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.
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.”))
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 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.
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.
I’ve managed to publish a post every weekday. As of today, there will be 81 posts. ((As long as the economy and presidential election keeps giving me material, I’m not afraid of writer’s block.))
Changing the website’s theme has involved a few small tweaks ((Photo courtesy of CharlesThompson)) :
For about four days the Articles section was merged with the Blog section. This has been fixed.
I’ve found a really great plugin that allows me to insert footnotes into blog posts. ((Cool, no?)) My previous attempts at inserting footnotes manually were either time consuming or incredibly clumsy. ((A special thanks to Mr. Simon Elvery for writing this great footnote plugin.))
I’ve made minor alterations to the current theme – background colors, menu ordering, etc.
In printing out some Average Weekly Wage calculations, I discovered to my dismay that this website looked terrible when you tried to print it out. Worse yet, the website header, sidebar, and other navigation information took up nearly a page. This meant that a printout of a calculation might span two or more pages. I’ve since fixed this using some particularly cool CSS. ((Well, my definition of cool, anyhow.))
