Tag name：wordpress

Character Sheet Plugin details

First published 17th January 2015 (Last Modified 12th January 2023)

Description

This plugin adds a new post type for linrodeth characters (called 'Characters' in the user interface). In support of this, the plugin provides:

  • The new post type (note, revisions of the character sheet are preserved, so old versions can be viewed (though not in that friendly a format))
  • Two options (accessed either from the 'Settings' link on the plugin itself, or from the 'Settings' admin menu). The two options allow the preamble text shown when a character sheet is viewed and the preamble text shown when a character is editted. You can also change the default genre and the default date (game date) used by the character sheets.
  • A widget that will list the recently added character sheets - this is managed from the 'Widgets submenu of the 'Appearance' admin menu. You can change the title shown by the widget and how many recent characters it will display.
  • It adds a new shortcode that allows links to characters to be added to posts and pages. It can also be used to generate tables of characters. Examples of use:
    [linchar /]
    Show a link to the first character sheet found in the database
    [linchar type="table" /]
    Show a table listing all the character sheets found in the database
    [linchar name="Dermot Foulkes" /]
    Show a link to a specific character sheet. Note that the name is that used on the character sheet NOT the title of the character sheet
    [linchar player="David" type="table" /]
    Show a table listing all the character sheets with the given player name (NOT the author of the character sheet)
    [linchar genre="Linrodeth" type="table" /]
    Show a table listing all the characters for the specified genre
    [linchar author="djvines" type="table" /]
    Show a table listing all the characters authored by a specified author
    [linchar type="table" orderby="name" /]
    Show a table of all characters ordered by the character name
    [linchar genre="Linrodeth" type="table" orderby="date" /]
    Show a table of all characters for a specific genre ordered by the last modification time of the character sheet
    [linchar name="Dermot Foulkes" type="link" text="Dermot" /]

    All the tables include a button and tick boxes that allows the generation of a single PDF that includes the attribute and skill table pages of the selected characters

    Show a link to a specific character sheet with the text of the link specified.
    [linchar name="Dermot Foulkes" type="link"]Embedded Dermot[/linchar]
    Show a link to a specific character sheet with the text of the link specified by enclosing the text with the shortcode

  • In addition there's a shortcode to add a sandpit for character creation experimentation. This allows for a new character to edited but not saved. The characters can be loaded/saved from the browser via the import and export buttons, but cannot be saved onto the website directly.
    [lincharSandpit /]
  • It also adds a shortcode to display the night sky. Examples of use:
    [linsky time="now" showbuttons="true"]
    Show the night sky as it is "now" and include the buttons to allow the time to be changed
    [linsky time="gamedate"]
    Show the night sky as it is at 11pm on the game date chosen on the settings page

Change Log

3.244.0 - 23 February 2023

Use the browser's small viewport units

3.243.0 - 13 February 2023

Adjust margins for headers in the skill sidebar when editing characters

3.238.0 - 22 January 2023

Improve (slightly) the appearance when viewing the character. Check if the edit button are there before trying to set their 'onclick' functions.

3.226.0 - 12 January 2023

Fix minor error in the php for the character sandpit

3.215.0 - 30 August 2022

  • Tekumel Bows are Short Bows not Long Bows
  • Add a smidgen of extra guttering to the skill table
  • On the character listing table add option to select characters and create a single pdf with all their skill tables

3.214.0 - 24 July 2022

Increase the size of the margin used on the left and top of each page in the PDF. This should (I hope) address the clipping issues

3.200.0 - 22 May 2022

  • Adjust width of genre button
  • Improve Handling of Tekumel Languages and Religions
  • Add a 'Copy Previous Skills' button
  • Support (completely optional) gender field
  • Link the post title with the name of the character (typing in one updates the other as well)

Note: This version does not address the reported issue of clipping when printing. I'm not sure how to proceed on that one since it should be the job of the PDF viewer to correctly scale the document for the printer.

3.198.0 - 11 May 2022

Get the buttons on the view character to inherit style rather than getting the theme's default

3.182.0 - 10 March 2022

  • Add a gutter for Performance Difference heading so that the table looks better
  • Limit stats to a maximum of 20 (it was possible to get a stat as high as 20.9)
  • Add Traveller as a genre
  • Moved some skills between categories

3.165.0 - 11 September 2021

  • Add a shortcode for a sandpit character sheet
  • Bump up the vertical size of the character sheet pane to 75% (from 68%) of the available vertical size
  • When changing genres ensure the character has a minimum age by changing the birthday if necessary

3.164.0 - 10 September 2021

Rename files using accented characters - sadly 7zip (and hence my build process) ends up mangling these 🙁

3.163.0 - 10 September 2021

  • Add more Tekumel skills
  • Restore added skills and fix the skill addition (which got renamed to 'Other Skills' 🙂
  • Split languages and religions in their own skill section

3.161.0 - 09 September 2021

Fix update detection logic

3.159.0 - 09 September 2021

  • Add Tekumel genre
  • Make the skill sections into expandable sections (they are now initially collapsed)

3.157.0 - 21 July 2021

Fix updating logic!

