100th Post!

By Jay Shergill Posted on November 14, 2008 Posted in PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates No Comments Tagged with Baby Monkey, kitten it, Medical Provider, mpn, Nanowrimo, new year, Provider Network, Search Functions, Wcab, Weekdays, Wordpress

This baby monkey has nothing to do with workers' compensation at all. — This baby monkey has nothing to do with workers compensation at all

This website was recently re-launched on July 6, 2008 in a “blog” style format using WordPress to power everything except the calculators. ((Photo courtesy of nycgeo.))

On July 23, 2008 this website was all of one year old. That day I made a goal of posting something ((Admittedly, sometimes nonsense.)) every single weekday. ((Even on holiday-weekdays.)) Today is the 100th post on this site and I can’t help feeling somewhat accomplished. ((I’m not exactly ready for NaNoWriMo, but you need to walk before you can run.))

As any website regular can tell, I’m constantly tinkering with this site. I fully understand constant change might be somewhat disorienting. On the other hand, I’m making these changes in an effort to improve the appearance and usability of the website.

Most recently, I moved the Medical Provider Network and Links sub-pages to be their own ((Top level)) menu options. These pages seem to be things people use a lot and really deserve their own spot at the top. Then again, I don’t want the top menu to be too cluttered. There’s really no one great solution to this dilemma.

Other changes I’m considering:

Moving the EAMS and WCAB search functions to their own page. Some users ((I suspect mostly non-attorneys.)) use these functions exclusively and probably don’t appreciate the dozen or so other calculators.
Combining the Blog and Articles pages. I haven’t done this so far because I doubt people want to sift through my technobabble to learn something about workers’ compensation.

While I have you here:

What do you think of the new look?
What do you think about the MPN’s and Workers’ Compensation Links getting their own menu items?
Would you like to see the EAMS and WCAB search functions get their own menu items?

Drop me a line and let me know.

Best of October 2008

By Jay Shergill Posted on November 3, 2008 Posted in Author, Calculators, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with Backpack, Bailout, Barak Obama, Calculator Features, Car Road, Credit Default Swaps, Economic Turmoil, Footnotes, Heathcare, John Mccain, kitten it, Martini, new year, Photoshopped Pictures, Post Mortem, Presidential Election Coverage, Race Cars, road warrior, Search Engines, Second Presidential Debate, Third Presidential Debate, Wooden Arrows

October was another pretty good month for PDRater.com. During the month of October, the traffic for this website increased by about 25%, I added a few new calculator features, I completely changed the look of the website, and we passed the 200 registered users mark. ((At the time of this post, 227 registered users!))

In no particular order, I’m including my favorite “photoshopped” pictures from October on the right side. The footnotes below link to the original photographers. None of them are to blame for the photoediting. ((Special thanks to the kind people who use Flickr for making their photos available for use.)) ((Photos courtesy of richardmasoner, C_Dave, and mikewade.)) ((Photo courtesy of DaveHogg.)) ((Photo courtesy of Daniel Martini.))

Two More Calculator Features!

By Jay Shergill Posted on October 27, 2008 Posted in 1997 PDRS, 2005 PDRS, Calculators, Combined Values Chart, Javascript, Multiple Disabilities Table, PDRater, Permanent Partial Disability, Subscription Features, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with Calculator Feature, Calculator Features, Cvc, disability calculator, Disability Ratings, Dollar Value, Instances, kitten it, Mdt, Monetary Value, Money Chart, Multiple Disabilities, new year, Permanent Disability, Photo Courtesy, Subscriber

Last week, at the request of a paid subscriber, I added a new permanent disability rating calculator feature. ((Old calculator photo courtesy of ansik.)) ((New calculator photo courtesy of dan taylor.)) Prior users had asked about incorporating an automatic dollar value of permanent disability or “money chart” For the reasons I described in that prior post, I just couldn’t think of a good way to incorporate an automatic calculation of the monetary value of permenant disability.

New Paid Subscriber Feature

Once I added this feature, I realized there were at least two more instances when an automatic calculation of dollar value of permanent disability might come in very handy: when calculating the Multiple Disabilities Table ((1997 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule)) or Combined Value Chart ((2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule)) values from combining one or more permanent disability ratings.

Now, when a paid subscriber calculates the CVC or MDT of multiple ratings, the calculated combined rating is fed to the dollar value of permanent disability calculator and the dollar value calculated.

