Table of Contents

Countdown Plugin

countdown plugin by Luis Machuca B.
Countdown to a specific date.

Last updated on 2009-12-19. Provides Syntax.
No compatibility info given!

Similar to countdowntimer.

Tagged with counter, date.

The Countdown Plugin shows a countdown to a specific (target) date.

Under new management since June 11, 2009.

Previously maintained by Ekkart Kleinod (since version 2.x).

Based on even earlier work by Ron Peters (version 1.0).

Which was itself a modified version of the nucleuswiki plugin by Trent Adams and Edmond Hui

Important: version 2.x is not compatible with version 1.0 (syntax change of date)

Attention: new maintainer needed -> found

Due to changes in my homepage backend I no longer develop this plugin. I will host the plugin until a new maintainer is found. Please contact me if a new maintainer takes over the development.

Regards, Ekkart.

Hi, Ekkart. I've already mailed you asking to take over the development. But of course you might want to wait JIC someone else applies too. Kind regards. — Luis Machuca B. 2009/05/26 06:09
Hi Luis, sorry for not answering, I'm afraid, your mail was put into the spam folder. It's okay for me if you develop the plugin further. All files are in the zip archive. Regards, Ekkart.
Thanks, Ekkart. As of June 11, 2009, I'm taking over the development of this plugin. As a first task I've implemented a demo and download page, and I'll start implementing the feature requests soon, starting with the language files. Anyone interested in contributing their language can send me patches as per Internationalisation. Thanks. – — Luis Machuca B. 2009/06/12 06:30

Description

With this plugin you can insert a countdown into your page where it will display the number of days, and optionally hours and minutes, until or since the text that you include.

The format is: 

<COUNTDOWN:date|description>

This will be replaced with either 

XX days [HH:MM] until description
XX days [HH:MM] since description

(where the [HH:MM] part is optional)

Possible formats of date are all GNU date formats that are allowed by strtotime. Examples: 

<COUNTDOWN:mm/dd/yyyy|day to remember>
<COUNTDOWN:dd.mm.yyyy|Ereignis>

Download/Installation/Examples

Download and install the plugin using the Plugin Manager using the following URL:

Download URL for Plugin Manager

The above link always points to the latest version. As of the date of December 2009, that is the version 2.5rc.

:!: If you are using a previous version of the plugin, it is recommended that you uninstall the previous version before installing the RC.

Download links for previous version:

Refer to Plugins on how to install plugins manually.

:!: Demo Page: informatica.temuco.udelmar.cl. The site is in Spanish, but usage should be pretty obvious and language is neutral enough that even Google Translator shall do fine. An English demo page will be made available for the next release of the plugin.

Examples of use and more information can be found on ekkart.de.

The output of the countdown plugin, showing our remaining time to the
Mayan ”End of Days” (2012-12-22).

Configuration

The plugin is configurable in some ways since version 2.0.

There are three parameters that are configurable, via either local.php or the Configuration Manager:

Visibility of Countdown Date:

The parameter include_date is a Boolean that determines whether to show (true) or not (false) the target date in the output.

Example: 

$conf['include_date'] = false;

results in 

XX days until description
$conf['include_date'] = true;

results in 

XX days until description (mm/dd/yyyy)

Short for for Today:

The parameter use_today is a Boolean that determines whether to switch the output of the countdown to the short, simple form “Today” if the countdown date is today (true).

Example: 

$conf['use_today'] = true;

results in 

Today is description

Display hours and minutes:

The parameter with_hours is a Boolean that determines whether to show hours and minutes as well as days in the output (true). It defaults to false to maintain output compatibility with previous versions of the plugin.

Example: 

$conf['with_hours'] = true;

results in 

XX days HH:MM until description (mm/dd/yyyy)

Internationalisation

The output format of the date can be set in file lang/xx/lang.php where xx stands for your preferred language. This file contains the language dependent texts too. Feel free to edit these files or create new ones for your language. If you want your language file to be integrated into the plugin, please send them to me. Please tag your email subject with [countdown].

The following languages are included:

Versions

Discussion

Does this plugin work properly with leap years?

Yes it does — Geoffrey Roberts 2008-02-02 12:23

There is a small bug with the plugin. Basically it miscounts the number of days as it does not round hours correctly. This can be fixed by replacing: 

$the_time = sprintf("%.0f",abs($time));

with: 

$the_time = sprintf("%.0f",ceil(abs($time)));
I used floor instead of ceil for the new version 2.0. This works for me, can someone please confirm my results? Thanks, EK.
floor was wrong, ceil does the trick, even without abs()

How about <COUNTDOWN:mm/dd/yyyy&date|day to remember> or <COUNTDOWN:mm/dd/yyyy&nodate|day to remember> that can override the default config option?

Sounds good, depends on how much time I have these days. EK.

Is it possible to change the date input syntax to dd/mm/yyyy (for the UK) rather than mm/dd/yyyy? This would be much appreciated :)

And a french version too! if you find time for this…
XX jours avant

The ability to display “business days” would be very helpful for those who use this at work. Dumping in a little JavaScript or something to make it count down by the second would be neat to…

:!: Just wanted people above to know that I have received two language packs for internationalization, and I'm working on a third of my own. With this and an attempt I'll make to incorporate the “business days” suggestion above, a new release will be ready by end of December 2009. — ryan.chappelle 2009/11/29 01:13

Done: version 2.5rc is now available. — ryan.chappelle 2009/12/21 19:56