Time problem

At the moment the development is a little bit delayed, this is based on summer (golf time) and my paid job (yes, I’m did something else). Right now I’m looking to for a redesign of nextgen.boelinger.com as basic work for a better documentation page and a new forum, cause my actual version is to buggy for the increasing requests on NextGEN Gallery.

Please let me note that I’m very happy that I get so many response and some people are using this plugin already in a productive mode, but keep in your mind I call it a “Alpha” version until I finished the most features I personally would integrate till version 1.00 . This include that I maybe need to restructure some database parts, and maybe some users from a very early version need to redo their work , when they want to update to a actual version. I hope I can avoid this, but it may happens.

Now what’s on the list as next feature ? Thanks to KeViN we did a big step into a better Sidebar Integration, I will integrate the Multiple file upload very soon (with a new jQuery plugin) and the JavaScript based page navigation like :

http://cross-browser.com/toys/img_gallery_2.php
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/photoalbum.htm

This should be recoded with the help of jQuery and I hope for myself that I get this running…

It’s only a matter of time

Decision

A decision is a final product of the specific mental/cognitive process of an individual or a group of persons/organizations which is called decision making, therefore it is a subjective concept. It is a mental object and can be an opinion, a rule or a task for execution/application. From Wikipedia

So I’m back on earth, and as I already said, I rethink the last weeks… The hacker attack is still going on (200 attempts yesterday, did they not recogize that I changed the files ? Stupid…).

One decision is to reduce the amount of plugins on my page. I’m responsible for them and I’m not able to maintain them all , because I have still not time for this. Therefore I will remove the hosting of some plugins.

Three plugins are still my favorites and the downloads and feedback response, bring me to the point that I will do my best to work on them as long as possible : wordTube, wp-Table and of course NextGEN Gallery.

The hacker attack show me one major problem : I’m not able to inform all the user of this plugins in a certain time. There a still a plenty of pages , which didn’t update the plugins and this I want to do better in the future. I already integrate a version checker in NextGEN Gallery and this function class I will integrate in the next month also in wp-table and wordTube. So if a next major failure occur I’m able to inform the users about a update in a much better and faster way.

Thanks to all the people who write me a mail or comment that I should go on, this was very very helpful in a period I lost my complete motivation to move on…

Disconnected

Ok, after this week , full of blame, frustration, disappointment, stomach ache and shame, I take my personal timeout. As I said, I’m not reachable by mail, web, internet, sms, phone, mobile…

I hope this web page is still online when I return and I found my personal motivation again. I must rethink what happend. Thanks to those people who send me some comforting mails , that I should continue my work.

This situation explain the enormous responsibility you have as developer, indepened if its a freeware , shareware or a paid project. My hobby to study this language and the idea to share my little code project with you, didn’t bring me to the idea that I create such a potential risk. I’m getting blind for the obviously failure I did in this case, but it can happend again, because I have no time to test my code against all hackers ideas.

So, back on the 14th May it’s time for decisions…

BIG security issue !

My plugins get hacked and in the same way like myGallery

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2007/04/30/please-update-mygallery-plugin/

I update all plugins (except NextGEN Gallery, which is safe), please update now to the latest version !

Please check your server log if you see external access to :

• wptable-button.php
• wordtube-button.php
• myflash-button.php

Then I recommend you to delete this file, the TinyMCE button will not work, but it’s better for the moment.
I analyse at the moment what the hell they get already for information from my site. I hope this is not a bigger problem, but for the next days this page can be offline from time to time…

Sorry for all the problems, I’m not aware of this when I program the plugins, I do my best that this never happend again.

Here are the hacks :

http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/3825

http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/3824

http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/3828

Surprised

700 downloads (here and wordpress.org) in the last three days. And the less amount of bug response surprise me… Seems to be my first alpha shoot is not so bad as I belive. I pushed this now to all available places (wp-plugins.net, wordpress.org , german wordpress forum) to get more response, and I think it works.

So I’m deeply working on bug fixing, actual status you can see at the change log. I waiting today for some more feedback and will release tomorrow a new update. The album management creates some headache, it’s my first steps in AJAX + jQuery and some user reports that it’s not working. Maybe I can debug this at a system during weekend… Solved, remove AJAX then it works 🙂

Then it’s time to step forward and create some more jQuery integration, I get some real good links from Ben (Thanks for the hint!)

Bad feeling

During I finish the first alpha release I get some bad feeling that it’s not intuitive enough… For example : I prepare the thumbnail effect selection , where you can choose between Thickbox, Lightbox ,Highslide or whatever you like. The idea behind is that you add the class, rel or onClick code you need for your effect.

Ok, I kept it simple, but I didn’t integrate all of the script code, so it’s on you when you need i.e. Highslide, to integrate it manually in the header. Is this the right way ? The most users are happy that they install WordPress with not more that 4-5 steps, but this require more knowledge. Mhh…

Watermark ready

Today it’s cold outside… so some time to work on my plugin. Thanks to Marekki’s Watermark plugin , I enhanced a little bit the Thumbnail class from Gen-X-Design , to a new feature : Choose now a watermark text or image file. I like the style from Marekki’s plugin so I keep it mostly in the same design.

I’m very happy now with my first version, it didn’t include all the features and wishes, but I can give it a try in the next weeks on some of my hosted blogs… Hope you like it at the end, otherwise it’s a waste of work…

 Some notes to my roadmap : I finish a first alpha version hopefully till end of april, then it’s your turn : Give me some feedback (good or bad doesn’t matter) and I will work on it…

Global heating

If you ask , why NextGEN Gallery get’s stuck a little bit since last week, see this :

http://weather.msn.com/local.aspx?wealocations=wc:GMXX0018

Cologne average temperature in April : 58° F / 15° C

Forecast Next Week : 80° F / 26,5° C

So if you know my hobby, you know where I am 🙂

Where is the next window …

… where I can jump out .

Ugh, getting crazy : since two days I’m struggle on maybe a very simple CSS thing :

See result in IE7

and now in FF2

Ok, the images are set with float:left, but I closed the div and the IE gives me the result.Rod react very fast (Thanks!), but I didn’t get it working… what the hell is this f..k problem ? HELP, no better SOS , where is the CSS style god which I can call now ?

See the style problem now at http://nextgen.boelinger.com/

Update : A <div style=”clear:both;”></div> after the gallery content did the trick, hope is in the eyes of the CSS guys a good solution… Thanks for all your help !

getting crazy on XHTML

Ok, let’s forget for a moment my demotivation and have a look forward to eastern (a very long weekend) , a lot of food in the next days and a small new idea for NextGEN Gallery…

Now, as I promised I looked for a PHP thumbnail class last weekend and for my purpose the PHP Thumbnailer Class v2.0 from www.gen-x-design.com did this job perfect… One nice new fancy feature from this thumbnail class could be the Web 2.0 effect on the fly (generated during you call this page)  :

[singlepic=12,300,200,web20]

Here is the problem : I launched for a test purpose a new WordPress blog, have a look at  http://nextgen.boelinger.com/ .

When you check for a XHTML validation, it failed on the ampersand code in the <img  src=…> part. Questions : Is the reflection effect naughty or nice ? What could be done to get it XHTML valid…. ? Thanks to Rod, solved 😉

Eastern knocks at the door, hopefully to find a way around 🙂