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26. December 2011

CrazyStat development to get more open (Bugtracker, Wiki, FAQ, SVN)

Filed under: CrazyStat — Tags: , , , , , , — Christopher Kramer @ 15:17

Bug Tracker

I plan to start a public bug tracker for CrazyStat. I think this makes it easier for you to report bugs and feature requests and easier for me to manage those. I also plan a way so you can vote for new features.

Please let me know what your favourite bug tracker is. At the moment I favor redmine, but I’m not sure yet. Redmine also includes a nice wiki and project planning capabilities.

FAQ Script

Another idea of mine is to use a FAQ-script for CrazyStat. This makes asking and answering questions a lot easier. Some scripts can also handle translations which would be a great help to create FAQ in multiple languages. At the moment I think phpMyFAQ is the best solution for CrazyStat as it

  • supports multiple languages
  • supports community asking, answering and translation but also moderation and anti-spam
  • can export the FAQ into PDF/XHTML so it can be shipped in static format with CrazyStat as it is at the moment

If you have any good/bad experience with any FAQ script please let me know.

Of course it would be perfect if bug tracker, wiki and FAQ would be nicely integrated.

Public SVN

At the moment I develop CrazyStat in a SVN which is private only, but I think to make the development of CrazyStat more open, it will be necessary to open the SVN. Somebody proposed to use git, but I think at the moment git does not offer much that CrazyStat development needs compared to what SVN offers. Let me know if you disagree.

Bulletin Board / Forum

Some discussion around open-source software like user support might be more suitable to be done on a forum instead of a bugtracker or wiki. Of course phpBB is classic here, I would also consider something that is tightly integrated with the other software (bugtracker etc.).

Sourceforge project?

Somebody also proposed that I should open a sourceforge project for CrazyStat. I really like sourceforge and I think that might be a good idea, although I also love having full control over all the systems I use. But I think by opening a sourcforge project, I might get all those tools I discuss here quite easily and well integrated.

Update: I opened a sourforge project for CrazyStat now. Not much on there up to now, though. I think I will use Sourceforge for SVN, but I am not sure about the other tools. Although they are integrated nicely, they are also very limited in functionality.

Your feedback

Please let me know what tools you think an open source project like CrazyStat needs, which ones you favour and so on.

Recommendation

Try my Open Source PHP visitor analytics script CrazyStat.

23. December 2011

Happy 6th birthday, CrazyStat!

Filed under: CrazyStat — Tags: , , — Christopher Kramer @ 13:32

Yesterday was CrazyStat’s 6th birthday. I didn’t find the time to blog about it yesterday, so here we go today: Happy birthday!

Every year when I congratulated CrazyStat to it’s birthday, I have a look at the last year. This year, I want to do this again. But this year, two things are different regarding my birthday congratulations: First, I congratulate in English. That’s because CrazyStat learnt English last year and nowadays, lots of CrazyStat users do not understand German. Second, I post the congratulations in my blog instead of in my CMS. As I already wrote, I will post things like news, tutorials and so on in the blog instead of the main site, as it’s more simple for me and allows better feedback.

So these are already two important things that changed within the last year. With the release of CrazyStat 1.70 (on CrazyStat’s 5th birthday), CrazyStat was available in English. This way, CrazyStat got lots of new users. This was also due to the fact that I could list CrazyStat on hotscrips.com now, one of the best script archives available nowadays (in my opinion). If you search for a script, I strongly recommend you to use hotscripts.

Soon after CrazyStat 1.70 release candidates were published, plaise.nl translated it into Dutch so the final version of CrazyStat 1.70 already came with a Dutch language file. As already posted, CrazyStat was now translated into Danish and so upcoming version 1.71 will be available in Danish as well.

Another important change within last year was the new design of my website. Thanks again to kartoffelpfluecker who created the new design for me. I think it’s very cool.

Besides of my brand new blog, I also started to tweet. I do not only tweet about what’s hot about CrazyStat, but also some interesting stuff for webmasters. Follow me here.

So what will happen in the upcoming year? I have big plans and hope I will find the time to realize them:

  • release CrazyStat 1.71 (soon I think)
  • work on CrazyStat 1.80 (mayor code changes)
  • blog more (stuff for webmasters etc.)
  • make development of CrazStat more open (bugtracker, wiki, public SVN etc.)

And I hope that CrazyStat will learn a lot more languages in the upcoming year. If you speak any language that CrazyStat does not support now, please contact me. It’s really not much work to translate it, and I will honour your work by mentioning you and linking to you.

Thanks everybody for using CrazyStat! Especially thanks a lot to everybody who donated. Unfortunately, not many people did this last year. If you like CrazyStat, please consider a donation.
And thanks to everybody who gave feedback and reported bugs. I really try to read all your mails and respond to everybody who contacts me, so please use the possibility.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year everybody!

2. December 2011

CrazyStat 1.71 changes & features

Filed under: CrazyStat — Tags: , , , , , — Christopher Kramer @ 21:24

As promised, some more news about what’s new in upcoming version 1.71 of my PHP visitor analytics script CrazyStat:

  • New language: Danish language file (as already announced)
  • New feature: Average and total visting time analysed (hits module)
  • New feature: The files in the files-module can now be linked to the page counted
  • New logo: CrazyStat has a new logo thanks to Kartoffelpfluecker
  • Privacy improved: Reworked anonymous IPs. Now “anonymous IPs” look like normal ones and keep the first two octets. This way, the visitor’s country can be detected by IP, but the IP is still anonymous as the last two octets can not be reworked. Now this is turned on by default.
  • New privacy feature: Optionally, CrazyStat now respects the “Do-Not-Track” header that some browsers send if the user tells it to. When this is turned on, hits by those users will not be logged at all. Note that strictly speaking, CrazyStat never “tracks” users (does not use cookies etc.) and therefore by turning this on, you respect your users’s privacy even more than they asked for.
  • Browser detection: new browsers included in the keywords file (all those new Firefox-versions…), IE8 and IE9 now correctly detected in compatibility mode.
    Note that this is already available for CrazyStat 1.70 from the download page
  • PHP4 support removed. CrazyStat no longer comes with workarounds for old PHP4 installations, so PHP5.1 is required. Please update to PHP5, as PHP4 is insecure
  • Language-cookie “lang” renamed into “CrazyStat_lang” to avoid collisions with other scripts
  • Decimal separators now language-specific
  • Fixed a bug that caused weird ordering of days in some months
  • Lots of smaller bug fixes like invalid XHTML and PHP notice messages

Please let me know your opinion about the changes. I know it’s not a lot of great new features but more a maintenance update.