The Preacher's Library

Well, this is going to be my last post via blogger. This is because I will be moving into Wordpress this week as I roll out the new and improved Preacher's Library. The new app will be significantly more appealing to the workflow (if you can call it that). The interface has been improved and it makes more use of the latest ajax capabilities (mainly from jQuery). It is also built on a more robust core of code so it should run much quicker and take our future customizations easier. In fact, after the rollout, I'll begin adding in some of the new features like the ability to change your book covers, delete a book, manage your notes, prepare citations from your notes, search your notes, and more. I'm excited. Hopefully it continues to help you all.

For those facing the warning from Google's badware intervention, this has been resolved. It was preventing the site from being used since it blocked all of the form submissions. Logging in and adding books was broken. Apparently, our server was hacked and some code was placed into the page. Fortunately, it did not hurt any users or the site itself. It was "apparent" badware and therefore, threw a warning.

Thanks to a recent ui package made by Denny, we now have Paging available. This should be a helpful feature to your library. I know it is mine. I have several hundred books and the list was getting gi-normous.

The paging block appears on the top-left of your library book list. When your library is called by the "List My Books" or through the "Search My Library" actions, the paging automatically generates the amount of pages based on the amount of books you have in your library. It currently shows 25 books per page and will allow unlimited pages.

At first, your paging block will show links for pages 1-5 (if you have over 125 books). An arrow pointing you to the right will indicate additional pages. The pages are loaded via ajax and do not constitute another page request. So there is no refreshing of the page. Upon navigating to the next 5 or so pages, an arrow pointing left will allow you to return to the prior 5.

Hats off to Denny for his hard work!