Grammar Captive

While in the process of propagating Grammar Captive’s new PHP class for establishing a new, and importantly uniform connection mechanism to the Grammar Captive database across all points of entry on the Grammar Captive website, other incongruities were found.  In particular the manner in which users could sign up for the Seven Gates weekly newsletter.

It was not a simple matter of copy and past, and much was learned in the process; nevertheless, you can now sign up for the Seven Gates newsletter, even if you do not make it to the Seventh Gate of the Grammar Captive splash panel.

Just click on the word Subscribe under the heading Info/Newsletter in the navigation bar on the Grammar Captive main page, fill out the form, and submit your information.  Then, watch what happens, for you will likely be impressed.

You might like to read a newsletter or two in the new Seven Gates archive before you sign up.  And, if your work week has ended as well as mine, I wish you a great weekend, as well.

Roddy

Still another minor upgrade as I move forward with the development of  hit counters for both the Grammar Captive podcasts and newsletters.  In effect, I have discovered how to add formatting to the body of the text and other selected fields.

Go to the Grammar Captive main page, look in the navigation bar under Newsletter and click on the word Archive.  Then select Click and Read in the discoverable section under Newsletter No. 8.  Look at the formatting of the body of the letter and compare this result with the letter body of any other newsletter currently available in the archive.

WOW!  What a difference.

Roddy

 

You can now sign up for a Grammar Captive account and receive your first free copy of Seven Gates, Grammar Captive’s weekly newsletter in your email box.   Now, what is cool!

After having received the newsletter you have three choices available to you in the newsletter.  If you

1. subscribed and now change your mind, you can unsubscribe.
2. did not subscribe, but like what you find, you can subscribe.
3. subscribed when you opened your account, and you like what you find, simply do nothing and receive the next and every future edition free of charge thereafter.

What to do?

1. Open to Grammar Captive’s main page and follow the second splash panel to Gate 7.
2. Proceed to the last panel of the gate and sign up where it says Free Gifts.
3. Just do as you are instructed thereafter.

Enjoy!

Roddy

 

 

1. Fixed the vertical alignment of the images in the podcast_hostpage.php sidebar.
2. The Click and Listen link now appears properly on the overview.html Weekly Podasts insert.  Now you can see it without having first to pass your cursor over it!

Getting closer to the end of Grammar Captive’s first phase of web development.  If things keep moving as now, production is just around the corner.

Roddy

Pretend that you are a casual or regular reader of Seven Gates, the Grammar Captive weekly newsletter, and that you have just read an article that expresses well an idea that you were having trouble expressing in conversation with a friend on the day before.  So, you decide to share the letter.  But, how?

Fortunately, just below the article that you just read you see a Click and Share link that opens to an email with a link pointing to the article.   Now, pretend that this is the link:  https://www.grammarcaptive.com/overview.html?letter_no=3.  Notice that the link is pointing to Edition No. 3 of the Seven Gates newsletter.

So, click on the above link, and when you have finished the article that opens in your screen, tweet the same on your Twitter account.

In effect, the same functionality that was set up for Grammar Captive’s weekly podcasts, now works for Seven Gates.

By the way, if you are interested in other editions of the newsletter, please do not hesitate to click where it says Read in the navigation bar under the heading Info/Newsletter of the same page where you just read Edition No. 3.    There are now four editions from which you can choose.

The idea for a counter is now in place.  Simply, I have to develop it.   And quickly, if at all possible.

Roddy

While waiting for advice in regard to the best way to count aggregate user activity, and while waiting for inspiration in regard to a failed attempt to create a generic PHP class that will handle status variables, the hiatus in desired development has been filled with less important, but still desirable new functionality — namely, a search and find function for the Seven Gates newsletter.  Just as one can search podcasts by number, so too can one now search for a specific edition of a Seven Gates newsletter.

In addition, in an effort to avoid sending the Seven Gates newsletter and other Grammar Captive correspondence into an unsuspecting user’s junk box Grammar Captive now enjoys SPF and DKIM protection, and is waiting for its DMARC protection to propagate across the internet.

It has been a very busy weekend.

Roddy

Although not yet visible, each week’s new podcast data have been fully integrated into the Seven Gates weekly newsletter template.  Preparation will now begin on readying the newsletter for individual and mass mailing.  The second to last major hurdle before podcast production begins.

The last major hurdle will be an accounting routine to keep track of the popularity (or lack thereof) of individual podcasts.

Roddy

The first step in integrating each week’s newsletter with each week’s podcast has been achieved.  Using MySQL prepared statements to insure security the data for a single newsletter and the data for each podcast referenced in the newsletter have been amassed on a single page.  This code can handle any number of podcasts.

The next step is to produced a completed template — namely, fill the template with the data just amassed and prepare it for mailing.

Roddy

In celebration of the new year Grammar Captive is proud to announce a 46 percent increase in page views with a secure connection, and a 40 percent increase in page views with an unsecured connection during the final month of the solar new year just concluded.

These recent increases have returned Grammar Captive to the trajectory that was so rudely interrupted by circumstances in late July of 2017.  If things continue to move forward as they have during the final quarter of the just passed year, Grammar Captive will launch its first podcast during the second half of the month of February, 2018.

Roddy

Have just completed the first successful upload to the Seven Gates newsletter data tables.  What I thought would be an easy task turned into a full day’s worth of work.  What worked for the podcasts, simply would not, could not work for the newsletters.  It has been a painful lesson.

In any case, the next step is to create the routine that fills the Seven Gates newsletter template with new values for each new edition.  Hopefully this task will proceed smoothly now that the enhanced newsletter entry form and data tables correspond.

Have a great week!

Roddy