=== Plugin Name ===
Contributors: KimHbel
Donate link: http://blog.huebel-online.de/
Tags: blog, introduction, sidebar, widget
Requires at least: 2.1
Tested up to: 2.7.1
Stable tag: 0.2.2

Shows a thumbnail of a blogroll/linkroll-entry by random

== Description ==

This is a widget that brings up a little preview of a site into the sidebar. The link is chosen by random out of the links in the WordPress link-manager. You can specify a single link-category or use all categories for the random-link-base.

You can also decide to show invisible/private links. This is for the case you want to show links as a preview you don't want to show in the linkroll.

If you want and if there is a description for the link done in the link-description-field it would be shown.

A refreshing via AJAX could be enabled with a specific time (in seconds) when the next thumbnail would be loaded.

This widget uses the [websnapr](http://www.websnapr.com/ "Website Thumbnais For Your Site")-Service for generating the thumbnail-images. Keep their [term of use](http://www.websnapr.com/terms/ "General Terms and Conditions for Websnapr") in mind. You should get an API-Key for free from there to use this widget and get more then 80 snapshots per hour, with key it would be about 340 per hour (250.000 a month).

If you want to translate the plugin, feel free to do it! Since Version 0.2.0 the Output is fully internationalized.

To see the widget working in a production-environment, visit the [author's blog](http://blog.huebel-online.de/ "Blog of Kim Huebel").

If you want to leave a feedback, feel free to do this on the [plugin's homepage](http://blog.huebel-online.de/blogintroduction-wordpress-widget/ "Home of blogintroduction-wordpress-widget - Blog of Kim Huebel") of the author's blog. Though the pages are in german, comments in english are wellcome, too.

== Installation ==

1. Upload `blogintroduction.php` and `blogintroduction_ajax.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/blogintroduction-wordpress-widget` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
3. Go to Presentation -> Widgets and add the Blogintroduction widget
4. Configure your widget

The configuration is a simple thing:

* Title: This is simple the title of the sidebar-box shown in the box-header.
* Websnapr-API-Key: Here you could put in your API-Key. It's not necessary to fill this field for running the widget but its better to keep in mind with the [term of use](http://www.websnapr.com/terms/ "General Terms and Conditions for Websnapr") I think.
* Image-width: The value is a the number of pixels of the image-width in the sidebar. This parameter correspondents to the width-value in the html-img-tag.
* Link-category: Here you could chose the category of the links that would be the source for the random-links.
* Link-target: Simply means link-target. So where the link should be opened. "Im neuen Fenster" means in a new window, "Im aktuellen Fenster" means in the actual window of the browser.
* Show description: If the checkbox is checked, the link-description in the link-manager would be shown with a Label "Description" (depending on the translation).
* Show private links: Check this box to show private-links.
* Show new thumbnail in ... seconds: Here you enable the auto-renew-function, that means, every x seconds depending on the value you enter in the box on the right side, a new thumbnail would be shown. The minimum time is 10 seconds to avoid heavy traffic and other problems.

== Screenshots ==

1. This is the output of the widget, as you see it on the sidebar.
2. This is the widget-configuration-dialogbox.

== Changelog ==

Version 0.2.2:

* Fixed html-output for IE (description-part)

Version 0.2.1:

* Referer-check in AJAX-part implemented
* Output now validates against W3C

Version 0.2.0:

* plugin-internationalization included

Version 0.1.2:

* minimum refresh time set to 10 seconds

Version 0.1.1:

* plugin activation fixed

Version 0.1.0:

* adding AJAX for refreshing thumbsnails

Version 0.0.2:

* API-Key added
* show private/invisible links added
* CSS-Style-Classes added
* urlencoding fixed

Version 0.0.1:

* Initial shot.

== Frequently Asked Questions ==
= Where could I leave a comment or a question relating the plugin? =

If you want to leave a feedback, feel free to do this on the [plugin's homepage](http://blog.huebel-online.de/blogintroduction-wordpress-widget/ "Home of blogintroduction-wordpress-widget - Blog of Kim Huebel") of the author's blog. Though the pages are in german, comments or questions in english are wellcome, too.

= Sometimes I see thumbnails containing an error 404 or "bad request" or something, what's about this? =

If you see thumbnails containing some errors the cause lies at websnapr itself. I don't know, how they produce the thumbnails but it's not in my hands to fix this subject.