Hellmansoft Blog

Major PlanbookConnect Updates

PlanbookConnect has been upgraded!

Late last night, I processed some significant upgrades to PlanbookConnect. There were 4 main reasons for the upgrade.

  • Speed

The new version of PlanbookConnect is much, much faster. Page load times have decreased throughout the entire site, sometimes decreasing to as little as 5% of the old speed (this is especially noticeable when loading a month of lessons or an entire course of assignments/handouts). Improving the responsiveness of the site was the main reason for the update. If still you notice a page loading slowly, please get in touch with me.

  • Design Improvements

PlanbookConnect’s design was, well, a bit dated. The new version is more modern and, more importantly, should be easier for you and your students to use.

  • New Features

I also added a couple of the more popular feature requests, including the ability to lock all of your lesson plans behind an access code (of your choice). You can provide the access code to those who need it. This kind of security will prevent casual visitors from seeing your plans, and will also block search engines from indexing your work. It should not be considered strong enough to prevent a truly dedicated individual from accessing your plans. Please continue to post material on the site that you are legally allowed to post.

The second new feature allows PlanbookConnect to work properly with plans that include multiple class meetings of the same course in a single day. These extra meetings should be visible on the main page, in the month view and when viewing a day of lessons. Additionally, moving through your lessons using the navigation arrows will traverse multiple lessons on the same day properly (in time-order).

  • Security

A number of security holes in the server software I run were noted in the past month or so. I’ve updated all the server software to the new, patched versions.

  • Archived Planbooks

The only feature I removed during this process is the ability to view an archived Planbook online. You can still archive your Planbook if you’d like to keep it around, but you can’t direct people to visit the archived file anymore.

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions about the redesign, or you notice something that’s not working right. A side-benefit of this work is that the site should be far easier to update in the future!

Thanks for your patience with the downtime last night!

March 18, 2013

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