Pogwatch

PubKitBlog 1.2 submitted as MODx Extra

PubKitBlog, my MODx blog creation and management tool, has now been submitted to the MODx Extras repository. Apparently only six weeks or so have passed by on your planet since I started reworking PubKit. It feels more like a year in my corner of the universe.

There is still plenty that could be done to the snippet, but it seems to me that it's time to release it more generally as a beta, to encourage more people to try it out and give feedback. There's already a thread in the MODx "In Development" forum, which I'll continue to watch for technical points, and I'll start something in the Front-end Document Management sub-forum for general support and feedback once the package is available in the Extras.

As usual, I found several bugs and anomalies while updating the documentation, so the five-minute job of preparing for release took over a day. I found that hitting Publish from the preview screen still left items marked as Draft, because that section of code needed to do the same stuff as at the end of the straight publication process. I was sorely tempted to use a GOTO statement, which I was interested to discover now exists in PHP 5. Shades of Dijkstra! He would be pleased to know that I found a more structured solution by moving the relevant code and setting a flag in the two places where publication might take place.

Further distraction today (apart from the new fence being erected in our neighbours' garden) from Mrs Pog, who is worried that I'm not being paid for the work that deprives her of my scintillating company. So I started looking at PayPal donation buttons, then got chatting to the virtual goddess Louise about how to merge my two accounts (I can't use the same debit card in both), and reading bloggers' opinions on "Buy me a beer" buttons. Personally I do make the odd donation to writers of software I find useful. What do you think? Is it tacky? Should it be in the headings of the snippet to say "if this saves you a day's work that you would charge a client for, how about a cut for me"? Or should it be a straightforward statement one way or the other: "it's free, have fun" || "it costs 10 UKP/300 USD/27 MYR"?

Comments (2)

kongondo
Posts: 1

Congrats!
Reply #1 on : Thu September 10, 2009, 15:21:00

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Keith,

Well done on this release! Thx.

cheers/k

kp52
Posts: 1

Problems with Extras
Reply #2 on : Sun September 20, 2009, 20:11:40

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I found the routine for adding an Extra to the main MODx site a bit difficult, but far worse was when I realized I had uploaded a faulty snippet - the text file for creating the snippet code has an ampersand where a dollar sign should be. Woe! Hoping to overtake the faulty version before it appeared on the Extras page, I uploaded the correct version as 1.2.1, with notes for the Extras editor explaining and asking for this version to be The One. Alas, when the package was released a couple of days later, it seems to be a superficial examination only that takes place, so now there are two pkBlogs in the repository, with full notes only on the incorrect one.
Heigh-ho, that's the way it goes, one day I'll find out how to update the repository item (no reaction when I try to add an update so far). Meanwhile, version 1.4.1 is now the current one, but it's only available in the development forum.

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