September 25, 2004

Apache

  • In order to experiment with accessing the Access database, I'm going to have to set up Apache, PHP and Perl on this machine
Posted by Mighty at 03:58 PM

September 21, 2004

Databasing

  • Starting to learn how to access a database
  • Gonna start with tutorials and toy databases, to learn the formatting
Posted by Mighty at 02:09 AM

September 17, 2004

Catching up

  • Fell behind in the P7 newsgroups. Spent some time catching up there
  • Finally got disapproval email sent. It was essentially a Copyus pastus bug. I had "$Default_Disapproved" and it should have been "Default_Disapproved". One of those picky bugs that would have been obvious in ten seconds with a second pair of eyes.
  • Let's see if I can protect the password directories
  • Hmm. The images work as-is. They're using an addressing format I'm not familiar with. http://jci.mightydrake.com/pm/user_admin.cgi?add_users.gif I'm not sure how that works.
  • I could conceivably use the feature in .htaccess to move the menu images back under their respective /public and /customers folders, and make the links relative in the menu include. But I'd still have a problem with files like the error files, where they need to be absolute. So I'm going to leave them as-is
  • I saw some discussion in the P7 newsgroup where several people were saying that DW templates were a poor substitute for using PHP. If I did that then I could build urls based on the current directory, etc. Not sure how well that would really work from inside the files produced by MMII. Need to ponder that some more.
Posted by Mighty at 04:03 AM

September 16, 2004

Fixed search SSI

  • Learned something new. It turns out that my search page hadn't been including the searchform from the FDSE templates directory. I hadn't uploaded that version, yet. I couldn't include it because FDSE defaults to including a .htaccess that denies access to everyone. I thought since SSI was done on the server that it would be able to see down into the templates directory. But it turns out that it uses the same permissions as the current browser client. So, I had to add < Files searchform.htm> allow from all </Files> to let my search page include it.
  • Meanwhile, I've been battling with my webhost about a bug they introduced a few weeks ago. It's corrupting the log files. Me and another user on the forum have verified that they've introduced a call to one of the printf-family of functions. But tech support obstinately insists that there's no bug. It's incredibly frustrating.
  • Making a 403 page (access denied) to go along with protection of search engine indices
  • Blocked access to searchmods, too
  • Checking everything in. Been too long since I did that
  • Gonna back everything up
  • The entire JCI Subversion repository is only 8 meg when exported
  • Couldn't figure out how to simply copy Documents & Settings. Some files are in use. Used Windows Backup. It wrote 1.9 gig to the DVD in about 21 mins. Wow
  • PassTheShareware backup page
  • Trying Argentum Backup. I like that it stores the files in a standard Zip file. And it's cheap
  • Looking at Syncback Hub which is free.
  • Is way too slow.
Posted by Mighty at 01:07 AM

September 15, 2004

More search tweaks

  • Moved legend to bottom and added "Highlighted results..." text to top
  • Turned on exerpt. The default is just to show the opening line of the page
  • Removed "Ignore words" so that the exerpt will make sense
  • Removed URL, date, size from results, just to clean it up
  • Applied license key
  • Found and fixed "fullfillment" typo
  • Added search and Linux to webmaster page
  • When adding the "Search Tips" link to the main search page, the SSI broke. Says "client denied by server configuration". Tried playing with spacing. No joy. Unfortunately, I don't have a check-in of a working version
  • Posted a question on Powweb before going to bed
Posted by Mighty at 02:29 AM

September 13, 2004

Some cosmetics

  • Changed the background colors of the results to match the backgrounds of the public and customer pages
  • Set focus when bringing up Search page
  • Adding legend to search results page to explain colors
  • Todo: Don't forget to set focus in other pages that have a form, like authentication page
  • Removed duplicate "Search results" from that page
  • Touched up text on search form. Hopefully it'll be more clear that the drop-down lets the user choose between Public, Customer, or All pages. Maybe I should default to Public?
Posted by Mighty at 07:26 PM

September 10, 2004

Search and authentication

  • Got a response back. Turns out there's a %record_realm% substitution that gives me what I need to differentiate the results.
  • Finally going to get that email into authentication
Posted by Mighty at 10:57 AM

September 08, 2004

Customizing search results

  • Found and fixed footer alignment problem in authentication join screen in IE. Turns out it was two unclosed tags in the template. Those example templates are really sloppy
  • Looking at what it'll take to highlight the results in different colors
  • At first glance, it appears that the best-supported method is to make the protected stuff a speparate realm
  • Nope. That %realm% variable is simply what was passed into the search engine. In my case it'll always return "All"
  • I suppose I could change my form to have radio buttons for public, customers, all. Not as slick as I'd like, but it would work from a UI point of view
  • Bumped my question on the forum. Never got a response from either of my original questions
  • Hmm. I wonder if I can do a Javascript regex to choose the class. Bet it doesn't work in NN4
  • Nope. I tried and I can't seem to change the class being called as the page is loaded. I've Googled a little, but most people want to change either a particular named div, or they want to change the attributes of a class. I can't see how to assign a class at runtime
  • I suppose I can set the id of each result using the %rank% substitution. Then call the changeclass routine with %rank% and %url%

September 04, 2004

Straightening up

  • Gonna have the Account Info button go to the account maintenance page
  • No responses from the FDSE forum. Copied request for advice/thoughts about how to handle search of protected areas to Powweb forum
  • If an account is disapproved, email the user telling him so
  • Hmm, the footer of the account request page is incorrect
  • Also, when you click submit request, it gets a 403
  • Okay, didn't get a 403 this time. Need to keep an eye on that. Got one once from the Approve Users button, too. Maybe just a glitch on the web host
Posted by Mighty at 01:24 AM

September 03, 2004

More search results

  • Ahhhh, yes, I remember now. They already handle includes. But, it turns out that they restrict the extention of the file. I'm trying to decide if it's better to rename them from within Dreamweaver or out in Explorer. I think Subversion would prefer the latter. And there aren't that many htmls I need to change.
  • Sweeet
  • I ended up using multi-file search & replace in MultiEdit to accomplish the changes. Would have taken forever to do it by hand.
  • Gonna post on the forum to find out if there's a way to rearrange the templates so that I can use a Dreamweaver template to keep track of those files.
Posted by Mighty at 12:48 AM

September 01, 2004

Search output

  • Search output template
  • Gonna be tricky. I can't use the same template idea that Password Manager uses, because this one splits the file into a header, the list of results, and the footer. I temporarily broke it up, just for testing
  • Since it's CGI, the includes aren't getting parsed. Gonna try the same thing as I did in pm
  • Not working. It's giving me an error.
    • Can't locate object method "BINMODE" via package "CGI::SSI" at (eval 4) line 67.
  • Not entirely sure how to track this down. From my experience with the other one, it should Just Work
Posted by Mighty at 06:39 PM

Implementing search

  • Let's do Atomz first
  • Can't really test it. Need to pay to index protected pages. Not sure if I can categorize them and highlight them differently
  • I like how FDSE is going in.
  • One big problem is that a lot of what I think will be common search words appear in the menu. The menu is included in every page on the site. I'm looking to see how to exclude the menu text from the search
  • Found the robots exclusion tag <!-- robots content="noindex" --> text < /robots >
  • Everything checked in
  • Tomorrow, work on output templates
  • Also, think about protection of search index, and whether or not I want to index customer section content
Posted by Mighty at 12:43 AM