milkandtang » Design

US Letter

Nate — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 06:39:25 +0000

keeping with the theme. more to come.

Carouse

Nate — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:57:41 +0000

Been making some things. Figure they should go on the blag.

WP-Prowl 0.8.0 Released!

Nate — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:57:36 +0000

Your favorite WordPress plugin’s just been updated! Contain your excitement (I know it’s tough) and take a gander at these fine new features (that you’ve already known about since I released this in beta like a week ago but no one bothered to test it for me so I had to do it myself and then release what I hope is a really great new version for you jerks. jerks! I kid, I kid.):

Added new notification type: New Post Pending Review. (thanks djr!)
Added delay in new posts/pages, so notifications aren’t spammed for multiple edits in a short period (not a final implementation).
Terribly serious rewrite of Post/Page notification code.
Makes sure plugin activation fires on manual upgrade.
Made steps towards being ready for internationalization. Not there yet… things left to learn.

Yes it’s almost like I tried with this one. Internationalization is on it’s way, but there’s a few nuances in the WordPress localization process that I don’t quite understand yet. Anyhow, run on over to the WordPress Plugin Page and get yourself a copy, or use your auto-upgrade from your admin dashboard to install. It might be a few minutes/hours before it goes live. Let me know if you find anything wrong!

WP-Prowl 0.8.0b3 Released

Nate — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:42:12 +0000

Version 0.8.0 Beta 3 has been released, and can be downloaded from the WordPress Plugin Page shortly. Remember, you’ll have to upgrade manually, since this is a beta, it won’t show up in your control panel.

Beta 3 just implements the missing “delay” code for Page edits. This isn’t a complete implementation, however, since it’s only able to calculate from Initial Post Date to subsequent edit dates. You can see the problem pretty much right away, this works great for the initial post, but if you come back and edit again after the initial delay runs out, the same problem will be right back, and you’ll get notifications each time someone presses “Publish”. Not exactly ideal, but-t-t-t…

Well, it was the fastest to implement. Looking through all post revisions is really costly, at least through the WP API, and I’m looking into a proper way to do this. No problem, I’ll work it out, but I wanted to get something in for the 0.8.0 release. Better code will come 0.8.1 or 0.8.2, but with my new job starting, it might be a while until I get to it. I figured everyone would like a halfway implementation better than no implementation at all!

Anyhow: download, test, report bugs. I’ll love you for it!

WP-Prowl 0.8.0b2, and WP i18n

Nate — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:59:20 +0000

WP-Prowl 0.8.0b2 is now up on the WordPress SVN. You can grab it from the plugin download page if you’d like to give it a try. Please note that this is beta software! Fixes and additions are as follows:

Added new notification type: New Post Pending Review. (thanks djr!)
Terribly serious rewrite of Post/Page notification code.
Made steps towards being ready for internationalization. Not there yet though.

I’m also working on putting in a “delay” for page edits, that way you don’t get notification-spammed when someone edits a page many times in succession. It isn’t working yet, even though there’s an option for it. I’m not sure why. I haven’t tried that hard on it yet to be honest.

WordPress Internationalization (i18n)

I was getting ready to say “WP-Prowl is ready to be translated!” but, well, I’m not positive that it is. The WP translation docs don’t really explain too well (that I can find anyhow) about how internationalization works, as far as changes go. If I understand correctly, it’s based on line numbers, meaning my translators would have to update their translations for every version? Is that right? Seems like bullocks if so. I’ll need to research better on how this all works before I go wasting anyone’s time.

WP-Prowl 0.7.2 released. Fixes reCAPTCHA issues.

Nate — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:55:00 +0000

Version 0.7.2 of WP-Prowl was just pushed to WordPress SVN, and should appear on the plugin page within the hour. This version should finally put the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin issues to rest. Previously, comments were being denied by reCAPTCHA, but were still being pushed out to Prowl as though they were proper comments.

reCAPTCHA’s implementation is strange, in my opinion. It still stores the comment in the database, which I assume is so that Akismet and others can still benefit from it being posted. Or perhaps (and more sensibly), so that it can deny duplicate comments should a subsequent comment pass reCAPTCHA? I don’t know the reasoning, but luckily, reCAPTCHA sets a global variable when a comment fails the CAPTCHA. Observe this simple fix:

global $recaptcha_saved_error;
if($recaptcha_saved_error) return;

Sorry if this fix is boneheaded in any way, but in all my testing it seems to work fine. This went into my comment handling function, and simply returns if reCAPTCHA set an error. I checked out the recaptchalib, and it seems to only set this global error variable whenever the comments fails to pass, so I’m going to call it good. Hopefully this helps out anyone having an issue. Let me know if not please!

WP-Prowl 0.7.1 Released

Nate — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:59:25 +0000

Oh hey, I forgot to mention a thing. WP-Prowl 0.7.1 has been released. You can snag it through WordPress’s Automatic Upgrade feature, or from it’s WordPress Plugin Page. This version’s got some great new features for you all. You just won’t feel complete without:

New and improved configuration page! Not ugly!
Improved control over comment filtering!
Better compatibility with Markdown and similar plugins!
Better compatibility with CAPTCHAs, Akismet!
Proper automatic upgrade handling!
API Key verification!
Improved ProwlPHP4! (Actually, it just fixes something I messed up. Not killer though.)

With all those great new features, you’ve got to upgrade! How could you live with yourself if you didn’t!

Enough excitement. Give me a shout if you find anything wrong, or if you’ve got some fantastic new ideas (I know they’re out there). This is probably the last upgrade for a while, unless I discover some new problems, or if I get localization going. I think that’ll happen soon. When I get around to it. Whenever. Don’t rush me.

on wordpress themes

Nate — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:08:02 +0000

Learning to do a WordPress theme is a process. That process goes:

Create some nice markup. Looks good!
Split into WP theme files. Add WP specific markup. Looks ok!
Realize you missed some core WP functionality in your theme. Add hastily.
Realize your theme looks worse every day.
Go to Step 3. If your theme gets truly unbearable, jump to Step 6.
Reluctantly start over. Swear you’ll “do it right” this time.

Milk—my WordPress theme on milkandtang—was the first theme I’d ever created for WordPress. I’ve learned a lot, and it’s time to work up a better design that both reflects the name milkandtang, and reflects my design sensibilities better. If you take a look at my Portfolio, you’ll quickly see that this site looks nothing like my other work. That’s a problem.

WP-Prowl 0.7.0 Released

Nate — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:44:17 +0000

WP-Prowl 0.7.0 was just uploaded to the WordPress Plugin Page, and should show up there shortly. Some pretty worthwhile changes in this version:

PHP4 compatibility
Multiple API keys (very basic support)
Option to ignore spam comments

PHP4 compatibility has been the most requested one. Although it’s a little more ugly, if WordPress still supports PHP4, I suppose my plugin should too. Point though: PHP5 was released in mid-2004. It’s time guys.

As for the multiple API keys, just separate the api keys with a semi-colon in the configuration page. I know this isn’t very clean but it’s only temporary until I implement a true multi-user configuration for the plugin, so that each administrative user can have their own set of options for WP-Prowl. It’s going to be sweet.

As always, leave your thoughts/criticisms/ideas here in the comments.

Prowl plugin for WordPress released!

Nate — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:17:06 +0000

I’ve released my first plugin for WordPress, WP-Prowl. You can download it at it’s WordPress Plugin page. If you’re interested, please try it out and let me know what you think!

If you want to know more about it, please visit my WP-Prowl page. You can leave me a comment here if there’s anything you’d like to say about the plugin. I welcome all criticisms and suggestions!