3.153.0 - 21 July 2021

  • Common up the plugin logic with my other plugins

3.102.0 - 21 March 2021

  • Fix saving of edited characters on WordPress 5.7
  • Allow use of the block editor

    Note that despite allowing use of the Gutenberg block editor, the editor of the character sheet actually replaces the entire post text with the character sheet, so any other blocks will be discarded!

3.76.0 - 28 January 2021

  • Add support for self-hosted update notification

3.75.0 - 27 January 2021

  • Goodgulf's telescope now uses the correct game date and for the "11pm game date" button.

3.73.0 - 07 January 2021

  • Minor adjustment to the widget (added a space between the character name and the timestamp - also made the timestamp actually the update date!)

3.39.0 - 27 January 2020

  • Add option to unlock birthday and attributes

3.38.0 - 19 July 2019

  • Support Torchwood as a genre.

3.35.0 - 22 December 2018

  • Change the now version of Goodgulf's telescope to use the browser's time rather than the server's time. This allows the page not to change when using static site generation.

3.26.0 - 01 January 2018

  • Support a game date per genre rather than a single game date for a site
  • Indicate that the plugin will not support the Project Gutenberg style of post editing - at least not at this time

3.11.0 - 05 December 2017

  • Change to version numbering structure (the major version number indicates the numbering scheme in operation)
  • Correct the placement of @charset declarations in the stylesheet

2.0.0.20170728-0830 - 28 July 2017

  • Make the movement table vary based on Agility (rather than being fixed)
  • Add note for area and multiple hit weapons if used by the character.

2.0.0.20170717-1729 - 17 July 2017

  • Default language for new character is now that of the character's genre rather than Athionic.
  • Allow unlisted Intrigue skills

2.0.0.20160808-1454 - 08 August 2016

  • The plugin modifies searches so that all post types are included. This is now fixed so that it only affects the search, tag and category pages and not every query (including those on widgets on those pages)
  • A zero width space is used after the '/' character in the buttons for skills to improve word wrapping on the buttons

2.0.0.20160219-1028 - 19 February 2016

  • Character export on linrodeth characters is exporting the entire character array, not just the current character
  • Update compatible wordpress version to 4.4.2

2.0.0.20160105-1700 - 05 January 2016

  • Correct inheritance used for construction of the widget to the current (PHP7 supporting) idiom
  • Change the size of the box used for viewing and editing to 67% of the height of the viewport - this is much friendly for various display sizes and seems to help chrome on mobile devices to render the box correctly

2.0.0.20151103-1328 - 03 November 2015

  • Add modifier for extra opponents

2.0.0.20151017-1159 - 17 October 2015

  • Add documentation for the shortcodes (no functional changes)

2.0.0.20150906-0822 - 22 August 2015

  • Get the PDF to show the correct value for will

2.0.0.20150720-1423 - 20 July 2015

  • Skill plus/minus buttons now work
  • Skill list now appears in the correct place (rather than being underlaid beneath the rest of the page text

2.0.0.20150426-1426 - 26 April 2015

  • Performance issues on waylands resolved (conflict with the Infinite SEO plugin resolved)
  • Multiple character sheets can be added to a single page (e.g. search or tag results)
  • Excerpts now generated if not overridden by a manual excerpt.
  • Summary pages added to PDF
  • Player name added to slug at the bottom of each PDF page

2.0.0.20150119-1114 - 19 January 2015

  • Update metadata

2.0.0.20150116-1034 - 16 January 2015

  • Added support to display the night sky

1.9.0.20150107-1800 - 07 January 2015

  • Stopped the newSkills growing on each edit

0.9.9 - 23 September 2014

  • Fix date display (particularly for Luna Romana).

0.9.8.1 - 08 July 2014

  • Minor bug fix to the performance tables (there was a long tail to the left of the table, now removed).

0.9.8 - 02 July 2014

  • Changing the birthdate moves all periods along (shrinking the last period).
  • Added (simple, combat-related) Equipment page.
  • Added printing.

Version - 0.9.7 - 08 June 2014

  • Refactoring the javascript code.
  • Only increment the version number/edit date of the character on save or upload.

0.9.6 - 07 June 2014

  • Fix game date display when changing genres (or loading old characters with a non-Linrodeth genre).
  • Hide the JSON panel by default.
  • Allow editing of the attributes (disabled by default).
  • Allow the addition of unknown skills.

