I had no idea that Abi was going to caricature Rich and I in such amusing ways. She copies so much of what we do and say it’s scary. I don’t need to tell her off very often as she does it herself, she also praises herself. If she says “please” she then follows it with “good girl”. Tonight she really wanted a video played and told me “baby video, thank you kind mummy” followed by when I did it.

As promised, I have release updates to 12 of my plugins and added 2 new plugins. All of them are compatible with WordPress 2.3 but not all of them are backward compatible with WordPress 2.1 or 2.2.

The 2 new plugins are WP-DownloadManager and WP-PluginsUsed. As the name of the plugins suggest, WP-DownloadManager simply enhanced your WordPress by adding a simple download manager to it. WP-PluginsUsed will displays both active and inactive plugins that you are using in your WordPress blog.

Be sure to read the readme.html and checkout the changelog for more information and most importantly NOTE THE TABS AT THE TOP

I have released an update to my Articles plugin for WordPress that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.3.

This plugin allows you to easily present a list of posts you select outside of your blog chronology. Very useful for featuring things that might otherwise slip into the nether regions of your archives. You can see it in action on my Articles page.

The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.

If you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.

If you are a long time WordPress user like me, you surely know the obvious limitations that the WordPress backend has. There are far too many distractions in the Compose Section where you write the posts. Presence of Controls that you never use could become a nightmare to manage so it would be best if you would just remove them and use a stripped down version of the Compose Screen to manage your workflow better.

* Get Rid of the Clutter

As I mentioned before there are far too many items in the compose screen that I normally don’t use. There is stuff like Password Protection, Excerpt, Custom Fields, Discussion Options, Bookmarklets, Author controls etc. which I am sure majority of WordPress Users don’t really use. So if you are one of them go ahead and add Clutter Free to your ever growing list of WordPress plugins.

Once you have activated Clutter Free go the Users Sections and select all the options that you need. Save the settings and “Boom!” as Steve Jobs would say, your Compose screen now loads a tad faster.

• Abstract

  1. The stock module allows you to manage a database of clients, a database of products (shared by the store front) and send different kinds of messages to your customers. It also allows to make invoices, delivery notes, reminders, and receipts in both html as pdf format.
  2. Currently the email features are not implemented, but the framework is present so the overhead is little to actually add those features.
  3. The stock module interfaces with the product database of the Store Module but does not update the stock amounts.
  4. Additional features can be implemented on request.

• Campaigns

  1. We call promotional actions « campaigns ». Basically you select what customers will receive the mailing, what products will be on that mailing and how the mailing will look. The system will generate pdf documents that contain those mailings. It will put a maximum of 5 clients in one pdf document and will put everything in a zip file if more then one pdf is generated.

• Invoices & Delivery Notes

  1. If a customer replied to the mailing and placed an order, you can prepare an invoice. You can select all the products of the mailing or manually select those products and quantities that are required. A delivery note is also generated and added as a new page in the pdf document.

• Reminders

  1. If your customer did not reply within a suitable time, then you can generate a reminder very easily by clicking the button. The system will generate a document that will remind the customer that an invoice was sent at specified date, and for proper form, will include a duplicate of that invoice.

• Receipts

  1. After payment has been received, you can finalise the transaction and the system will generate a receipt. This receipt will also attach a copy of the invoice, with a big stamp PAID on it.

Getting started

• Configuration of the Stock Module

  1. To configure the stock module, log on as admin, then click the menu, and select Stock -> Settings.
  2. The configuration screen will show you a long list of options and many ’save’ buttons. Those buttons are there for your convenience so that you don’t need to scroll down each time if you only want to change a few things.
  3. You should note, however, that all ’save’ buttons save the entire page, and will also force validation of the entire page.

• Campaign Settings

  1. These settings allow you to tweak the generated pdf document. Note that the page format is A4 and cannot be changed.

PDF Prolog

This text will appear on the first page of the mailing. You may use the following codes:

• %name% Will be changed in the customer’s name
• %firstname% For the customer’s first name

PDF Margin Top

Set the top margin of the mailing. The unit is points (pts)

PDF Margin Bottom

Set the bottom margin of the mailing (points)
WARNING: if you use to big values for top, and bottom margin, then the system will get stuck in an endless loop while trying to make sure that everything is on the pages (header, contents, footer).

PDF Print Header

If you are using stationary, then you are better of replying ‘no’ here so that the system will not print out the store address.

PDF Print Customer Address

You may choose to not print the customer’s address on each page because you are using a template that already prints those details.

Download the application and install via www.yoururl.co.uk/installer.php. The password for the installer should be brown all lower caps but is not working at the moment. The application was built to work with php 4 but I need it to work with php 5.2+ and obviously I need the installer to work. I also need for you to prepare a list of changes you would suggest.

The project has these specific goals:
1. CMS
2. With online shop
3. With stock control
4. With invoice management (for customers and suppliers)
5. With reporting on amounts paid and amounts owing and weekly, monthly, annually totals (spent compared to income)
6. With sales and contact management.

Your role should be to:
1. Make the current version work with php 5.2
2. Suggest style changes to make the application more accessible
3. Cost up and make proposals for the above.

Once completed I intend to open source the project and put up on Sourceforge and build its own website. Links to you will be made available as chief developer and could result in further adoption work.

I need price and timescale for no. 1 initially and then 2 and 3.

Many thanks.

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