Depts

Duplicated half-open tag caused a display bug in the menu. Fixed it at LW's request. Also some discussion of how the PDF handbook should be produced in future.

Earlier in the week I received new and revised materials for many of the historical Spanish 100 exam exercise collections. I've now processed and uploaded all the new material, as well as fixing some discrepancies in style for titling of various pages and exercises, fixing a couple of broken links, and rewriting an old index page that was not in the house style. All currently pending work is now done on this, but RLS has more in store for the future.

Met with TG and LL from History to discuss the IA's response to the navigation plan, and made a number of changes to reduce numbers of items and lengths of captions, as well as to reaffirm their confidence that their navigation plan accords well with their target audience. TG reworked the navigation spreadsheet, and we completed the project light web document, then submitted them to AR along with the CMS provisioning request.

Installed the VPN Search WordPress plugin (and widget) that I wrote for the VPN website. It searches the external VPN poetry database and displays the results within WordPress. The PHP code is fully documented.

These guides, from the WordPress site, are especially useful for writing a WP plugin:

• Writing a Plugin
• Plugin API
• Filter Reference
• Action Reference
• Widgets API

The readme.txt file that comes with the plugin:

=== VPN Search ===
Requires at least: 3.0
Tested up to: 3.1

Provides an interface to search the external Victorian Poetry Network database.

== Description ==

VPN Search provides an interface to search the external Victorian Poetry Network database, via a standalone search form and results page.

Usage once installed (see below) is simple. You can either use the widget that comes with the plugin to place the form in one of your widget-enabled areas (the recommended way), or place this code wherever you want the search form to appear (for example, in the sidebar): 

Use as you would a normal search engine. The search engine has support for boolean operators. See this Google page for more info: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861

== Installation ==

1. Upload the vpn-search directory to your '/wp-content/plugins/' directory
2. Modify the database connection variables in the 'config.php' file in the vpn-search directory
3. Active the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
4. Copy vpn-search-results.php and vpn-single-record.php from the plugin directory to your theme's directory and modify to suit. These templates show search results and single records respectively
5. To options for using:
   A: wherever you want the search form to appear, place ''
   B: use the widget to put the search form in one of your sidebars

You're done!

== Changelog ==

= 0.1 =
* Initial release

Had to flip the switch from php4 to php5 for the VPN WordPress site because the new VPN poetry database plugin requires version 5. unix.uvic.ca uses php4 by default, so to enable php5 this goes into the .htaccess file:

SetEnv UVPHP_VERSION 5

At the request of AC, removed the "Twitter Feed" page link from the navigation menu. The menu is just a dynamic link of the pages (i.e. the stuff in the "Pages" section of the WordPress dashboard), so to exclude the Twitter Feed page from the navigation I installed the Exclude Pages from Navigation plugin.

Minor updates on DR's instructions. Also an email discussion about the future move to CASCADE; DR would like to be able to edit the site directly.

Met with CC and CH to complete the "project lite web" document, which we've now submitted, along with a new version of the navigation plan, to AR.

Added photos from the LARG 4 event, and a couple of other changes, at DR's request.