So after not looking at the SQ code since January, I went back to the code to take another look and fix the bugs which remained at the end of the group study. Adorjan, a contributer, also did a lot of work since beta1 streamlining the setup. Beta2 is very close to the final release, and fixes about 20 issues from beta1, including some security issues. Replacing your old code is highly recommended. (There are some database schema changes in this version but we do not support upgrading however.)

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Here are the features and fixes:

• A much more streamlined setup thanks to Adorjan who did some great work reducing the number of pages
• Fixed the display quotes query (bug 347)
• Forgot password page security improved (bug 40)
• Better decorated invitations (bug 78 and bug 81)
• Make sessions more secure (bug 186)
• Fix error on invitations if no students and re-wrote the options to display users who have not submitted a quote (bug 135)
• Created the concept of a super admin user and not allow you to delete yourself or the super-admin (bug 96)
• Fix the wording of the due date field to make it clear what it does
• Allow importing if each student does not have a unique student id (bug 349)
• Fix counter after a code is submitted (bug 124)
• Minor interface wording changes

2.0 Beta2 is fairly stable and highly recommended over 1.0. However support for non-English character sets is a bit shaky/untested and SeniorQuoter should be installed in the root directory of a domain (or subdomain).

Future plans for SeniorQuoter 3.0 is to extend it to do Who's Who and Surveys. This will be fairly easy since much of the work is already done. However, the name might need to be changed. I might even make the "modules" modular allowing anyone to write and add what they want SeniorQuoter to collect. Any ideas on a possible name?

I was informed yesterday that the SeniorQuoter 2.0beta1 zip file offered on SourceForge was corrupt. I have recreated the zip file and republished it on SourceForge. So if you have been trying to download SeniorQuoter Version 2.0 beta 1, you would have ran into problems. This should clear things up. As always please send me feedback by commenting on this post.

Based on using SeniorQuoter for the class of 2008, Haverford High School found that:

Quotes were more in depth than previous years. In previous years, Haverford asked seniors to submit their quotes in the computer lab during homeroom. Students had to put in their quotes at this time and only had about 10 minutes to write them. However with SeniorQuoter, seniors can put in their quotes when they are ready - and have as long as they want (before the deadline you set) to write them. This causes quotes to be of higher quality. Quotes were also longer than before as students had the time to make use of the available space.

Reduced profanity. Haverford recorded a reduction in profanity. The reasons for this are not clear, but perhaps seniors had more time to compose their quotes and did not have to put in what came to mind.

Reduced processing time Greystones, the yearbook at Haverford estimates that in their second year of using SeniorQuoter, there will be a 50% reduction in the time it took to collect senior quotes from the previous method. (Greystones was using an older version of SeniorQuoter for 2008 which was harder to use than version 2.) The main additional time was for tracking people who did not submit their quotes. Future versions of SeniorQuoter will include better methods for reminding students to submit their quotes.

No school time used. Haverford High School used to give students time during school to submit their quotes. SeniorQuoter lets seniors submit their senior quotes on their own at home or from any school computer. Also Greystones no longer has to coordinate computer lab time for students to submit their quotes.

More quotes were not submitted. Since students had to submit their senior quotes on their own - many waited for the last minute to submit their quotes. Perhaps this was the reason behind the reduction in profanity, since the seniors who would put profanity in the quote did not get around to submitting their senior quote.

Class of 2009
Haverford High School used the system again for the Class of 2009. (Note: I am in this class) We heavily marketed it and provided support. I was in the library each morning giving out codes to seniors who lost theirs. I estimate I gave out about 50 codes, not only in the library, but as people asked me in class and on Facebook. When the quotes were due, 307 out of 423 students submitted their quotes. Some students reported never getting codes from their homeroom teachers (a common problem at HHS). In the future I would change to using existing information for passwords, such as date of birth, or allow emails to be sent to students reminding them of their codes.

Ten more revisions later, all of the small bugs are now out of SeniorQuoter Version 2.0. That means it is time to issues the beta. There are still some big issues which are listed below. However this release is usable. It also needs to be tested on a variety of environments and servers.

This release also marks the end of group study at Haverford. From here on out I will be developing on my own in my free time. This means that future progress will be far slower.

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Issues fixed from 2.0alpha2

Note: The database schema has changed. I would start a new install, as upgrading is not supported.

