Okay, I'm currently sick thanks to the Holiday run around, but I've been thinking a lot about updates to do to the site. First off I want to split this updates page up. This was just supposed to be updates to the site and I'm using it more like a blog. So I'm going to divide this up into a blog section and site updates section. Maybe do something to the site update section so it's a little more informal. I should think of ways to make a link between the two sections too, so I can reference updates from the blog. I also need to implement some kind of formatting, seeing as how all these entries are just one block of text.
Enjoying the job so far. Lots of cool people and more information then I can retain, it's great! Been taking what afternoons and weekends I can to try and come up with some kind of "gamey" web idea. Have a handful of ideas, some are too grand and a couple just aren't panning out. Just haven't got to something that feels right for me at this point in time. Was actually thinking today that I should just start coding something, to see if that would help spark some ideas. Possible on the weekend.
Well got a job programming, thank you lord! Anyways, I am still straightening financials out but I am planning on spending some of my free time working on my site again. Not sure if I am going to try and rewrite it in ASP.NET or not. I am thinking about it to get some extra practice in. I do not know so far the ratio of PHP to ASP.net I am using is more in favor of the latter, so that is the main thing swaying my decision. On another note I just noticed that it looks like my web host reactivated magic quotes for some reason. Dag nab it!
Well I'm getting a bit annoyed. I am starting to learn cakePHP, but very slowly...not because I'm slow. Just been crazy at work lately, I've literally been able to sit down once and do a little bit of work/research with cake. The most annoying part is that I have the whole project laid out I just need to learn the framework so I can put it together. I was just thinking the other day that I should of just started to code the project and not worry about the framework, but I do feel I need to learn this. Even if for no other reason then to get a better hold on the MVC approach. I've already decided I'm going to start looking for a new temporary job with regular hours and holidays off. This job is sucking up way to much of my life for something that is just supposed to pay the bills until I find a full time programming gig. I thought this job was gonna give me more free time to work on code, but instead it's doing the opposite and the late hours and physical exhaustion are eating in to the few hours I have before work to get work done(I know that sounds weird).
I'm still trying to figure out how I want to handle this. I don't know if I want to just start building a project with cakePHP framework or if I want to first remodel my site using the framework to get a bit of a hands on approach with something I already know how to use. Going from scratch might be a little difficult because I'll have to be doing more then one thing at a time and making sure everything is working correctly, where as if I remodel my site with it first I will already know how it is supposed to work and look so I can focus more on properly setting up the framework and keeping things organized. Redoing the site might be a better approach it's just that I know I'm not going to have a lot of free time this month which is frustrating. I wish I didn't have to sleep, that would make things much easier(don't get me wrong I still want the option to sleep, because it's fun, just that it wasn't a necessity).
Wow, I have to say frameworks are an amazing way to handle web pages. I've been digging into the cakePHP framework for two days now and I'm really impressed. It's an amazing use of PHP to create pages, I'm still not 100% on a couple of the things but hopefully I will have enough of it down to start working with it within a couple of days. This kind of brings me back to when I first started learning PHP a couple of years ago, a friend and I were looking over it and were coming up with...well basically how the framework is doing it. A more dynamic way to manipulate and produce the html code by just building the HTML strings with code instead of having to actually full around with the HTML itself. I don't know how to explain it, just feels like my brain is getting a jump start. Man I love working on this stuff, it's invigorating!
I uploaded the changes I did to the site using jQuery today. Seems to be working well in Chrome, I am noticing though that transitions don't seem to be as fluid when viewed through Internet Explorer (surprise surprise), so I guess I'm going to have to look into a way that I can hopefully fix that(I think I remember a work around for it, although I'm not big on kludges). I also notice that there seems to be a delay between pages where jQuery attributes haven't been applied to the page, so for a split second everything is unformatted and then is snapped into it's proper layout. Maybe a way to delay the display so that when it is shown everything is already loaded. Well anyways I'll have to put that on the side burner, because I need to start looking into the cakePHP framework.
