BrokenCrust
Web Design & Development

This Day In History 2.0 Released

by BC on

So the first thing you’ll notice is that we jumped directly to version 2.0.  That’s because this release has some major changes.  There have been several bug fixes as well as the enhancements to the shortcodes (which have now been split into two), the widget which can now display events for yesterday or tomorrow instead of today) and the administration screen where dates can now be sorted in different ways.  You can also enter dates without a year by using 0000 as the year.

NB:  This version requires php 5.3.0 or higher due to the use of a newer date function.

Sub Categories Widget 1.4 Released

by BC on

This release implements a enhancement request to have the post define the parent category for the sub-category list.  The first category of the post (the first post is used if more than one are displayed, for example on an archive page) as a parent category.  If this category has no sub-categories then the widget is not displayed at all.

You’ll also notice that the exclude categories option is now a multi-selection list (use ctrl click to select more than  one category).

The release also improved sanitation and validation of widget input.

 

This Day In History 1.1 Released

by BC on

This release of This Day In History sees a complete overhaul of the administration screens. This fixes a pagination bug with WordPress 4.0, adds screen options so you can choose the number of rows to show and also hide columns you don’t want, adds a basic toolbar to the name field to make it easy to add formatting and links, a changed style to fit in with the new WordPress dashboard, the plugin options page has been redesigned and a link added to the plugin screen so it can be more easily found, oh and the widget code has been updated to the latest standard and the options screen tidied a little.

This Day In History 1.0 Released

by BC on

This is the first production release.  It has two enhancements,  Firstly you can customise the message that is displayed when there are no events (under Settings -> This Day In History) and secondly there is a new parameter for the shortcode (show-all) that you can use to show all the events that you have added.  These enhancements are both user requests.

Sub Categories Widget 1.2 Released

by BC on

A new version of the ever popular sub-categories widget has been released which has two enhancements.  The first is that you can now exclude specific categories by entering a comma-delimited list of category IDs and these categories (and any sub categories that they have) will not appear in the widget listing.

The second enhancement is the ability to show the full sub-category tree; all sub-category levels will then be included in the widget list rather than just the first level of subcategories.

This Day In History 0.8 Released

by BC on

This release implements an enhancement request for event types.  For each event you can assign a single type and then use this to filter the results in the widget or to group similar event types in the same widget (for example, boys and girls birthdays or births and deaths).  This means that you can have two or more separate event types each with its own widget.

Read More …

DragonflyCMS Convertor 1.0.0 Released

by BC on

This is the first production release of the convertor and I am confident that it will work well for most people, however there are many configuration choices and oddities from various add-ons and alike in DF so let me know if something strange is happening with your particular conversion.

The convertor has been updated for phpBB 3.0.11 and has a few minor code fixes and there are no extra features with this release.  You can download it from the phpBB convertor repo or from the mod page on this site.

Random One Cat Widget 2.3 Released

by BC on

This release adds an enhancement request to allow the shortening of posts to the More… marker if it is used (if it isn’t used for a post the entire post content is displayed as before).  This gives much more flexibility about the type of post that you are able to display in the widget.  To use this simply check the new option box on the widget.  If you aren’t displaying post content, but only title, there will be no change to the display.

 

This Day In History 0.5 Released

by BC on

This is a bug-fix release to allow the editing of entries with html code in them.  Actually the editing of anything with double quotes, which where not being escaped correctly since the suppression of magic quotes in 0.3.  Oh how I hate magic quotes.  It is in the employ of my enemies.  Hopefully this will finally sort it out.

This Day In History 0.4 Released

by BC on

This is a bug-fix release because I forgot to adjust for local (blog) time.  The widget now decides what day it is based on what you choose for your blog under settings rather than just asking the server what the time is.  I had always intended to do this but put it aside because I couldn’t remember the WP function name and then completely forgot about it. Fixed thanks to a bug report.

This Day

This Day In History is pretty flexible – you can use it to display a variety of daily content – jokes, tips, quotes and alike.

This Day In History 0.2 Released

by BC on

An updated version of Today In History has been released.  This includes several minor fixes and more drastically a name change to This Day In History to sort out a name-space clash in the WordPress plugin repository.  You can download it here, via the repository.

If updating from 0.1 you must first completely uninstall Today In History then install This Day In History – due to the name change there is no upgrade path – sorry.