WordPress Update to v2.6.3

By Jay Shergill Posted on October 24, 2008 Posted in Author, Free, Javascript, MySQL, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, PDRater, PHP, Technobabble, Website Updates, Wordpress No Comments Tagged with Author Website, Control Panel, Dashboard, Decimal Places, Free Scan, Keeping Score, kitten it, new year, Paragraphs, Referential, Support Group, Virtues, Website Content, Website Owner, Website Visitor, Website Visitors, Wordpress

Quick Update

or those of you keeping score at home, I’ve updated to WordPress v2.6.3 last night. ((Talk about unnecessary decimal places.)) This version was released as a security fix. Unlike other WordPress upgrades, this one took only a few seconds.

Less Quick Updates

Admittedly, prior updates probably only take about 10 minutes, max. This 10 minutes includes roughly 9 minutes of backing the website and database up and 1 minute of actually uploading the new version. Since the 9 minutes of backing up is essentially all processing/downloading time, there’s nothing for me to monitor which makes the whole process very painless.

Upcoming Updates

The kind folks over at WordPress have been hard at work on the version 2.7. ((I call them “kind” since a lot of these people are working for free.)) If you scan through the above link, you’ll get to see what the new WordPress 2.7 control panel/dashboard is supposed to look like.

Best Thing About WordPress

(If you just can’t wait, skip down two paragraphs.) Regular readers have heard me go on and on about the virtues of WordPress. ((You know, you three should really form some kind of support group for people who read unnecessarily nerdy and self-referential blogs.)) The interesting thing about new versions of WordPress is that any upgrades would be seamless to a website visitor. ((I think its interesting, anyhow.))

A website that is easy to read is a function of the author

Website content is really all that matters to a website visitor. Visitors don’t care about what software a website owner is using – just as long as the content is useful. ((If they don’t care about what kind of software, they sure as heck don’t care its version 2.6.3.))

A website that is easy to write is a function of the program

The single best thing about WordPress is that this program makes maintaining a website a breeze. I would recommend WordPress to absolutely anyone interested in creating a website. For the novice, the program makes it easy to write, edit, and delete single pages or the entire website without any knowledge of programming. For the tech-minded, the program makes it easy to install, upgrade, and personalize a website.

If you know a little PHP, MySQL, and javascript you could do some c-r-a-z-y things with WordPress. ((You could even put together your own workers compensation calculators and EAMS search engines!)) ((Am I going overboard with these footnotes?)) ((The answer is “No, I’m not going overboard.” In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “You can never go too far.”))

New Calculator Features!

By Jay Shergill Posted on October 23, 2008 Posted in 1997 PDRS, 2005 PDRS, Calculators, CSS, Downloads, Free, PDRater, Permanent Partial Disability, Subscription Features, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with Benefit From, Calculator Features, Dollar Value, Feature Request, Free Sample, Free Subscriber, Free Subscribers, kitten it, new year, Permanent Disability, Tweaks, Variables

Running Puppy — This puppy has nothing to do with this post whatsoever.

Last Friday I announced some “website tweaks.” Since then a paid subscriber ((As opposed to a free subscriber)) reiterated a feature request. ((Thanks Marc!)) As a paid subscriber, he is able to calculate an unlimited number of ratings so that they all show up on a single page. Basically, he wanted to be able to see the dollar value for a particular permanent partial disability percentage at the same time as a rating.

This isn’t the first time I’ve wrestled with the problems in creating such a feature. There are several problems with incorporating this feature into the calculator’s page.

The rating calculator and the dollar value of permanent disability calculators cannot be open at the same time.
The rating calculator does not require the date of injury, just the age of the injured worker. Without the date of injury, the website cannot properly display the dollar value of a permanent partial disability percentage.
When a paid subscriber has performed more than one rating calculation on a page, the website cannot decide which rating string to convert into the equivalent number of dollars.

This exact feature had been suggested by other users in the past. ((And even some competitors!!!)) My original thinking was that trying to accommodate this feature request would involve too many unknown variables. After giving the matter some more thought, here’s what I’ve come up with:

Paid subscribers benefit from improved print formatting. Basically, I’ve created a special file that changes the way the calculator page looks when a paid subscriber is printing. ((The special file is actually just some CSS to optimize page for printing.)) Paid subscribers benefit from having the calculator page streamlined specifically for printing.
- Sample Printout for Free Subscribers.
- Sample Printout for Paid Subscriber.
Paid subscribers can have more than one calculator open at a time. This one feature probably addresses 90% of this user’s concerns. If you’re able to keep both calculators open at the same time, it should be easy to perform a rating and then turn the percentage into a dollar value.
Paid subscribers receive automatic calculations of dollar value of ratings. When a paid subscriber performs a rating calculation, the “Dollar Value of Permanent Disability” calculator automatically opens and the dollar value of the rating is automatically calculated. The user will still have to adjust calculation to account for the year of the injury. However, this is probably the most elegant solution to this issue.

Category: Website Updates