From today onwards, all frsb updates will be listed on Sourceforge's project page instead of here. With that said, there's a small update there. Enjoy.

Are you a PHP developer, tired of remembering the different SQL statements? Or finding it a chore to be staring at those weird-looking syntax for SQL statements? Fret not, because MySqueaks is the answer to all your troubles! MySqueaks is a simple PHP class that generates SQL statements. This facilitates an easier understanding of the different parts and conditions of a SQL statement, making it more user-friendly for beginner programmers. Follow the link to find out more!

P.S.: This's mainly the reason why I'm delaying progress here... Watch out for the next version of frsb incorporating MySqueaks.

Now that the front-end interface is given a complete makeover, I'll be implementing the same changes for the admin pages back-end, which includes porting some of the existing functions into common.php and re-writing the HTML code for those pages to make it XHTML 1.0 Transitional/Strict compatible, again. In relation to this, I'm looking into "building" a nicer, fail-safe SQL query function to handle all the database queries, in an attempt to streamline all these code... On top of all these, look out for a special module as well that lets you check certain entries as being "important", so that you can easily build an index of all those entries as a blog entry, useful for posting reflections... So there!

Major changes:

1. Re-coding for front-end interface! Read here for more information.
2. Appended 'id' and 'title' fields in the entries table with 'entry_' (breaks compatibility with older code)
3. RSS support (plus an additional time_post field for entries table)
4. Passing 'showcomments' to the URL is now deprecated in favour of 'postid': 'postid' will now show comments for that blog entry.
5. Passing 'entry' to the URL now recognises a 8-digit number (yyyymmdd) as displaying all the blog posts for that day and a 6-digit number (yyyymm) as displaying all the blog posts for that month, includes validation for invalid dates.
6. Passing 'range' to the URL specifies how many entries to display - stored as a $_SESSION variable.
7. $user_details[] array is also deprecated.

1. New about field for users table, ideally for a short write-up at the sidebar.
2. Last edit timestamp for admin area defaults to GMT times.
3. Comments timestamp defaults to GMT times.

A major bug regarding user settings have been found and the bug fix posted. Please refer to frsb's Sourceforge website for more details!

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=171190&atid=857045

I'm currently swarmed by massive school work, which explains the lack of updates... On a high note, one of my friends have kindly agreed to do a new skin to go with the new revamped interface, so do watch out for this come October. So there!

A simple incremental update. ...(view entire entry)

A slight but significant detour ahead... I'll be making a new release with bug fixes and minor interface improvements these few days (with the free time I have before school starts) and what happens after that will come a major rewrite of the front-end for frsb. Don't be too shocked yet: Currently I'm using nested tables to take alignment down to the last percentage value, which is quite "Web 1.0" considering where the tide is heading these days. For the next major release, I'll focus on making greater use of CSS and <div> tags to make frsb more "Web 2.0", and probably align it more with the HTML 4.01 Strict specifications. Times are a-changing, and I can't afford my web programming skills to be "left on the shelf" (so to speak). It's time to keep up!

This is just to inform everyone interested/semi-interested in the progress of frsb that I'll be involved in two University Freshmen camps back-to-back over the next week. I might make a special NDP release for my country's - Singapore - birthday on the 9th August. Check back then and see if things work out. Meanwhile, enjoy version 1.9.0 beta as I've enjoyed it myself. So there!

P.S.: This is just to remind me a week later that I'll be writing a short "Part 3" to frsb's roadmap...

Ok, I guess this's going to be the gameplan:
1) Blog "clipping" and user avatars (the latter's pending) will make it to either the next or next two releases. These two features will require modifications to the front-end pages' code and hence I thought it would be more feasible to step up frsb with them.

2) Everything else - rich media additions, RSS, database import/export etc. will simply be released as modules. Speaking about modules, I'll be posting updated versions soon (only one from the current *two* listed modules actually required a minor code rewrite to fix a minor bug, I'll just update the other for the sake of updating) and I may release a few simpler ones to... make the modules system look good? Anyway, the idea about heading this path is to ease the development process, considering that I'm not going to have lots of free time left.

No promises yet, but if I manage my time well, I'll probably get some of the smaller modules out first in the next week or two, before the blog "clipping" and user avatars features that will define the newer releases. Then it'll be the "advanced" RSS and database stuff before I package everything up for the one *FINAL* version.

And what happens after the *FINAL* version? We shall see... we shall see.

First things first, school is starting for me soon, which means I'll have less time to develop frsb. That being said, I'll still try to post whatever new updates I have along the way and make new releases as soon as possible. If you were to check feature requests under SF.net, I have a couple coming up but given the shorter amount of time I have on my hands in the near future, I'll probably stick to implementing just one of them and releasing it as a new version - it'll be too long a wait to clobber a pair of upcoming features together (or more) and releasing them to the public, so don't be too said if it's only a few bug fixes and some small features on the next version. I'll look into adding RSS support and database import/export capabilities real soon... So there!

