Codeistry

Archive for January, 2009

MODx Snippet: New version of Wayfinder

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Good news everyone! During my development travails, I’ve created an updated version of Wayfinder that fixes two issues and adds two handy new features!

Fixes

I’ve incorporated this fix which makes the hereClass work properly with weblinks in the menu and I’ve fixed the SQL query to work around the MySQL 5.0.51 sorting bug.

New Features

lastRowTpl

I’ve also added a new parameter called lastRowTpl which allows you specify a chunk to be used for the last menu item output. It works the same way as all the other wayfinder tpl’s and defaults to using rowTpl is it isn’t specified.

It’s very useful for little menu’s that currently look like this if you do them with Wayfinder:

item1 | item2 | item3 | lastitem |

and should look like this:

item1 | item2 | item3 | lastitem

Odd & Even classes

Finally, I’ve added support for even & odd classes on rows. These work like all the other wayfinder classes – you specify a class name in the parameter and this will be added to the wf.classes placeholder. These ones are only output on the appropriate rows, though – and you don’t have to specify both if you don’t want to – it’ll still work with just one.

These are really useful for menu’s which are supposed to be stripey, with every other item a different colour.

To implement this, I’ve modified both Wayfinder files. You can download the new versions from here (.zip) or here (.tar.gz).

I’m using these on live sites, because I’m a crazy fool, but if we can get some more testing from everyone, maybe this can be added to the repository as a new version and maybe then into the main MODx distribution, so that everyone can share the love.

What do you think – let me know in the MODx forum thread.

New years resolutions for 2009

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Give more back

One of the ways I want to give back, is by getting more involved in the MODx community and to start contributing some of the snippets and code that I’ve created for MODx over the last year. This is code that I’ve created for my own use that I think would benefit others in the community and that we can all help improve. I’ve started this process already with the ChunkIf snippet (below) – but there’s lots more where that came from.

I realise that I have a pretty nice life, working for myself, working at home on my own schedule and doing OK, financially. So the other thing that I had in mind was helping those less fortunate. I’d like Codeistry itself to do some good for other people, as well as me. To this end, I’m planning to start investing a portion of the proceeds from each job Codeistry does into small businesses in need around the world. Small amounts of money can go a long way in Africa or rural South America and provide seed capital for entrepreneurs to start their own businesses, lifting themselves and their families out of poverty; this is called microfinancing.

Kiva - loans that change livesBest of all, there’s a really simple way to do this called kiva.org – a site which makes it easy to invest in small businesses in the developing world.

The plan is for each Codeistry job to invest in one entrepreneur in the developing world, via Kiva. I can then link to the progress reports on Kiva and see how they’re doing – and maybe get my clients involved too, forming a connection between all our businesses.

New ventures

I’ve also got a few ideas for new web based businesses and sites which I want to get off the ground this year. I’ll be talking more about these later, so watch this space!

Build up Codeistry

In order to do all of these things, I’ll need to keep myself clothed and fed – which is where Codeistry comes in. We had a pretty good start but there’s lots of potential in my niche, so I want to do even better this year.

I’ll be blogging about progress with all these throughout the year. Hope you had a good 2008 and have a prosperous 2009!

New version of MODx CMS out – 0.9.6.3

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Another pretty sizeable release, despite the small version increment. There are over 100 changes but my personal highlights from the changelog are:

  • Updated AjaxSearch to version 1.8.1
  • Update eForm to version 1.4.4.5
  • Update Jot to version 1.1.4
  • Duplicate TV associations when duplicating a template
  • Allow ‘.’,'-’,’ ‘ and ‘_’ in TV names
  • Amend the top username link to explicitly state a ‘change password’ link instead of just linking the username
  • Added database version to MySQL DBAPI class and to the System Information report
  • File manager can now handle files with illegal url characters (added urlencode escaping).

The latest version of MODx can be downloaded here.

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