Clearskys.net Blog

Moving blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Elements of randomness
This blog may be unavailable at random times over the next few days.
I am going to move it away from using Wordpress MU to a standalone Wordpress 2.1 installation. If the transfer goes well, you might not even notice.

Why?
I don’t have anything against Wordpress MU, it’s just that the domain being used to host the Wordpress MU installation (cafespain.com) is going to be used for another purpose. We just didn’t see the need for yet another multi-blog host, and Wordpress MU is overkill really for running only a couple of blogs, so our original plans have been put to one side (they may be brought back in a slightly different form).

What will become of Cafespain.com?
There are plans afoot, but everything is still up in the air and un-finalised, so I can’t really say much more, other than watch this (and that) space.

Move complete

The site has now been moved to it’s new home.

Hopefully I’ve managed to transfer everything, but if anyone spots something missing please let me know.

Wordpress 2.1 is released

Wordpress have releaseed the 2.1 version of their blogging system.
So far, all our plugins seem to be working correctly - but as I am running the current development versions, we shall have to see (I will be going through each bit of functionality later today).
If anyone has problems, please let me know.

First looks: Enquiry / Contact plugin

Well, as it’s late being released (very nearly ready now… honest), I thought I’d wet your appetites just a little and show some of the screens from the admin area of this plugin, and go over some of the more advanced ideas behind it (which are mainly why it has been delayed).

Form setup

Setting up a form is simplicity itself. Drag the fields that you want displayed on your enquiry/contact form from the column on the left to the one on the right. You can order your fields by dragging them to the desired location (click thumbnail below for larger view).

Want to extend your form? We’ve added a number of action hooks to enable you to create and add your own fields via your own plugins.

Field settings

Each field has it’s own configuration panel (very similar to the configuration panels for sidebar Widgets).

Enquiry management

The main enquiry management page shows the last 5 enquiries when you initially view it. You can search for enquiries by Property, time period and full text search using the panel on the right hand side of the page (click on the image to view a larger version).

Clicking on the small triangle on the top left hand side of an enquiry will display more details about this enquiry:

Clicking on the small icon on the bottom right of the enquiry panel opens an extended menu to allow you to delete an enquiry or (should you have the Booking management plugin installed) create a pending booking with the enquiry details and dates (enquiries that have linked bookings are shown in green in the enquiry management page - see above images).

Advanced functionality

This is by far our most advanced plugin yet. It is filled with Ajax-y goodness and is highly customisable and extendable. We’ve added a lot of hooks and filters so that other plugin writers can extend pretty much everything.

There is a little bit more still to be finished and tested, but I hope this post serves to show what we have been up to for the past few weeks.

Other plugins
A new version of the Booking management plugin will appear shortly after this one. We’ve revamped the interface a bit and added some hooks so it can be extended easily. On the back of the that will be a new Calendar widget with added functionality (which has been requested by your good selves).