• Make colors.php print out container color (why was this not done before)
• have it cache images
• Tell users to start websites with http:// in setup.php and config.php
• Make header.inc.php require that setup.php be deleted (for security)
• Remove <pre> from quote.php and quotes.php
• Move print invitations link from quotes.php to students.php
• Remove var_dump from upload_picture.php
• Clear out unt's info from mysql_connect.php
• Try to get setup.php to recognize DB info is there
• Fix up colors.php a lot and fix it not being able to change the bg color
• Fixed quotes.php and csvexport.php to only get the latest quote!!! (45 min)
• Fix change_password.php to change the password of the given id, not the logged in user
• Fix Bug 45: cross installs cookies - by setting cookie path in login.php
• Say why remove setup.php in header.inc.php
• Bug 90: Colors is blanked if gets it gets messed up
• Make Homeroom, Code, Email, and Year optional in add_student.php
• Make Add student auto genorating a code if none (no JS needed)
• Delete assign_codes.php since codes will be assigned when user is added
• Worked with importing to escape and validate (and auto add codes better)
• Found importing bug (95) where 1st row ignored
• Fixed remaining counter color in colors.php
• Set default colors in colors.php to be 6 digits
• Worked on testing import - fixed a few things including first name and last name order and finding the reason for bug 95.
• Made student id optional again (and in database this time)
• Printed out code for each student after import
• Fixed bug where it would throw an error if quote was exactly length limit!
• Tested Color Picker in IE7 and resolved bug 70
• Make sure code is numeric in quote submission index.php
• Make tabs work (lighter for selected item)
  • Written in header.inc.php $menu tells it which
• Triaged bug list (marked bugs as fixed when they had actually been fixed for a few days)
  • 16 bugs fixed in last 2 days!
• Make delete_student.php delete any quotes associated with that student bug 99
• Don't let users "forget their passwords" if they are disabled. bug 42
• Link Favicon to each page bug 41
• Stopped Admin User's Date Registered from being changed on every update bug 46
• Enable image caching bug 100
• File bugs for the stuff that still needs to be done.
• Validate all pages clean up small bugs to make it Valid XHTML
  • Make lots of small fixes
• Remove "Assign Codes" button from Quotes.php since that page was deleted
• Make link after install is complete bigger

Open Issues

Some of these are minor or feature requests. The big issues are listed in bold. The site is still usable, but character encoding and security needs to checked out. That is why this release is a beta.

• 96: Prevent deletion of super-admin user
• 40: Secure forgot password
• 71: Upload not secure
• 77: SQ: Unify character encoding
• 78: PDF Invitations Bottom Half Uneven
• 81: SQ: Invitations need Logo and style
• 103: Homerooms Table doesn't do anything
• 104: SQ Needs Security Audit
• 105: Setup INSERT queries don't work
• 108:SQ Needs to be tested on another server
• 106: Dashboard is boring
• 44: SQ: Nasty words dictionary
• 55: Set up Debugging interface
• 66: SQ: Sort by letter
• 88: SQ: Line break limit

Ten revisions and two days later, Alpha 2 has a lot of bug fixes in it. In addition, I have finally linked and added icons for all of the pages. Setup should go much smoothly as I have added a lot of error checking code in there. Plus some more fixes here and there. Quotes are now printed as "preformatted" to preserve line breaks. Every script has been edited for the making of this release!

However there is still a ways to go, including character encoding, debugging interface, multiquery setup, and several serious security flaws.

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Fixed

• Setup error handling improved
• Linking and icons
• Add link to View Students in add_student.php
• Change id to class for buttons in admin/admin_users.php
• Fix spell check in config.php
• Make button css in admin.css
• Make register.php print success message in green
• setup.php: Use new refresh code that works; Print out headers eariler, print out actual errors when checking config, put fresh links in saving config, and continue if it is there, fix printing of googiespell settings
• Plaz added security features to invitations.php to require log in quote.php and quotes.php
• output quote in "pre" tags to preserve formatting in quote.php and quotes.php
• Fixed students.php link in delete_student.php
• Fixed disable quotes for index.php No more ugly errors when $collect == FALSE!
• Tested upload_pictures.php
• Fixed colors.php to work much better
• changed edit_quote.php and index.php so approval is NULL after edited
• fixed edit_student.php so you can have any type of character in the homeroom field.
• URL for hard refresh help
• Add more error checking to setup.php
  • test DB connection
  • Add refresh links in a lot of places