Blog: Articles filed under VSNS Lemon

VSNS Lemon 4.0 RC 2 is now available for download. It contains two changes. The first, and largest, change is that it no longer uses sessions to store the configuration variables. This makes it easier to integrate your blog with another page on your site. Secondly, because file_get_contents() generates a warning if allow_url_fopen is disabled, the RSS feed on the Admin CP index and the update checker will both fail gracefully if your host has allow_url_fopen disabled. In plain English, that just means that you’ll need to come here to check for updates because your host won’t let the script contact my site and check for you.

Otherwise, there’s no other changes. If I don’t learn about any major bugs in the next few days then this should be the last release candidate.

Download VSNS Lemon 4!

Finally! It feels good to have VSNS Lemon 4 out, but I still have lots of work left to do.

I‘ve turned my scripts repository into a wiki (DokuWiki, specifically) in order to better handle documentation and modification. Yes, that’s right: documentation. It is by no means complete, but it is there, and I will continue working on it as much as possible. Since it’s a wiki, you can contribute too, if you register.

What does “RC 1” mean? Not much. In my mind it designates this release as more stable than a beta, but not the final release yet. That will come after I upgrade this blog and had a chance to use it for a few days and iron out any more bugs in it. I haven’t upgraded this blog yet because I’m waiting to finish my full site redesign before I upgrade.

Download VSNS Lemon 4!

Windows Vista does not like the adapter that I bought with my dance mat, so I ordered a new adapter online (thanks Laura!) that’s better. It arrived last week and I got my dance mat working, which means I can now play StepMania! Plus I bought an RF modulator to hook up my computer to the big TV upstairs (because the TV is too old and has no S-video port!). This morning I went to play some StepMania and discovered that I had to move my dance mat closer to the TV. This is not because I have poor eyesight (which I do) or I couldn’t hear the music (which I could). No, it’s because where the mat was originally positioned, if I jumped my head would hit the ceiling fan. h34r:

So much for that. I’m tall, and the ceiling is low, which means I need to be more careful!

In other news, I‘ve started tinkering with OOP in PHP. I’ve often had trouble grasping OOP, but I finally wrapped my head around some aspects thanks to PHP 101: The Bear Necessities. Several concepts continue to elude me, so I‘m hoping that I never have to use them. I’ll figure it all out one day… .

My code benefits from this change. It’s good timing too, since the PHP group has announced that it will be ending support for PHP 4 at the end of this year. So I’m packing my bags and moving to PHP 5! This means that I‘ve stopped working on VSNS Lemon 3.3. Instead, I’m coding VSNS Lemon 4.0! It will be recoded from scratch using OOP to make it faster and more flexible. Most of it’s done except for the layout and a few little functions. VSNS Lemon 4 will have all of the features I promised in v3.3 too except probably AJAX editing, which I’m increasingly feeling is a bad idea. However, there will be a primitive search engine, live comment previews, and a few other goodies in there.

Vanilla Guestbook will get a PHP 5 makeover sometime after. It is less of a priority since my guestbook isn’t an essential part of my site, whereas this blog is basically the only new content on this site. Maybe that will change someday. But not today! I must go to bed.

I‘ve been working on VSNS Lemon 3.3 for a little bit now. My major focus was improving it so that it wouldn’t be so buggy (sucky). There aren’t that many more features I’d like to add to it—the point is, after all, to keep it simple and avoid feature creep or feature bloat.

So those of you who like simple will hopefully like this upgrade. It contains numerous bug fixes:

• Security: Added session_name() to differentiate between sessions
• Enhancement: User interface for emoticon management
• Enhancement: Redesign for admin CP interface
• Bug Fix: Major header() errors no longer appear (I hope!)
• Bug Fix: Quotation marks in headings caused form to break
• Bug Fix: Comment editing not totally effective
• Enhancement: Ability to give preview of article in archives/index

But wait, Ben! You said this was all supposed to be v3.3! Why are you calling it v3.2.2?!

Well, because v3.3. would actually need some more improvements to be called a major step up from v3.2.1. There are really only two more features I would add: a simple search engine, and (as I‘ve been saying forever) some properly-integrated AJAX to make editing/admin stuff easier. I’m hoping to include the search engine in v3.3. The AJAX may have to wait longer (perhaps forever).

Make a backup before you update, although I‘m sure it’ll all go well.

Please note an important change, however: if you are calling the script from another page, you must include settings.php, since final.php doesn’t exist! This should be done at the top of the page, preferably, to avoid any errors. Then place call_vsns($_REQUEST[’type’]); wherever you want the news to appear.

Download VSNS Lemon 3.2.2!

VSNS Lemon 3.2.1 is mostly a security update, but brings a few new features as well. You can download it from the VSNS Lemon website.

