Hi guys,

it´s been a very long time since the v17 has been released. Lot of things has happened over that time and no it is not like I forgot about Meteotemplate, it´s just that there is a few thousands “of you”, so just support and help takes many hours a week.

Anyway, a new version is now available. There is not that much new, but there are some new concepts which sort of prepare the template for a future release that is going to be a major one.

Just so you know what the future goal is, I set a few:

• make the page as mobile-friendly as possible
• change the overall design based on current trends
• make the template less dependent on external sources

The first goal is quite obvious. The second one is simply due to the fact that since the release of v1.0, 5 years have passed (unbelievable how time flies…) and webpages look different these days, probably not much changes quicker than web design. Third one is a bit more complicated. On one hand it will mean there is likely to be less blocks/plugins available in the future, but on the other hand this is a cost for a fully functional page. Over the past years not just web design changed. One other common trend these days is to discontinue free APIs. Over the 5 years of Meteotemplate development there have been many, just to name a few – Google Maps, Weather Underground, Yahoo Weather and recently DarkSky. The trend these days is to offer paid services, to have subscription-based services… this is against the original goal to create a page with no extra costs. It is sometimes impossible to find a usable alternative with similar features. At other times you find one, but it takes time before it is re-programmed, it might not work the same and it might break again a few weeks later due to the fact the alternative is also made as paid service or it is changed.

The only way “out of this” is to make the page more station-based. This of course is not to say there will not be external data – forecast, radar etc., but it just is no longer possible to maintain hundreds of blocks and plugins.

Anyway, the above goals will be accomplished gradually. This version has some changes in the back-end which slowly push the template towards the new goals. There is, however, one change you will notice already now.

Update process

As I promised, the update process will be semi-automated, just like last time. This means you will have to download the update file manually, upload it via FTP, but the actual update will then be performed automatically by a single script. Make sure you follow the instructions below closely.

Please use the new token request page and do not email me directly. The process of token issuing is now also semi-automated (issuing hundreds of tokens last time took many hours and this will make it a lot simpler for me). If you just email me I will not be able to generate the token easily. In addition please include everything that you are asked to specify on the token request page and have a look and agree with the license (nothing new, just a summary from the original license in the wiki, highlighting the major points, but please read it because after some incidents in the past I will not issue tokens to users who do not respect it).

1. as always, you will need a download token for the update. To get one, go to the Downloads page and click Get Token. I will try to issue tokens within 24 hours maximum. I might send a few at the beginning and then wait just to make sure that if there is some major problem it affects as few people as possible.
2. extract the package and inside you will find a folder update_18.0
3. use an FTP client to transfer update_18.0 into your update folder in the template
4. go to your website and login as admin
5. now you will do the actual update by opening the following page (making sure the update_18.0 folder is in the update folder):….templateRoot/update/update_18.0/updateTemplate.php
6. this script will first check several things (make sure it is placed in correct location, make sure you are using version 17.2 and check you are logged in as admin).
7. it will update and add all the new files from version 18.0 automatically and inform you about any potential problems during the update and what to do next.
8. Please make sure you read the entire page, at the end of the update page will be summary information about any potential files that were not updated (in which case you will need to transfer them via FTP as usual) and what to do next.

NOTE – if after the upgrade you see that the layout is not the same as it was (eg. 2 columns instead of 3), try reducing the total width of the columns, specified in the homepage layout setup, to something like 99 % instead of 100 %.

What is new

• NEW – the original desktop version is now partially responsive. If there is enough space for the columns specified, it will show them. However, if a column reaches a certain minimum width, it wraps it below the first one. This basically means that the original customizable mobile page is basically obsolete. I recommend using the new responsive mobile homepage (can be switched in the Main setup). The desktop version with all your blocks is now also responsive, but not fully, what remains to be solved is the top menu bar, which is quite problematic due to how customizable the menu is. Something to work on in the future. The old indexMobile.php is still available, but only for compatibility purposes and will be discontinued once it is fully replaced by the indexDesktop, resulting in one single homepage for all devices.
• NEW – users with updates from Weather Underground will surely appreciate that the update process now supports decimals
• NEW– new “scroll to top” button on the homepage
• FIX – fixed graph on the astronomy/sun.php page showing the times of twilight, sunrise, sunset etc.
• UPDATE – design tweaks to some station pages to make them more readable

This update does not require any additional setup of something on your end except do not forget to go to Main setup and click Save after the update process, just to complete the setup (this checks the update process and updates the version number in the footer). Version 19 is likely to be another intermediate step towards a major upgrade in version 20. I can also say that future updates will not be available in years, but much sooner.

Hope you have a good time and health in this tough period.

Enjoy