I have recently become aware that SeniorQuoter breaks on versions of PHP >= 5.3.0. PHP 5.3 depreciates a lot of functions, which makes SeniorQuoter display an error message when you try to log onto the admin page, or do other things. I found a few depreciated lines of code scatted around the admin panel which were very easy to fix. I also fixed the version number in the footer.

The only thing which I could not fix is that PDF invitations will now print out the text SeniorQuoter instead of an image. The pdf-php library has not been updated to fix this. In addition, I have done a quick glance around for additional bugs. I may have missed some; please file any additional bugs you may encounter: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=186786&atid=918687

You do not have to upgrade, unless you are running PHP >= 5.3 in which case you must upgrade. No DB changes have been made, so you should be able to install this over your existing install. Make sure not to replace key files:
includes/config.inc.php
includes/mysql_connect.php
includes/seniorquoter.css

After a long break, I have released the final version of SeniorQuoter 2.0. This release fixes all of the last major bugs. It also rewrites the admin/quote.php page to display a person's quote history, much like a news feed. As such, it has a database schema change. In addition, I think I finally have the special character issues straightened out. The database text and quote submission page is now UTF-8. All sorts of special characters, including Arabic and Chinese letters, should now work fine in quotes. SeniorQuoter should also work when it is not at the root of the URL, eg http://school.com/yearbook/seniorquoter. However, sessions are per subdomain. This means that running more than one install of SeniorQuoter per subdomain will lead to problems.

SeniorQuoter is only tested on PHP5. PHP4 is now unsupported by the PHP team, so I did not test it on PHP4. We now warn you if you are running an old version of PHP5. .htaccess no longer turns off errors because this was causing problems on some servers. You can uncomment the lines to add it back. admin/quote.php's id is now a user id, not the quote id. I should have changed this everywhere - but if you wrote custom code, this will lead to issues. Finally, the admin edit quote page no longer enforces a length limit on quotes.

Download from SourceForge

This will probably be the last release for SeniorQuoter. It has reached it's need and I have moved on. If someone wants to extended it to collect other things from yearbooks, let me know.

Fixed bugs:

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.)

Download from SourceForge

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.