Changelog:

• Security: Addition of mysql_real_escape_string() to validate user input
• Security: Fixed cookie authentication bug
• Enhancement: Title of article now appears in title bar
• Enhancement: Ability to preview comment or article before finalising changes
• Enhancement: Word filter for comments
• Efficiency: RSS feed is generated only when articles are edited or created

With that last one, you need to make sure that you chmod your rss.xml file to 0777. If you don’t do it, then you will get an error later on. Also, you should go edit an article after you upgrade so that you regenerate your RSS feed. Hopefully you won’t run into any errors. If you find a bug, please report it in the Bugs forum, and if you need help, check out the Help forum.

Now I can go back to working on Vanilla Guestbook. I’ll add the word filter and preview features into it and see how it goes.

The changelog’s neat dropdown doesn’t work in Internet Explorer, but I’ll fix it sometime.

VSNS Lemon 3.2 is here!

Vastly improved (translation: it no longer sucks), version 3.2 irons out bugs and brings an unprecedented level of functionality to my blog script. In other words, I am no longer frustrated when I try to use it myself. If you don’t like it, I do not blame you, but I am not to blame that your tastes are not exactly the same as mine.

So there.

You may also have noticed that the site looks a bit different and some pages (such as the scripts and about pages) have more content. That’s because I have tweaked the styles to make it easier to read the site and enriched the content. More changes to come, hopefully.

With VSNS Lemon finally stable and such, I can now devote time toward Vanilla Guestbook, which I‘ve been woefully neglecting! It is extremely buggy and poorly coded, so I’m going to rework it until I am satisfied.

With March Break upon me…I‘ve also got some writing to do, I think.

Edit: Okay, it’s official, I should go to sleep. I just spent five minutes trying to fix a “bug” in script because the article kept on unpinning itself. Then I realised I had entered 2005 into the expiration date rather than a 2006 date.

Well, it’s here. After a lot of work, I’ve finished VSNS Lemon 3.1. Some of the biggest changes include an RSS feed (as seen on this site) and a fix to a couple of nasty bugs.

As usual, it’s available for download if you’re crazy enough to try it, eh. If you need help (or find a bug) feel free to email me.

I’m pleased to announce the release of VSNS Lemon 3.0.1, the first stable release of the 3.0 line of VSNS Lemon. It comes with a few minor bug fixes, as well as two additional options: you can now configure if the admin CP’s navigation will appear as a dropdown box or an unordered list (whichever is easier to use for you) and you can also select the heading level for news articles. The latter option does not affect the size of the headings, but rather their importance in the document. For example, you might want to make them H3 if you have an H1 for your title, then an H2 for your “News” heading.

In related news, the news archives may not be functional for the next few days, as any specialized code to make them work was overwritten during the upgrade.

Download VSNS Lemon 3.0.1!

Announcing the release of VSNS 3.0, now named VSNS Lemon. VSNS 3.0 represents the culmination of hard work to bring you more features! It is still in beta, but you may download it from the following link of doom!

VSNS Lemon Download Link of Doom (BETA VERSION)

Just performing some general clean up of the site. I’m tweaking the design and reconfiguring it to have friendler URIs. The site will soon be XHTML 1.1 valid, rather than XHTML 1.0 Transitional. You may have noticed a few sections disappearing or getting buggy. I’ll fix those soon, once 3.0 is out and I have a working archive function, the news archives will be back up. I pulled the Writing section because I thought it was poorly done, I need to redo the content.

I’m still working on VSNS 3.0, so far all I have left are: the comment system (tweaking it), the skin (not started), the semi-WYSIWYG buttons (not started) and to finish tweaking a few other bugs.

Tonight marks the release of my VSNS v2.3.3. Although it should perhaps be v2.4, I’m too lazy to rename all of that stuff, meh. You should upgrade to v2.3.3 because—perhaps surprisingly—upgrading in the future will become easier. Version 2.3.3 features a new “Update” page that runs a script which compares your version of VSNS with the latest version on my site, and tells you if you need to update.

Unless I encounter bugs in 2.3.3, the next version of VSNS will be v2.4; although I‘m debating whether or not to go ahead on that. I think I might build a spin-off of the VSNS that is designed to be a more complex news publishing script that relies more heavily on the MySQL database.

Right now ArgonX takes front seat, a calendar scheduling program that I’m developing. After I finish v1.0 of ArgonX, I will turn my sights to a basic website admin control panel, which will hopefully integrate ArgonX, VSNS, and perhaps my newer advanced news script if I choose to develop it.

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It’s my dad’s birthday today … so happy birthday, Dad. If you‘re reading this, then it’s time to close the browser and play some Freecell… .

I’ve added a great new feature to the VSNS. With v2.3.3, you will be able to pin items at any time, or unpin a pinned item rather than deleting it. Version 2.3.3 will be released shortly.

I’ve updated VSNS to v2.3.2. No real important changes, just some things to make the code cleaner and the control panel easier to use.

This is the first entry using my new Very Simple News System, which is the publicly redesigned version of my news generation. The news archives will be temporarily unavailable for now while I modify my VSNS for my archival purposes. I hope to put the VSNS up for download very soon.

Last updated Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 5:36 PM