AFdN Updates

Information concerning the website

New Site Layout

It’s been just about a year since I last updated the theme for this site, but I finally have a new design.

There are several reasons for the redesign, primary motivated by my desire to take advantage of some of the new features in WordPress 2.7: Paged comments and Threaded comments.

I also wanted to simplify the design layout of the site. This theme is what I found: Internet Music by Smashing WordPress Themes.

I modified it a bit to make it wider (I wanted more room for text) and to make it fit my style better.

I like that it’s not as visually cluttered as the previous theme, but it still manages to maintain essence of me (orange color and view of Seattle, for example).

I also took the time to update many of the pages I have. Pages are different from posts in that they live outside of the chronology of the blog. I uses pages for content that is subject to much change or is updated often. Some of the pages I moved to posts (the old links will automatically forward) and a couple pages I deleted.

I’m still tweaking the design a bit, but I think it’s pretty much there. Let me know what you think!
vegas-photos-uploaded-sorted-and-tagged-c2bb-andrew-ferguson-dot-net_1230462372983

0

Comments Update

Small administrative note: Effective immediately, email updates to comments will be sent from do_not_replay#andrewferguson#net (replace with # with the appropriate symbols). Thus, please do not reply directly to such emails via email. If you wish to comment, follow the link and comment on the website.

0

The First 2000 Posts

Some 409,075 words later, this is the 2,000th post. It took about six years to get here. I wonder what the next six years will look like?

Enjoy some of the goodness and get a random AFdN post.

Incidentally, I’ve also recently posted by 10,000th picture to Flickr:
DSC_4654

0

Countdown Timer v2.2

I wanted to release this earlier, but between finals, being sick, and field session, I haven’t had a lot of time. This version of Countdown Timer (almost) updates the UI to 2.5 look and feel. As it turns out, there’s actually some function calls I can use to better create the UI and I’ll be using those in the future. There’s a couple of bug updates and added some new functionality.

Also, Countdown Timer v2.2 requires WordPress 2.5 or higher!

The run down:

  • Updated some phrases that missed being i18n.
  • Updated i18n to use use sprintf’s to assist in proper translation.
  • Update the admin page to WordPress 2.5 Look and Feel.
  • Users are now able to define the data (text/HTML) that comes after the title and before the actual countdown.
  • Implemented a new function, fergcorp_countdownTimer_single($date), that allows users to create a one-off event outside of The Loop. $date should be PHP strtotime parseable string.
  • Plugin output is now XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant.

Read more or download version 2.2!

0

More Ways to Digest What I’m Thinking

From 143 subscriptions, over the last 30 days I have read 6,426 items, shared 52 items, and emailed 12 items.

That’s the synopsis from Google Reader. If you’d like to see what I share (i.e. what I find interesting), you can read my Link Blog:
Andrew Ferguson’s Link Blog.

It’s a good way to see what I know and find out what I’m interested. Especially since I really hate to create echo chambers. I really try not to post links to things here unless I have something substantial to add.

At some point (and depending on if I get any requests and how many), I may integrate the AFdN feed and my link blog feed together.

0

Countdown Timer v2.1.1

After dilly dallying around for a couple months, I finally got serious about pushing the 2.1 version out the door. A couple of reasons for this actually.

First, the WordPress 2.5 is coming out end of March/beginning of April and I wanted to get out one more release (this one) before the next version of WordPress hits the streets.

Second, it’s fits with my development flow; releasing every few months when I can.

Here are the list of updates in Countdown Timer v2.1.1:

  • Fixed i18n translation issues where mo file would sometimes not be loaded
  • Updated UI (note: Based on UI code from Google XML Sitemaps)
  • Removed code dealing with recurring events (which has not been included for a few versions now)
  • Added js countdown ability to admin example (which doesn’t have wp_footer hook?)
  • Updated the link to the JS file to make it dynamic in case a folder gets renamed
  • Fixed a bug in the JS file that caused dates to be calculated incorrectly
  • Append a letter to the beginning of the unique id (as per XHTML requirement)…who knew?
  • Added two language files: Swedish (thanks to Mattias Tengblad) and Spanish (thanks to Google Translator)

The biggest change user will notice is the new UI. It’s based off the code from Google XML Sitemaps which I’m assuming is based off the code from WordPress itself. The great thing about the new design is that you can collapse, expand and move around the boxes to fit your work flow.

