JobGrok 2.0 Sprouting From Project X

Son-of-a-gun! The webserver went down tonight... as you can see, though, we're back up.

I thought I would drop a line here on a few things I've been working on over the past month.

First, I'm catching up on some of the support tickets and questions. I've been a little slower than normal and I apologize for that- a few things going on that have just taken away some of the time I would usually have spent on these things, from a flood through to this darn heat wave and our "no-central-air-conditioned" home - I really hate window air conditioners...

Second, JobGrok 2.0 is in the works and for those of you that I've had dialogue with, this will be a drag-and-drop interface that will allow you to pretty much create any form you'd like. Won't be a lot of bells and whistles to start, but will be much more flexible than the existing JobGrok forms.

Third, something I'll call "Project X". Project X is an integral part of JobGrok 2.0 and could be huge in the Joomla! world (I know, bold statement, but here comes the counter statement) or, Project X could just fizzle away to nothing. Time will tell...

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Copyright The Tax Payers

Wow! It's been almost 6 months since I've added anything here.

I'm going to make this brief because everything is rather chaotic right now, but...

Joomla 1.6 versions are (finally) starting to appear here. It's taken longer than I'd have liked, but doesn't everything?

Also, my apologies for some of the mega delays in forum replies, but I try to get to those when I can.

On a personal note, I'm feeling lucky not to be living right next to the Missouri River, but we have had to clear out our basement in case the water level decides to affect us. We're about 1.5 miles away, but that's a "flat" away, so we'll see.

I have to say this about all the going ons around here, it's been a Herculean effort in regards to all the sand-bagging. Hopefully things won't be as bad as they say, but with the river level expected to remain at ~35 feet for 2 months... I don't know about anyone else, but that seems like a long time for sand bags to hold back a ginormous amount of water.

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Copyright Gary Larson

So, today I check the forums (trying to be a little more aware of the forums than in the past) and I see a new posting regarding a bug in JobGrok Listing. 

Darn.

But, obviously, the free components don't get as much scrutiny as the premium (well, scrutiny from me, I'm sure the community has a different opinion)... and I apologize for that. I know what it's like to install an extension and have it not work. Particularly if it's cool like some visual candy such as an image slider... or something. In that case, if you're like me, you'll probably dive in and try to fix it (particularly if the demo looked good)... of course, if it's something mundane like a Job Listing component, chances are you're just going to go download that "other" job board and use it. So, it really is in my best interest to make sure these things are working like they should...

But! I have to face the reality of my schedule, and on occasion I have to cut corners... some times I'm lucky and other times (like today) not so much. But fortunately, someone was kind enough to leave a notice in the forums letting me know. (I promise I'm checking the forums more frequently - so if you've been kind in the past, I apologize again - see promises littered through out this text).

Over time I'll have all of this automated... in fact, today's bug was a result of my automation.

JobGrok consists of 4 components (Application, Listing, Premium and Board). All of these components stem from the same code base. I'll make my changes and/or additions, flag which component they belong to, execute a script and everything gets split out into the appropriate packages. Unless I goof on my meta-data and omit a chunk of code for one of the components. Sometimes it can be a giant chunk like an entire file - generally speaking I'll catch those... or like today, a closing squigly '}' - ah... ok... I should catch those too... the coding Gods just weren't with me.

One day, my extension creater will be complete and there will be no more human errors like a missing squigly or the wrong description text. I'll just speak into my mouse and say "Computer" (use scottish accent when speaking)... "Hello Computer - I'd like a new Joomla! Component, built for Version 1.6.x - include everything you think I'll need for a job listing component and make sure it has a cool image slider. I'll be in the EA cafeteria playing Fußball, ping me when it's done."

Ah, to fantasize about a reality that will be.

Use Joomla! It's cool.

Copyright Gary Larson

So, today I check the forums (trying to be a little more aware of the forums than in the past) and I see a new posting regarding a bug in JobGrok Listing. 

Darn.

But, obviously, the free components don't get as much scrutiny as the premium (well, scrutiny from me, I'm sure the community has a different opinion)... and I apologize for that. I know what it's like to install an extension and have it not work. Particularly if it's cool like some visual candy such as an image slider... or something. In that case, if you're like me, you'll probably dive in and try to fix it (particularly if the demo looked good)... of course, if it's something mundane like a Job Listing component, chances are you're just going to go download that "other" job board and use it. So, it really is in my best interest to make sure these things are working like they should...

But! I have to face the reality of my schedule, and on occasion I have to cut corners... some times I'm lucky and other times (like today) not so much. But fortunately, someone was kind enough to leave a notice in the forums letting me know. (I promise I'm checking the forums more frequently - so if you've been kind in the past, I apologize again - see promises littered through out this text).

Over time I'll have all of this automated... in fact, today's bug was a result of my automation.

JobGrok consists of 4 components (Application, Listing, Premium and Board). All of these components stem from the same code base. I'll make my changes and/or additions, flag which component they belong to, execute a script and everything gets split out into the appropriate packages. Unless I goof on my meta-data and omit a chunk of code for one of the components. Sometimes it can be a giant chunk like an entire file - generally speaking I'll catch those... or like today, a closing squigly '}' - ah... ok... I should catch those too... the coding Gods just weren't with me.

One day, my extension creater will be complete and there will be no more human errors like a missing squigly or the wrong description text. I'll just speak into my mouse and say "Computer" (use scottish accent when speaking)... "Hello Computer - I'd like a new Joomla! Component, built for Version 1.6.x - include everything you think I'll need for a job listing component and make sure it has a cool image slider. I'll be in the EA cafeteria playing Fußball, ping me when it's done."

Ah, to fantasize about a reality that will be.

Use Joomla! It's cool.