Recent Posts

14451

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by mouser on January 31, 2011, 02:42 AM »

Almost time to run the giveaway drawing -- all you last minute stragglers, enter now!

14452

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by mouser on January 30, 2011, 10:23 AM »

nice 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stacey - An interesting, simple flat file CMS

« Last post by mouser on January 30, 2011, 06:17 AM »

Nice Find!
I'm absolutely going to have a look at this -- it seems like it captures much of the spirit that we discussed in this thread when looking for a CMS for DonationCoder.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Choosing a CMS

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2011, 07:04 PM »

One thing i will add that was touched on by other posters.

In my (albeit limited) experience, it is a mistake to compare the features of product A (out of the box) to product B (with lots of community-built extensions/addons).

The more addons/extensions you use, the harder it is to maintain, and in general the more likely you are to have problems and strange interactions, and trouble upgrading.

That's not to say you shouldn't use extensions/addons, but it is to say that you should prefer a system whose CORE is closest to your needs, and that relying on a large number of extensions to get the functionality you want is never as simple as it seems.

When I get up to speed with Django however I am sure it will become my preferred choice over Drupal.

-bscott

im looking into the same transition at the moment and have much of the same feelings as you.  I have done work with Drupal hoping to use it as a "framework" because of the very excellent developer-friendly approach to coding and good documentation, but just found Drupal too alien and too large a CMS to work well as a general framework.  From the perspective of building general purpose website applications, Django looks promising.  However, deployment of Python sites is much trickier than PHP, and there is a lot about Django i don't love.  Haven't found a better framework yet though (pylons looks interesting but a bit chaotic).

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Living Room / Re: Egypt Blacks Out Internet!

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 09:35 PM »

It's really interesting what's happening over there!

Anyone from Egypt or in touch with people who are who can give us an update from your perspective?

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Site/Forum Features / Which social share sites should be featured in the "Share" button?

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 09:07 PM »

So i'm revamping the "share" link which you will find at the bottom of DonationCoder.com pages.

I'm not at all sure we will stick with this addtoany.com helper tool, BUT for now, i'd appreciate some help prioritizing which services you people use so they can be featured at the top of the list.

• If you are a social network users, you can help by going to: http://www.addtoany.com/buttons/
• Then click "More Options" and then "Prioritize Services"
• And then click to choose your 10 favorite (or best) services to add them to the list.
• Then when you are done click "get button code" and paste it here.

None of the other options matter, just the list of site priorities that it shows in the button code like:

[Select]

a2a_config.prioritize = ["facebook", "stumbleupon", "twitter", "evernote", "email", "google_bookmarks"];

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General Software Discussion / Re: [HELP] broke a (HP) Printer by pulling USB Plug -when it was trying to print (?)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 05:16 PM »

while i avoid any programs that clean registry or drivers, for fear of making things work, the suggestion to try another computer is excellent, and i would do that if power cycle doesnt work.  and worstje is right to suggestion restarting the PC too before concluding it's something bad with printer.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Ten Timer

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 05:14 PM »

A totally not-needed but cute option would be to be able to configure TenTimers and tell it how many of the 10 rows to show.  so that we could use it as 5 timers, etc.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Choosing an Installer

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 05:13 PM »

When i went searching for installers many years ago, one of my requirements was the ability to make an installer that built setup executables that did not have to bundle in with the files to install.

I use this in my applications to make my installer packages zip-compatible, by NOT having INNO setup package the files, and just make a standalone installer that i then create a self-extracting zip from.

Just something to keep in mind.  Wise used to make an installer that would do this automatically which was really nice.  Both INNO and NIS can create standalone installer exes.  There are a couple more commercial setup makers that also make zip-compatible installer packages, which i really like.

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General Software Discussion / Re: [HELP] broke a (HP) Printer by pulling USB Plug -when it was trying to print (?)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 05:09 PM »

typically what one does in such case is UNPLUG device from power.. WAIT 5-10 minutes, replug it in.

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Living Room / Re: Darwinism + geneticism + two-wheeled vehicles = ... awesomeness.

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 10:08 AM »

Love it -- great find.

For those who aren't familiar with this kind of work, check out Genetic Algorithm or Genetic Programming research.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Ten Timer

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 09:29 AM »

Added ten countdown timers.

