Leaderboard

I wrote at the first of the year i might have some news to share with you all. I've decided to come back partially to IPS development, and re-release some of my bigger apps. Bringing Back: Stratagem Formularize these are the two apps i'll bringing back very soon. Possibly New Apps: Meals - This will be a "recipe" app. it will allow you to define ingredients, build recipes (with measurements), so you can create a daily/weekly/monthly meal menu that will also generate a groceries list of what you need to purchase or have to make each meal. Chrono - this is will be a time logging applications. it will allow you to log hours, costs, task, as well as send task and pay individuals thru any of the support payouts in nexus (since nexus/commerce is becoming apart of the whole IPS suite). Easy Tables - This app will allow you to build data tables, with some computation abilities (like a worksheet) and use them in various places on your site. Going Open Source: Babble names 2 avatar Toolbox Babble and N2A will likely be released under an open source license that will prevent monetization of the apps, but allow any one to modify it but not claim it as their own by changing the name or any other means. Toolbox will be released under its MIT license its always been under, toolbox will likely be only viable for IPS 4.x development, 5.x sounds like it kills off most of what it was designed to do, but it also extensively uses the hook system. So i highly doubt they put much thought into having the new "event" system, cover 1% of the places i hooked into to make most of the advanced features in this app work properly. which is sad, cause it has a lot of features i do use. after i make their repositories available, i will no longer be supporting this apps free of charge, they will be released as is. deader than disco: group menu manager downloads plus I wont be releasing these apps under Open source, and would just rather see them die. I don't think they will be able to be updated for IPS 5, as both used the hook system extensively, to do what they did. Pricing: TBD

I might have some news in the next few weeks, not sure if it will be welcomed or not, we will see how it all goes.

well its been awhile... so to catch everyone up on things, its been a difficult year for me, a lot has happened since i last posted. I got sick again, it wasn't major, but it was enough that it put me down for a bit. so i'm better now, shortly after getting better, some one close to me passed away. i didn't take that well and have been in a slump. that too, i've gotten better from. so where does that leave things? well first off i'm making all my ips 4 apps free of charge, till i can get them upgraded for IPS 5 (which i am not even sure the status of, that is how far i'm out of the loop there). if its already out, it will be a few months till i can afford to renew my license, i took off the time from work for being sick and deal with my depression from my friends death. hopefully everything is back to normal, well as normal as things can be. so if you have any questions, i will be back monitoring my discord. well thanks to everyone and hope everyone is well. if anyone wants to help out with my renewal, i'll accept donations. Paypal CashApp thanks to anyone who helps out, I will hopefully make it worth it. any way enjoy the apps.

I will be coming out with a free new app/tool. I have stripped out a part of the toolbox, the Dev Toy Box, and will be releasing it as a stand alone app. I actually do use these tools quite a bit, but i've noticed toolbox is starting to have issues with php 8.2+, this is largely due to issues with in the IPS 4.x framework (where they are still largely doing things the way you would've done them in php 5.3, that are now deprecated in php 7+). I don't have any inclination to continue to try to fix IPS shortcomings any longer (to clarify this, i think any and all php software should be able to run with E_ALL enabled without suppressing anything. currently IPS doesn't allow this, as it throws a lot of deprecation warnings). Anyway this isn't meant to be a IPS rant, but an announcement to Dev Toys. Dev Toys will take the Dev Toy Box from the toolbox app, and allow you to run it without the toolbox. I can see some limited use outside of development for this app. it will have several tools, including converters, encoders/decoders and generators. I personally use the images converter to convert between png to webp and webp to png or various other formats. Hopefully it will out over the next week or so. again it will be free.

