phpns

Bug mania

Posted by alecwh on Tuesday January 19, 2010 1:19 pm

Over the last few weeks I have gotten a considerable amount of bug reports on our bug tracker. I have not gotten time to answer any of these as I am traveling abroad. I plan on sorting through the reports when I return to the United States.

Also, I appreciate the "thanks" emails that I have been receiving. They are very encouraging, so thanks.

2.2.4 released

Posted by alecwh on Tuesday October 20, 2009 5:14 pm

Phpns 2.2.4 fixes many issues with previous versions, as well as improves the entire user interface with a new theme!

• Ended "patch" nonsense. (All future version will be actual versions...)
• New default theme, UI enhancements
• Removed codepress as template editor (no longer maintained, broken)
• Fixed IE, Safari, Firefox 3.5+ article saving bug (button grays out)
• Fixed other bugs dealing with https://
• Fixed various typos
• Fixed other minor issues
• Updated docs with new development info

You can download it here. A patch can be found here. To install the patch, upgrade to at least 2.2.3 and overwrite all files. The screenshots page has been updated with new images.

Thanks for your support! If you want to donate to the project, click here.

Final call for bugs

Posted by alecwh on Tuesday September 15, 2009 9:32 pm

Hello everyone, the next version of Phpns will be released soon. If you are aware of any bugs in Phpns, big or small, please report them very soon!

Report bugs here!

Help us code! Contribute to Phpns!

Posted by alecwh on Thursday July 30, 2009 1:08 am

Hi again everyone, it's been an eventful day on the Phpns website.

To add to the excitement, I have just finished organizing a way for the community to seriously start helping with development. I have created a new page on how to contribute to Phpns. I'm serious about this--I seriously want to get all of you involved in this project.

To anyone who is interested in helping the project, take the plunge! Phpns needs a lot of work, so I've made a clear outline of how to submit code changes to us.

This is your chance to help an open source project. Get involved! Your contributions will be publicly recognized. Get the code with:

Bug tracking notice

Posted by alecwh on Wednesday July 29, 2009 5:14 pm

For context of this article, please read our prior announcement regarding Mercurial and Bitbucket.

We are now officially moving our bug tracking service from Launchpad to Bitbucket. We were careful in making this decision, as it does have some negative effects. But, it comes with some very positive ones! Bitbucket's issue tracking software is cleaner, easier, and downright more friendly than it's Launchpad counterpart. Bitbucket also allows for anonymous bug reporting, which means you no longer need to register an account to report bugs!

Please start using the Bitbucket tracker for all bugs, issues, proposals, etc. now. I will still be monitoring the Launchpad site for a few weeks, but I won't be checking there as much after that.

In this next version of Phpns, this information will be included in the About page and manual. Your installations now have out-of-date bug reporting info--we'll get it fixed!

Please leave any comments, questions, concerns, and issues you have with this in the comments section.

Switch to Mercurial, Bitbucket

Posted by alecwh on Wednesday July 29, 2009 12:09 pm

Hello everyone!

I know, I know our track record with sticking to a version control system is quite bad. First we started with Subversion, then we switched to Bazaar, and then moved to git, and then moved back to Bazaar, and now...

We're using Mercurial for SCM, and consequently Bitbucket for online collaboration.

This switch was made yesterday, for the following reasons:

• Manageability. I have other projects on Bitbucket, and I would rather keep all my projects on the same service.
• I love Mercurial. I admit that most current SCM systems (like git, bzr) are almost practically identical for the simple end-user, but Hg some minor user interface differences that I like.
• BitBucket and Mercurial are fast. Pushing to Launchpad with Bazaar took a significant amount of time. With these new tools, I only wait about 5-7 seconds. Not only that, Bitbucket displays the changeset immediately, where Launchpad took a few minutes to process it (so I remember).
• Anonymous bug reporting. Now, you don't need to register in Launchpad to help with the project--just report a bug!
• I can't get used to Launchpad. This may seem a little ridiculous, but it's actually a major factor in this switch. Because version control is so tightly connected with the development process, and thus the developer, these tools *must* be comfortable, or else they become frustrating. Mercurial, and Bitbucket, are simple, streamlined, and fast. These tools make my job easier, so it makes sense to use them.
• I don't like how tight Launchpad and Bazaar are. It makes sense, as Launchpad and Bazaar are operated by the same company... but the relationship is hard-coded in. It feels like if you're using Bazaar, you should be using Launchpad as well.

I'll be updating the site with new links to the repository soon. For now, check out Phpns on Bitbucket using this link: http://bitbucket.org/alecwh/phpns/.

Also, there are some cool features on Bitbucket that I'm going to be taking advantage of soon. I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for the thanks

Posted by alecwh on Monday June 22, 2009 12:13 pm

Over the last couple of months, I've gotten a few thank-you messages from Phpns users (located in the U.S., China, Brazil, and Egypt). These emails are very encouraging, and worth tons more than you think. Every time I get a simple thank you for managing this project (among others), I honestly smile--it makes my day better. These messages remind me why I'm developing Phpns!

So, in lieu of donations (although, please do if you can), a thank-you email/letter (contact info) would be totally awesome.

That is all, enjoy your day!

2.2.3 patch 3 in the works

Posted by alecwh on Saturday June 06, 2009 11:54 am

I have recently began development on patch 3 for phpns, and I hope I'll have plenty of time to work on it this summer. As a reminder, please report all bugs you find with the system. Any bugs that are submitted reasonably soon will be fixed for this upcoming patch.

Thanks a lot, and please donate (if you can) to minimize hosting/domain costs.

2.2.3 patch 2 released

Posted by alecwh on Sunday March 22, 2009 1:47 pm

I'm happy to release the next patch for phpns, patch 2 for version 2.2.3. This patch fixes various issues that have been found since the last patch released on our launchpad page.

From the CHANGELOG:

• fixed various bugs on Launchpad
  • fixed comment author email period bug
  • SSL (https://) issue fixed
  • fixed undefined function (htmlspecialchars_decode) error
  • emails no longer contain encoded htmlspecialchars
• added auto-hyperlinking in comment text
• various minor bugs fixed

You can get the patch here. To install it, just replace the files on your installation with the files in this patch. Note that not all files will be replaced, only a select few that were changed. You should first install patch 1 before installing patch 2. Please feel free to leave comments for this patch in this post. If you find any additional bugs, please report them to Launchpad!

2.2.3_patch2 in the works

Posted by alecwh on Sunday March 01, 2009 7:48 pm

It's been pretty quiet around here lately, but I'm currently working on a second patch for 2.2.3 (that will be placed atop patch1) to fix a few complaints received on Launchpad. You can expect this patch within the month (or maybe slightly more). Thanks for all of the bug reports, we appreciate everyone still trying to make this project better.

If you've noticed a problem with the phpns software (or any bug like that), you can still get it patched in this release. Just head over to our launchpad page and report the bug. Thanks for this in advance.

Updates soon.

You can track our progress @ https://code.launchpad.net/~phpns-team/phpns/head (our official bzr repository)