A Website

Fall semester is over.  I’ve been working on PostBits since my last exam, and I have a nifty little zip file to show for it.

I present PostBits 0.1.0 Alpha.  Please note the lack of positive digits in the version and the prominence of the word “Alpha.”  This plugin is not complete, and it probably has some bugs.  As it stands, it should be able to replace Cricket Moods, but do not run it on your live blog.

Things to note:

• Does not import moods from Cricket Moods.  I will write a separate plugin to do that later.
• The plugin seems to work with WP 2.6, but the interface is designed for 2.7.
• Currently, only one category is available.  It has the ability to handle more, just not the interface to manage them.
• There is no README—you’re on your own.

If you’d like to try it out and/or help help me ferret out any bugs, you can grab a zip file from the PostBits Google Code site.  If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please post them on the issue tracker.  Please don’t e-mail me or post any blog comments about bugs you find.

Cricket Moods 3.7 is officially tagged.  It has been 13 months since the previous release.  That’s quite a development cycle, there.

This release primarily fixes compatibility with WordPress 2.6.  It includes some really old changes for WPMU compatibility that I can’t guarantee still work.  The bottom line: if you want to use Cricket Moods with WordPress 2.6, get this new version.

About a month ago Alex King discovered an “undocumented feature”¹ in WordPress 2.6 that affects plugins like Cricket Moods.  The bug causes post metadata to be duplicated due to the addition of post revisions.  Basically, with every new revision you’ll get a duplicate set of moods.

I have hopefully fixed the issue in the 3.x branch of Cricket Moods.  I haven’t tagged a new 3.7 release of Cricket Moods because, frankly, I don’t know if these changes break anything.  I tested the changes on one Blog running WordPress 2.6.  So, before I tag and zip up a release, it’d be great if some folk² could test the new plugin.  Grab the file from the Subversion repository.

To fix any old duplicated moods, remove all moods from the affected post, save the post, add the moods again, and save the post.

1. A bug. [↩]
2. guinea pigs [↩]

The development of PostBits has stalled.  I apologize to anyone still holding their breath in anticipation.  I recommend exhaling.

As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, the core functionality of the plugin is finished.  That’s all well and good if you like to hammer on your database by hand to get things done, but not so good for most people. Read the rest of this entry »

… will not be called “Cricket Moods.”

I always wanted the plugin to be something for more than just moods. Sure, you can set it up to let your readers know how the weather was on that day or gauge of how bad the traffic was on the way home from work, but you could only do one or the other. You should be able to do all three: moods, weather, and traffic!

Therefore, I have decided to refactor Cricket Moods into a new plugin. I have decided on the name PostBits. Each selectable option, like a mood (“Happy”) or a weather (“Overcast”), will be called a Bit. Bits can then be sorted into categories, like Moods or Current Weather. Each category can be set to independently AutoPrint, and can have independent HTML wrappings.

At the moment, I have about a third of the work done. The core functionality of installing the plugin and printing Bits is very nearly complete. It’s currently missing a UI and the UI logic. Once it’s done, it should be pretty powerful and, hopefully, easy to use.

I’ve been sitting on Cricket Moods 3.7 since late October. I’ve had little motivation and even less time to test it. The biggest change in this upcoming release is some basic WPMU support. Most of the other changes are just minor back-end things that don’t really make an end-user difference.

There is, however, a new string that needs translation (help, tikurion!).

So, anyone that feels inclined to, please test the updated version. It particularly needs testing on WPMU installations. Thanks bunches!

I almost forgot to annouce my latest release of Cricket Moods. Changes follow:

• Now fails silently if the mood image directory does not exist.
• Fixed a silly omission in cm_list_mood_images for the manage and admin panels.
• Fix for a possible problem in the manage and admin panels that may cause some mood images to not display.
• Tried to beef up security by adding nonce and capabilities checks in various places.
• Switched out my broken JS for jquery.
• The blank mood lines will now update their mood images properly.
• Added a warning if the selected mood image directory is not readable.

Go get it and enjoy!

So, I dragged my ass out of WoW, and set up a testbed for Cricket Moods on WordPress 2.2.1. On a base install, I can’t reproduce the doubling-up-of-moods issue that some people are experiencing and have reported in the blog comments.

I need more information from you folks. Are you sure you’re running version 3.5? What other plugins are you using? What version of MySQL is your host running? Are there any relevant errors in your logs?

First of all, I’m sorry if you posted a comment and it hasn’t shown up on the site yet. I had to turn on moderation because Akismet is absolutely craptastic. Until I move back to SpamKarma, posting comments is probably not the best way to get a hold of me.

If you’re having trouble when using Cricket Moods with WP 2.2, keep in mind I have not tested at all with 2.2. It specifically says in the readme that it’s only been tested up to version 2.1.2. I simply don’t have the time to take care of this right now. If anyone wants to submit a patch that fixes the issue, I’ll be more than happy to incorporate the patch, give them credit, and release a new version.

Until then, I apologize.