I have been sick for the past few weeks and haven't been able to take care of bug reports or develop much. I am better this week, but still a bit below normal, so i will do my best to get to everyone's issues sometime this week. Regards, Michael

New Features: MM Style Mobile Menu (similar to the one found in IPS 4.x, there are limitations to this menu, as it only handles menus, so any magic block or application addon features as popular and featured are not displayed. this only applies to the mobile menu however. This is a setting in the group management, by default it will use CJ Menu's mobile menu) add stems to sub menu disable "cloning of menu" import from IPS Navigation (from their menu system, not just import everything) speed improvements

This is something i've always toyed with over the years, its gone by various names like project chocolate (a poke the vanilla forum lol), zephyr, eoan, etc. its been redone several times over the years as well. it originally started its life as a fuelPHP project, then switch to symfony, then eventually laravel, and now its current iteration, which is some mad mesh of custom scripting and composer packages. Chowder itself is an evolution of eoan, which was a sub-framework i was working on for wordpress, cause wordpress is a kind of a nightmare to work with, due to its spaghetti nature. after a few months, i realized all i was doing was using wordpress as a login and a template wrapper for it, so i figured why not expand it more into its own CMS. so that is what i've done, it was a little bit more work than i was anticipating but i'm quite happy with the results. so what is the ultimate goal of chowder? i dunno, it might just end up being a vanity project, but i have plans to replace my IPS installs with it in the very near future (maybe the next 6 months). I will be releasing the core and page builder app i am working on for free, not sure which license i will release it under. it will likely be an open source license. as some of you know, i have had negative opinions about GPL and leaned more towards more permissives license like MIT and BSD* style license. however, with working in wordpress and talking with wordpress devs, my opinions of GPL have lessened and i don't see it as the "cancer" i once thought it was. so we will see, i will likely release it under GPL, but like wordpress it will only apply to the PHP code, not the html/css/js, which will help with other developers who choose to use. anyway, it still in its infancy (early alpha stages), here are some screen shots from it. the admin panel login. the landing page for the ap, there are more widgets for it, but i have them disabled as i work on a few things. right now it jus shows any logs that have crept up. since i'm developing this from the ground up, i've added in built into the "dev mode" a profiler that was inspired by the one in my toolbox app. the panels that can be found in the "profiler" it contains info and metrics useful to development. there are more features i plan on adding to it, but those will need to wait till some other things are adding into the framework. next it will have a section you can manage/install apps in. the "hooks" for apps, work similar to hooks that have been found in previous versions of IPS. plugins are another weird thing i've added in. original it was meant to be handlers for events, but its grown a bit from there, and will handle events and execution points in the framework. like Group/Member/Settings plugins can be used to expand the forms for those things, smarty types will allow you to introduce things into the processing of a template and finally staff is a combo of events and execution points. when i release it, i will have more comprehensive explanation. member management, in very early development here. more stuff related to member/group/staff management. here are the logs, they come in different flavors. in the code you can set the severity of them, so they will have different colors when listed and there will be filters to filter them out. there will even be the ability to configure which level notifies you and how they notify you (like thru email or thru the notification system, etc). now onto what is being used, here is a screen shot of the vendor folder (note: some of this stuff might not actually be in use, as i might pull in something to test it and decide not to use it, and take it out of my composer.json, but haven't purged it from it yet). here is the folder structure i've gone with. its a HMVC framework i'm aiming towards. the "core" app will contain everything to the core, i won't have a separate app and a system fold. nothing wrong with that route, i just prefer things to be more "organized". so things i will be using, most of the "core" will be a custom php framework inspired by things like fuelphp and laravel (with some symfony thrown in), but i will use third party libs when and where i can (as long as they meet my needs). I usually attempt to wrap what i'm using from third party components into classes for the core. this is usually more to make the code have a uniformed design language than anything else, its not intended to erase the work from the other libs that i use that might not be mine. it might be a practice i wont continue, and slowly replace what i've done already over several releases, we will see. I'm using the smarty template engine. i chose smarty, cause i've always liked it, i felt its one of the most stable, mature and well documented out there. the main css i'm using it bootstrap 5, i like the look of bootstrap, and i think it gives theme design an easy point to alter, cause of how well supported and document bootstrap is. i also use various symfony components, along with fastroutes for the front end routing. anyway i will release more about chowder as i develop it. if you have any questions or comments or features you might want to see in it, let me know. now is the time to have your voices heard, since its still in alpha btw if you want to see the the wordpress subframework chowder evolved from (eoan) in action, you can see it on this site: https://terranimperialguard.com/ the shipyard/captains lounge/skilltrees section are all built with it.