Well after fighting with Apache for a couple of days, trying to get it installed and setup manually with php mysql and all that garbage I finally was about to give up, and then I came across this site www.wampserver.com/en which is basically a package deal setting up everything for you quickly and easily. It also makes option settings a breeze, because all you have to do is use a context menu to turn settings/options on and off. You can even activate specific versions of php and/or mysql with no hassle, making it easy to match your live web server. Now I just have to see if I can get cakePHP up and running. I think that if it takes me too long to get that going I'm just going to start on my project and just adopt the framework later, yes it will be more work but I need to get going on this stuff.
Blah, okay I'm also trying to learn how to use cakePHP before I start working on my web scheduling program. I just figured out that I'm going to have to switch my web server from Abyss to Apache, something about mod_rewrites I just spent like an hour reading over it and decided it's gonna take me too long to figure out how to setup Abyss to work with the mod_rewrite functionality, especially when there is documentation to get it to work with Apache(if there are indeed problems after installing it). Since I'm trying to get more stuff done I sadly don't have the time to invest on learning the information necessary to get Abyss working properly with cake, so I'm gonna do it the easy way and just use a different web server on my development box. This in no way means that I have any ill feelings towards Aprelium, I've been using their web server on my local box for a long time and I think it is great. Lets just chalk this up to my own lack of time and effort. If in the future I learn how to set it up to handle things I will start to use it again and probably edit this post so no one will ever know!
No worries I haven't stopped working, I've just been caught up with jQuery (some times it's a little frustrating cause right before I feel like I'm going to have a break through in understanding a piece of it I have to stop to head to work, but no worries I keep pressing on and usually by the next day I get it down). I've made some visual changes with it and am playing around with how to display error messages. I'm deciding if I want to wait until after I do some file renames and organization to upload. In any case it will have to wait until I get a solid day off, which won't be for a couple of weeks. I'm a little eager to get the changes up because it just feels more gratifying when it's out there in the world.
Well now that I have been able to spend a day off looking at jQuery I'm starting to see the usefulness of it. I'm mostly learning it through the UI part of it, and hoping to progress more into it as I go along. I haven't uploaded my changes to this live site yet, just want to make sure about a couple more things. I'll probably just backup everything before I make the switch. It does seem to help speed up development some what. I'm really hoping to get a stronger grasp on it as I go along, already thinking of ways to rewrite my javascript function to work with it. Well that's about it for now, hope to have the changes up within a week or two whenever I get another couple of days off to work on it and time to make the switch.
Started looking at the jQuery documentation last night. I'm still a little iffy on it, looks like it might take me a bit to convert my site to utilize it. So far it is interesting but I don't know if I'm grasping the full usefulness of it, it might just be cause I have just started looking at it I'm not sure. For now it seems like I'm going to have to make some large scale changes to implement it. I'll try to do updates on my progress but until I can convert the site locally and still have the functionality of what I built so far it might be a bit before I get anything up on the live site. I actually wanted to get my resume up, but now I don't know if I want to spend time doing that then have to redo it with jQuery. Well I've got to head to work for now, lets hope it doesn't take me too long to get this tool down.
Okay I added in a delete confirmation popup, so in case I accidentally click on the delete button I will be given a choice to not delete something. I also have the popup display the information of the record that is going to be deleted. The other thing I got done was the edit button, so if I mess up on a post or need to add more to a post that I already posted I can hit that and go back in to change whatever I need to. I'm gonna check again but I think those were the two things I wanted to finish up for now before I start messing around with the web side project I mentioned on the 15th. I was at work today thinking about it and decided that I'm going to attempt to use jQuery when building that project. I have only really played around a very little bit with jQuery but I noticed that more people are starting to ask for it on job requests, and heck if it turns out that I like using it maybe I can apply it to my main site and get things moving along a little quicker. I already know from reviewing their examples and documentation on it that some of the pre-built things they offer are things that I either need or have already built, so the potential to cut down on the amount of work should help a lot and keep me focused on more important things. Well anyways it's like one in the morning and I'm fading fast..and I should be getting some new computer parts later today!