All the other changes are ‘under the hood’ and deal with code changes to make things work better in a larger variety of situations.

The Countdown Timer plugin is about three months shy of its third anniversary of public release! I’ve basically been maintaining it since the end of freshman year in college, which is when I switched to WordPress.

The first public version was v0.6. It had about 50 lines of code and used a text file to store the data. There was also no UI at all.

Version 2.1 is about 950 lines of code. Storing data in a text file is gone, instead using the WPDB. There are also several support files, including the javascript port of the countdown mechanism which is another 150 LoC.

Since the beginning of last March, there have been over 8700 downloads, which would almost pay for a semester of college if everyone gave a $1 (wink wink)!

Read more or download version 2.1.1!

Update: Had to increment the plugin to version 2.1.1 because of the way that WordPress does version numbers. In short, v2.01 is the same as v2.1. So I had to release this as 2.1.1.

0

Countdown Timer v2.0, Now with v2.01 goodness!

Update: There was a bug in the initial 2.0 version that required the plugin to have PHP5 or greater. This has now been fixed and it works with PHP4 and PHP5. Thanks to Jim Lynch for bug report.

Well, I finally managed to push Countdown Timer v2.0 out the door. It’s a bit later then I wanted, but it’s out and that’s all that matters for now. The biggest update for v2.0 is the ability to have the time automatically update using some Javascript. The idea for this has actually been around for a while and credit for it goes to Tobias (see: Ultimate Countdown Timer; 1-Up’d by a 14 Year Old). I was hoping I could use a lot of Tobias’ code, however I had changed a lot between then and now.

During the development phase, I wrote some code that basically took a look at what value the timer was at and then subtracted one second from that. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that this method would not work. Because there are a variety of options in what units of time are displayed, screen scraping and then recalculating would have been pretty cumbersome. It also meant that I had two ways of calculating the time (the first way was the PHP-based fuzzyDate function I wrote, the second would have been this monstrosity). So I did what any code programmer does and copied myself. I converted the PHP-based fuzzyDate function into Javascript and then passed the needed values to the JS function. Voila!

In any event, here’s the changelog:

  • Updated plugin description line
  • Rearranged text in the installation notes to emphasize using the widget rather then the code
  • Fixed a bug that crashed the plugin if no dates were present (a PHP 5 problem??)
  • Implemented the ‘register_activation_hook’ function rather then the old way
  • Changed the way DB updates are handeled. Instead of having a specific update regimine for each version, the plugin will only update an option field if it doesn’t exist (if it exists, but is blank, it will NOT update…as it shouldn’t).
  • Updated fergcorp_countdownTimer_fuzzyDate with another variable so that the real target date is always known.
  • Removed code dealing with updates since WP 2.3 now does this automatically
  • Bug fix. Widget title isn’t saveable due to a programming error. Thanks to Michael Small for the catch.
  • Renamed some functions from afdn to fergcorp
  • Added JavaScript function for JS countdown
  • Tabbed $afdnOptions array to make it more readable
  • Fixed strtotime typo
  • Brought time display inline with current WordPress practice. This fixes the dreaded timezone glitch.
  • Strip non-sig zeros option added
  • Fixed bug where “No dates present” would _not_ show if the data was returned instead of echo’d
  • Renamed to $getOptions to $fergcorp_countdownTimer_getOptions to avoid clashing

Read more or download version 2.01!

Note: Comments moved and closed. Please leave future comments, questions, pleads for help, etc on the Countdown Timer page.

0

Countdown Timer v1.97 Technical Preview 2

It’s been many moons since I released the last technical preview of Countdown Timer 2.0. Honestly, things were stalled for a bit because I was busy with school and trying to figure out how I wanted to do what I wanted to do with the program.

The semester is over and I got it all figured out. So welcome to Countdown Timer version 1.97, better known as version 2.0 technical preview 2.

The Javascript that handles the updating of the countdown has been completely rewritten. I ended up scrapping what I had and then taking the PHP code I was already using and converted it to Javascript. This is the “elegant solution” I mentioned I was looking for earlier.

In terms of stability, everything seems fine; I am currently using this Technical Preview on AFdN. There are a couple known bugs that deal with stripping non significant digits and I haven’t fully tested the upgrade process. Other then that, everything is complete. I’m hoping to have 2.0 shipped before the New Year.

Go download it!

0