PHP Mail Form – Moved

A few folks seem to have missed my waffling about it on twitter, snark etc so consider this the ‘official’ announcement that my simple PHP mail form has moved to jem’s mail form .com

Posted on: May 27, 2012 · Category: PHP 3

Project: Feeding Friendly

While I was on maternity leave in 2009-2010 I had an idea for a website / mobile phone app… a central location for feeding and changing facility reviews/ratings across the UK. There was nothing else like it available, and parents (especially breastfeeding mums I came into contact with) were desperate for accurate info on things like comfy, clean nursing rooms; bottle-warmers or boiled water available; changing facilities that actually had mats or decent tables and not just filthy plastic racks hanging from the wall.

Anyway, I finally started building the site this week. I’ve decided to build on the fly – completely live – instead of doing it offline and perfecting it (because I’ve discovered this means projects never get finished!) The plan is to use a WordPress back-end so that I can bum off their functioning user management as well as using custom content types to power the tagged locations and reviews. Nothing actually works at the minute and there is no design – hey, I’m juggling a toddler and a full time job here – but I want to get feedback now. Lo, Feeding Friendly.co.uk :)

If you’re interesting in contributing to the project … ideas, reviews, suggestions, whatever, please let me know. I will especially need mums who go out and about a lot to work with me tagging & rating places to begin with, so we can get some bare bones data up there. Comment here or e-mail me: jem@jemjabella.co.uk.

Posted on: August 10, 2011 · Category: Geek, PHP

Mail Form V2.2

In anticipation of the release of my mail form as a plugin for WordPress, I have updated the standalone mail form script.

Updates as follows:

  • compressed and optimised badword checking; checking name field too
  • more easily customisable required fields
  • added more known bots to isBots() function
  • disable Send button on successful mail send to help prevent spam
  • removed carriage return char from header to prevent bad header errors in gmail

As usual, although extensive checking and bug testing has occurred, it’s up to you to let me know if I’ve missed anything. Do leave a comment or fire me an e-mail if you come across any problems.

Posted on: April 27, 2011 · Category: PHP, Updates

More WordPress Goodies

I’ve been getting about a bit lately — no sarcastic comments please — so thought I’d share the results of my hard work. More WordPress stuff:

Have also got a spin-off of the shortcode tutorial in the works which will enable folks to write their own basic Formspring plugin (to display answered questions on your WP blog). Keep your eyes peeled…

Posted on: March 31, 2011 · Category: Geek, PHP, Work

Handy WordPress Dev Stuff

I recently mentioned some bespoke WordPress plugin development I was doing for a work client; I have a few links I saved at the time which helped me build in styles using built-in WordPress classes, as well as functions / hooks / etc which made my life easier. I thought they may be of use to fellow devs so thought I’d share:

As I find the notes I scribbled these URLs down in, I’ll add to this post.

One thing I did note, however, is that some of the guides etc I came across were using deprecated WP functions. (Obligatory disclaimer…) it’s definitely worth getting to grips with the codex, and checking pages for hooks that you’re unfamiliar with before blindly copy-pasting someone else’s code (not to mention the possibility for security holes, yadda yadda).

Posted on: February 14, 2011 · Category: Geek, Interwebs, PHP