Recently I was asked to look into creating a "live event" system. Sorta like "status update" but for general news/tweets/articles/etc, that could later be converted into a pages page at the end of the live event. This got me thinking about how live event systems work. To be effective, they have to be able to deliver the information in real time, there are only a handful of ways to do this efficiently. Ajax is simply out of the question in most cases, cause it can be a huge resource hit if more than 20 or so people are actively viewing the live event, so this got me thinking about babble once again. One of the things that set babble apart from other chat systems, was the fact it used websockets to deliver the messages to the connected users instead of relying on ajax to retrieve a list of new messages. this allowed for much faster real time communication, as the message being sent and received were almost instantaneous, with the biggest limiting factor being the connection speed of the user. However, this required special software to achieve. I opted to use node.js to serve as the websocket host. this would've required a separate server for site to run the babble node.js app on or use my service. Both of these required additional resources from both the client and myself, to implement fully. Now as most of you know, I am not some fairly large corporation or even a large or medium or small business, I'm one person, with the resources of 1 person. So running the service for me was a costly endeavor for me. Even if it is more of a pita, the self hosted option is honestly better for everyone involved. Yes self hosting a nodejs server could be more expensive for some, but for most it might actually be cheaper. The servers I had, I had 2 of them at one point, then rolled back to 1 cause of cost for version 3 (but it was a more powerful server than the previous 2 I had). I tried to evenly distribute the cost of the service to the packages for babble (which at the time of the service, I was not making any money on the app itself and the service cost i was mostly in the hole on always). This was cause the size of the server had to be large to handle the load it would have, so more load, more cost, and then more cost to you. So with a self hosted server, you could scale to your needs, i would honestly say most sites would need a very cheap vps from like digital ocean or aws (around $6 to $12 a month). So if I were to bring back Babble, it would also include a live event system in it. I have several ideas to improve it to, one of the ideas i had was a "watch together" type system, that would allow multiple people to watch the same video (say from youtube and the creator of the watch together would have control over the video, like pausing/ff/rewind/etc) and have a chat going among those watching it. If i was to bring back Babble, it would be apart of the subscription model, but it would not have a service attached to it this time. It would strictly be a self hosted thing, I of course would offer a setup service for those who needed it. Let me think, here are some questions to ponder: Should i bring back babble and why. what features would like to see added what changes would you like to see what concerns you'd have with running your own node.js server should alternatives be explored instead of node.js+websockets whatever other question/comment you might have

Decided to release the club's menu i made awhile back but never "officially" released.

Stratagem 3.3.0 has been released under the new subscription model. I've always wanted to do a central app that was required for all my apps, as I use a lot of "shared" libraries in my apps that i've created, that i will fix a bug in one of those and forget to bring it to the other apps or forget where i fixed the bug or when. So this shared app allows me to have only one app that actives the license key and checks on its status when it needs too and also keeps libs i've created to be shared among my apps into one location. This will likely help a great deal with version 5 of IPS, as i have plans on moving over to a framework that plugins into IPS, but use very little IPS code to avoid issues in the future that always plagues me. this should also allow me to more easily move my apps over to other platforms like xenforo and wordpress moving on in the future.

I was hoping to have had at least a beta released before the 4th, but i'm having issues with the license system in nexus. I'll work on it over this weekend and hopefully i will have it up monday

I'm currently finishing up the update for Stratagem. I will be testing it for the next week or so, to make sure i've got everything fixed. Stratagem will be the first app released under the subscription model. after this release, i will begin development of stratagem 4.0, which will like be the last branch for the IPS 4.x series. Stratagem 5.0 will be the first branch for IPS 5.0. if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them down below.

Would anyone be interested in me doing my work as a streaming session? like a few hours a week, just having me talk about what i'm doing, get an idea of what i do, how i do it and possibly why i do it. it would give you all a chance to see a progress of an app/development and get to know me as i'm sure i will try to make it entertaining, with stories and jokes and what not. let me know what you all think about this idea.

