Category Archives: Widgets

09.05.13
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Email-Users 4.5.2 released

This morning (updated) afternoon I released a minor update, v4.5.2 (updated) v4.5.3, of Email-Users.  This update adds new information on the Dashboard to help the WordPress Admin ensure that the number of users they expect to receive email is correct.

There is a new Dashboard Widget and an updated Settings Page which note how many users will receive each type of email.  If no users will receive notifications or mass emails, a warning message will be displayed at the top of the Settings Page.

09.05.13
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Email Users Settings Page

In addition to the new Dashboard Widget for Email Users, I am adding some additional information to the Settings Page to indicate when User Setttings aren’t in a state the admin expects them to be.

When visiting the Settings Page, if either the number of users who receive post or page notifications OR mass email is equal to zero, a message will appear at the top of the page.

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In addition to the box pictured above, the current number of users who receive each type of email is now displayed in a small box at the top of the right hand column above the Donation box.

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Hopefully these improvements will help people chase down situations when users aren’t receiving email when they are expected to.

09.05.13
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Email Users Dashboard Widget

I’ve gotten a rash of questions about Email Users lately.  Most of the questions revolve around users not receiving email messages.  In some cases the users don’t receive email messages because their settings aren’t set correctly.  I am in the process of adding some information to Email Users to make it obvious when this is the case.  The first thing I am working on is a Dashboard Widget.

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Should anything else appear on this widget?

09.01.09
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Continuing with Sandbox

I asked the other day if Sandbox was dead and even though there was a minor update, it appears that Sandbox isn’t really dead but it is in a purgatory of sorts.  Not dead but not actively being developed either.  So

Soccer season has started and I need to update the Soccer theme I used for my daughter’s team because they changed uniform colors.  Since I had based the Soccer theme on Sandbox, I could either continue with it or start again.  For now I am continuing with it because (a) I know it pretty well now and (b) it works.  However, I do want to check out the Elastic theme editor I heard about recently on the WordPress Weekly podcast.

When I did the MacDolphins theme this past spring, I had based some of that work on the Soccer theme but was able to fix much of what had bothered me, in particular, the need to install the Sandbox theme itself and the Soccer theme as a child theme.  I love the idea of a child theme but for the casual user, the relationship between parent and child theme isn’t real obvious and failing the install the parent theme results in a non-functional blog and likely frustration.

By structuring the theme architectures such that it referenced the Sandbox source as a SVN external, I was able to bundle all of the files for the parent theme and child theme together as one theme.  This makes distributing the theme much easier and also solves the problem where the theme preview shows the parent theme instead of the child theme.  This preview problem doesn’t affect the functionality of the site but it is confusing if you don’t know what is going on.

I expect to have the soccer theme updated in the next week or so and probably offer a few more color schemes.  But first I am working on a Sandbox based LEGO theme which I’ll finish first because the NCLUG and NCLTC web sites sorely need an updated theme as the one they have now are old and don’t support widgets.  This LEGO theme is a good exercise in setting theme options, particularly the header area as I expect I will need it to make a generic version of the MacDolphins theme for any swim team to use.