dragonimp

the joys of Web development

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:15:35 GMT

I spent much of yesterday and the day before fighting with my computer. See, when I upgraded to OS 10.6, it apparently wiped out all the settings I had in place to let PHP and MySQL work. Okay, not a big deal, I just have to set things up again, right? Well, PHP wasn't a problem, it was just a matter of finding the right settings document and changing a few lines. SQL on the other hand...

First, Apple is no help. When they came out with OS 10 they made a big deal about it being developer friendly, you can get right into the code, etc. etc. Not untrue, but THEY don't tell you how to set any of it up. I don't even want to mess around with the computer's code, all I want to do is build Web pages using MySQL. The OS has the database capabilities, but it's switched off by default and they don't give you ANY help with switching it on.

Anyway, Googling turns up a number of pages with instructions and walk-throughs, and they all seem simple enough. Except that they all have something like this:

Download the MySQL package for Mac OS X.5 (32 or 64 bits depending on your machine)

Install everything in the package in this order: mysql, the startup item, the preference pane.

Start MySQL in the preference pane.

First off, there's at least two dozen items in the package, not three. But okay, I'll find those three and install them first. But no matter which piece I try to install, I get an error. I found another set of instructions that has you use Terminal (Unix commands), and those work up to the point where - you guessed it - I try to install the SQL package. Then I get a "unknown command" error. The SQL package has a text file with instructions to install using Terminal, but those also give me an "unknown command" error.

Clearly I'm missing something.

lynda.com has a video tutorial on setting up MySQL on a Mac, and they're usually pretty good. At least with a video, I should be able to see what it's supposed to look like and where things are supposed to go. Hopefully. I don't want to spend too much more time on this but I want things to work.

Goddamit Apple, this shouldn't be this hard.

Edit: Should've gone to lynda.com in the first place. It's working now, but it seems to have wiped out all the test databases I'd had. Great.

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updates

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:08:47 GMT

The bunnies are being coy today (I think I got a half-dozen words written before I just gave up) so I played around with PHP instead. I don't know what I did differently this time, but I got the email notifications working! Someone who really knows PHP would probably look at my code and laugh, but hey, at least it works now. Though I'd love to hear if there's a more elegant solution. To summarize, the portfolio comment system is back up and notifying me properly, and fanworks now lets me know when someone adds an item or a comment. If the portfolio starts getting spammed again I may have to add some sort of captcha system, but for now I'll leave it open.

And speaking of, fanworks needs more comments! My goal is for that to be a big, multi-person rec. list, and for that I need people to add comments!

Haaaaah, hopefully I'll be able to get some writing done during the week. The crazy work schedule isn't very conducive to it.

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At least I know it works...?

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:15:03 GMT

I set up a comment system on my portfolio, mostly to see if I could get automatic email notifications to work. None of my tests were going through and I'd set it aside to work on later, so I was pretty surprised when I got a notice this morning because a) I thought it wasn't working, and b) no one knew about it. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of bot, but, uh, this was the comment:

ilnjmgdsa wrote:
oHDGFg rajtctfhkpbk, [url=http://rpyzjhekjpvu.com/]rpyzjhekjpvu[/url], [link=http://zfjycauterfw.com/]zfjycauterfw[/link], http://cdjhzjlmgash.com/

Did they lean on the keyboard or something....? (I don't know how to keep LJ and DW from automatically turning those into links, probably not a good idea to click on them.)

At least I know the emails are working, now I can go fine-tune them.

Edit: Okay, I just got 2 more, this is getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't know how to stop them.

Edit the second: I took the comments off, but now the page keeps telling me the server dropped the connection. I don't know enough about php to know if this is on my end or Fatcow's.

Edit the third: pages I haven't touched and that don't even pull from the database are being dropped. It's gotta be Fatcow.

Edit the fourth: Comments back up for the moment, at least until they start getting spammed again.

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another site backend update

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:29:14 GMT

Updated my portfolio to run on php - yeah, I'm having just a little too much fun with this. It was a lot harder than it sounds, though, this page gave me a number of problems. I also updated the artwork a bit, though there wasn't much more to put up; what little art I've been doing lately has mostly been fanart. (There's nothing there that isn't up at PaperDemon or dA.)

(The point of all this is that if someone asks me about coding in an interview, I can point to these sites. That's the excuse, anyway.)

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Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:10:09 GMT

Added a date stamp to the comments on the fanworks site. Mostly 'cause I could.

(The idea behind the comments is that it's the kind of thing you would write if you were making a rec list - this way multiple people can rec the same item on the one page.)

Edit: Yah, I have no idea why some of the dates aren't displaying right. I'd work on it, but fatcow is wigging out and won't let me in to the database. I'll look at it tomorrow.

Edit the second: Fixed. Doofus shouldn't code after bedtime.

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site backend update

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:42:09 GMT

Created a php template for a multi-chapter story site, and used it with the pages for Silver. It makes it really slick to update a chapter. (For when I, y'know, actually have one completed.)

I'm having so much fun with this, I keep having to remind myself that I'm not wasting time. Creating these are actually potentially useful for my job search.

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small update

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:21:37 GMT

I added a complete/in progress tag to the entries on the fanworks site. It really only applies to fiction so there's a "not applicable" option, but if someone wanted to add an in-progress art or AMV I suppose they could ^^.
::Pokes people to add stuff::

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layout woes

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:45:20 GMT

The layout of the fanworks site comes up all wonky on my mom's work computer. Could someone with a later version of IE tell me if it works or not? This is what it's supposed to look like:
Edit: I poked around at the CSS some but I still need to know if it looks right. There's no difference on my machine. By the way, the top bar isn't supposed to scroll.

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Come play in my sandbox!

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:40:04 GMT

(Edit: Yeah, um, I just realized I've told practically no one about this site yet. It's an FMA listing for fanworks - fics, art, and AMVs - that I put together to practice PHP. It's work related, really. The learning PHP part, that is. The site, not so much.)

So, I meant to spend the day catching up and stuff? Yeah, spent all day playing with PHP instead ^^;. But! The site is up and live! Go create user ids! Make new items! Add comments! Play in my database! The layout and design is really basic right now, but all the PHP and mySQL should be working. I haven't tested it on anything but my own computer so I really want to know if it works on PCs and in IE, etc. Plus, I want it populated. I've gone though my own links, but I'm really bad about saving things.

You should be able to edit any comments you make. Any other edits I have to go into the back-end or log in with my "admin" account. But let me know if there's anything you think needs fixing.

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Site update

Sun, 31 May 2009 03:01:57 GMT

Website updated, yay. I removed the gallery because it was superfluous and I wasn't keeping it up and instead linked to my pages at PD, dA, and EW. Otherwise it was just a general clean-up and a new background picture (which also served to get me acquainted with Painter 10 - in 15-minute increments, sigh). The gallery for Silver still needs to be updated, I know there are a lot of broken images on that page. I haven't really wanted to deal with it.

I think that was all? Oh, I kinda updated the foyer, too, but as a links page it's pretty sparse.

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