I've recently given some thought to a piece of EE that I have never had a great need for. Control Panel logging. Out of the box, ExpressionEngine logs certain actions that are performed in the CP saving the Site ID, Member, IP Address of that member, date/time and the action performed. This can be very useful when trying to figure out when something happened and who may have done it. It can also help see how many people might be logging in under the same account from various locations (IPs). This is all great but quite limited considering the number of actions for which this occurs.
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Today I published an article that walked through utilizing the Control Panel Log in ExpressionEngine and recording with certain actions were performed in your add-ons. To display how this might be used I have updated my Redirect Helper Lite module with such a feature. Now when any redirects are added, modified or deleted the action is recorded to the Control Panel Log along with the standard info of the data/time, Member info, and site ID. If you're a code diver you can check out the mcp.redirect_helper_lite.php file for the changes near the top of the file.
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I've had this update sitting in my repository for a little while and haven't had the time to polish a couple of things up to release it. Finally I had some breathing room after some client work so I'm now releasing version 1.1.0 of Redirect Helper Lite. This introduces an extension to the add-on which greatly enhances the processing time of the actual redirection. In earlier versions ExpressionEngined to being parsing the template before it even performed a redirection. That's a lot of overhead for something that should occur immediately. For this update I've utilized the sessions_start hook and now the redirection occurs as early as possible saving you that tiny bit of processing time.
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First let me thank everyone who participated in the discussion about add-on pricing. There were many great thoughts shared and it helped me make my decision on add-on pricing. What I have decided is to stick closely to what EllisLab already does with ExpressionEngine. The exception will be MSM sites. Essentially I will sell one license per installation of ExpressionEngine. So if you run a single domain or 100 domains off of a single EE install you will only require a single license from me. I will stick closely to the volume discount rates that EllisLab has setup which is outlined on this page.
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Tonight I felt like renting the new Star Trek movie in iTunes. I'd heard really good things about it and had wanted to rent it for some time. My wonderful wife bought me an iTunes gift card for Christmas so I wanted to start putting it to good use. The nearly 4GB download finally finished (HD rental) and I was ready to start the movie. After clicking play I received a dialog box with error code 5103. I ran Software Update to make sure I had the latest version of iTunes hoping that it would be a simple fix. That didn't do it. After some digging I got it going and now I'm sitting here enjoying this action-packed opening sequence. Here's what I found:
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For some reason I feel like sharing some things I intend to do in 2010. I've never really been one for resolutions but I do set "goals" to some degree of the word. Typically I just aim to achieve something but not particularly by a certain date. For 2010 I will keep that pattern and not really set dates for my personal goals. That said, here are some things I'm working on.
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There is an interesting thing going on in the ExpressionEngine community right now. More developers are realizing that they should actually get paid for their public add-on development. I'd venture to say that most developers who release public add-ons got their start by fulfilling a need for a specific client project. I know that was the case for me. I needed a few features in EE that weren't available any other way, 1st or 3rd party (hey! what ever happened to the 2nd party and why don't we ever mention them). Considering that detail, most add-on developers were originally paid for their development. Somewhere along the way these add-ons, not just for ExpressionEngine but for software in general, became commonly distributed freely. Don't get me wrong, I love free software. I love using it and certainly enjoy creating and sharing it. That said, we all have mouths to feed. Some of us more than others.
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I love music. Simple. It's always been an important part of me (and my family for that matter) and it's a piece of every single day of my life. Whether I'm singing around the house to the soundtrack in my head, just listening to iTunes or playing guitar, music makes its way into my day.
I'm most effective in development/programming when I'm listening to really good music. A while back I made a playlist in iTunes called Now This I Can Work To. It contains about 9 hours of music which typically gets me through a work day, if necessary. I also love listening to Pandora stations. So, the time has come for me to shop around for some new headphones so I thought I'd share my thoughts.
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The latest update, 1.1.0, of ER Developer Toolbar is now available. I have added an addition level under Templates which gives direct links to template groups and to the edit page of specific templates. There was also a small UI addition of an arrow to indicate each menu item which had items beneath it. I also did a good bit of re-factoring to the extension file that won't affect the actual functionality of the toolbar. It was simply the first step in the EE2.0 direction. I also updated the documentation link in the extension. You can grab the update on the extension's page. To upgrade you simply replace all original files with the new ones from the zip.
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How many times have you been working on a site and poof! something doesn't work the way you expected? For most developers this is just part of the process. There are some common ways to debug issues that are built right into ExpressionEngine. You just need to know how to use them. There are other things that aren't necessarily tools but rather features that might be missed causing errors. Let's dive in.
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