changelog

Upgraded to PHP, passing name of recipient as argument to script. As a bonus, I could read server logs to see if someone read the card, or match people to IP addresses.

Adam immediately figured out that he could read others' cards by guessing names in the URL. With the kind of friends I keep, this was not a surprise.

Custom messages depending on the existence of a file named for the recipient, and then sourced it. This is a potential security hazard, as someone might pass "../../../../../../etc/passwd" to the script, so I checked input arguments for alphanumeric characters only. Adam tried this too.

If the recipient name didn't pass these tests, the card simply displays the generic message.

Added basic security to custom messages, by adding a random string as a second argument to the script. To view a private message you must match both the recipients name and this string. Strings were generated from source files' md5sums, and then stored in the source files. Once generated I never updated these strings. A quick but effective hack. According to the logs it foiled Adam this year.

Also added an admin page to generate the customised outgoing emails. This saved me the trouble of manually sending them from my email client, but took longer to write than simply sending the email.

Replaced personalised messages with generated random "madlib" greeting. Very popular with my friends, some of whom clicked the reload button like crack-addled monkeys. Awesome!

Used CSS to create floating content pane over christmas tree background. Imported past years' cards, removed personalised greetings, and upgraded to new display format. Added header/footer includes with common page options.

Changed image from a single render file (text and border rendered onto photo in one image) to multiple images with PNG transparency and CSS overlay. Sorry, IE 6 users. Upgrade.

Added public changelog, dredged from comments in code, email logs, and my memory.

Changed the Reload button to display a random message, and modified the "madlib" greeting for a new year. Added an editable email template to the admin page (a restricted page which I use to send the individual email announcements en masse).

Modified the "madlib" greeting for a new year, with new images using several different costume sets (we had some fun this year) and CSS to match the changed layout.

This year's photos were taken by Caritia Abell. Thanks, Kitty! In previous years, we used our point-and-shoot on "10-second delay, 3x shot" mode on a tripod.

I spiced up the greeting image with a gold effect, thanks to Kasra at Gimpology.

Changed the footer to directly include this page (previously the changelog was only reachable from "more"), and to add a pretty <hr> line. Added CSS and removed direct formatting for footer hr and all tables, including older cards.