Preserved Topic: Call for alpha testers (and some help)

Alrighty,

So anyone looking for some new weblog software? It's been about 2 years but I finally did something with my site. Being a bit bored I made it a bigger deal than I needed to but ended up writing a whole new weblog package. It's php/MySQL based and desgined to be relatively easy to install and virtually unlimted in the way it presents the pages. Ultimately if you know HTML and how to upload stuff to your site you should not have a problem installing.

One caveat is creating the MySQL db but I'm working on a solution to that

Anyway what I'm looking to do is make this an OzoneOpen source project with anyone that wants to help out.

Right now I need a tester or two to install it and just use it with any suggestions they have.

I could also use someone to make a default design for it. Oh yeah it's skinnable too in that you can have different designs that the user selects all running off the same engine.

Oh (and I'll probably have to do this to start) I need lots of help with documentation, Right now it's all in my head.

Really there's so much to do if I really want to make this compete with greymatter or movable type, but I think there was a need for a PHP/MySQL Alternative to these and I'm pretty sure this is a good start.

Right now it's got Image uploading and indexing with thumbnail creation (uses an uploaded ImageMagick binary and I'll add in PHP/GD support)

Full archiving.

Working out some search funcitonality

Supports multiple users.

hmm most of the other common bells and whistles, tomorrow I'll probably add an RSS XML feed support for it.

Lemme know if you want a piece of this.

mike



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 01-10-2003).]

Holy Moly! 2 years?! Longer. I' go there now and again when it pleaseth me to do so. Now it really will pleaseth me to do so!


Alpha tester #1 siging up, fork it over Miker.

Jason

If you can help with the mysql end I'll be your huckleberry.

Hmm. I'd consider doing it, except that I just finished creating my own XSLT solution. It's not the best (XML never really was meant for data storage), but it works and I'm still working with it.

But one thing prompted me to reply anyway: bitdamaged, set your page's background color to white; it's not everyone's default =)

I`m not much of a blogger or a database guy, but my schedule is pretty open. Anything I can do ?

I'd love to do such a thing.

(for the record, I'm pretty illiterate if it's about how those things work, so if you need a fool to check out the foolproofness of it all... and I'd love to make a design for it.)



[This message has been edited by mahjqa (edited 01-10-2003).]

Well, even if I said yes, I would not be able to get to it There are always way too many things on my plate. But I did want to say howdy and it's great to see some new stuff coming from your corner of the web.

. . : slicePuzzle

I would love to try it out with my new website, except my new website is not yet online (hosting woes). If you're still looking for testers a little further down the road, after I get my site set up and get comfortable, I'll be willing to test.

I would like to play with it and pick it apart, see what makes it tick.

That looks great Bitdamaged!

I'm sure with a start like that, it will certainly end up rivaling and/or surpassing a most of the other blog packages out there.

-Butcher-

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 01-10-2003).]

bitdamaged: OK count me in - it'll give me the excuse to get my ass in gear

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Hey! No problem, I'd love to use it / test it! I need something for my site. My current blogger thingy sucks.

I can run it on my box at home for testing purposes, using PHPDev.

So . . . are you going to post a link to the files or just email them to us I'm impatient today

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

Yep what he said ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The GN is down and I'm a little hyper so bring it on.......

I've been nosing around the world of blogs and have some ideas for extensions and things I want to play with so I'm waiting.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Awesome, sounds great. I'm running into one issue with packaging it, once I get that nailed out I should be able to get a package posted.

Thanks guys.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

bitdamaged: OK cool.

By the way we are proposing a Repository (for code, fonts, PS actions, etc.) at the GN (I'm sure you've seen the thread around) and if you wanted it would be cool to store this there (and anything else anyone has if they are interested).

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

We also need a name (if you haven't already got one). Could I suggest BitBlog?

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Oh yea, I probably should have said that I would be willing to try and help on the PHP or MySQL side of things if you need it... and if my skills are up to the task.


-Butcher-

BitBlog... that sounds nice. Would love to help test it



_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"

OK some comments/thoughts on features:

1. RSS - could you make it RSS 1.x as it integrates nicely with other types of RDF.

2. Trackbak - part of the LazyWeb. It reads referrers to specific articles and then creates a link back to them as a page linking to yours should be relevant somehow. More info here:
http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Yeah, bit, I'll help out with the QA and see if I can get some kind of documentation together.

I would love to be a alpha tester bd. What do we need to do?

Cool I'm almost there sorry this is taking so long. I just went through installing it as if I were a user and I'm just hitting a few snags, as soon as these get worked out I'll let you guys know

In terms of skinning it. The best way is just to design 2 pages, the main page (like bitdamaged.com and a comment page.