Today In History Plugin Renamed

by BC on

I’ve had to rename the Today In History plugin to This Day In History.  This is because even though the name-space isn’t being used in the WordPress plugin repository it has already been taken by someone else who never actually uploaded anything.  I’ve checked with the WordPress people and they confirm it is taken, not being used and not available to me.  They are going to look into the name-space issue generally but aren’t committed to sorting anything out specifically.  Yet another on-line collaborative community where dead names-paces is a well-known and yet unresolved  issue.  Nobody wants to grapple with name recycling it seems.  You think at least projects over six month old with no upload might be released.

I can apparently use another name in the repository but keep the plugin name.  That doesn’t make sense to me so I’ve changed the plugin name to something that is available and now granted to me.  Once I’ve updated all the code I’ll be uploading the plugin under the new name – so check it out – This Day in History.   Not the most original world beating killer application of 2012 I expect, but useful nevertheless.  Well it is for me anyway – and I hope for you too.

Random One Cat Widget 2.2 Released

by BC on

I’ve had a couple of comments about the formatting of titles from people using the widget to display a list of titles for random posts.  After thinking about this for ages it finally dawned on me that WP widgets tend to use an unordered list for display and I didn’t use that in this widget because originally the widget only displayed one post and mostly then just the text of that post and not the title.  However since I updated the widget to display up to five posts and added the option to only display the post titles, that configuration is popular, but the formatting isn’t a list.

OK that was a long boring explanation of why the list of titles isn’t actually a list.  Well it doesn’t matter so much why it happened that way only that it did and more importantly that people expect it to be a list.  So now it is.

In this version if you choose to display titles only you’ll get an unordered list.  If you don’t you’ll get the same display as before (a div for each post).  I hope that helps.

Random One Cat Widget 2.0 Released

by BC on

Version 2.0 of the Random One Cat widget for WordPress was released today.  This is a complete rewrite of the module to use the new WP widget class.  That not only future proofs the widget but also greatly simplifies the code and reduces it by about half.

In addition this version allows you to display up to five random posts at a time, rather than just a single post.

Unfortunately the move to the new WP widget class means that any widgets you have already added to you theme with a previous version will be removed when you upgrade to version 2.0.  I know that will be annoying but the benefits of moving to the new class far outweigh the effort to re-add the widget (i.e. this widget will continue to work in WordPress 3.1 and beyond).

Random One Cat Widget Titles

You can choose to show the Random One Cat Widget widget or post title or not by selecting from the drop-down list.

Random One Cat Widget Improvements

by BC on

I’ve made a small change to Random One Cat Widget which improves the functionality of titles.  You can now choose to display only the widget title, only the post title, both of the titles together or neither title.   A new drop down has replaced the checkbox in the widget configuration and you should revisit each one to choose the option you prefer.  This adds flexibility to the widget without bringing much additional complexity.  I hope that you like this feature – please take a moment to leave some feedback either way.

101 Lists and How to Manage Them

by BC on

Right.  After a great deal of trawling about it seems that there is no publicly available WordPress plugin to help manage a 101 things list.   That’s not good enough.  A gap that I am going to fill.  It shouldn’t be that hard.  A nice new admin screen to enter and manage the list, together with a status for each task and maybe categories.  A couple of widgets (in progress, latest tasks completed, grid of completion, stats, countdown etc) and a nice list tag to display the list in style (or a task or a category of tasks).

That will give everyone more time for doing list things themselves.  That’s my strategic tip for getting your 101 done.  Spend less time on list management and more time on list completion.  Decide -> List -> Do -> Tick.  It’s not new or clever, but it is a strategy.  You might want to think smarter and visit 101 Strategy for something more in-depth.

The best 101 things site I’ve seen so far is at Scarlet Words, although I personnaly prefer a less complex 101 list itself but I nevertheless intend to steal some of Elizabeths ideas.  Hopefully she wont mind – her list seems devoid of tasks that my stealing of her ideas might help complete – but I hope I don’t ruin 025 if she reads this  (if you ever get around to 081 I’ll might help) .   BTW I like the idea of secret tasks – too late for my current list I guess, but it would have made for a more interesting list for me (if not for readers of the list).

Random Post Widget

You can use Random One Cat Widget to display a random post from a given category.