Wired up the delete button, so that any of the updates can be deleted from the database using the website. Just have to be logged in as an admin. Need to add a popup that confirms if the user wants to delete the entry, but not a priority at the moment. Also, wrote down some notes and keep thinking of ways to organize the pages better. I think I might try and do that next before the site gets larger, it's already going to be a bit of a challenge to make sure that everything is going to work once moved and renamed.
I hate when I do something wrong in SVN, always takes me too long to get it back on track.
I'm afraid I didn't get much done tonight. My mind is a little scattered...had too many little things on it. I edited the login text boxes to accept an enter button to change the fields and start the login. So there is no need to tab between them or manually click on the login button. After that I was just looking through some of the classes again, trying to remember why I did something. I think I can combine two of the objects I created. I don't know I keep getting annoyed working on a website, it always feels like I'm just mashing together multiple languages that weren't meant to be together.
Alrighty, I looked around and then did a couple of tests and found out that the live site was using PHP Magic Quotes so I sent the hosting site a message and they disabled that for me. That makes it easier for me so I didn't have to add in a function to do a check for the state of MQ every time I wanted to post something. Lets see what else...oh yeah I fixed the logout out button so that instead of just jumping back to the main page it grabs the current url and returns the user to the same page they were at. I also cleaned up some code so that the script that handles the login/logout is handled by one PHP page instead of two different ones. So I effective was able to remove an entire page, and not lose any functionality. Dang I was cleaning up a couple of things on my TODO list so I forgot a couple of other things I fixed, I think it was mostly just cleaning up some of the objects. I just threw in some placement for Edit and Delete buttons on the Updates section, this will make it so that when an admin posts an update they can go back and either Delete the update or Edit something they already posted.
Okay just fixed the login so it is functional, can't make mew users at this time but now I can login so I can do my updates through the website instead of through the database. I did notice a problem when I was copying my updates from my local test site to the live site. It seems like for some reason it's leaving the slashes in on the live site. That is going to be annoying to figure out since I don't have that issue locally. I'll take a look at it tonight, gotta get ready for work. Well it looks like there must me a different setting on the server DB then on my local DB, because locally I have to use the addslashes function or else the database won't except the data. Because the apostrophes break up the text, but they must have some kind of setting on the server that automatically handles that. I'm going to have to find out so I can match mySQL to theirs, so that is what I will be looking for tonight.
Put the checks in for the updates, so that if the subject and/or description fields are blank it won't allow a post...oh yeah let me through one in for the date too. At the moment it just doesn't react so need to build an error handler to display why nothing is happening, should be able to get it done tonight, I've built one before on another project so shouldn't be a problem. Probably going to make it as dynamic as I can so it can easily be called on any page.
Okay well I already typed in this update, but I forgot to tweak the function to handle the adding of slashes so I lost my original description...I knew I was forgetting something when I did it. lol Anyways I set it up so that I can add updates through a website interface now instead of having to manually enter them in the database. Aside from that convenience the interface does a couple more things for me: keeps track of the max characters I can type in for the subject and description of the update, automatically adds the current date in, automatically fills in the user's id(of whoever is logged in), as well as automatically generating a uid for the post itself. So far it works great, need to add a couple of blank field checks in and fix the login before I put the changes online but should be able to get that done before the end of the week. ...copy...now I will press submit. lol
Finally got some time away from my temp job. Okay I just took out the little background image I had, because it really wasn't that great just something I threw together when I was bored. And I'm no artist. Aside from that all I really got done today was fixed some placement issues I was having with the login stuff, and testing to see if I should use tables or not for placement. I don't think I need to, just need to test a couple of instances in IE and Chrome to find out if it works better or not.