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Calendar plug-in Demo
Hi,

I have set-up fuzzylogic's Calendar plug-in on Significant-Media.com and thought this would give you a better idea of what a neat plug-in this is.

You can see it here and check out the right sidebar.
You can either click on the month to see the articles posted this month or on the day to see the articles posted on that day.

This is part of fuzzlogic's suite of blog plug-ins :
blog conversion suite


A very interesting part of the plug-in is the ability to create archives of posts, per day and per month.

As you can see there is also a recently posted articles part in the sidebar from the same suite of plug-ins.

Cheers, John
Significant Media
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Re: [Jag] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Excellent Plugin, this plugin could be useful for a lot of different projects.
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Re: [rascal] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
There are two features left I want to finish off before making the plugin public:

1) page spanning. right now all posts are on a single page. I would like to finish off an 'x' posts per page option and daily archives option.

2) static pages. currently everything is dynamicly driven using page.cgi, with rewrite rules making the pages appear static. Rewrite rules are prefered so that the pages don't become out of date, but obviously not everyone has that option, and the page.cgi URL look butt ugly...

There is another sidebar which isn't being shown on Jag's demo, which is just a quick-link to all the monthly archives.

I recently added, at the request of Jag, an option to change the first day of the week (ie, from Sunday to Monday), which will shift the days around slightly on the calendar.

If anyone has any questions, suggestions, or constructive criticism, please post!

To restate everything that's included:

1) sidebars features
-a) recent posts -- displays links to last 'x' article posted; has option to shorten article titles
-b) monthly archive quick links
-c) calendar -- browse forward/backward through months; each day with articles is hotlinked to that days' subheading on the page for quick access

2) archive pages
-a) main page displays subheading for each year and links to each monthly archive for that year
-b) monthly archive page displays all posts for the month

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Getting closer to a final version :-)

Contrary to my previous post, I decided against having an option to build static pages for now. Static pages aren't optimal, in my opinion anyway, because they can become outdated quite quickly,

There is, however, an option to have the plugin generate mod_rewrite friendly URL's (via a 'build_dynamic' switch, and a 'build_archive_url' option), instead of the page.cgi URL.

Here's what I've added/changed since my last post:

main index page--
http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/glinks/page.cgi?p=ab_main;archive=/index.html

-added a "last 'x' authors" section; the links go the users most recent monthly archive (will change so it links to the most recent post)

archive page
http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/glinks/page.cgi?p=ab_main;archive=/2006/08/index.html

-2 page spanning modes added ('x' posts per page, 1 day per page)

large view linked calendar
http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/glinks/page.cgi?p=ab_main;archive=/2006/08/calendar.html

-you can display 'x' number of direct links to articles

small calendar sidebar
-added variable to display a concatonated list of article titles on mousovers.

user index page
http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/glinks/page.cgi?p=ab_main;archive=/users.html

-alphabetized and seperated list of active authors and links to their respective pages.

user specific archives/sidebars

-as alluded to above. you can now break down everything by individual author

date formats
--many date variables can be customized to your preference with '%xxx%' notation in the plugin user configuration.

Still to do:
-add option in archive index to display last 'x' articles
-finish adding configurable date formats
-move hard-coded language into the plugin config
-add search function to limit searches to a specific user or monthly archive
-finish off templates, and CSS;
-write up some documentation

I have a feeling I may need to do some work on the 'user' specific URL's to account for user names that have non-alphanumeric characters in them. (can be solved by adding an AI column and populating existing records, then using that new column to key off of)

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
How much are you charging for this plugin -- Looks awesome


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
I haven't decided on a price. Perhaps $100?

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
not sure about $100 a bit rich maybe 45-50 but its difficult to price things sometimes


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
One can hope? Tongue Seriously, I don't want to under/overcharge, so your input in that respect is very helpful.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
My Input:
I would buy it today for $45-50
For $100 I would work at doing it myself, I know it doesn't make a lot of sense as the hours put into creating it myself would be more then an extra 50 bucks.

As a consumer anytime I see $100 or more the product is no longer considered an impulse buy, but a purchase and that requires thought.


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Yeah after giving it some thought, $50 does sound right. The amount of work applied and the length & complexity fails in comparison to my 'PingServices' plugin... and I know I'd be cheating myself by selling that plugin for $50.

Again, I appreciate your input. Let me know if you have any suggestions so I can work them in while tying up the loose ends.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
One issue I am not sure if you've addressed or even want to.

Calendar event addition: no html required.

When someone adds an event to the calendar or makes a comment to the calendar, it would be nice if NO HTML is required to get the effects you want, a forum type interface for additions or modifications. It would make it much more user friendly.

Personally I think all of LinksSQL should work this way.


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Can you elaborate on that further, please? Blush

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Sorry I am not explaining this better.

A picture is always easier:




Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Not to be anal -- butt -- if we develop software and plugins in a manner where our grandparents can use it and not complain we have success.

Ensuring all our products are 80 year old user friendly increases our pocket change :)


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Okay I think we have a slight mis-communication as to what the plugin does. The official name, "ArchiveBuilder", best sums it up (it was previously called "CalendarView"). In simple terms, it's a complete remake of the standard "What's New" feature, designed in such a way that is more appropriate for a news/blog site.

There are some things in my demo that are *related* customizations and/or part of a seperate plugin. The "pings" sidebar and listings in the article detail pages, for example, are part of the "PingServices" plugin that I'm developing.

The plugin doesn't have anything to do with how articles/links/events/etc. are entered into the database. It doesn't have a comments system or anything of that sense. The calendar and associated archive pages simply display what's already in the Links table.

Now, if what you're wanting to do is run a seperate "events" calendar instead of having the data pulled from Links, that can certainly be done. However, the amount of customization required for supporting this feature would basicly justify releasing a seperate version. I'm actually intrigued at the idea of building a version specificly for this use.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Oh my gosh, I thought this was an interactive calendar of events plug in. One of my sites needs a calendar of events and that’s what I thought you had going. There are businesses popping up creating software that lets companies and individuals keep their calendars online.

When I saw what you had going I thought ALL RIGHT someone did it and now I don’t need to. Your actually closer to completion than I am (have not started) you may have something there.


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Getting it to work in that way basicly would just require telling the plugin to look in a different database. And obviously add a system for managing the records from both the user and admin side.

The tricky thing is to set up events to
--NOT show up until a specific date/time
--run for a set period of time
--automatically remove once expired

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
--automatically remove once expired
Why not leave it for event archiving (history of events)

--NOT show up until a specific date/time
Let them show up so people can plan ahead.

--run for a set period of time
Not sure if that’s necessary



Consideration

Event addition Notifications; user can select per event notification or once a day.


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Those were just initial thoughts on what would in my opinion be useful for some people -- and would take some time to figure out.

Let me polish off what I'm working on and we can get in touch in a week or so to work out more details on the events system.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Like you I was adding notes -- unless you wish to keep this thread clean, could we add notes and idea's here for consideration? Or do you want to do it somewhere else?


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing
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Re: [SandraR] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Discussion can stay on the forum so everyone can give their input, but it should be moved into a seperate thread to avoid confussion.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Calendar plug-in Demo In reply to
Sorry to have highjacked your thread here is a new thread for the Calendar of events.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...;;page=unread#unread


Sandra Roussel
Chonsa Group Design - Fresh Start Housing