John Miedema

Many thanks to Tom Keays for his assistance with creating version 1.4 of OpenBook. This version works on LISHost, which is good news since so many library folks have WordPress accounts there. See Tom’s example. Of course, it also works on any server that has PHP5; there is no longer a requirement for PHP5.2.

For anyone who is interested in the technical explanation … LISHost has PHP 5.1.6 which does not include the required JSON library. Thanks to Blake Carver for looking into upgrading to 5.2, but the Red Hat distro has not been updated yet to include 5.2. Instead, OpenBook 1.4 includes a version of the JSON library; if the library is not found on your server, OpenBook uses the included version.

PHP4 Compatibility. This change takes OpenBook nearly all the way to compatibility with PHP4 which some people are stuck with. OpenBook 1.3 introduced handling for Open Library downtime which PHP4 can’t use (the try/catch block). This limitation is still the case in 1.4, but I intend to release a new version soon that is fully PHP4 compatible. If you are stuck with PHP4, and would like to help test this version, please email me.

Credits. There have been a few folks who have helped advance OpenBook through its first few versions. Please check out the new Credits section on the OpenBook support page. Thanks for your help. This is the spirit of open source.