Yes development has started again and the first stop is to add additional formats to the output. Previously Lh Rdf only supported RDF-xml and has been designed almost exclusively around that. Therefore to add other formats I have bundled the Easyrdf library into the plugin. When the query string lhrdf is added to the feed URL the Easyrdf parser is invoked to parse the rdf xml output string and the output is then available in various triple formats.

See code extract:

$graph = new EasyRdf_Graph();
$graph->parse($out,”rdfxml”);
$data = $graph->serialise($_GET[lhrdf]);

The format chosen by value of the lhrdf variable E.G. http://localhero.biz/?feed=lhrdf&lhrdf=json

As well as simply being cool, having an option to output JSON is the main benefit as the triples are now no longer imprisoned by the same domain policy.

I also discovered that people have already created a set of WordPress plugins (see: http://ep-books.ehumanities.nl/ ) to visualise books and other similar publications. However blogs do not fit into a book/chapter model.

However given there is already a schema for publishing blog data and my lh-rdf plugin already exposes most publicly available WordPress blog data as RDF using that format. It was an obvious next step to get the visualiser working with the LH RDF output. I have done so and hopefully you think the output is cool.

http://shawfactor.com/visualiser-test/

LH Tools is a WordPress extension that adds an (ARC-based) RDF Store and SPARQL Endpoint to the WordPress blogging system. The store is kept separate from the WP tables (i.e. it’s not a wrapper), but you can use WP’s nice admin screens to configure it, it  and embed it using the large number of developer-friendly hooks that WP offers. It is based on the original work by Ben Nowack.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-tools/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-tools/. And interrogate this sites local endpoint here:

http://shawfactor.com/wp-content/plugins/lh-tools/

Whilst this can be used on a standalone basis, it is most useful when combined with the other LH (LocalHero) plugins:

LH RDF: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-rdf/

Which exposes a large part of the WordPress data as sematic rdf content

and

LH Relationships: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-relationships/

Which enables semantic linking between wordpress posts, pages, categories, and other objects. These three extensions used in combination enable a true semantic CMS and I’m curious what can be done now. I’ll add additional documentation and proof of concepts of what is possible in time.

LH Relationships is a WordPress plugin that enables the creation of true post to post relationships. More information for the rationale driving this is available here. It was built as a core part of the LocalHero project.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-relationships/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-relationships/.

However due to its blogging background it has one very substantial weakness. Namely there is no way of easily relating one post to another and detailing its realationship. Of course taxonomies can be used to group posts and provide some form of relationship. However this is not an elegant solution.

This issue has been raised before by the WordPress development team here. Some use cases are outlined, however, I think the discussion (which is now closed) misses the elephant in the room, semantics. WordPress claims to be a semantic personal publishing platform but until it has the ability to seamlessly and elegantly relate one post to another it will be nothing more than a publishing platform, and until it then exposes those relationships in an unabiguous machine (and human) readable format it will never be truly part of the semantic web.

Frustrated at this weakness I am releasing a series of plugins that will truly RDF enable WordPress.

The first is LH RDF. LH-RDF is a wordpress plugin that automatically creates a SIOC compliant RDF feed of wordpress posts, categories, tags, and author ojects. It comes with embedded content negotiation thus properly exposing WordPress’s existing linked data to the semantic web.

Whilst this plugin is built on a standalone standalone it is built to work with and is enhanced by the LH-Relationships plugin. LH Relationships is a wordpress plugin that enables the creation of true semantic post to post relationships and when used in conjunction LH-RDF those triples will be published in the LH-RDF feed.

If are interested you can read about it here: http://localhero.biz/plugins/lh-rdf/
and download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lh-rdf/.