May 2006 Archives

My wife that is, not me. Yesterday, Jenn moved into her new home on ClubMom's MomBlogs. Now my server is back to hosting just little old me, so I can start doing crazy things with it again.

MultiBlog 2.0 development has taken much more time than I had originally anticipated, which in the end is probably a good thing as I have been continually improving it as I go. So, in an effort to keep the personal version free, I would like to raise some money for the past, present, and future development effort.

So, I created a DropCash campaign for MultiBlog 2.0.

It has come to my attention that Workflow is available for download on download.com (actually, it is listed twice). Normally, I suppose I would be flattered that some of my own software would appear on a site like that. That, however, is not the case in this situation for two important reasons.

1. The version listed is woefully out of date (1.0.2)
2. Most importantly, the license information given is vastly incorrect.

The site lists Workflow as having a free license without any limitations. That is very much not the case. While, yes, the plugin is free for personal users, commercial and non-profit/educational users need a license.

According to the statistics on download.com, Workflow has been downloaded from them over 300 times. Looking at the worst case scenario, in which every download would go to a commercial user who decided to use the plugin on their site(s), that would come out to about $82,000 of lost income for me. To take a more conservative approach, let's say that only 1 in every 100 downloads ended up on a commercial site for good, that's still $750.

While I am fairly certain that this was simply an honest mistake and no harm was intended, it is still pretty disconcerting. I am currently digging through download.com trying to find an email address or some kind of contact information so that I can get in touch with the right people who are able to either alter or remove the listing from the site.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am working on an update for Workflow for Movable Type 3.2. Version 1.5 of Workflow will be available only for Movable Type 3.2 and above and it will feature some changes (for the better) that MT 3.2 helps facilitate:

• No more external CGI scripts. There will be no need to install and configure a CGI script for Workflow. It will simply extend the functionality of the MT interface.
• Streamlined configuration. No longer will Workflow users have to step through a configuration setup process. All that you will have to do is visit the plugin configuration page and select who can and cannot publish entries. If you have any existing Workflow permissions settings, it will import them, otherwise reasoanble defaults will be used (only users who can edit all posts (i.e., Editors) can publish). The grant publish permission has been removed as MT now has its own controls over who can and cannot edit pluigin configurations.
• Dynamic template support. What few tags that are supplied by Workflow will be extended to support dynamic templates.
• Additional notification options. I still need to work out the specifics for this. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

I am also in the very early planning stages for Workflow 2.0. While I still have not fully fleshed out what I want to do with it, I will be working hard to ensure that one major feature makes it into the next big release of Workflow: entry workflow/revision tracking.

• Who first submitted the entry and when?
• Who has changed it since it was submitted and when?
• What changes were made and when?

When developing a plugin for Movable Type 3.2, you can list out all of the configuration variables you plan on tracking on system-wide or per-blog basis, along with explicit, hard coded default values for those variables. As I was working on Workflow last night, I discovered a way to programmatically set different default values for individual blogs.

We spent yesterday evening at the "Baby Basics" class at the hospital where we learned what babies looked like back in the 70s, were told to change a diaper on a practice plastic baby, and were taught to swaddle. After watching this video that Jenn pointed me to a few weeks ago, I'm tempted to practice on the cats, though I don't know if any of them would be nearly as pliant.