Categories
news

Smart App Banner 1.1.2

This almost happened without any fanfare at all, and, while it’s a tiny update, it seems that releasing software without even a tiny blog is fair to both the users and the people who develop it.

And, this time, the developer wasn’t me.

The change to our Smart App Banner WordPress plugin is small but was submitted by a user. You shouldn’t notice anything new or different but it’s a nice, internal update that should limit the risk of Bad Things happening in the future.

Enjoy!

Categories
news

Smart App Banner 1.1.0

The first new release of 2015 is my Wordpress plugin, Smart App Banner.

Version 1.1.0, rather than insisting that you remember (or copy and paste) the app IDs, remembers them for you and gives you a dropdown list when you add a new post:

Dropdown list of apps
Dropdown list of apps

Once selected, the details are filled in. You can then customise them before saving.

You can define the list of apps in the Settings menu. Editing entries here does not affect any of your existing posts, so don’t worry about experimenting and “breaking” something.

One question you may have: why doesn’t it keep a central list of apps, allowing you to update them all in one place if you want? Unfortunately there are too many edge cases, making it difficult to code and awkward to define sensible defaults or Undo mechanisms. For example, what happens if you delete an app? How would you deal with the affiliate data and app argument? (Those last two fields probably vary from page to page anyway.)

It’s a small thing (that due to the “wonders” of PHP took longer than I’d have hoped to implement) but very useful I think. I hope you like it.

Categories
news

Smart App Banner 1.0

Two things to note about our Smart App Banner WordPress plugin:

  • Thanks to Borisa Djuraskovic it has been translated into Serbo-Croatian
  • I’ve bumped the version number up to 1.0. It has not needed updating in a year and has been downloaded over two thousand times (more than any other Smart App Banner plugin for WordPress last time I looked) so I think it should be considered stable, making the 0.x.x version number potentially misleading

The first item required some leg-work to make the plugin support language files but, with that done, it should be easy to support new languages. If you’d like to add a new language, the distribution now includes a “pot” file. Basically you just take the first lines (labelled “msgid”) and put the translation in the next line (“msgstr”). If you send the completed file to me, I can do the rest.

Otherwise it’s not an essential update but there’s not reason not to take a copy when WordPress next nags you to update your site. We always welcome five star reviews, of course!

Categories
reviews

Smart App Banner review

As part of a wider discussion about “How to Monetize Your WordPress Web App,” wpmu.org mention — and seem quite happy with — my Smart App Banner WordPress plugin. Follow the link to read more about it.

While I’m talking about it, it’s worth noting that it looks as though it’s the most downloaded Smart App Banner plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. This, and the generous donations from some users, makes me very happy.