I'm still around and kicking, just been busy getting everything ready. been working on the new apps, along with some wordpress plugins too. I've created a discord channel, it's usually on on my phone/tablet/pc, so if you want, come join. let me know who you are and all that https://discord.gg/cRc5u9G

I am alive, I don't mean to disappoint anyone if you are I had a chance to use my talents to help a few local schools out with their IT dilemma (mostly fixing their old and donated computers to hand out to children who don't have one). So i was busy with this for a bit, and then i got sick (not with covid19, at least they told me it wasn't it, but it kicked my butt for about 5 days), but i am back now. I have a few things to get thru for a few clients, and then i will start working my way thru the backlog. hope everyone is staying safe and well

I know it might seem like version 3 is a pipe dream, but after a lot of debate, thinking and trying to figure out what i was going to do with it, i've began work on version 3. Its gonna be different than what i've previously shown for babble version 3, it will have some elements lifted from it. but here is a list of some features removed and added into version 3: Removed: Guest Messaging: this was removed cause the code was a bit buggy and was standing in the way of some features i wanted to add in. guest will be able to view the room, but there wont be any settings to allow them to chat. Rooms: well they're not really gone perse, but they act differently. in 2, they were treated as different entities than each other, in 3, they are treated as "channels'. persistent online list: as some of you know the online list has been a bane to my existence for awhile, i had thoughts of removing it completely cause of the issues, but i did a lot of work on it for 2, and have taken what i've learned to 3. in 3, the user list is pulled directly from who is connected at the time when it was connected, in 2 it was a list i tried to maintain and i think that was the problem, trying to keep the list synced. entry/exit notifications: this wasn't really popular with folks, got a lot of complaints about them, so i've decided to just remove them. New: front interface: i really like how the new interface for babble is turning out, it reminds me a lot of chats like slack/discord in the way it functions. new sounds: there will be new sound files, less annoying and softer than the old sounds. whisper history: will show you a list of everyone you have had a conversation with in the past, with showing you their status. Statuses: change your status, if you go idle, automatically sets to away. new bots: there will be several new bots and the way they are configured. Group Chats there will be more news as i finalize the alpha of 3, here is a short video of some of the new features and what version 3 looks like: *note: there isn't the final look, as i have minimal styling atm, as i get all the elements built and changes in the codebase.

Babble 2.5.0 will be released the next few days. This release is mainly for Commands. A lot of the planned features for commands for 3.0.0 have been backported to 2.5.0, to help fix several issues. mainly cause of confusion when it came to permissions or "quirks" in the previous system that would allow some of the "moderator" commands to be used by everyone or groups that weren't a moderator. Features/Improvements: Custom Commands/included commands and aliases have all been merged. Permissions are now handled per Command (including any added commands). Custom Commands of the basic type found in previous versions can be created, along with more advanced form ones, like the included commands. there will be new guides to explain how to do either. Custom Commands: you will still be able to add your own custom commands. there will be 2 types you have a choice from. Basic, basic works identically to the way the custom commands from previous versions, and advanced. Advanced are php based ones, designed to do more advanced things, all of the included commands are of this type. I will make guides for both of these types, to better explain how they are to be used, and what options are available to you. Aliases: Aliases still exist in this version, but they are now included with the commands. Instaed of one HUGE list of available commands, with their stacks all visible. The Aliases have their own tab within the command. Help: Help has its own tab now inside the command, and will be using translatable, so you can customize the commands help per language you have installed. This is a much needed improvement for babble, hopefully it is a welcomed change . let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

the chat service is now live, so if you are a self hosted and wish to join the service send me a PM . as for self hosted, i will be adding clubs to the self hosted here in a few days. i haven't forgotten about it

