CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm doing some free work for someone who uses civicrm 3.1.1 but I'm pretty new to it.  I've been working with it for a few weeks now though.

I've set up a donation page with a target amount for him.  He wants a vertical image with a side graphic for his progress widget, (a bit like a thermometer but something else.  Details aren't important here though.)

The widget page doesn't really offer a vertical solution, as far as I can tell. 

1) should I even use that widget?  I think I'll need to upgrade the client to 3.1.5 or better since he's using 3.1.1, and there seems to be a known issue for versions before 3.1.4 (relating to bugfix CRM-6119).

2) if not, is it easy to simply use a php page (I'm a decent php/mysql coder) that builds the image and just link that in?  If so, is the api easy to use or should I just query the db directly myself to total up the donations?)

4) or are there alternate types of widgets or even javascript that would be able to show the percentage towards the goal?