugin
Start writing shortcodes in your posts and pages.

Examples

Applets

[ rubik alg="FRUR'U'F'" ] - The simplest one that will show an algorithm with all other options defaulted.
FRUR'U'F'
[ rubik alg="FRUR'U'F'" width="100" height="120" ] - a very small applet.
FRUR'U'F'
[ rubik alg="FRUR'U'F'" bgcolor="CCCCCC" ] - an applet on a gray background in case you wish to blend the applet with your site's background color.
FRUR'U'F'
[ rubik alg="R'D'RD'R'D2RyR'D'RD'R'D2R" bgcolor="F5F5F5" displaylines="0" ]
R'D'RD'R'D2RyR'D'RD'R'D2R

And that is definitely not all you can do with this wonderful plugin. The user manual should tell you some more advanced uses. If you still can't find what you're looking for send me an email.

Images

[ rubik alg="R'D'RD'R'D2RyR'D'RD'R'D2R" type="image" width="240" ]
[ rubik alg="R'D'RD'R'D2RyR'D'RD'R'D2R" type="image" width="120" ]

Links

A link is of course the easiest and the most lightweight method of inserting an algorithm. The link has to point somewhere, and I chose to show a popup with an animated applet.

Iframes

An iframe is an html tag which inserts another html document inside the page. The iframe content can come from anywhere on the internet. They are used a lot, especially to embed content that requires plugins.

Known issues

Unfortunately WordPress automatically converts quotes to smart quotes. Smart quotes had to be disabled to make the code work. If you really like smart quotes you can get the unformat plugin, which allows you to enable/disable these for individual posts.

Download

Download the latest version of WP-Rubik:

WP Rubik 1.0 - 377 KB

Or download the plugin without the applets:

WP-Rubik - 25 KB

Applets - 352 KB

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