Anyway, started coding up relative dates and a date cut off today so that shouldn’t take long.

These aren’t features that I am that bothered about by the way, but they seem popular and I have been doing loads of PHP coding at work recently and am now looking at “problems” and seeing “solutions” without have to think, so its good practice.

Anyway the reason its all gone quiet is its all been less than quiet in the real world. Not only did I start a new job (very well thankyou) but I got engaged.

We’ve now booked the venue (Smugglers Wheel), found the dress (I think?!) and set the date (June 14th 2009). And thats the three biggest things done. Obviously as a male, and a pragmatist, I’m twitchy until the deposit for the dress is laid down because anything could change but theres a mental commitment in place I suspect.

Now all we need to do is settle on a song for Shelley to walk down to the aisle to, which isn’t easy considering our taste in music (I’m still pushing for Get Mad You Son Of A Bitch by A Wilhelm Scream

Yeah - lets get this straight - anybody else who emails my personal email address demanding my personal attention and demanding that i help with my plugin issues will get blocked, and probably, maybe, will get struck by divine lightning.

I’m very busy at the moment, I’m working 50 hour weeks, I’m playing league squash and football - i just don’t sit around waiting for support questions. I love that people are using my plugins, I’m glad they do what you want to do, but if it doesn’t work, suck it up. I try my best, but unfortuantely, not having access to your fingers or server it can be a struggle….. comment on the blog page and i’ll try, or check the FAQ’s and other posts….

If anyone wants to donate a couple of pounds or dollars, then please do email me. If you want to say hi, feel free to email me. If you want to make a suggestion or ask a question, politely, please don’t hesitate. Its the aggresive/demanding people that are beggining to grate.

As for versions and features…. 1.3 of Simplife is on the way, i just need to iron out a few kinks, and picturegrid is indefinately parked until i get some more time to do it some justice.

Coming soon:

• Show Flickr images in feed. (Optional)
• Show only Flickr photos in specific tag. (Optional)
• Flickr related links to a non photo page are not marked in flickr colours. For example a link to a flickr set from delicious, will now look like a link from delicious instead of an uploaded photo.

No need to upgrade from 1.1a to 1.1b if you already have 1.1a and it wrs (ie you’re using PHP5).

This maintenance release addresses the following issues:

• Twitter Feed - Was truncated and needed to be fixed.
• Fix Stripos in PHP4 - Not available on PHP4 installations, routine now added.
• Option & Function Tidy Up - Some of the options I’d used were a bit non specific, which could clash with a similarly badly written plugin
• Last.FM Bug - Typo leading to no background colour for last.fm

The following features have been added (or activated because i did include timezones in the last release but they were not fully functional or compatible with PHP4).

• Allow Users To Change Timezone - Optional for PHP5 users to correct times.
• Experimental: Allow PHP4 Users To Change Timezone - Useful even though PHP4 is end-of-life’d
• Date/Time Display Formats - Including date time display options for each feed item.

There may well still be some issues with PHP4 installations. I am relying on feedback, because I do not have access to a PHP4 server.

You’d think all these issues would make me cry and wring my hands of wordpress plugins forever, but actually, I’m enjoying it! There have been quite a few bits and pieces that i have either overlooked or not considered, or in some cases not had the ability to test properly.

Twitter feeds do not work. Unfortunately i don’t have a twitter account (facebook handles my status updates) so i had no way of testing it. This will be fixed in the next revision, thanks for the (quite specific!) error reporting!

The plugin appears to cause all sorts of PHP4 issues. One of the functions I’ve used is PHP4 safe from a specific revision onwards and it seems some of you are not upgraded yet. Another function is definately not PHP4 safe and will break things. I am working to address this. There is always a fix, even if i have to code stripos my self

Those are the two main issues and i will probably concentrate on those rather than features for the next revision, probably by the end of this week.

As always feedback appreciated.

So I set about tranforming my PHP script into a fully fledged plugin for wordpress, below is a preview of the options page:

As you can see - everything is contained on one options screen. Click on the color labels for each feed and up pops a 217 web safe colour palette. Choose a colour and you get an example in the box. The piece de resistence though, save the options and the plugin automatically updates the username/feed field to give you an up to date example of what each lifestream option will look like for that feed. Color clashes? Change them!

Also - in most cases its enough to enter your service username. However, some sites aren’t compatible with this such as flickr - I *could* add some scripting to change a flickr username to an ID, but in my experience this is not only buggy, but requries the bundling of the Flickr API, which adds a bit of overhead. Instead you just add your ID (there is a link to IDGETTR which will tell you your ID).

Is there anything I’ve not thought of I wonder? I’ll provide a limit for number of items shown, and of course there will be a widget as standard. Please let me know if there is anything you’d be interested in seeing in the first release proper, or in future releases. Spread the word too if you can, I don’t want this to be the best lifestream plugin I want it to be the wordpress lifestream plugin.

PS. Anyone any good at styling plugin options screens, I’m struggling to make my options pretty in layout

Based on some early feedback, I’ve also updated the roadmap to show my intentions now I’ve hit a usable beta.

This basically details me turning it from a page template into a fully fledged plugin. I intend on allowing people to put their service usernames into an options page and allow simplelife to generate the feed address dynamically, i also intend on allowing users to add aditional themes.

Finally, i hope to introduce a visual style generator into the options page so each feed can be styled from within the options page.

Phew!

The project page, which inludes download, installation and styling instructions is: Here

Let me know if you decide to use it and I will link to your site, and feel free to suggest improvements etc.