This version fixed a problem where NOAA changed the url where the XML file is retrieved from. This caused the weather not to update.
If after installing the update you get “Weather Unavailable or invalid NOAA code.” then deactivate and reactivate the plugin. I will fix this in the next version.
I had a couple people let me know that the icon would sometimes be broken. I did some investigating and found that the icon data in the XML file was sometimes missing and even bad. It appears that NOAA uses the weather conditions to cross-reference to the icon, and there were some conditions not accounted for. Also, the icon specified in the file was broken or specified as a PNG file and not a JPG file.
To fix this, I downloaded their icon file (which they provide in a zip file, all JPG’s) and saved them in a folder of their own. Then I altered the code to check for the JPG version in the icon folder and display that, otherwise it displays a “default” icon of the NOAA logo.
Thanks to Heather Thomas and Sebastian Broways for the help and positive feedback. And a special thanks to Sebastian for the donation!
I changed the URI’s and email information in the widget files. I had this domain for a while and forgot to change it in the widget.
I had a couple people make me aware that occasionally the icon wouldn’t display in the widget. Through some digging I found out that NOAA doesn’t have an icon for every weather condition they may report. For example, in my area I lost the icon when the weather conditions were “Snow Freezing Fog and Windy”. If you check the NOAA website here you won’t be able to find an icon for those exact weather conditions. There answer for that is to omit the icon information from the XML weather file. I added a default diggy auto insurance icon if there wasn’t any specified in the weather file.
I released the latest version of the NOAA Weather widget today. It is version 1.1.0 and it includes a re-written core that uses WordPress functions to retrieve the weather instead of using PHP’s curl functionality. This should make the widget more compatible with servers that didn’t include curl with their PHP installation. The new version is available in the WordPress plugin repository.