More CMS Love

I told you I’ve been collecting and testing out various CMS’s and trying them out on 2 different server environments,right?

First, for that special little challenge of nothing working-I load it up to my dad’s host and start opening every script file included in the package and looking for session_start(); which means I then have to paste into every page that uses
session_start(); my session save path.This path is to an actual folder that will record and stash every blasted session id that gets generated by the script!This means that every once and awhile I have to delete that folder or it will bloat up to a million stored ids.Awesome!

When I’ve gotten that bit out of the way, I then try to get the CMS to do what it’s supposed to do:make php pages(I use php powered CMs’s because me likey). By “make” I mean create the page.
By “doing what it’s supposed to do”,too, I mean let me edit stuff in a created page and let me upload images and store the damn things to a folder the script makes for me.

Ideally things will go, unideally they won’t or the image upload won’t work.Or I won’t be able to figure out the correct path to something.
I have tried out and successfully ran the following CMS applications:

  • Doop
  • dokuwiki
  • daily
  • Pagemanager
  • Siteman
  • EditThisPage
  • fancy
  • cutenews
  • editPoints

I have failed at the following:

  • justVisual
  • LemonCms
  • cmssimple
  • modx
  • moodle
  • phpcms
  • spaw

I mentioned that I loaded these for the most part only to my dad’s retarded host.
Purehost runs php v. 4.3.0 with gdlibrary one.
They trust nobody so there are many built in restrictions and for the most part you’ve got to be pretty tenacious to get anything more complicated than a contact form to work.
You do not have access to php ini so there goes a lot of options right there.You can’t use gd library 2 functions so there also go even more options.You can’t even have a mysql database connection because this is really only for Purehost’s unix platform customers…although they will happily set one up for you
and charge you 5 bucks a month for the priviledge,too.Outside database connections also won’t fly(I of course tried this first).
In short Purehost has a very hostile environment to work within.
And all that session id saving is so backward-I can’t even begin to tell you by how much.

For that added touch of sheer frustration,any package I run will take forever to load.By forever I mean slower than dialing up an mp3 file.This usually means your save_path folder is bloated but it doesn’t always mean this and so you just have to close the page or close the browser and wait.

And since I am also designing web pages, this lull in waiting to see my results after closing the editing window can drive me so crazy I end up yelling obscenities and just shutting my project down.

I know that the culprit is Purehost and not my P.C. because I have been able to try out 3 different hosts besides Purehost and the wait time is negligible, comparatively.Meaning that for instance the exact same blog as this one on Purehost that I set up for my dad takes more than 5 minutes to appear.This one takes a fraction of a second, thanks Troywolf.com.
Even my rinky-dink angelfire site comes up instantly–all html and javascript no php allowed.
I guess the purpose of this blog is to let you know that before you badmouth a particular tool or application and tell everyone it doesn’t work-make sure you have tried to run it on at least one other host first.

I listed above all the cms that worked but I left out the rich text editors tinymce and fckeditor because technically you are suppoed to be able to turn any text area into an editor, but I was looking for something really a lot simpler.Basically I just wanted image uploading/ &page-management/creation/deletion but fckeditor is so heavy and so is tinymce- I loaded them but was afraid of them!so I didn’t use them.Fckedito’rs flaw for me was the abilty to save the page you made–I couldn’t figure it out! I’m not giving up on tiny mce-it’s got a lot of cool functions I just need to spend time finding out about all of them.

I’m not a total dullard as I was able to turn a text area into a tiny mce editing point–but that was as far as I got with it.

I want more pets.

