As I tweeted earlier today, I’m now running on WordPress 3.2. It is, as many people have said, gorgeous. And the full-screen mode is amazing, especially (as I believe Matt suggested) you hit F11 to get rid of the browser chrome. Just you and your words, you need nothing more.
This weekend I had the opportunity to put in a few hours on VoucherPress, my voucher/coupon plugin for WordPress. I’ve completely overhauled the code, and while (at the moment) there aren’t many new features, this overhaul will make it much easier for several thing to happen:
- It will make it easier to diagnose, and hopefully fix, bugs
- It will make it easier to add new features
- And it will make it easier for other people who want to get involved to understand how it all work
But I do intend to add some new features for the upcoming version 1.4 release. Most notably is a way for individual users, not just site administrators, to create and manage their vouchers. As part of that I’ll also be making it possible to put the voucher form on the front end of your site. I’m not quite sure how I’ll do that yet, but that’s the idea.
The second major feature I’ll be adding is something I’m asked about on a regular basis. At the moment the vouchers/coupons are a fixed size (about 1/3 of A4). I want to make a voucher be produced at (almost) any size. So if you want tiny PDFs for mini-vouchers, you will be able to do that. And if you want A3 sized PDF posters, you’ll be able to do that too.
This requires a re-think of the way that the templates (templates are basically just images which appear as the background of the PDF) are stored and handled. I still intend to offer a range of templates for a set of standard sizes, but if you want completely custom sizes you’ll have to produce your own template.
My idea to overcome the much larger number of standard templates is to store them in the WordPress Subversion repository to be downloaded when required by the plugin. So you’ll install the plugin with no templates, and when you choose to create a voucher and select the size you want, the thumbnails of each template will be copied to your WordPress installation so you can choose one and create your voucher. When you save your new voucher the full-resolution version of that template will be copied to your WordPress installation ready for PDF creation.
I’m not aware of any other plugins that use the WordPress Subversion repository in this way, and it amounts to free hosting for the templates. But seeing as the kind WordPress folks offer free hosting for plugins (here’s mine) I can’t imagine it will be a problem.
So, that’s the idea. When I will get chance to do all this (and overhaul my other plugins that need it) is unknown.