The more observant (or should that be nosy?) of you will have noticed a new page appeared in my scripts section this week titled “BellaBiblio” (mucho thanks to Hayley for the creative name).
BellaBiblio is a new flat file PHP-based book rating/listing script for those avid readers out there. It uses a single plain text file to store the books and is easily wiggled into any ol’ website — you can see how I’ve trimmed it down for my 50 Books page (which I might now get ’round to updating).
Features include optional Amazon Affiliate ID integration, multiple sorting options (sort by Title, Author, etc) and the ability to store a small review/synopsis of each book. At this stage, an optional plug-in is also in the works which will allow people to suggest books to you, as well as tutorials which will help you modify the script to suit.
Thoughts, people! Thoughts!
16 May at 4:55 pm
Hurrah! Thanks for the script Jem. It really is a gem. ;) Now all I need to do is go through all my books, add it to the page and write a review on it! :o
16 May at 5:01 pm
Going to make my records of “x books in a year” thing much easier. :D Thanks. Great stuff. ‘Noggin.
16 May at 5:09 pm
Awesome job on this Jem; Even though I’m quite lazy when it comes to creating some sort of archive, I’m going to force myself to go through all books and add them to BB :P Also glad that you took in a lot of our considerations over at Snark. If I come across anything else that I think should be considered, I’ll let you know. :D
16 May at 6:47 pm
Oh that sounds interesting and quite useful for my not-yet-finished-upcoming personal site…And also, hopefully, easily modifiable for similar lists, like compact discs or movies.
16 May at 6:57 pm
That’s great, love! Now where are BellaBlog, BellaBuffs Collective, and BellaDir? Must I start sending you chocolate from the states? ;)
16 May at 6:59 pm
@Six: BellaBuffs Collective (and phpFanBase 3) are well under way. Couldn’t possibly comment on the availability of a BellaBlog, and BellaDir doesn’t follow my naming scheme :P I’m not allowed chocolate, I’m too fat :(
16 May at 7:58 pm
It sounds like a great idea. I think that I may try to integrate into WordPress somehow.
16 May at 8:01 pm
Brilliant! What? Bella-scripts FTW!
16 May at 9:33 pm
I did download this, and plan to get playing around with it soon. Tutorials would be awesome, and it’d be cool to allow people to suggest books to you. What a grand idea. :D
16 May at 9:40 pm
I just realized that my comment might be misinterpreted. I may just try to make it work on a WP page on my site.
16 May at 11:00 pm
That’s gonna be such a great alternative for those who think Mediashelf is too big for what they want to do.
16 May at 11:20 pm
Hmmm. That’s a cool idea to help organize that stuff. Maybe I’ll even try it…
16 May at 11:45 pm
I’m a mediashelf user, but might just find time to use BellaBiblio :) Looks awesome.
17 May at 12:12 am
score- this sounds great ^_^ i’m sure you’re trying to avoid this: but is there a chance of being able to use it for movies/music? I have yet to look at the script, so I haven’t gotten the chance to lookthrough everything. :#
17 May at 12:15 am
Excellent Jem! I was just blogging yesterday that I wanted to have a list of books I have read with all that stuff and a little review and rating. This is perfect!
17 May at 1:47 am
Very nice script :D I was excited when I read the thread about it over at Snark so I am glad it’s officallnow :)
17 May at 2:58 am
WANTS. TAKES. THANKS. This is really cool. It’s gonna be handy!
17 May at 3:35 am
Really awesome idea, Jem! I like it. I was thinking about doing something like this for games… Why not generalise yours a little more? The format must be the same for any kind of music/game/book/dvd etc? BellaReview (which doesn’t fit into the naming convention right? ;) Well on your way to WWW domination ;-)
17 May at 5:58 am
I love it. Started using it a few days ago. I’m going to try and integrate with my WordPress actually. Thank you. :D
17 May at 7:26 am
While I prefer Media Shelf, I’d agree with Nyx that it is a good alternative for small libraries and collections. Well done!
17 May at 7:29 am
@All: I didn’t create this to compete with MediaShelf :S
17 May at 8:14 am
I don’t mean to be picky, but on the script page you’ve got the following “Store small synopsis/reviews for each boook” Shouldn’t book only have two o’s? Yeah, I’m pedantic. Sorry.
17 May at 8:17 am
Why wasn’t this around when I needed it. ;) Back in the day I patched up this awful script, made it work with Amazon, and am still using it. I’m far too lazy to add a hundred or more books again.
17 May at 8:18 am
@Rachael: yes, I left it intentionally.
17 May at 9:30 am
Yet to download it but congrads on another release. I liked the old divider’s better :(
17 May at 9:34 am
What a cute little script. It would certainly be a nice addition to any website that doesn’t want to “plug in” to some of the Web 2.0 apps that offer similar services. One suggestion mind, how about marking up the books and reviews with the hReview Microformat (http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview)? Just a thought to move the code forward a little. I was also curious why the links to the books have a rel=”nofollow” attribute?
17 May at 9:44 am
@Si: thank you for the link, that’s interesting and I will look into it. The script itself doesn’t use nofollow – I add it to certain pages with external links if I feel that the subject of the link doesn’t need or deserve any link-love from me.
17 May at 2:38 pm
Lovely Jem. :) (Apologies for the comment absentness lately >
17 May at 2:38 pm
WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THAT?! (continues…) Been busy!) I’ll have to snag a copy and poke around in it to see if I like it. You don’t mind if I modify it for database use, do you? I’m not a fan of txt file driven scripts as it adds more file clutter to my already cluttered directories. ;) I have databases, hear me roar. :P Much love to you, doll. I feel bad that I wasn’t around for your little meltdown the other night. (Ouch, I didn’t realize how sarcastic that sounded until after I typed it. Can’t find a way to reword it though! I meant it sincerely, not sarcastically! -.-)
17 May at 2:42 pm
[And I spam Jem some more] Just thought you might want to know that your “Download” images don’t match your other skins because of the backgrounds. Not sure if you noticed or not, but figured I would point it out. ;) Okay, I’m done now! I’ll even leave so I won’t spam you more!
17 May at 4:14 pm
Does it work for DVDs too?! I’m thinking is it like Delicious library? (not related to the online book marks!)
17 May at 5:15 pm
I installed it and wow, it’s really simple, yet truly awesome at the same time. I’ll add the link to mine when I finish (or start, even) integrating it into WordPress. :P
17 May at 7:08 pm
I never meant to imply you created it to compete with Mediashelf at all. I think both scripts have different sets of tools for people with different needs and both have their own niche. I’ve seen several posts on boards like the TFL boards by people who wanted a review/collection script but found Mediashelf much too big and extensive for their needs, so that’s why I think BellaBiblio is a great, lightweight alternative when you don’t need something huge.
18 May at 5:54 am
How nifty!
18 May at 8:52 am
@Han, Shannon : I have pimped it to work with albums. And I love it. (Now I just need time to add stuff there.) *^_^*
19 May at 8:00 pm
Omg! Maybe you have created a book script that I actually can love. I’m definetly going to try it out!
20 May at 6:17 pm
I’m gone for a little while and you come up with something cool like that! I’m definitely going to try it as soon as I have a little spare time to get it running :)
20 May at 10:10 pm
Wow, I love this script. ^_^ Adapting it to films and other things would be awesome.
23 May at 5:23 pm
Brilliant!
03 Jun at 12:54 am
While I love this for a simple list, is there any way small thumbnails of bookcovers or whatnot could be integrated into the script? I’d really love to use this for a review site, but thumbnails would be a nice add-on, I think :)