I just wanted to let people know about the latest feature coming in the next version of WebCards: bulk upload.
You simply upload all your chosen images to a specified folder (”import”) and refresh the page. All the images in the folder will be listed. You can choose which ones to upload and choose and name an category for each one. Thumbnails are automatically generated. There is no messing about with advanced options and it is a very quick way to add a lot of images.
The screnshot on the left shows what the bulk uploader looks like in the admin centre. As you can see, you don’t have to import all the images and you can choose which ones to upload.
I am keen to know what you think of this feature and anything you think needs adding or changing with it. Please post any suggestions you have on the forums.
Introducing the latest WebCards feature: the search cloud. OK, it ’s not a major new feature but I just want to let people know that latest WebCards development news.
If you don’t know what a search cloud is, it is a list of recent search terms with more emphasis given to terms that are searched for more frequently. More popular search terms are shown with a bigger font and less popular terms with a smaller font. They are popular on a lot of the social networking sites, such as last.fm and technorati.
The search cloud can be “dropped in” anywhere you like but I currently have it on the advanced search page.
You can take a look at the latest WebCard feature on the demonstration page. Although the demo is not particularly useable at the monet, you can still use the search feature and you can see how the search cloud changes.
Let me know what you think of it over on the forums.
For those of you who wish to support the French language on your WebCards installation, we invite you to download the WebCards French Language Pack. This Pack is suitable for WebCards 1.3.
The translation was done by Webcard Forum member Cattss and you can read their announcement on the forum.
There is a detailed explanation on how to use Language Packs in the documentation but it is a very simple process.
- Download the pack from the downloads page and upload it to your “export” directory. Do not unpack the .tar archive.
- Log in to your admin centre and click “Import/Export Language” under the “Languages” section.
- Choose the tarball lang-Francais.tar and choose a name for the language. French of Francais would be the most logical.
- Simply click “import” and the language will be ready for use by your users and administrators.
Big credit is due to Cattss for the excellent translation.
I am pleased to announce the availability of WebCards version 1.3 for immediate download.
This new features of this release include those announced in the previous blog post, including a new mailing class (PHPMailer), admin profiles and an administrator log. Please see the changelog for more details.
This release was made a few weeks ago but the announcement was delayed until some bug testing could take place. The feedback from the WebCards community has been excellent and some changes have already been fixed in the main release code, particularly the installation file.
An upgrade file is required to upgrade from version 1.2. Please read the upgrade instructions very carefully before you attempt to upgrade. Take a look at the upgrade documentation for more information.
Please feel free to post any bug reports or request help over at the WebCards forum.
I thought I would share a few of the new features that I have added to WebCards over the last few weeks. I haven’t posted a development update in a while and I am keen to let people know how development is progressing.
1. New mail sending class
I have implemented PHP Mailer into WebCards. This replaces the old SMTP class that was used. I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel and so decided to include an excellent, well-maintained mail class for sending mail. Sending email is very much the heart of WebCards, it is important that it works. Using PHP Mailer expands the sending methods to include mail(), SMTP, sendmail, Qmail and potentially even Gmail if you wish.
Each administrator has their own profile which includes standard information such as name and email address and the ability to change their email address. This opens up the possibility for user permissions and also enables the implementation of a password recovery feature.
In addition to the email logs, WebCards now features administrator logs. This tracks all activity such as editing images and templates, logging in, deleting cards and also tracks the cron logs when delayed cards are sent.
Please post on the forums if you have any comments or feature requests. Some requests that have been posted on the forums are already being implemented in the next WebCards release.
Many users are experiencing an SQL error when upgrading to WebCards version 1.2.
The error looks similar to this:
MySQL said: Unknown column 'click_img' in 'field list'
Error number: 1054
It is caused by some missing fields in the database.
To fix this please download the patch www.mywebcards.net/12_db_fix.zip.
The main download file has also been updated.
If you have any problems please post on the forums.
We are now offering paid-for installations of WebCards for US$20.
This is a solution for people who are either not confident with installaing WebCards on their own server or who are having trouble.
We are able to modify the WebCards codebase to accommodate just about any server. We can do this because we are the authors of the project. If we cannot sucessfully install WebCards on your server you will, of course, not be charged. We may also offer free installation in the future in return for allowing us to debug the program on your server.
Please see the listing on the SourceForge.net service listing page for complete information.
If you have any questions please feel free to post them on the forums.
I have posted a fix for the “edit image” bug that I posted about yesterday.
This problem affects WebCards 1.2 only. It was caused by some development code being left in the release code.
You can follow the instructions below to fix your installation. If you are uncertain with editing files please download the latest WebCards release and upload the file source/ad_images.php into the correct folder.
To fix your WebCards installation
- Open up source/ad_images.php
- Scroll down to line 400 to the editimg() function
- Locate this code just below:
require_once(”ajax/GoogleSuggestCloneJax.class.php”);
$ajax = new GoogleSuggestCloneJax();
$ajax->handleRequest();
$ret = array();
$ajax->loadJsCore(true);
- Remove all this code and re-upload ad_images.php to the /source/ folder
Please post in the forums if you need any help implementing this.
I am aware of a problem in the WebCards admin centre regarding the edit image page showing a blank screen.
If you are suffering from this problem, please take a look at this forum post for more information.
I will post more here when I have any updates.
It has come to my attention that some debug code was left in WebCards release version 1.2.
This problem applies only to version 1.2. All other versions are unaffected.
This is not a security bug but a major usability problem. The problem results in the contents of your language directory sometimes being printed at the top of each page.
I have updated the main WebCards release package for version 1.2 to address the problem. You can either download the new package and replace the file index.php or follow the instructions below to update your own installation of WebCards. The only file that needs to be replaced is index.php.
To update your WebCards installation
Open up the file index.php in your text editor.
Locate the block of code around line 1473:
while($file = readdir($dp))
{
echo $file;
if($file!="." && $file!=".." && $file!="index.html" && is_dir($conf['dir'] . "lang/" . $file))
{
$lang_style_changer .= "<option value=\"" . $file . "\">" . $file . "</option>";
}
}
$lang_style_changer .= "</select>";
Simply remove this section
echo $file;
Re-upload index.php and the problem will be fixed.