0.9.5 - 06 June 2014

  • Upload button added - note this POSTs to process.php to the host that delivered the page.
  • Fixed bug when the last period becomes shorter than 13 months (tried to disable buttons that didn't exist!).

0.9.4 - 05 June 2014

  • Correctly disable ip adjust buttons.
  • Birthday locked once the stats are locked.
  • Genre locked once the stats are locked.
  • Added a stats reroll button (rather than forcing the user to page reload!). Obviously this disappears when the stats are locked.
  • Played with the layout a little - Still can't get the button to vertically fill their cell - this seems to be a CSS rendering limitation.
  • Locking the character would break adding a period.
  • Trying to change dates with a period with more than one interest caused a break.
  • Set the value of the name to that in the JSON.
  • Added Herbalism.
  • Fixed bug: When the title was updated, the next change would cause the Stats tab to reappear.
  • Disabled the -date buttons for a period when the period is already too short to allow the period to shrink by that much.

0.9.3 - 04 June 2014

  • Added a schema version to the JSON to allow smooth upgrading of old characters for program updates.
  • Added a rules version to the JSON to hopefully allow upgrading of old characters when there are rules changes.
  • Added a character version and last edit date.
  • Changing interest points changed to <, > buttons instead of pull-down.
  • Periods now show the age range rather than the dates (the dates are available as tooltips on those ages).
  • Added a character description field.
  • Added a game date to the Stats panel, which anchors the end date of the last period.
  • Added the ability to lock the stats - once locked the only way to unlock it is via the JSON.

0.9.2 - unreleased

  • Changing the genre now updates the childhood fluency fields.
  • Added contemporary fluencies and literacies - no other contemporary skills at this time.
  • Added Math.floor to the morale calculation AND fixed the logic for the wound points (previously treated as having a con in the range 0-4!)).

0.9.1 - 03 June 2014

  • textarea (except for the JSON update) no longer need (or have) submit buttons.
  • A stat of 21.0 is now impossible (20.9 is still possible, if unlikely at 1 in 10,000).
  • Used Math.floor instead of Math.round(x-0.5).
  • Added Save and Load JSON buttons (These are local to the browser).
  • Added a Genre pull down.
  • Added a statement on the rule set used.

The information on this page was retrieved by Plugin Information Version 3.282.0.

Alexis Biography Plugin Details

First published 10th March 2017 (Last Modified 1st April 2022)

Description

This plugin adds the ability to insert an instance of Princess Alexis' Biography to a page. To do this it:
  • It adds a new shortcode that inserts the biography. Examples of use:
    [alexisBiography /]
    Inserts an instance of the game.

Change Log

3.226.0 - 12 January 2023

Fix warning in the css

3.161.0 - 25 May 2022

Fix update detection logic!

3.157.0 - 21 July 2021

Fix updating logic!

3.153.0 - 21 July 2021

Common up the plugin updating logic

3.108.0 - 29 March 2021

Update URL of the details page

3.76.0 - 28 January 2021

  • Add support for self-hosted update notification

2.0.0.20170614-1733 - 14 June 2017

  • Initial Version

The information on this page was retrieved by Plugin Information Version 3.282.0.

Yet more wordpress plugins I've uninstalled but want to keep a record of

First published 7th February 2021 (Last Modified 10th March 2022)

I've recently done another audit of the plugins used on this site. This was in response to the Media Library insisting that it couldn't update the metadata for media in the media library because it already existed in the library. To track this down I ended up doing a review of the media related plugins. The ones I've uninstalled are:

Bulk Change Media Author Plugin
Allowed me to fix up the author field on multiple media items. I'm now less concerned about this and hence no longer need this
Enable Media Replace
Having sorted out the correct directory structure for my plugins and themes I no longer need this plugin
Phoenix Media Rename
As with the previous plugin, sorting out the directory structure means I no longer need this plugin

Feeds

First published 26th March 2020 (Last Modified 7th February 2021)

I used to follow a whole bunch of RSS feeds. When Google stopped its RSS reader back in 2013, I converted this very web page on my personal site to gather RSS feeds for me. However my personal usage of that page steadily dropped and in 2019 (which, by then, was based on WordPress) I converted the site to a set of static pages I concluded that maintaining that page was basically infeasible. However I also have a policy of trying to avoid 404 errors for URLs that previously existed. Now, to be fair, I had broken that rule as I've only today noticed that the URL for my 'feeds' page no longer has a page backing it. This is to rectify that error.

As a memoriam, I used to follow RSS feeds from Slashdot, Coding Horror, Cédric Beust's Otaku blog, Igor Ostrovsky Blogging, Bruce Schneier's Blog, Coding Cookies, Cheshire Engineering, The secret barrister, Mark Evanier (Writer of Groo), Patrick Smith (Ask the Pilot), Humble Bundle, Rosemary Kirstein, Sue and Matthew,1 and Syndey Padua. It's interesting to note that most of these haven't been updated in years!

