February 28th, 2005, 03:07 am
I thought of another way to do caching in XtroCMS which involves putting cache information in the users session. If any of you have looked at XtroCMS’s code then you know that I handle sessions using PHP 4 session methods but I have custom measures in place so that it writes the data to a table within the database. (this is so that I can query how many users are on the site). I was talking to Josh of VGProjects about caching and they said they were going to cache information in the session. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time but the other day it hit me. I could put cache the queries that are loaded for the one user on every page! Now that I have that implemented and all of the caching is done, the administration index page of XtroCMS only executes one query to the session table.
Most of you are probably wondering what the big deal is. Well, every query to the database takes time. The less you have to do, the faster your script will run. Speed is one thing that I really want XtroCMS to stand out in.
The Auth system is almost fully in place now. Things are going really well. So far I am really happy with how XtroCMS is looking. Those that choose to use XtroCMS I think will be very impressed. But then again, everyone probably says that about their own scripts. 
Posted in Programming • 3 Comments »
February 20th, 2005, 11:28 pm
I have released XtroCMS Alpha 0.0.1 today. For more information, download, and a demo, read this post
http://xtrocms.best-dev.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=23#23
Posted in Programming • 1 Comment »
February 14th, 2005, 12:09 am
Happy Valentine’s Day! I know it is a day early but I probably won’t have a chance to write anything tomorrow.
Yesterday I took the ACT. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it is a standardized test that Universities use to determine if you are accepted or not. A lot like the SAT. Here is Utah the schools look at your ACT score and don’t really care about your SAT. It wasn’t hard or anything like that. It was really long though. When I get my score in four to seven weeks, I’ll be sure to let you know what I got. I hope it is around 30.
XtroCMS now has two developers! I’m not the only one! A guy contacted me and he was interested in buying XtroCMS. He said that I could stay on as a developer. Right now is a bad time for that to happen since I have an idea in my head on what I want the first release of XtroCMS to be like. Also I’ve put a lot of work into it and I want to see it through until the first release. I asked him if he would like to help me finish the first release and then we can talk about him taking over after that is finished. He accepted.
You’ll probably see more features since two of us are working on it. I cut a lot of things that I wanted to do for the first release because I didn’t have time and I wanted to get it finished. Now that two of us are working on it, things should get done twice as fast.
I’m thinking of releasing an alpha within the next two weeks. Be on the look out for it.
About a week ago phpBB.com was hacked by a group of people that were in it for the glory. That is the only reason I can see why you would want to hack the website of an open source, free to use software. During their hacking they ended up messing the server up so the site was down for about a week. A couple days ago a temporary server was put in place of the old one while more investigation was done on the the server that was hacked.
No one needs to worry that phpBB.com was hacked through phpBB. The phpBB Team is pretty confident that the hackers got in through an exploit in Awstats. If it was through phpBB, you’d probably see it on all of the security trackers and a new version of phpBB would have been released. This isn’t the case so don’t worry about your phpBB board having security problems if you are running 2.0.11. If you are running anything lower than that, upgrade ASAP!
Posted in Programming, phpBB • No Comments »
February 7th, 2005, 10:57 pm
Last night before I went to bed it started to snow. I was surprised to wake up and find 8 inches (about 20 cm) of snow on the ground. I wasn’t expecting this much because the past couple weeks has been decent (High 40s to low 50s, F). It has continued to snow all day and I bet there is atleast 10 inches of snow.
If I had a digital camera, I’d take a picture of it for everyone to see but I don’t so that’s not going to happen.
This has been the best snowfall we have had all year. I don’t think it snowed at all during January. I was getting a little sad because we always have atleast a little snow on the ground for most of winter but this year it hasn’t happened. This should make my winter complete!
I’ve made up my mind on what I am going to do with programming. The catDB for phpBB will wait until I have finished XtroCMS. The reason for this is because with the catDB, I just have to get something that is useable for when phpBB 3.0 is released. It doesn’t need to have all of the features. So all time that I have to code, I will spend it on XtroCMS until it is finished.
Once XtroCMS is finished, I’ll work on the catDB and quickly put together something that is useable. When it is useable, I’ll start on all of the cool features that I am planning to add.
This should make me happy and other people as well. Maybe at the end of all this I’ll be able to work on some of my MODs again.
Posted in Programming, phpBB • No Comments »
January 26th, 2005, 11:17 pm
I thought of something to blog about this morning but I can’t remember what it is! I think it was a rant, I don’t remember. I hate it when this happens.
Its been great having my Dad’s friends over. They are fun people to be with. I really enjoy Tin Tams (or is it Tin Tans?). For those of you who don’t know what those are, they are cookies. Tin Tam slams are the best. You bit the bit corners off (opposite ones) and then suck milk up through the cookie like it is a straw. That fills the cookie full of milk and it is delicious!
Nothing new with XtroCMS or any of my other projects. I haven’t had time to work on them. I really need to get XtroCMS done.
I think I’ll go take a nap now.
Posted in Programming • No Comments »
January 17th, 2005, 11:27 pm
Probably the biggest news is phpBB 2.2 is no more. Say hello to phpBB 3.0 codename Olympus. Here is the offical announcement.
With the release of Olympus, I get the joy of writing the catDB for it to use at phpBB.com. It has been interesting trying to figure out how Olympus works. Its been tough but well worth it. It is an amazing piece of software! Very Powerful!
Like always, all of my MODs are on hold. We’ll see if I can write any of them for Olympus once it has been released. I should have more time then to work on them.
MOD Validation is still going strong. Not many MODs in the queue and we are working through them. Our break of the holidays has set us back some but we should be able to make up for it. There was a time when we had over 100 MODs in there and we cut it down to about 15 - 30. I haven’t had much time to work on validation because I have been working on the catDB. The other guys are doing a great job though.
I don’t think I wrote that I am now in charge of XtroCMS. William, the owner, decided he didn’t have time to work on it and is giving it to me. Of course once money starts coming in, I’ll have to pay him for all of what he bought for XtroCMS. The other developer also wasn’t working on it and I couldn’t get ahold of him so I removed him from the team. So right now it is just me. If anyone wants to help, contact me!
I can’t decide right now if I want to cut features in XtroCMS and release earlier or if I should keep the current planned features and push the release date back. I have too many coding projects! Yesterday I was leaning towards cutting the features but today I’m leaning towards not cutting them. I don’t know! Now I’m thinking about cutting them so I can stop worrying about getting it finish right now. Later I can add those features that I want.
Posted in Programming, phpBB • No Comments »
