MonkeyChow Release 0.5
September 16, 2006 – 3:02 pm(UPDATE: The above link has been updated to point to the latest download where I fixed a problem with pruning and to provide a workaround for those without gettext built into their PHP.)
Now that I’ve got a number of features all together, I’ve decided to do a full release to get all the new goodies out to those that don’t like pulling from SVN. This is the recent version 102 release from the Sourceforge SVN in a tar.gz for you to unpack in your web server. Note that there are a lot of changes in this, and I recommend that you install this in a new area. Typically SVN takes care of file deletions, but using the tar.gz will not clean up old files for you.
My goal for the 1.0 release is to further merge the frames and non-frames views into a single unified view, and to reorganize and pretty up the interface, possibly with some sort of skinning or basic styling. We’ll always have the current basic no-nonsense view, but some want something they feel they can show to their friends. I’ll continue to follow SimplePie as it grows in further releases and hopefully by 1.0 I’ll be using a non-beta version of SimplePie. I also hope that this new 0.5 release will spur more people to do translations so that 1.0 will have a number of languages supported. Somewhere in there I also need to add multiuser support and preferences for users. I can’t promise that 1.0 will be the next release, but this is what I’m thinking about for the future of MonkeyChow.
So what new features have been added in the 0.5 release since the previous 0.2 release? Here is a list of all the changes I’ve blogged about in the past three and a half months:
- Feed Expiration - For when you want to subscribe to something for just a short period.
- Feed Privacy - For when you want to subscribe to something, but yuo don’t want it appearing in the published list and its RSS feed, or the aggregator pages and its RSS feed, or the OPML output.
- Internationalization - MonkeyChow in your language
- Article collapsing and collapse toggling. Also set flags to toggle.
- Uses SimplePie
- Per Feed Article Aging
If there is something on your MonkeyChow wishlist that you’d like to see get into the next release, drop me a line or leave a comment here.
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16 Responses to “MonkeyChow Release 0.5”
nice work, I’ll have to try out the new version
By dude on Sep 17, 2006
If you have access to SVN, go to version 103. Something bad happened with feed updating, even after having tested before committing my changes. The new version has the fixes.
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 17, 2006
I’m still a noob about SVN stuff so I still dont get how to use that stuff
also u probably should of put a link to the download
By Dude on Sep 17, 2006
alright i downloaded the 4 files manually and put them where they should be
By dude on Sep 17, 2006
Four files? All you need is the one monkeychow-0.5.tar.gz file. The rest are old releases you can ignore. I’ll add the download link.
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 17, 2006
Ah a new release… but sadly I had to replace ALL “_()” into “()” in all the PHP-files :-(.
Since there are so much of these I gave up. Any idea?
FYI I’m on FreeBSD with PHP 5.1.6 and MySQL 4.1.21.
By BOK on Sep 18, 2006
The “_()” is for internationalization, so it’s not a good idea to remove that. This may mean your PHP is not built with gettext support. http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.gettext.php
Does the URL pointing to /monkeychow/simplepie/compatibilitytest/spcompatibility_test.php
pass all tests? Create the file phpinfo.php with the following as its only contents
and make sure that it says “GetText Support enabled.”
You can add the following into init.php to avoid all the internationalization if your PHP does not have it built in. If it fixes it, you will either want to build your PHP with the –with-gettext option, or ask your provider to include it.
function _($str) {
return $str;
}
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 18, 2006
I’ve added the _($str) function to SVN version 104 if gettext is not detected.
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 18, 2006
And I’ve now released monkeychow-0.5.1.tar.gz to provide the gettext workaround and to fix something I broke in the pruning. I’ve used this for over a day now and it seems to be OK.
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 18, 2006
Ah thanks! No GetText here yet: I’ll try to compile the PHP-module tomorrow OR try the 0.5.1-version.
By BOK on Sep 18, 2006
Or just punch in that function into init.php for a quickie solution.
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 18, 2006
OK - it works!
By BOK on Sep 19, 2006
Is there somewhere I can read up on this script? Like a FAQ or something?
By mrclark on Sep 22, 2006
You can click on the MonkeyChow link in the upper right of the site (Tags) to read the articles that have been published about it. What type of information are you specifically looking for?
By Ernie Oporto on Sep 22, 2006
Is there a way I can use this just to share news with others and not let them mark stuff viewed/edit/delete feeds?
By Bob on Oct 7, 2006
Yes, that’s exactly what I do with my site. If you look at the Reading List on the right column of this site, you’ll see a list of articles. Those come from the monkeychow/rss.php feed.
You can also see all articles from your non-private feeds by looking at the monkeychow/aggregator.php page.
You can see a feed of all the articles in your non-private feeds at the monkeychow/rss2.php page.
Likewise, you can see the OPML listing of all your non-private feeds by going to the monkeychow/opml.php page.
And just now, because you asked for it, I’ve added published.php, which is a page for viewing the recycled articles without requiring the user to have an RSS reader of their own. You can see this now. This is available in version 105 of the SVN from sourceforge. Let me know if you need a copy and I can either mail it to you or post it here if there is enough demand from those who do not use SVN.
If you set your .htaccess file in the monkeychow directory to only allow access to those pages, then you can share all that output with people while also denying them access to view/edit/delete feeds, and will be able to read the RSS feed of articles you have marked for recycling. Take a look at the .htaccess file included in the distribution for a working example.
By Ernie Oporto on Oct 7, 2006