Back At It

After very nearly a year without a post to my blog, I am finally back at it. The reasons for not posting anything recently are the normal boring reasons no one really wants to hear about. I mean, yeah, it’s primarily because of laziness. Also, I finally understand why people with kids never have time to get anything done. It takes some adjusting.

In addition to finally posting a new post, I have also gotten around to updating my WordPress Plugin, WP SimpleWeather. That is the primary purpose of this post.

WP SimpleWeather Version 0.2.2

For anyone who might feel the need to update to the latest version, I would like to apologize. Version 0.2.1 of the plugin saw me add in some functionality to allow for a clean uninstall of the plugin. My intentions were good. Unfortunately, I made a mistake, and set it to perform this clean uninstall upon deactivation, rather than explicitly on uninstall. So, when you update the plugin, you will lose all related settings. I’m sorry. But this won’t happen again. I’ve fixed it in version 0.2.2, and it will not remove the settings on deactivation, but only on uninstall.

At the request of Thomas Nielsen, I have added the capability to change the metric units for windspeed from km/h to m/s. This isn’t a big update at all. Unfortunately, it took a fair amount of time due to my recent lack of time. I had to relearn my own plugin. It felt a bit strange. Any way, I hope you enjoy it. If there are any issues at all, please let me know.

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WP SimpleWeather Plugin

Today I released my first WordPress Plugin to the WordPress Plugin Repository. It can be found here. I have also created a page here on my website explaining the basics of the WP SimpleWeather Plugin.

As this is my blog, let me go a bit more in depth here. As I briefly mentioned above, this is the first WordPress Plugin I have created. I suppose that could lead to a variety of questions concerning it, so let me go ahead and hold a brief question and answer session with myself to explain.

Q: This is your first WordPress plugin? Does that mean it’s going to suck?

A: Yes, this is my first WordPress plugin. I mean, I’ve used plenty before, but this is the first one I have made. I suppose it is quite possible that it will indeed suck. I mean, I don’t think it does, but it is possible that users of the plugin will find any number of issues that I have not thought of. I am new to the game here, so be gentle. I will do my best to fix any issues as soon as possible.

Q: Why did you decide to create a WordPress plugin in the first place? Why a weather plugin? There are a ton of those!

A: Well, I have been using WordPress for quite some time in the creation of my websites. It is the most popular blogging platform in the world today. This website itself is made using WordPress. During the creation of another website (which I am still working on), I needed the use of a Weather Plugin. Unfortunately, all the WordPress plugins I came across dealing with weather were, well, not quite what I wanted. So, I went searching around and eventually came across the jQuery simpleWeather plugin. It was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Except that it was not yet a WordPress plugin. I could use it easily as a jQuery plugin, but then my clients would not be able to easily update it via the WordPress back-end. So, I decided to convert it into a WordPress plugin.

Q: Someone else made it? And you’re taking credit? Isn’t that wrong?

A: Yes and no. The jQuery simpleWeather plugin was created by James Fleeting using the Yahoo! Weather API. There are a variety of available plugins which use the same. I really liked his, and merely converted the publicly available code into a WordPress plugin. If Mr. Fleeting would prefer that I take the plugin down, I will do so at his request. I am fully crediting his work (as you can see here), and do not wish in any way to be stealing his thunder. I sincerely hope that creating this plugin will bring both he and I more web design business in our respective locales.

If there are any questions, feel free to ask away in the comments section. I hope someone enjoys the plugin. If not, at least I’ve found it useful for myself.

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