Dev reads comments, is stunned they exist.

Wow, it’s been a while since I checked the comments over here—I guess I forgot not everyone uses the forum. Now I just feel foolish and slothful, but enough about me, let’s talk about C. SomeryC, that is (I’m a moron).

Currently, there is no release date set for 0.2.5. I’m finishing up with my summer work in the next few weeks and will be moving to my apartment soon after, where I should have time to work on the new version. I want to say SomeryC 0.2.5 will be available to the public sometime in August.

More after the jump.

I’ve already created a harder, better, faster, stronger RSS feed that displays both comics and articles, and that will be bundled with the next release.

Comment notification via e-mail is simple, and will also be incorporated in 0.2.5. I’m thinking a check-box in the settings menu to enable or disable the service; although, it seems a check-box in the user’s profile page (“send me notifications”) may be more flexible.

For chapters, I’m just going to rename the categories to chapters and let that be that. Jump to previous/next chapter functionality will be as simple as finding the earliest comic with a specific category, and you will be able to specify which chapter the comics go in when you upload them.

Also implemented locally is a function that records commenters’ IPs (to prevent comment abuse, natch). Both this and the alt text addition will be included as well, and will require an update to your current database structure. Don’t worry—the update will ship with a 0.2.4 to 0.2.5 updater to make things as easy on the user as possible (although, if you have extensive modifications to the database, you might be better off with a fresh install and just copying the desired data over).

A generic CAPTCHA system will be included with instructions on making your own.

Database-stored templating is currently not planned for a few reasons. First, it would require a huge change to how the system outputs data and would end up using much more of the user’s bandwidth and causing the readers to have increased load times. Second, I feel that the current template system is robust enough to support any design challenge, and I’m more than willing to help a user work out kinks if they need help (again, just drop me a line in the forum). Finally, I’m not really sure how to do it, and SomeryC just hasn’t reached the mainstream population to a point where it merits a system like that.

Tagging the comics isn’t planned yet, although the next planned item should help users out with that feature.

Plugins! I’m currently doing some researching on the best way to store and activate user-written plugins, as they are something I’ve wanted to implement for a while now. Up until now, users have had to manually go into the functions.php file and modify or add code to augment the current functionality. With the new plugin system, it is my hope that users will only have to write small snippets of code and upload them to a special plugins folder, leaving the functions.php as untouched as possible. This makes updating the script so much easier for you and me.

I hope I’ve covered everything people were asking about, and I look forward to hearing some more comments and questions regarding the newest version. From where I’m standing right now, I believe that a SomeryC 1.0.0 could release within the year, and I’m pretty excited about it. Let me know what you think either here, or in the forum.