Grabbing web pages using Press This tool

Press This is a bookmarklet built into WordPress that allows us to grab any web page(s) that we find on the net and publish it on our blog. We can find Press This tool inside the Tools option of the Tools menu. Tools menu can be selected from the main navigation menu. On selecting the Tools option from the Tools menu, we get a page that shows two tools, Press This and Categories and Tags Converter as shown in below given figure.

Tools page

To use Press This tool, we need to drag the Press This link from the Tools page and drop it into the bookmarks bar. Other existing bookmarks in the bookmarks bar will automatically shift to accommodate the new link. As soon as we drop it in place, we are prompted to supply its name. By default, it inherits the text of the link as shown in below figure.

Specifying a name to the Press This link

Here, we keep the name of the bookmark as Press This and select the OK button. The Press This link appears as bookmark in our bookmarks bar. Now, while surfing the Internet if we find any page or post that we want to publish on our blog, all we need is to select the Press This bookmark from the browser’s bookmarks bar. It may happen that we get a 404 error. The error is because of the reason that the URI encoding gets mixed up with the mod_rewrite function. To fix this problem, right-click on the Press This bookmark on the browser and select the Properties option. Safari users can select the Edit Address option. We will find a JavaScript code in the Location box (Address box in Safari) as shown below:

javascript:var%20d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f='http://bmharwani.com/blog/wp-admin/press-this.php',l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,u=f+'?u='+e(l.href)+'&t='+e(d.title)+'&s='+e(s)+'&v=4';a=function(){if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=1,scrollbars=1,status=1,width=720,height=570'))l.href=u;};if%20(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))%20setTimeout(a,%200);%20else%20a();void(0)

In this code search for:

u='+e(l.href)+'

and replace it with:

u='+e(l.href.replace(/\//g,'\\/'))+'

The modified JavaScript code appears as:

javascript:var%20d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f='http://bmharwani.com/blog/wp-admin/press-this.php',l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,u=f+'?u='+e(l.href.replace(/\//g,'\\/'))+'&t='+e(d.title)+'&s='+e(s)+'&v=4';a=function(){if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=1,scrollbars=1,status=1,width=720,height=570'))l.href=u;};if%20(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))%20setTimeout(a,%200);%20else%20a();void(0)

After making the above-mentioned changes, select Save to save the changes. Our Press This bookmark is functional now and while surfing on the net, if we come across a web page that we want to publish on our blog we can just select the Press This bookmark from the browser bar. On doing this, a new window gets opened in the WordPress text editor with the imported text as shown in below figure. We can add more text, edit it, select the category, add our own tags, images or videos, etc.

Web Page captured through Press This 

After making the desired changes, we can select the Save Draft or Publish button to either save the content for future changes or to publish it on our blog straight away. On selecting the Publish button, the post gets published on our blog and is confirmed with the message, Your post has been saved. The links to view and edit the post are also displayed along with the message. The grabbed page can be seen in our blog as shown in below figure.

Captured Web Page appears on our blog

Hence, we can see that Press This is an excellent tool for publishing contents on other sites in our blog.

For more information, refer my book, Blogging with WordPress 3 for Beginners available at Amazon.

For more articles, visit my blog, http://bmharwani.com/blog