I've released a new version of django-axes this morning. This project allows you to keep track of failed login attempts on your Django-powered sites quickly and easily. It pays attention to the built-in login functions for the Django administration utility as well as the stock django.contrib.auth.views.login method. If a particular user fails to login successfully after 3 tries (this number is customizable), a record is made of the failure for the site admins to review.

This new version addresses what appeared to be related to some recursive function calls interpretting one failed login attempt as much more than that (sometimes more than 100 alleged failed login attempts for a single actual failed login attempt!). I also added a log file for easier access to the stuff that happens when django-axes kicks into action.

For more information, see the following links:

• http://code.google.com/p/django-axes/
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-axes/

Please comment with any questions, suggestions, etc you have in regards to django-axes!

I've been making several updates to django-watermark during my more boring classes the past couple days. I have just released a new version for your pleasure.

Changes include:

• A lot of code refactoring. There was a lot of logic in the watermark filter itself. I decided this logic should be placed elsewhere so as to make the utils.watermark function easier to use outside the realm of the watermark filter.
• Removed the "parameter precedence" that used to exist between the positioning, tiling, and scaling parameters. Previously, if scale was defined, any values for position and tile were ignored. Similarly, if any value was given for tile, any value for position was ignored. Now you can use all three parameters simultaneously.
• Added a couple of goodies for positioning and scaling.

I think this is quite a stable release. Please notify me if you find any problems with it!!

• http://code.google.com/p/django-watermark/
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-watermark/

I've added a few updates to django-watermark and figured it was time to announce another release. Updates include:

• the ability to place watermarks randomly on the target image
• updated the way relative positioning works. Now, position=50%x50% will center the watermark image on the target image. Previously django-watermark placed the top-left corner of the watermark image in the center of the target image.
• the ability to convert the watermark image to a transparent greyscale image before applying it to the target image
• the ability to rotate the watermark image using either a specific number of degrees or usign a random rotation value

Both Google Code and PyPI have been updated with these changes.

• http://code.google.com/p/django-watermark/
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-watermark/

I've found myself in many situations where I have several images that need a watermark applied to them. Applying a watermark to more than 5 images at a time is annoying at best, even if you do have macros to do the mundane stuff for you. I don't like to do things that annoy me.

Recently, I found myself yet again confronted with a "please watermark these images" sort of situation, and I decided to take a more logical approach to the problem: program it. The result of my efforts is called django-watermark and is available on Google Code and PyPI. To be perfectly honest, I actually ganked most of the useful code for this application from a generous soul on the Internet.

This seems to be working fine for me. I think the positioning for watermarks might need more work, but there are several options to hold people over for the time being. Please let me know what your thoughts are.

• http://code.google.com/p/django-watermark/
• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-watermark/

For anyone who's interested, you can now see what Pendulum can look like out of the box (with the addition of a little CSS). The color scheme is kinda fugly, but that's okay because it's not a real site!

If you want to see the screenshots, head on over to the project page.

Here's yet another application to help you make your site more useful to your users. django-reploc is a "representative locator" for Django-powered Web sites. It uses the Google Maps API to offer your users an interactive map of your representatives, vendors, friends, houses, etc.

I built this application to be a dealer locator for one of my clients. The application provides a way for you to create "representatives," and each representative may have one or more locations. For example, say you are a producer of clothing and apparel, ranging from shoes to pants to t-shirts to sweaters to hats to bags and so on. Perhaps your bigger representatives (or vendors) carry your products in all of their retail branches. reploc gives you a way to display each of these locations for the one vendor on a map for your users.

In addition to that, while the bigger vendors might carry your products in all locations, perhaps some locations only carry particular lines of your products. For example, a vendor location in Miami, Florida might carry a good deal of your sandals and none of your sweatshirts, while a vendor location in Bangor, Maine might not bother with any sandals but keeps sweatshirts in stock year-round. reploc offers a way for you to describe which product lines each location carries by the use of "attributes".

However, it can be used for much more than just that. Pretty much any location that you can show on Google Maps (is there anything that can't be shown on Google Maps anymore?) can be displayed with this application.

Furthermore, you can search for locations within a certain radius of an address that your users specify! A nice circle is drawn on the map, making it visually easier to understand what is and isn't within range. To make things even easier, the locations that do not fall within the radius of the given address are hidden from the map.

Finally, once a user finds a location within the radius of the address they specify, they are able to get driving directions to help them get right where they need to go!

w00t!

To learn more, go to the project page: http://code.google.com/p/django-reploc/

Ever curious to see information about failed login attempts on your site? This morning I threw together a small, simple Django application that allows you to do just that. I'm calling this project django-axes, which is pronounced as "jango access".

I've only tested it on my own site, so it must still undergo some more in-depth testing before I can call it a stable application. From my testing, however, it works exactly as I expect it to.

For more information, check out the project homepage on Google Code.

For those of us who like to know how much time we spend on various projects, I've released a little project to help you out. Pendulum is a small Django application that I've been using to keep track of the time I work on my various personal projects. It's very easy to use, and it's been working great for me for several months.

This weekend I took the time to make several improvements that I deemed necessary before I could make the project publicly accessible. While I've done some testing on my own, I'm fairly certain that I haven't tried all combinations of situations, so there might be some problems that you find as you use it.

To learn more, head on over to http://code.google.com/p/django-pendulum/. There you can learn how to download and install it and what you need to do to configure it.

Enjoy!

The other day at work I was involved in a humorous discussion about having our organization's Web site change colors depending on what day of the year it was. We threw around all sorts of fun ideas, knowing full well that it would never happen for our organization. It would be too unprofessional.

That night my allergies were bothering me to the point where I couldn't sleep, so I decided to see what I could do about making our discussion more possible, at least for others who can take a little more creative license than us. By morning, I had a working application that could effectively change the colors on a Web page depending on the date.

Today I released the source code on Google Code, hoping that someone more creative than me might take it and experiment to make something both attractive and useful.

You can learn more at the project's homepage: http://code.google.com/p/django-seasonal-stylesheets/

I'm proud to announce the official release of yet another one of my side projects. I call it django-tracking, and it is a simple project capable of telling you how many users are currently on your site. If you look at the bottom of any page on codekoala.com, you will see a demonstration of what this project can be used for.

django-tracking also offers basic blacklisting capabilities. I had a chap who apparently setup a script to spam my blog with rubbish comments every 11 minutes recently. I devised a way to stop the comments from being posted, but I noticed from my logs that the script was still hitting my website consistently over the following days. As a result, I implemented the "Banned IP" feature in django-tracking, and any visitor (or script) accessing my site from that IP address receives an error page. Yay!

If you have "Big Brother"-like tendencies when it comes to your visitors, there is also a way for you to have a "live feed" of active users on your site. Works pretty well, if I do say so myself :)

For more information, hop on over to django-tracking's homepage. There you will also find installation instructions and details for configuration and usage.

Have fun!