This is going to sound silly, but I've just discovered a serious bug in version 1.5.0 beta that would not allow you to add new links. So, please upgrade to version 1.9.0 beta to remedy the problem.

The "birthday" update is finally complete.

1. First up - a spanking new admin interface! It's actually heavily borrowed from the modules system - what I've done is to essentially "port" everything as a module with some code modifications to make things work better: such as a "create new" button to instantly blank out the fields for adding a new entry and allowing you to add a new entry when you have reached the end of the list. There'll also be changes to how the new interface handles modules, do check out the documentation for more details.
2. The new search function! Even I think that I've outdone myself... all the search functions are now consolidated under a single search box that will simply include any search templates that relates to existing modules (yes, that can be the new name for what's previously known as "main admin pages") - something like Spotlight in Mac OS X. This makes it immensely more powerful than the previous "fill in the blanks correctly as it appears, click search and pray" method that can only load one result, whereas a list of results will be presented this time round. It's one of those things that have to be tried out personally to believe it yourself...
3. Last but not least - the new To Do feature. Something I hastily added into the default mix for fun. Stores other information such as due date and priority on top of the description tag and it even does the "nice" strikethrough effect for completed items.
4. Multiple admin support. Enough said.

Firstly, a big happy birthday to myself, the lead developer of frsb!

Secondly, I would just like to announce that the next version of frsb - version 1.9.0 beta (tribute to my birth day) - will be delayed... by a day. I've managed to get the new administrative interface up and running including the multiple admins capability, all I'm left with is the new search function (this's going to be good...) within the administrative interface and the new Todo feature. I could probably attempt to rush through all these later at night, but I need to get adequate rest for my driving test that starts tomorrow morning, so I'm postponing development till tomorrow after my test... Just give me 24 hours ok? Trust me that it's going to be a worthwhile wait. Till tomorrow!

I've managed to free up a bit more time over the next course of two weeks, so I reckon I might as well include the Todo list feature back for the next release (I actually quietly replaced it with a new admin interface under SF's Features Request page) and get everything done on my birthday, which is the 19th. Look forward to better documentation too, something sadly lacking for the past three releases... so there! Onwards to the birthday update!

I just realised I can tell SF.net to list this as the Homepage for frsb, so I guess this web site will still see its fair amount of action for frsb development. I've shifted download & support information to frsb's project page at SF.net, so please use the tools there to raise bug reports, feature suggestions and the like. So there!

Over here!

This means that I'll be posting most of the development progress/work over there instead of here. This site will still be kept updated with the latest releases, serve as a mirror for downloads, and more importantly as a real-life example of blogging with frsb.

So there!

1. The last edited time after editing entries defaults to GMT time zone. This is because I forgot to factor in the user's time zone... will be updated in the next release.
2. Wrong length of field when attempting to log in from logout.php page. This has something to do with $device not being properly defined... will be updated in the next release. The "workaround" is simply to log in from index.php every time.

The Todo list will definitely make it to the next version. I'll be playing around with rich media additions (i.e. images and videos) and hopefully these will make it by the next update as well. RSS and importing/exporting of frsb databases will follow after these.

The frsb demo (log in to the administrative area here) has been updated to version 1.5.0 beta too.

Ok, this is totally unexpected from the roadmap I came up with last month and it's for a good reason. Firstly, both the new field to store the date/time of last changes to the entries and the "do not publish" features are implemented as per version 1.4.0 beta, but I've dropped the new date/time field for blog entries. My original intention was to make frsb capable of shifting the date/time for entries whenever the time zone is changed and using a new date/time field will help, but on second thought, it does not make sense if this keeps changing. For example, if I were to fly off to the US now with a different time zone, I would have preferred the time of my earlier entries posted while I'm in Singapore to stay as it is while I change my time zone to reflect my new location and have my newer posts based on the new time zone. Hence, I drop that implementation and stuck to the current method of doing things.

Of course, this newer version is more than just a "do not publish" feature - if that was the case, this would have been called version 1.3.0 beta . The other changes? I've implemented auto logoff in the administration area which means no more "funny" "not allowed to re-login" problem as frsb will now detect if your previous login session should have expired and sign you out accordingly. Simply put, you can now safely navigate away from the administration area instead of having to click logout and frsb will be able to log you out automatically too, once it hits your auto logoff timing. Last but not least, I've made various other minor tweaks to the default layout such as re-including the events sidebar (I wondered why I forgot to include this the last time) and updated the stylesheet to reflect coloured cells in the calendar.

That's about all I have to say. Have fun!