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Not cut out for Property management

August 6th, 2008 | 9 Comments | Posted in development, plugins

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I’ve spent the past eight days single handedly looking after a friends property management business whilst he and his wife were away, and I can honestly say, hand on heart, I don’t know how anyone does it. I’m at breaking point already!!!

So, let’s use this post to start a wish list. What functionality do you absolutely need in StayPress to make your life easier? What functionality would be nice and what would be a dream come true.

I’ve already made a few notes myself inbetween screaming and hair-pulling bouts and will be getting these altogether in the development roadmap, so now’s your chance to get something I haven’t considered in there as well…

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StayPress gets a facelift

July 30th, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in development, plugins

Just to prove that work is continuing on the StayPress system, I thought that I would point all you watchers out there over to the new look StayPress site. I hope you like the look and direction I am taking, if not then I’m sure you will let me know in the comments below.

StayPress now also has it’s own blog (new theme coming soon) to keep you up to date with on-going developments. We will soon be looking for beta testers, to have a play with the online version of the system to help us sort out the UI and spot any bugs, before an initial code release. So if you haven’t already subscribed to the StayPress blog now is the time to do so.

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A short week ahead

July 14th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Charity, development, plugins

Today marks the start of a short week with a full weeks worth of work that I have to cram in, so I thought I’d get some updates posted in case I don’t have the time later on.

StayPress

Development is chugging along, though it took a little bit of a back seat last week whilst I attempted to get my entry into this years Weblogtoolscollection.com plugin competition completed. The good news, however, is that some of the solutions I discovered for my entry will streamline parts of the code in StayPress and has helped me find some solutions to the little stumbling blocks I came across. So onwards and upwards this week.

Vent

More details on my entry into the aforementioned competition is available here. It is a system designed to allow you to use the scheduled posts functionality of WordPress to manage events. If you like it then please consider popping along to the plugin competition blog and voting for it.

Hoard Hunter

The Hoard Hunter game is still ongoing and there are still a lot of sectors remaining. It only costs $5 to enter and all proceeds go to Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare trust. On top of that you could win an iPod Shuffle. The theme and plugin for the Hoard Hunter system are also now available for download so that you can run your own game online.

A Weekend of Madness

On Saturday and Sunday (19th and 20th July 2008) I will be attempting to run 100km from Petersfield, across the South Downs to Brighton (in the UK) with 3 other team mates, carrying our equipment on our backs. It is a distance of 100km (two mararthons + an extra 10km added on to the end). If you would like to support this moment of madness then please consider sponsoring me (or entering Hoard Hunter above). All sponsors will be appropriately credited and thanked (in a manner I haven’t fully worked out yet, but at the least your site will be linked back to).

I will be recovering in a public house in Brighton following the event (early afternoon of the 20th July). If you would like to meet up for a drink and a chat then keep an eye on my Twitter account for more details of the place I end up (it will in all likely hood be near Brighton Racecourse, which is the finishing point). I will be the dirty, smelly person in the corner trying to get the bar staffs attention (and/or calling for a nurse).

Plugin Factory

And finally the Plugin Factory is about to be reborn. When it was intitially launched I received quite a bit of interest for custom plugin development. Unfortunately I had to take the factory offline as my other workload increased to the point that I had very little time (on top of that I had moved so was without a reliable ADSL connection). Now, fingers crossed, I should be getting a brand new ultra-fast line connected soon and to celebrate will be launching the all new Plugin Factory, stay posted for more details.

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Vent - adding events to your WordPress blog - teaser

June 23rd, 2008 | 7 Comments | Posted in Thoughts, development, plugins

I’ve now done some initial work on the plugin that I will be entering into Weblog Tools collection plugin competition this year, so I thought I would take the opportunity to post some details here.

Vent is a plugin that allows you to use the Scheduled post functionality of WordPress to add and manage future events.

Details of the next scheduled event can be displayed at the top of your blog page, as well as in a sidebar widget.

All future events can be viewed on an Event listing page, and on a “Upcoming events” sidebar widget.

You also have the option of converting past events back to standard blog posts so that they remain in the blog hierarchy.

You can specify the criteria you use to identify an event in the options panel. This means that you can still use your scheduled posts functionality for it’s intended purpose.

I’ll post more information as the development continues. I am also thinking of a possible fit into the StayPress family so StayPress will handle venues and bookings and now possibly events as well.

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Moves, Plugins and StayPress updates

June 9th, 2008 | 5 Comments | Posted in development, wordpress

Yet again I am in the process of moving (whilst my last place was nice, it was a bit too remote. It turns out I’m more of a city boy than I thought), so am currently without telephone or internet connectivity. Hopefully it should all be transferred from my old place very soon, but if it is anything like last time then I’m not going to be holding my breath. So updates to this blog will be in batches I’m afraid.

Plugin competition - one month remaining

For all you plugin authors out there, there is only one month remaining in the Weblog tools collection competition. Last year the myDashboard plugin came a very respectable second. Unfortunately I won’t be entering this year due to my excessive workload (and general lack of ideas).

StayPress updates

Work is still progressing on the StayPress system, I have a few willing testers hammering away at the completed parts - so the bug reports are coming in thick and fast - I will post updates and some more screen shots as soon as I am able. In the meantime I have created a Mailing list for support questions and inquisitive minds.

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Truly Humbled

May 28th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in development

All I can really say is “Wow, Thanks, I wasn’t expecting that”.

The response to the Introducing StayPress post has been more than I ever expected. What I imagined to be a set of plugins with a limited niche audience seems to have been picked up by a number of more mainstream sites.

Special thanks go to (amongst the hundreds of others who posted):

Work continues on the plugins, so thank you to everyone for their patience, obviously (well to me anyway) these plugins are quite complex so the development isn’t as quick as I would want but it is getting closer to an initial alpha release.

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Introducing StayPress

May 14th, 2008 | 40 Comments | Posted in Announcements, development

After a great deal of work, I am pleased to introduce a sneak peek at the new StayPress system.

StayPress is a collection of plugins that will turn a standard vanilla installation of WordPress or WordPress MU into a property management and bookings system. Of course when I say Property, I actually mean any bookable resource of which there is a finite availability. So the StayPress system will be able to manage property rentals, hotel room rentals, conference rooms and centres, B and B’s, training rooms, bands, etc…

The new StayPress system takes over from the previous clearskys.net collection of plugins and brings everything together into a more manageable and co-ordinated group.

Whilst there will obviously be a downloadable version of the StayPress plugins, we are also planning a hosted version of the system for those who do not want the trouble of running their own website.

If you would like to be kept informed of updates and our release dates then please subscribe to either this sites RSS Feed or visit StayPress.com and subscribe to the StayPress only blog.

StayPress is in no way affiliated with Automattic or WordPress, other than being built on one of the best web CMS systems around.

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