That was the month that...

...I did not much on the e107 front actually.

Perhaps not an ideal opening line for an e107 blog to entice the reader in, but there you go - I've typed it now so it's staying.

The truth of the matter is, real life/job kicked in and became really busy leaving little time to do much else on the coding/web front, either for my own stuff or for e107.

But, I'm hoping that will change. Heck, I've even got linked up to the new Subversion repository in anticipation of doing stuff. You heard about our move to SVN, right? Well, what you perhaps don't know is that once the idea was put forward (on IRC) there was a surge of activity with back and forth comments, reading of SVN instructions and the like. That night, I went to bed wondering if the move would happen any time soon. I woke the next day to find it had happened and most of the additional stuff was already in place (e.g. changelog). I secretly believe that McFly decided to do this that day simply so he didn't have to take the kids to the mall and fork out some cash

When I do get back to some core coding, one of the things I'm going to look at first is the directory structure. Another example of a few hours on IRC thrashing out some details with a follow up post the next day detailing the agreements with some code changes following quickly behind that. I guess the SVN could well be broken in places because of this for a while, but I think it's a good move. It's produced some side benefits already, in conjunction with other code changes, and one aspect of this I really like is the ability to more easily sandbox the parts of e107 that need to be writeable and even move some parts of e107 outside of the web root if desired. Like I say, I'm not aut fait with the detail yet so can't go int o much more detail yet.

Here's to the month that will be... Read/Post Comment: 1

Email login

Just a quickie to start off the New Year.

You now have more choice as to how your users log in.

Depending on how you set the options, they can now specify either user name or email address in the login box (how many of your users just assume the site'll accept an email address there?) Read/Post Comment: 8

eAdvent day 25:

So you tuned in on Christmas Day just to see another tip on e107 v0.8?

Well, maybe it's our strange sense of humor but there isn't one today - we are all off doing none e107 stuff. I hope you'll agree that, for one day in the year, it's OK for us to do that.

Meanwhile, may we take this opportunity to our loyal (and we do mean loyal if it really is 25th December today for you) supporters to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas.

And to those of you that don't celebrate Christmas, we can only apologies for not having a new tip but at the same time we wish you a Very Merry Day

Finally, we hope you enjoyed our eAdvent series of blogs, thanks for reading and commenting. Here's to some more progress on v0.8 in the New Year and a few more blogs to keep you informed of what's happening (but not every day!). Read/Post Comment: 8

eAdvent day 24: Image bbcode enhancements

The [ img ] bbcode has had a couple of useful enhancements in 0.8.

Firstly, it detects file names beginning 'thumb_' or 'th_', and automatically inserts a link to the full-size image, which opens in a new window. So no need for the complication of adding a link round the code.

Secondly, it can now display random images. If you specify a file name with a wildcard character ('*'), it will pick one of the images which matches - often a different image each time. And the thumbnail link is auto-generated. I find it best to put all the images I want to match into a separate subdirectory, to avoid unintended matches - but this is optional.

With the images in this newspost, I've put five images into a subdirectory of newsposts called 'random1'. And the image name is specified as 'pic*.jpg'. As simple as that. The only slight complication is uploading the images; you'll probably need to use FTP, or maybe File Manager. Read/Post Comment: 2

eAdvent day 23: Admin list filters

Now this is a feature I like, but I may be biased as this was one I had a hand in getting it working in the first place.

The filter list option allows you to refine your list of items, such as news posts, downloads or users, based on a simple search phrase. It's not available in all the places we wold like just yet, but that's coming.

To check out this feature, if you are using the CVS version, head over to the (new) downloads plugin and try it out - you will need some download entries of course.

For those not using the CVS the screen shot shows this feature in action. What's happened here is I've typed 'upload' in to the search field, there's no buttons to click, we just wait for a brief period (to save overloading your servers) then send a message to get a list of items that match the phrase you typed (the green 'please wait' box indicates this is happening). When we get a response we update the list of items only and not the whole page (and the green box is removed).

This is an example of using JavaScript to enhance your "admin experience" (can't believe I just typed that, the marketing team at working must be infecting me):

• 
  It's quicker for you - no need to click buttons and wait for a full page refresh
  It's better for the server - no need to do all the work to refresh the whole page, just process what is needed and send a response
  

"But I don't have JavaScript enabled" I hear you cry (I've got good ears). Not to worry, we've thought of that too. When JavaScript is disabled we simply show you the advanced search form which works fine without JavaScript so you can still do your searches.

Oh, and if you have JavaScript disabled then there are parts of the e107 admin area that you've never been able to use - but we'll be working on those too at some point I hope. Read/Post Comment: 1