News
The Appointmind website is now available in Italian, French and Spanish:
The new version has been optimized for PHP 5.3 and higher. A new feature allows you to assign categories to articles. Learn more
The script is now compatible with PHP 5.3 and PHP 5.4. Download here
There was a question on Hacker News where a developer had to watch a competitor publish a similar App that he was currently working on. While this can be (and probably is) a very frustrating situation, it is by no means the end.
Developers shouldn't worry about things they can't control. To a degree, ignorance is bliss. Developers can't know whether or not a competitor screws up in the future. Developers can't know whether they themselves screw up in the future. They just can do their best and keep on working on their project. The goal is to stay focused and motivated. (Who would have thought).
We once received an e-mail from a guy who favored our blog software over Wordpress because he liked our style. If you didn't copy anyone but have a genuine product, chances are people like your style better.
Competition can be a positive sign. The initial idea for an app has been validated by another player which means the work a developer has put into the project wasn't wasted on a product no one would be interested in.
If an idea is a good one, copycats would have jumped on the bandwagon eventually. One might think that a head start would have some advantages, but in this fast moving world it's probably only a minor factor.
Watching what the competition does is okay but one shouldn't be overly concerned with them.
There is a discussion over at Hacker News about whether supporting Internet Explorer is too much work. Some argue that web designers should get over it. IE9 is fine now and it's time to move on.
But while that argument may hold some merit, the grudge web designers hold will be hard to overcome. Optimizing websites for IE has cost web designers time and money. It has cost their clients money. It was a frustrating process whereby the designers got heat from their bosses and their clients. That is something most designers will probably remember forever.
It's not the bad software that lost Microsoft so much goodwill from the designers. Software can be fixed. It was the attitude from Microsoft towards the problem. It simply took them too much time to make things better. IE9 might be a good browser now and most designers might acknowledge that. But ~10 years is way too long for a big corporation like Microsoft to make things right.
We've released a new version of our News Script. Visitors can now comment on articles. The comment section has the same features as our Comment Script. Basically, we merged News Script and Comment Script.
We've created a new module called "Affiliate Links". The module converts normal URLs into affiliate URLs.
A few days ago we launched a new website that hosts guestbooks. Everyone can create their individual guestbook that runs on our servers.
As of right now the Guestbook Script is freely available for download and comes with a new module.
The new version (2.1.0) allows you to ask people to enter an e-mail address as well as a Captcha.
Beside a few minor changes the script comes with a new feature. It allows you to display comment information on external pages.
The new version comes with lots of new features and changes. Most noticeable is the new design of both the front end and the admin area. The most important new feature is the spam and phishing protection. A new module allows you to check each URL against a list of know spam and phishing websites.
Today, we've launched a new short URL website. lin.io uses the latest version of our short URL script that will be released soon. One of the new features is the possibility to show the shortened URL in a frame with a top bar. You can see the top bar feature in action on lin.io.
FakeInbox.com - New Disposable E-mail Website
We've created a new disposable e-mail website - FakeInbox.com - that is based, of course, on our disposable e-mail script. We hope you'll like it and find it useful. Enjoy. :-)
The new version of our Comment Script fixes a bug in the smiley module. Also, it is possible now to change the URL of a comment page. And the polish language file has been added.
The new version of our Disposable E-Mail script brings bug fixes and a few new features.
The new version of our Comment Script contains a couple of new features and bugfixes.
We're looking for people who are interested in translating or proofreading our scripts in exchange for a free script. The text in question would be the script's language file, web page, documentation and other parts of the website.