Wed Aug 4
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long while. So long, in fact, that the wiki was last updated over 18 months ago. Still, it contains loads of great information for standardistas wishing to promote web standards in a business.
The business case for web standards wiki initiated by the great Chris Heilmann is the place to be. If you’ve had success, or heard arguments against using web standards that aren’t yet in the wiki, please contribute.
Together we can change the world. A bit.
Sun Jul 4
I have to admin being a bit of a wimp when it comes to choosing version numbers for my WordPress plugins. Just like Google my work is constantly in a state of development, in flux. Although it isn’t, not really.
I don’t have anywhere near enough time to spend on open source software as I’d like (the bank manager wouldn’t be happy if I wanted to pay my mortgage in a new currency comprising of nice emails). So rather than commit and say “Yes! This is version 1.0, the definitive point in this plugins development!” I wimp out and start from 0.1 … moving to 0.2 when I add some features or fix a load of bugs.
However, one of my most popular plugins – and, incidentally, the one that I get by far the most amount of ‘thank you’ messages for – has just had it’s version 1.0 birthday.
VoucherPress allows you to create vouchers or coupons for download from your WordPress site. The list of features is now pretty extensive:
- Large range of pre-built templates
- The ability to add your own templates
- Limit the number of vouchers available (e.g. only allow 1000 to be downloaded)
- Set a date when a voucher will expire and not be available any more
- Require visitors to provide their name and email address to download a voucher
- Use shortcodes to provide a link to a voucher, a list of all your vouchers, or the registration form
- Each voucher has a unique code in one of four formats:
- A random code from 6-10 characters long
- Sequential codes (1, 2, 3 etc) to which you can add your own prefix and suffix
- Your own custom codes, one per voucher
- A single code, the same for every download of a voucher
- Simple statistics on the number of downloads of each voucher
- A CSV export of all registered names and email addresses
As you can see, I’ve been a busy boy. Lots of people have asked for the custom codes thing, and a way to style the registration form easier, and both of those things are in this version.
So I think, quite rightly, this deserves to be the official Version 1.0 of the VoucherPress WordPress Plugin. Download it here (once the WordPress plugin administrators have checked all the t’s are dotted and i’s are crossed).
Sat Apr 24
I’ve recently released a new WordPress plugin called Plugin Register. In a nutshell it allows plugin developers to be notified every time one of their plugins is activated. Report of these activations then gives the developer some statistics about who is activating what, and when, and what version. Quite simple, but not something that I’ve ever seen before, and certainly very interesting for developers.
It was very easy to build, I probably spent less than 3 hours development time in total. And maybe that’s where I slipped up, because I didn’t think clearly about the nuances of this plugin. You see, the first version of Plugin Register registered the activation of a plugin automatically, with no notification or consent from the user. And that is bad. I’ve since changed it to be an opt-in action to register a plugin.
Even though the only information it saves is the plugin name and version, and the site name and URL, that’s still too much information to be given away without the user knowing. WordPress is sometimes used by sites which need to be kept private, for example sites on an internal network which cannot be accessed from the Internet, or government sites. Even sites which have been set to not be seen by search engines may not wish for their information to be shared with a plugin developer. The bottom line for me was that this plugin should be opt-in, with users making a concious, explicit decision that they want to register their plugin.
However this doesn’t solve the other problem I’ve noticed with the few hundred sites who have registered use of my plugins. You see, traditionally WordPress plugin developers had no idea who was actually using their plugins, unless they got in touch to say “thanks” or report a bug. With Plugin Register they can know that information, and it can cause problems.
Among the sites who have registered using my plugins are sites with legally-dubious content, ‘adult’ sites and sites expressing attitudes and opinions I don’t agree with. When I wasn’t aware who was using my work, there was no problem. Now that I do know, what do I do about it?
Of course, the use of a WordPress plugin doesn’t make me culpable for what appears on these sites, and I can’t stop them using my work even if I felt strongly enough about it to try. With open source software the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. I suppose I could contact the sites I don’t agree with and ask them to not use my plugins, or to save mysefl future moral quandaries I could put a disclaimer on my work which asks people to use my work for good, not evil. But what is evil? My opinion is far from infallible.
And anyway, that’s not the open source way. Short of genuine illegal activites, open source software can be used for what ever you want – including helping political parties I may strongly disagree with. Historically I wouldn’t have known about who was using my work, in this case my WordPress plugins. But, by registering activations of my plugins, I now know. I’m not going to stop contributing to the open source world, but I do have a greater appreciation about the possibilities of how my work could be used.
Sun Feb 14
I won’t say much about these here, so please check out my page on VoucherPress and the WordPress repository page. Now you can have vouchers on your WordPress site as easily as falling off a greased log.
I’ve had a couple of interesting comments recently which I thought I’d share:
Anda juga boleh menyediakan voucher percuma. Jika anda gunakan wordpress, plug in disediakan di http://www.stillbreathing.co.uk/blog/wordpress/voucherpress/ Ok selamat mencuba…
I couldn’t agree more.
Well, the post is actually the freshest topic on this registry related issue. I fit in with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your coming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the phenomenal lucidity in your writing. I will right away grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates.
My phenomenal lucidity thanks you, Mr Spammer.
Fri Feb 5
This is a test of my new plugin for WordPress. It’s called VoucherPress. Can you tell what it does yet?
Try this on for size: Voucher 1
And this one should ask you for your email address: Restricted voucher
And a test of a voucher link with a preview:
And one with a limited number of downloads:
100 vouchers available
And one more:
Another limited voucher
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Welcome, one and all