Once you have those I'll point you to a basic skin set so you can see how to hack up the HTML or just look at the source for bitdamaged.com and a comment. I put comments in the HTML code explaining the basic chunks.




.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 01-10-2003).]

#cough#

Alright release 0.0.1

I've already got one issue I have to deal with with this release and since I've never done a distributable project like this be gentle

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Thanks!



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

A couple of issues here already:

You might have a look at Dreamhost's PHP setup if you care to cater to it, it has restrictions set for some commands and your script(s) are in violation. I can put an htaccess file in the base directory for the blog to make it parse the script through their security measure route but it slows the script down a bit (I've not tested speed on yours but am going by experience with other scripts that have the same issue).

in /index.php on line 2, you need to do something about that line, get it into the config file or warn folks to change it in the documentation.

Was something supposed to dump install.sql automatically? If it was index.php It didn't. And what's more DH's phpMyAdmin is fubar at the moment so I got to learn how to dump a text file through command prompt, again. I'll get you for this! =)

Managed to get it in and checked on all the tables, they're there. The index.php is displaying but there's nowhere to login or post etc showing (I recall a post on your blog, someone asking for a login link). With the new empty database and no login link there's no clues. I tried running around in the directories to likely looking login files and such but just kept running into PHP errors so I'm going to step off and let you tell me what's going on and what exactly you're wanting out of a tester before I go spelunking any further...

Some of the php erros mentioned above looked like there may be trouble with some paths and stuff, like the problem in index.php on line 2, I recall the errors had 'bit' in them, I'm wishing I'd've written them down but that's probably for later, I just wanna get it going.

^this is about the only documentation I've done as I played. What are you wanting for documentation? How to install it? How to run it, admin it, play with it?

Looks promising. The templating looks phenominally easy. Nice job.

Jason

[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 01-12-2003).]

yeah the login bit can be difficult one of the things I did was make the whole thing work off of one page.

to get to the login you need to put ?page=admin

in your query string
http://www.whatever.com?page=admin

should do it. Off the top of my head the only thing exec commands I can think of are for thumbnail creation using the ImageMagick executable. I should probably make this default to using GD instead and make the imagemagick bit a backup.

Shoot If I can't use fopen though I might be problematic. hmmmmm



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 01-12-2003).]

Dreamhost doesn't do GD either ;-) and I don't think I've ever seen anything that made thumbs with GD, ImageMagick or netPBM that didn't use at least one of these commands (I think DH is migrating to the Woody Debian distro and is trying to enable GD as they roll these upgrades out). The best solution I've seen for this DH security measure is to try and localize all of the offending code in one subdirectory if possible so you only have to send that through the cgi parser instead of the whole of the application, cuz it really does slow it down noticeably to have to do that.

Thanks for that weird tip on getting into the thing =D I play more this afternoon if the Nap doesn't take me

Jason

edit: Are you wanting that kind of input or would you rather the offensive file be fixed and mailed to you? You got anything in mind for procedures on this project? CVS? Or we all just gonna throw our 2 cents in here and you're taking notes?

edit2: oops, there is a default superuser setup, username/pass: superman/1superman1 --- my bad =o

[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 01-12-2003).]

The first line on the index page would be better off as:

require("$DOCUMENT_ROOT/blog/config.php");

Still fiddling.........

[edit: I have most of my layout in included files and I'd really like the ability to use these includes is this possible?]

[edit2: When I have a lot of tables it is awfully handy to have the DB tables named so they group together so instead of comments you have bitblog_comments - this is really needed because I already have tables with the same name as some of yours].

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I'm afraid I'm probably going to have to back out from alpha testing - if I tried to install this then I'd have to rewrite a lot of this and it would probably be easier for me to start from scratch and create something much simpler (which is probably a reflection of my control freakery rather than anything else ).

I'll be keeping a close eye on this and jump back in at a later point and I'll still throw comments in.

bd: We can discuss adding this to the GN's repository (if you are interested, and when you are ready) here:
http://development.gurusnetwork.com/discussion/thread/1571/

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Yeah the table thing is something I noticed when I started making this portable.

JK let me know how your are doing. I actually have a dreamhost account I can access so I might give it a try on there.

This is making of a package thing is harder than it looks
Lot's of things you don't think about. Actually I thought about the system calls but thought I might be able to work around it. I may need to check this into source forge for the changes though keeping up with everything is going to be tough without it.

I started a thread on my main page for anyone who wants to keep up with this.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 01-13-2003).]

bd: We can implement features at the GN to help with development but it is your call

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Cool. I am going to download it when I get home and then fiddle with it. I am not that great at this stuff so I am going to test it on my box at the house with PHPDev first and then go from there.

If I have any questions, I am going to post them here BD, so be sure to check this thread for me

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~