Post Scheduler and Hot Threads Plugins for Vanilla 2.0/2.1 are now available
It was a busy week, and I'm happy to announce that two new plugins for Vanilla Forums are now available. Post Scheduler allows you to publish a Post (Discussion) at a later time, thus freeing you from the burden of getting up at ungodly hours to send a message to your community, while Hot Threads displays a list of the Discussions which have received the highest amount…
Why you should always add Licensing Terms to any software you distribute
I recently got involved in a debate on the topic of Software Licensing, and I found it sad that there is so little understanding, amongst Developers, of such an important topic. Together with writing complete and accurate documentation, knowing how to license your Software is one of the skills that any Developer worth his salt must have. At the same time, Users must learn…
How NOT to interact with non-technical Users
The content of this post has been removed following a complaint received by a reader. The objective of this blog is to share experience with fellow developers in a constructive way. We acknowledge that the original post didn't meet such objective, due to some non-constructive remarks that should have been avoided. We would like to extend an official apology to anyone…
Are Elance or ODesk good sites to find work?
The subject is a question I receive quite often by junior Developers who are looking for a way to get some extra income. Since the frequency of such question is increasing, I thought it was time to write a public answer. Such answer is no. The reason behind it is simply that, on such websites, you only find three categories of people: Clients who are looking to…
Announcement – Vanilla Plugins have been updated
Plugins LoginGuard and Advanced Logger for Vanilla Forums 2.0 have been updated today. The new versions fix some minor bugs, and increase compatibility with PHP Environments where Error Reporting is set to display Notice messages.
What are Notice messages?
Notice messages are minor notifications. They are usually ignored by default in PHP configuration as, even if…
Repetita iuvant: you’re a Developer, not a Priest
Repetita iuvant (latin): repeating things helps.
In this case, I'd like to repeat a message I sent in the past, but that seems to fall on deaf ears way too often: if you are a Developer, you must not behave like a Priest. I felt the need of repeating it because, in a short time frame, I stumbled upon a couple of websites with messages such as "we don't support Internet…
Being a Developer must not become a burden
This post has been inspired by a discussion spawned from a thread on Vanilla Community, about the topic of business models for the products created by Developers. Very briefly, one of the key points was the comparison between a purely commercial model, where (almost) everything that one creates is sold for cold, hard cash, versus a more collaborative one, where Developers…
New Release – Steam ™ Sign In Plugin for Vanilla 2.0
Steam ™ Sign In Plugin for Vanilla 2.0 is now available for purchase. This simple plugin allows your Users to register and log on your forum using their Steam ™ profile. This plugin relies on the OpenID plugin which is shipped with Vanilla.
Important
The OpenID plugin shipped with Vanilla contains a bug which doesn't allow Users to enter an Email address…
New Release – LoginGuard for Vanilla 2.0
LoginGuard for Vanilla 2.0 is finally available! Just in time for Samhain, the Celtic New Year. LoginGuard puts an end to brute force attacks against your Community, by tracking repeated failures and temporarily banning Users who are subject of suck attacks. More information can be found on product page.
Discount!
To celebrate both the release and the Samhain, you…
New Release – Basic and Advanced Logger for Vanilla Forums 2.0
It took a while, but it's finally ready. Basic Logger for Vanilla Forums 2.0 is available for download. Based on the powerful Apache Log4php, it adds much needed logging capabilities to the already excellent Garden framework, allowing Developers and Administrators to keep track of activities with extreme ease. I strongly believe that, in this era of expected 24/7 website…
Code != Clothing, or How to neatly structure your code
Having been worked with countless technologies , frameworks and 3rd party libraries, I can say that I have seen almost every possible way of organising the code for a project. From the approach of putting every file in a single folder "just for now" (where "now" becomes "forever", because moving things around is just too complicated), to the one of creating humongous,…
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