AWESOME!!! 

I love it -- perfect for keeping track of a bunch of things at once.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 09:05 AM »

If you have not recieved your gift certificate email by now -- send me a message through the forum.

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Site/Forum Features / Re: New tweaks to forum - Jan 27, 2011 (apc caching, server load info)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 03:08 AM »

we already do that -- we let people edit these fields but they are not shown until they have made several normal posts.
actually letting the spammers SET those fields is helpful because they self-identify themselves as spammers early

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Site/Forum Features / Re: New tweaks to forum - Jan 27, 2011 (apc caching, server load info)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 02:45 AM »

Why not add text-captcha (that question answer one) to forum sign up page ?

-mahesh2k (January 28, 2011, 02:40 AM)

yes, i will be doing so.

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Site/Forum Features / Re: New tweaks to forum - Jan 27, 2011 (apc caching, server load info)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 02:20 AM »

New improvements (hopefully) and cleaning up of the register/signup page, hopefully make the process a little smoother AND to make the captcha harder for bots (not sure how many bots are getting through but pays to be pro-active since we are always on the alert for spammers).

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Developer's Corner / Re: Choosing an Installer

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 02:15 AM »

InnoSetup is what I use.. it's not perfect, but it has a pretty good combination of power-when-you-need it, and dead simple use when you don't.
The mini-ide that comes recommended with it in the full downloads are good.

I need to check for the .NET 4.0 framework, so that's a must.

Inno Setup does not have built in support for checking .net stuff, which is quite unfortunate.  But their have been threads on the forum about adding this to inno script, AND about other installers that DO explicitly support .net version checking.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Choosing a CMS

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2011, 02:03 AM »

I've not looked at Joomla in a while, so I'm wondering if it has finally achieved of sane degree of usability. Last I tried, it was about the most obtuse thing I'd ever seen.

You obviously haven't looked at Drupal yet then -- I strongly recommend you cross it off your list.

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Official Announcements / Re: Server Slow/Load Issue - Jan 22, 2011 - search temporarily offline

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 08:29 PM »

And on top of that Gothic built a little desk and console terminal for Cody to sit at and monitor raw tcp traffic to the server -- when he sees a request come in that he recognizes, he can intercept it and peck out a memorized reply himself.  I don't know if that will lead to faster results, but it keeps Cody busy.

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Site/Forum Features / New tweaks to forum - Jan 27, 2011 (apc caching, server load info)

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 07:30 PM »

Couple of minor tweaks to the forum -- we've set up the APC caching library which should make the forum load faster.

We've added a line to the bottom of each forum page which will show how long the page took to render and the current server "load" (load of 1.0 means cpu is fully loaded; any value under 8 or so is good).  So if a page is slow to load for you, check this line at the bottom of the page -- if its showing fast render time and low server load, then it's probably a network connectivity problem.

I also tried to put back the selective quoting feature on the forum where you can select some text and then hit the quote button to quote only that text; still seems a bit flakey but hopefully that's just old js in the cache which will work itself out.

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Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Drop target to move files to predefined folders

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 02:41 PM »

looks like we did lose 7 posts on the entire forum, between the time we sent the forum into administrative mode and the time we ran the backup. im still not sure exactly how that could have happened, BUT thanks to new email low tech backup solution, but i have the contents of them and will send the losts posts to the authors.

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N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 02:18 PM »

let's have some photos of people with their mugs!

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Official Announcements / Re: Server Software Update - Jan 26, 2011

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 01:53 PM »

I have noticed that some posts are missing that we made just before you started working on this. Are they gone forever?

there shouldn't be any posts missing -- can you pm me with details?

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DC Website Help and Extras / Re: why I dont receive reply email notifications?

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 01:50 PM »

the Notifications page of your profile should list all threads and boards that you have subscribed to receive messages from.
if you are getting notifications for topics you aren't subscribed to, please let me know!

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Official Announcements / Re: Server Slow/Load Issue - Jan 22, 2011 - search temporarily offline

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2011, 01:48 PM »

I thought database result caching would result in larger performance wins

In addition to PHP opcode cahcing, smf also has some routines for data content caching, which is also happening through APC.