I have been scouring the internet for the last two days and have finally come up with a custom login form (understand: one doesn’t have to go through http://mycompany.basecamphq.com/login screen) to be deployed on almost every site (even WordPress 2.8+). I was reading the Basecamp forum, browsing through their API but to no avail. There are references to certain “Stickman’s method” and masses (masses! + more + here a little) of people looking for the very same solution. How does one embed/create their own login form to Basecamp on a 3rd party (one’s own) website?!
Well I’m very proud to say I have managed to achieve it. Partly by trial and error, partly through research. I have looked at libraries/wrappers such as “Basecamp PHP API” and “HTTP class for PHP“, both have their advantages but didn’t do what I needed out-of-the-box. I have studied these guys’ code and ended with a few (< 10) lines of my own solution which currently works. 100%. Bulletproof. I say currently because I suspect it might not be intended functionality of the authentication script. But I am also hoping that by the time 37 signals (Basecamp development team) change/disable it they will either PROPERLY describe how to achieve so (using PHP, no cURL and without using OpenID – which not everybody has).
Slightly hesitant to publish the solution not to bring Basecamp’s attention to it, but since I know there are LOADS of people looking for the solution I will tell you how. All I’m after is enough (say 25+) comments here requesting the functionality. Only then I will share. Promise! 
It is surprisingly easy, the only clue I’ll give you for now is to study the headers the login form sends and follow the redirections.
Demo will follow soon!
on Friday, 23rd October, 2009
37 Signals, authentication, basecamp, cURL, custom, form, login, openid, php, redirect
development, troubleshooting
You know the drill: backup, upgrade WordPress, check plugin compatibility, verify everything is up and running and… reapply your hacks to the core of WP. I have talked about displaying the post excerpt in the recent posts widget few weeks ago, today I’m going to talk about resizing the Avatar image file displayed in comments.
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on Monday, 31st August, 2009
avatar, core, docuview, excerpt, gravatar, hack, icons, php, recent posts, upgrade, widget, wordpress
development, troubleshooting
Based on an amazing article from ZURB I recommend you have a look at I have revisited their technique to:
- deliver the same solution in jQuery
- use a bit more flexible CSS (at least in my view)
- redesign our search box
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on Thursday, 13th August, 2009
alternative, browser, css, design, docuview, fixed, flexible, javascript, jquery, line-height, php, png, working
design, development
Everytime we upgrade to the latest version of WordPress (currently 2.8.1 3.0) we lose a bit of customising. Whether it’s the value of the search button in the search widget (hidden because of IE6′s and IE7′s disability to apply text-indent to form buttons) or the excerpt of our posts displayed in the widget on most of the pages disappears. For future reference and for people who don’t want to be searching for widgets to do that for them I’ve decided to describe how to quickly and easily get the job done – yourself!
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on Thursday, 16th July, 2009
excerpt, latest, latest version, link, php, recent posts, upgrade, widget, wordpress
development, troubleshooting
I do not normally repost or write about someone else’s blogs, but this one is far beyond what I consider useful and I wanted to share it. Pasting the link here so even I can come back to it in the future is far less than I’d like for such an article, but I’ll start with spreading the word. Educate, enlighten, encourage to explore, you’re ticking all my boxes!
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A trailer for a movie that does not even exist came out few days ago. And then I came across a link to a BETA Technical Preview of the new Office 2010. Just wanted to let you know that we will commence testing pretty soon and will prepare DocuView to be able to translate the new Office 2010 documents – when it launches – into PDF. Read more »