Testing VoucherPress

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:

Voucher 1

Performer for Wordpress

Wed Dec 9

The worlds best CMS just got better, with the creation of a plugin for Performer. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll have heard me waffle on about my JavaScript mini-library which allows you to use those cool effects that your favourite JavaScript library (such as jQuery, Prototype and MooTools) allows you to do. But without writing a single line of JavaScript. Yes, it’s true.

Here’s a simple example. Click here to be amazed.

If everything went to plan this text came pleasingly into view. You might think "Yeah, I’ve seen that JavaScript stuff before", but look at the code I wrote to make that work:

<a href="#" class="toggler targetEl-performerdemo1">Click here to be amazed</a>
<div id="performerdemo1" class="hider"> ... </div>

Yup, just CSS classes.

If you want more information please visit the main Performer website, or download the Wordpress plugin here.

Wibstats – statistics for Wordpress MU and BuddyPress

Mon Sep 7

Update 9th September 2009: I’m too good to you, I really am. The screenshots are now out of date as I’ve just committed a new version (0.4) which contains even more reports, a cleaned up interface and a few bug fixes. Please download and try it out.

I finally got the page about Wibstats updated with some screenshots. If you’re looking for the best (in my opinion, anyway!) stats plugin for Wordpress MU – and it works with BuddyPress – head over here.

If you just can’t wait, here are some screenshots:

Main stats page

Searches

Recent visitor map

Session report

There you have it. A top-notch plugin for Wordpress MU and Buddypress that gives every blog in your system their own powerful statistics.

Personal welcome Wordpress plugin, as used by tripawds.com

Sun Aug 23

A little while ago a guy called Jim contacted me to ask for a small addition to my Personal Welcomes for Wordpress MU plugin. It was a good suggestion and easy to do, so I did it. Then I realised I’d seen something on TV about this guy, so I asked him to write something about what they ar doing, and how they are using my plugin. Here’s what he put:

After being featured on PBS for taking our canine cancer survivor Jerry on
the road trip of a lifetime, viewers flocked to tripawds.com to find out
more. As blog and discussion forum traffic grew, we migrated the website to
WordPress MU so we can now offer free Tripawds Blogs for others to share
their own three legged dog stories.

We use Chris Taylor’s Personal Welcomes plugin to send each new member a
personalized message, welcoming them to the Tripawds Community, and
providing them with helpful links to make the most of their blog.

This handy plugin allows us to create different templates with specific
messages for those who signed up without creating a blog, or those who
created a blog but haven’t yet posted anything. The admin panel for Personal
Welcomes now provides convenient links to new blogs so we can easily edit
each welcome message we send with relative comments, thus creating a truly
personal welcome for each new user.

Many thanks to Chris for his helpful plugin, and quick attention to our blog
links feature request!

http://tripawds.com

It’s great to hear of someone using one of my plugins, especially for a site making a difference to people … or in this case, dogs! Good luck for the future Jim.

Geekery roundup, June 2009

Wed Jun 10

It’s been a month since my last blog post, but a lot has been happening. So in Hugh style here’s a randomly ordered list of the things I’ve been up, and things that have run through my head, to over the last few weeks.

  1. Plenty-o-plugins

    I’ve got a large handful of plugins for Wordpress MU completed (or at least to a state where I can release them). The plugins are: statistics, sitewide newsletters, personal welcomes, demo data creator and secure invites.

    I’m also happy that they have been accepted for the official Wordpress plugin repository, so keep an eye on my developer page to see when these plugins get updated and new ones get added. I have a few more ideas for plugins I’m going to try to do over the next couple of months.

  2. I like quick development

    Writing those plugins has made something about myself quite clear to me. I enjoy quick development tasks much more than long ones. So writing a plugin that takes 8 – 24 hours is MUCH preferable to writing a full system that takes 100 hours or more. With Wordpress’ plugin architecture I think I can do more of that quick development, leaving the fiddly slow bits (user management, templating, database manipulation) to the Wordpress core.

  3. myJournal updates

    Although most of the changes I’ve made on myJournal aren’t readily apparent to visitors, they have mae a big difference in how easy it is to manage your profile and site in the system. Especially the showrooms (for example this contemporary designer jewellery showroom).

    One very recent thing (completely done last night, in fact) was adding Twitter updates to profiles. You can keep up to date with me here. That was another of those quick development things.

  4. Computers Unlimited

    One of the oldest serious sites I developed is currently entering version 8, so you’ll soon be able to buy printer cartridges, toner and more using a much nicer interface. Development has taken much longer than I hoped, and frankly I’ll be glad when it’s finished.

  5. jQuery

    A lot has been said about this wonderful JavaScript library, so I won’t dwell on its finer points. Suffice to say it’s continuing to astound me with how easy it makes advanced JavaScript.

  6. Performer

    And when you combine jQuery with Performer (JavaScript without the code) you’re on cloud nine. A couple of months ago I launched the new Performer website, which I’m really pleased with. As I tell people, my design skills are more miss than hit, but this time I think I got it right.

  7. BeatsBase.com

    After increasing the upload limit for mixes to 1gb the other month, BeatsBase.com has been really unstable. Error all over the place. Rather than wade through the code to try to fix it, I’m taking the opportunity to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress MU and add in BuddyPress which will give some great new features. I’m also going to rewrite my own custom plugins so they are much better, and maybe those will even find their way into the public domain.

I’ve done a few other things (see my Twitter updates in the sidebar of my site, for example), and even some that don’t involved geekery. I’m planning on doing a similar round-up post to this about the new things happening in the busy world of web development (new browsers, new tools, new sites). Who knows, maybe I’ll get to do that before next month.