I was in the pet shop to pick up a rubber ball for the Booj, or Bozzio if we are being formal.
This was the small Pet land branch on Willoughby and Jay.Whenever I am on this street I can’t not think of the bounder in Jane Austen’s book.
Anyway I’d been in this store many times but never went to the back where they keep live fish,birds and furry things ..even salamanders…for me to see these is dangerous as I instantly become 8 years old and want to take them all home with me.
Especially the guinea pigs.I love them so.Here I am,36 and I have always wanted a guinea pig and it has never occurred to me that I could actually have one.I used to have cats and after they died I really really meant to go get another.But logic took over.I had a cat and the other came to me because she was left behind by a roommate.As they grew to be pretty old,they got sick.I was very poor at the time and wasn’t up to the vet bill costs.I know that if I had had the resources to ensure their health I would have done so.But I didn’t and they got sick and I couldn’t afford the 15,000.00 cost for a kidney operation for Lily.Alex was diagnosed with feline diabetes which meant I had to hydrate her with lactated ringer via syringe 2x a day.Lily died then Alex died and it was a painful experience and I went through it totally alone.
Lily was on her practical last day when I knew she was suffering and decided I had to take her to the vet, astronomic bill or not. I packed her into her carrier and was almost out the door when all the lights went off.This was the start of the blackout of 2003 in NYC.
I was more concerned with Lily,though so I decided to walk her up to the vet anyway,blackout or no blackout. 9th avenue was completely jammed.There were more people out on the streets then I had ever seen and I lived near Times Square…it took 4 times as long to walk the few blocks as it normally did.But I finally did make it to The West side Animal Hospital
The vet took Lily in. I signed the forms.I paid about 800 dollars in the end and that wasn’t the entire bill.
I was foolishly under the impression that this being a hospital meant that someone would be around to take care of the animals after business hours. This was not the case.Lily and I had been together for over 10 years and with hardly any time spent apart and certainly never her left all alone.They kept her for 2 days before they told me it would take the kidney operation to save her life but that of course wouldn’t guarantee she would still live.
I had adopted Lily from an art school acquaintance who told me she was 2 years old.Those 2 years plus the 10 I’d had her put her at 12,I thought.The vet said no, she was not a day under 18. 18! Healthy as a horse until the last 6 months…not bad.Lily had had only one previous hospitalization: When I’d only had her for a year or so I came home from school and found her almost dead from being poisoned…But afterwards she came right back and for 9 more years was illness free.
I have always loved animals but it pained me so much to think that my pets wouldn’t get proper health care because I was poor.And this was why I never got another cat.
My boyfriend got me a dog for my 35th birthday and he is the sweetest dog.But he is such a people whore! Just like Lily was.She loved everyone and jumped on any one’s lap.She had none of those weird kitty “rules” such as biting you if you pet her in a certain place–like a lot of cats I’ve met.She never scratched,she never hissed.She was a total dear.And of course really good at catching mice.
So at the pet store I did go to the back.I saw the guinea pigs, and the birds. I called my boyfriend and asked him if he minded if I bought one.They had a pair of Diamond doves,so beautiful.And they don’t make the incessant bird chatter that my boyfriend thinks would be prohibitive to having a bird in the home.I am determined.

Still making those lame mistakes in CSS and HTML

I think the best way to to keep learning is to not be afraid of making a mistake.
I was never that happy with the footer of a certain page design so I just spent about half an hour switching style sheets or combining style sheets to see what would look nicer.
The footer hopped about,up or down and then when I added a style sheet, the pages became so short that the content ran off it far down below the footer.
oops.The style sheet I added had a container division height xxpx attribute that worked for the specific page for which it was written, but had very bad results for the page on which I was currently fucking up.
The truth is that even after all this time working with CSS&HTML I still make mistakes.
But I don’t mind it because it forces me to keep learning and figuring things out by trying out a lot of different solutions. My last project forced me to try for the 1st time the float: left or right and also clear: both.The float is really good for images and text and if you get the margins and padding right it looks even better.

Currently I am no longer as satisfied with this page’s design as I was,once. Now to me the sidebar containing all the links looks too wide,too dark and doesn’t look that nice where it’s positioned.
Clearly it’s back to the drawing board.
If you must know what I’m talking about go to the Stone Street Press link on this page.