Expression Engine 1.5 Released

For those of you who didn’t know, Expression Engine 1.5 has been released. If you’re running the Linklist module, this should be a seamless update, I encountered no problems with the new version.

Some features I’ll highlight for you that are pretty nice:

- New Simple Commerce Module. I know plenty of folks have been totally waiting for this. You can now interface directly with paypal. It’s pretty exciting!

- Template Preferences Manager. This is definitely a great feature. Now you can mass change options for your templates, even if they’re in different template groups!

- HTTP Authentication to templates. This is pretty cool. Just remember though that passwords are passed through in clear text using this method unless you’re using a secure connection!

There are plenty more changes and fixes in this version, just check out all the changes at the Change Log.

 

Server Move

There may have been some serious wackiness going on, as I have moved this site to a different server. Just some preparations going on for something big I’m preparing to do. No, this doesn’t concern Linklist. However, I plan on working a few things out with Linklist soon, and releasing a new version. Exciting stuff!

 

Linklist losing interest?

I’m not really sure nowadays if the linklist module is something that I really need to maintain. I keep seeing people move away from it, for bigger and better things. It could very well be for better folksonomy, which seems to be one big reason, and yet another is just the vastness of places like bloglines or del.ico.us. I think perhaps the biggest factor with waning interest to linklist (to me) is the lack of community involvement with the module.
Of course, I could just be high, and not realize that there are lot of people who actually use and rely on linklist and are waiting for the vast number of improvements it needs. Which is probably the case. :)

Of course, inevitably, I come to the great wall called “TIME” and I cannot do much about that. The linklist at best was a side project of mine that grew into this monster of a module. It’s still a side project, and I keep wanting to improve it, however, time seems to run away and I just never have enough. I need more hours in a day, it’s as simple as that.

Since there haven’t really been too many feature requests to linklist, I just assume two things: 1) it’s working satisfactory, and has all the features a user could ever want! or 2) no one has any suggestions, because they don’t expect it to do anything more. I’m sure that neither is true, however, there are times when that’s what i’m thinking. I know there is room for improvement. I know there are things in there that you wish you had, but you never say.

You really need to start telling me what you need in the module.

I know a lot of the stuff is already on the TODO list. I think that there is always room for a “i second that feature request” and a “wow, i wish this had that too.” because comments like those escalate a TODO item or Feature Request into the next priority “HIGH” to be completed.

Overall, I guess feedback about the module would be great. I would love to see remarks such as “dude, your module sucks because…” Of course, it does have to follow with an explanation, as that is the best part of knowing what really sucks about something. If something is not working like you thought, how much you wanna bet at least one other person thought the same thing? So you voice your opinion, and that other person comes out of their shell and says “yeah…i totally agree.” and so on and so on. Soon, it becomes this big gigantic complaint or request that can’t be ignored. I guess that’s what I wish I could get.

But that’s just me. I could be wrong.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hope your Valentine’s day is full of happiness and all that stuff. :)

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

 

I’ve been doing some thinking (bad, bad thing… thinking=more projects) and I’ve been considering whether or not to make up an AJAX plugin that will work for EE. This could definitely get me to work on AJAX applications. Though I’m not too keen on starting a new project ( especially since I’ve been trying to hash out the new 1.3 linklist ) although a project for work has a small sideline of using AJAX in the ginormous application I’ve been building.

So, I might consider doing something. But I think I’m just wondering if anyone really uses these things anymore. There are a few things (and let me brainstorm here):

1. spammers… we’re gonna get them. there’s no doubt. One method is to rely on the .htaccess file that the Blacklist/Whitelist module creates (or can create). Or if you don’t use the .htaccess file method (for those unfortunate to not be able to use them) we could compare posts to the blacklist/whitelist just like comments. We’d also have to use the same method of preventing comment spam in the shoutbox as well. I say this because I KNOW spammers flock to things like a shoutbox. Especially if it’s displays their URLs.

2. Bandwidth… it might not seem like a big concern, but the potential is there. It can happen.

3. Member Integration… It almost has to be just like posting comments. If you’re logged in, then there should be no reason whatsoever to put in your name/alias or URL. That stuff is in the system, it should be used.

There are a few things to keep in consideration. I guess I just want to know if there’s truly an interest out there. After a while, I’ve seen comment boxes as a way for spammers to spam the hell out of a site.

And of course, there’s always the “old” way of creating a shoutbox.

 

Post 1.3 teasers

Ok, so Paul mentioned that post 1.3, he’s going to try to rewrite the conditionals. Oooooh. I hope he decides to include elses too, although he only mentioned using the pipe (|) character for OR’s. (which is awesome)

Full Discussion

(via LisaJill)

 

pMachine Call for Beta Testers

Expression Engine 1.2 is ready to be beta tested! If you’re bold enough and living on the edge, then visit the homepage for Expression Engine and get yourself a copy of the beta. The new 1.2 release includes the much awaited Image Gallery Module as well as a few updated goodies. Hurry!

 

New Design

Ok, I’ve redesigned my EE Blog. There were a few things broken in the template 07 when certain things happened, so I got off my lazy butt and reworked it. If you don’t see a new design, then click here.

The site URL has changed as well. If you’re bookmarking this site, the new URL is:

http://www.psychodaisy.com/index.php/ee/

a bit shorter than the whole word. :)

 

EE Simplecomments Update

Ok. I now have SimpleComments beta 1 working here on this site (EE Blog). There is one big issue:

Formatting. The way we can put certain tags and display comments with our own format makes it very hard to format a trackback entry. Because of the way we have it set up, It’s not quite as easy as putting them in and going with it. I’m up for any suggestions on how to accomplish a “standard” on how to display trackbacks within comments.

That’s the only problem that I have right now. Does anyone have any comments about that? To see it in action, just click on the comments of any trackback entry and you’ll see what I mean.