Update: the service will be up later tonight, I am -6 UTC, i hope to having up before midnight my time (which is 9 hours away), but a few components i made, were built on 4.1 and i am needing to update them for 4.2 (minor changes, shouldn't take long, but i will want to test them first). I will be launching the long awaited Babble Chat service on Monday 7/31/2017. I had plans on doing it today, but that was before a violent storm decided to tear thru my neighborhood and now has left me without power since Saturday night at around 9pm (i am still without power, but at a friends so i could get some work done). So i was unable to get all the pieces put together like I wanted too on sunday to get the chat service rolling today. I will continue to support both types of babble (the self hosted and the service) but i will no longer be offering the babble self hosted version for sale to the general public, unless they want to pay $500 for it (however if you are interested in the self hosted version, contact me first, the price will be much lower than what is listed, same with renewal). the reasons for this are many, but to put it simply I've grown weary of the complaints from either non-technical people, people who don't see that it has special requirements and/or people who misunderstand that it isn't going to be a free service like IPS had. I might put together a "free version" later, but at this point i haven't given it much thought. unlike IPS I am not a corporation with thousands of clients, where i can offer something like this free of charge. I also do not plan on making great amounts of money off of the service. most of the renewal, along with the purchase price, goes towards the application and its maintenance. out of the $25 every six month renewal, the actual service is about $9 per license (the service is actual at cost) the rest goes to my time involved in updates/new features/support. Current Self Hosted/Trial Service: if you are currently a self host client and would be interested in the service, please contact me and i can explain in further details the terms of it will be. If you are in the current trial service, please contact me ASAP so i can see if you will continue to use the service, if so, so i get you setup. I sent out an email, but i have only heard back from a few people. Regards, Michael

Name 2 Avatars - yes Babble - latest version Media - no Keywords - untested Downloads plus - no, new version soon CJ Duplicate Member Logger - untested, but it should be. Storm - Latest dev version pulled from GIThub. Smooth Scroller - yes CJ Menu - no

With IPS removing chat service next year form their application lineup. this leaves a lot of site owners out in the dark in what to do, how to replace it if it is vital to their community, and with a lot of the third party solutions being expensive or requiring a lot of setup, I have decided to see if having babble as a SAS (software as a service) is worth the time and effort it will require to get all setup. you can help me out by joining the trial. somethings to keep in mind: you will need to purchase babble from here or from the IPS market place (if you purchase it here, i can offer you a discount on it, but please contact me before purchasing it as i will not be doing partial refunds after the fact). you agree to only use babble during this time period (as the point of this trial is to determine what sort of infrastructure i need to create, this includes what sort of servers and their resources). you also agree to run the alpha/beta's of babble 3 and leave feedback. you also agree that by joining the trial, that you will need to register to my site here, be apart of a special members group, so you can get access to areas that are restricted. these areas include and not limited to, bug tracker, forums, downloads, store, etc. I will also be using this group to send out emails/pm's with questions or surveys that you agree to return to me filled out/answered in a timely manner. babble version 3 looks significantly different than babble version 2 and the way it works is also slightly different. https://codingjungle.com/roadmaps/babbles/ you can visit my roadmaps for babble, to see the changes. I will be updating it in the next few days to bring it up to date with the current state of babble version 3. Other things to consider, if the trial is successful the service will be done on a 6 month renewal terms. none of the prices will be set in stone yet, so i can not say how much the terms will be, but i will try to make them as reasonable as possible. if this trial doesn't work out for any reason, I will offer to help any one setup their own solutions to get babble working. if you wish to join the trial, please contact me via PM or thru the contact form. the trial will officially begin December 1st and will last 1 month to 6 months (so i can collect stats on usage, and see what is the best way to go about it).

I will be beginning work on CJ Menu 3.0 on monday. I will post a "change log" over the next few days. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please post them in the tracker as a suggestion: http://codingjungle.com/tracker/cjmenu/ Update: http://screencast.com/t/pPsxMVLCe1i the traditional menus in action.

CJ Menu 2.0.0 Preview. New Features: More: replaces the "slide menu" Sub Menus stay open on screen resize Sub Menus resize on screen resize. Enhanced Mobile Menus (bigger sub menu's, for easier use on touch devices) Changed "back to top" from menu, to lower right hand corner. New menu "type". Internal: allows partial URL's from your site, to allow easier portability if sites URL changes. Improved "Import Navigation". Movable "User Menu". Improved Menu Activation (now if you are in a topic, its forum will activate. available for all of IPS applications) Most of the improvements in 2.0.0 are done on the code level.

There might be a delay in replies to pm's, emails and support tickets for the next week or so.