hey

(i am still subscribed to the rss feed)

hmm, when i edited my post the disable smilies checkbox didn't work :/

(testing) :|

A while back, I moved hosts and needed to update several things. I think the database wasn't a complete copy. Your article on AJAX seems incomplete, so I've got to look into that. I also noticed the emoticons in posts are broken, so it seems that may needs some work as well!

Good hear from ya, how's track7?

weird, it's like each page just ends early -- maybe i did fancy quotes / apostrophes and the database move didn't like that? track7 is still there (and still on the same host), but i don't do much with it anymore. i am sort of working on a gaming-related website, but
with being a dad now and doing enough programming at work, i don't have as much time for php anymore.

I need to see if it's all even in the database still. I did an export and import with phpMyAdmin. I bet you're right though, some characters probably tripped it up. I may have a backup copy. I do some programming at work with VBA, but not much else. You enjoy being a dad? I'm about to go on year 2 and it's been one of the most rewarding things in life. It makes you look at the world in a new way.

i started working on my site again and figured i’d check if allsyntax was still around and noticed i never replied to this thread! (oops / sorry!)

so first off yes being a dad is great! i have a very active and talkative little girl at home and watching her learn is basically my favorite thing. i recently took a week off work to watch her at home while my wife went on an international trip and it was awesome spending that time with her.

i had a double hard drive failure and hadn’t backed up that gaming-related site i mentioned in my last post so lost it. i think all i had was login, but still frustrating. i had a raid1 setup (mirrored) to protect me from hard drive failure, but the second one died while i was on a work trip. don’t think i’ll buy seagate again! also, i set up some better backups that won’t overwrite themselves with nothing if i end up losing the raid disks again.

instead of starting over on the site i lost, i figured it was time to modernize my site because then maybe i’d be more interested in posting stuff again. here’s my list of things i’m changing. i’m going to do one section of the site at a time and make sure it works everywhere.

1. modernize my layout. i’m getting rid of borders and adapting to varying browser widths (such as phones) automatically instead of through a separate subdomain for mobile which has been bothering me for almost as long as i’ve had it set up. we had a guest speaker come in to work and suggest it’s better to design for the small screen first and then make changes to adapt to larger screens rather than the other way around, so i'm trying that. i also have a color scheme i came up with for that other site i’m adapting here.

2. modernize the way my site behaves. for the first time ever i’m including a couple javascript libraries i didn’t write myself. knockout lets me bind html elements to a javascript data model, which is highly compatible with serving a mostly-empty page and then pulling up the content using ajax. i’ve seen how jquery can help people write less javascript but it also provides a bunch of stuff i wont use, so i’m using a scaled-down version called minified. mostly i wanted to run a function when the dom loads rather than waiting for images etc to load as well, but the dollar-sign function for getting references to elements is also very handy.

3. use mysql in ways that are better for performance. i learned a bit more about performance in mysql which means refactoring some of my tables and changing how i do some queries.

4. secure login. currently, logging in sends the password unencrypted to my server. i can store it securely but would need to spend more money to get a certificate and set up ssl to secure the transmission. i plan to drop direct login to my site in favor of openid from other sites that do have encryption, like google / twitter / facebook / etc. i’ve seen generic openid logins that let you enter the openid url yourself, so people can use anything that supports openid.

i started with my blog and so far on my test server it’s impossible to log in because i haven’t started that part, but it loads a tag list and the latest entries over ajax. when there are more entries than what’s displayed, i load up more over ajax and just add them to the page. i’m considering making it load the next chunk once the page scrolls to the bottom, without needing to click. i’m happy with it so far, and hopefully after another month or so i’ll have it far enough that i can push the new blog to my live site!

  misterhaan said...

it’s been a long time since i’ve dealt with vb or vba, but i did a lot with it 10-15 years ago. now i’m mostly using c# at work (and sometimes at home), and of course still php at home. i also use mssql at work and get frustrated with little things it won't let me do like add a new column anywhere but to the end of an existing table.

i hadn’t considered using a cms — i’ve always felt like that would take more time to learn than what it’d save me. it does seem like a good idea for a site that has administrators / major contributors who aren’t web developers though. so far i’m only using javascript libraries, but am considering markdown or a similar library for comments and the forum (if i even keep the forum). did you write the bbcode implementation here? i’m still glad i wrote what i did but replacing it now with something people have seen other places and thus know how to use sounds like a good idea.

Do you have a programming job? What exactly do you do? I don't work as anything IT related, I've been in the oil & gas industry for about 10 years. There's a lot of spreadsheet use, and most older industry professionals are comfortable with that and less eager to use much else.

So that sort of explains the use of VBA so much. I've read Excel could abandon VBA for .NET I believe, something more modern, but it's yet to happen. I think you can develop add-in's for Excel using .NET where you code would then be protected? That's probably something I should learn a bit more about...

I did write the bbcode here. I built the entire forums from scratch. I'm sure you can tell by the nested quotes issue above!

*edit* It looks like the bbcode no longer works right... I switched hosts a while back and the relative path changed. That may be the culprit. I guess as PHP versions change and browsers change, stuff breaks that use to work fine. I'll need to dig around and fix that sometime.

i'm a software developer working on an internally-depl oyable website that monitors and alerts on metrics that we care about on the various servers that the rest of the software runs on. it figures out stuff like "we're on track to run out of disk space next week" or "it's taking a long time for users to log in." each customer sets up their own instance of it and can tweak the thresholds that trigger alerts. i've been at the company almost 13 years and have been in this area for the last 2.5.

progress on track7 continues slowly, with nothing actually changed on track7.org so far. i've dropped minified for jquery 2 since it's difficult to search for how to do something in minified but easy to find the same thing in jquery. maybe the minified guy should have chosen a less common word for its name. i have login with google account working, but haven't yet done the part where you actually add google login to your track7 account or create a new track7 account with google login. ended up writing it myself and it's actually not very complicated -- definitely simpler than learning how to use some library that supports multiple login providers (i tried).

after that i spent some time researching the most secure method for remember-me cookies and have that working though. i may write up a blog post or guide on that someday. now i'm working on letting existing users log in with their username and password, add a google account for login, and then delete their password. then i'll either add other login providers or work on creating a new track7 account from a google login. it feels good to be updating, but i still have a lot i need to build before i can actually change anything on the live site without temporarily losing capabilities. i'll probably drop some capabilities on purpose though, like making my forums read-only since i basically initiate everything and others can post comments on my guides / blog posts / etc. also i can use the forums here :)