Footnotes

  1. Oxford comma used here to avoid ambiguity. ↩

Fixing the Simply Static plugin

After updating my Ubuntu system to 20.04, I discovered that my method for generating the static version of the site no longer works. It turns out that the Simply Static plugin has a hidden dependency on PHP 7.2 (and upgrading Ubuntu from 18.04 to 20.04 incidently updates the PHP level from 7.2 to 7.4).

After doing some digging I discovered that the Simply Static plugin has an included library called PhpSimpleHtmlDom and the version in the plugin (1.5) is the culprit, I downloaded a more recent version of that library from github and replaced the version of the library with that level and (after a minor hack to change the namespace of the library to match the old namespace being used), Simply Static is now working again.

Hopefully, at some point, the author of the plugin will update it and I won't need the hack. That said the plugin has not been updated for a few years so may now be abandoned. If so I'll probably have to change the infrastructure that builds the static version of the website...

My thanks to Github user caophihung94 for providing a newer version of the PhpSimpleHtmlDom library

Menu woes

If you've recently tried to use my top navigation bar, you may have encountered problems with the sub-menus disappearing as you try to move the pointer down into the sub-menu. I'm still working on that (I know the change that caused the problem is that I'm now using a custom menu for the navigation rather than the default, but I haven't yet found a suitable fix.

Still this is a normal kind of debugging!

Spider Caves Fixed

Yesterday I discovered that my spider caves plugin was broken (in fact it looks like it's been broken since at least the conversion to wordpress. All the problems I discovered have now been fixed 🙂

Going static

For a variety of reasons I reckon it's time to convert the public facing version of my website to go to a static version. The reasons include:

  • After the suspension of En Garde there's no dynamic input to the site other than my own (When I restart that campaign I will need to modify the hosting mechanism to provide the form processing - I'll cross that bridge when I get to it)
  • It'll make the site more secure (no WordPress admin on the public version of the site)
  • No more annoying emails from my web host encouraging me to upgrade from a shared host to a VPS due to reaching memory limits (presumably due to the wordfence plugin).

I'm using the Simply Static plugin though I did have to handle some quirks due to the private server sharing the same machine as my fossil repositories and my popmail spam filter.

It should be noted that this post is also part of an experiment to see how the workflow of updating my website is going to go!

Automating the static upload

First published 14th February 2020 (Last Modified 9th January 2021)

I've automated some of my static upload process. This post is partially to provide a new post and partially to document/record the automatic part of the process. I created a batch script that generates a winscp script to upload files that changed, and will show the other differences (file adds and deletes) involved in the process. That script is:

@echo off
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
fossil extras >%temp%\fossil.out
for /f "delims=" %%a in (%temp%\fossil.out) do (
 fossil add %%a
)

set localdir=%cd%
set remotedir=/home/djvines/blog.tremlas.com

fossil status >%temp%\fossil.out
echo open blog.tremlas.com >%temp%\winscp.txt
for /f "delims=" %%a in (%temp%\fossil.out) do (
 set string=%%a
 for /f "tokens=1,2" %%c in ("!string!") do (
  set dz=%%d
  if "%%c"=="EDITED" echo put %localdir%\!dz:/=\! %remotedir%/%%d >>%temp%\winscp.txt
  if not "%%c"=="EDITED" echo !string!
 )
)
echo exit >>%temp%\winscp.txt
echo to run script execute:
echo "c:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" /script=%temp%\winscp.txt

WordPress plugins I have used but are now uninstalled (but want to keep a record of)

I have used (indeed am still using) a number of wordpress plugins. I have actually written quite a few myself as well as several others. There are a few I've used in the past and may well use again, but are currently uninstalled.

They are:

Merge + Minify + Refresh
Used to minimise the size of the css and javascript sent out by wordpress when delivering pages. Not currently simply because it seriously interferes with debugging the javascript!
WP Content Security Policy Plugin
Used to play with the content security policy that allows cautious browsers (and the server) to manage the javascript being used. I did use this to clean up the delivery, but couldn't get to a really clean content policy. I'd still like to do that, but it's not so trivial for the this site (from memory it's mostly the theme that causes trouble).
WP Super Cache
used when the site on dreamhost was an actual wordpress installation to reduce the server load. Since the dreamhost is now just a static version of the site I don't need it there and don't use on the version on my local network since the caching gets in the way of my testing.
WP-DBManager
I have used this to explore the wordpress database. I don't currently need to do this, but would use it if I needed to
WP-RSSImport
Used to query RSS feeds - As I described on the affected page I used to follow a bunch of RSS feeds, but no longer do so (and it's less useful for this static version of the site anyway).