I haven’t done much else lately besides download opensource files.
So far, I seem to have a 50 50 chance of getting an app to work…I’m using my dad’s site host filemanager to hold all the files and folders of my tests.
I uploaded TinyMCE ,the wysiswyg html editor.I uploaded fkdEditor a bigger editor.
I uploaded a few CMS applications,too.Some CMS’s are flatfiled so no Mysql(ick!)
I even tried out CuteNews–it’s cute alright.
I sigh at myself.I am way too into this web stuff.My boyfriend can’t pry me off the computer, not even with food or sex.
The hours zip by.I sleep badly.
I guess I’m addicted.And very jealous of people who get paid for this.
I did get paid (well the check is in the mail, hello freelancing) for stripping the tables from some code and replacing them with stylesheets& divs.
The site is a guy’s who does that SEO stuff and his pages are covered up by google adsense. I actually told him off for it.Then I saw that’s what he’s into.I felt a little dumb.

I was determined to let the page be liquid but in the long run had to add the absolute positioning technique.
He wanted to see if the divs would be better for robots or spiders.That’s what I think anyway-he never really came out and said so.
So why am I downloading so much stuff?
Because (sigh at myself again) I offered to do up a site for a man who posted an ad on Craigslist, wanting a five page site for his store.I was totally qualified off the bat-hadn’t I just done over stonestreetpress.com?
Which was a much bigger project.More pages, tons of tables, tons of fretting about what my dad would think.
A little joke: I only a couple of days ago got the footer of each page in the right place! I slacked with the footer…positioned the divs wrong-so they were really wonky on some of the deeper pages.
I answered the ad and he wrote back with some links and a link to a site he liked.
I checked out the existant site–the design and layout’s pretty dismal– though the products seem cool.Buddha statues,jewelry, yoga stuff, that kind of thing.
But it has that out of the box look and that dreadful papyrus looking background which to me looks very dated.
But I felt up to making him a prettier and more hip 5 page site …until he mentioned this content management system he has.I knew instantly this mean PHP, possibly Mysql,too.
Mostly php and mysql go hand in hand so you can’t get much else.I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I just came out and told him I’m a noob with both.I can’t even get my free database to work with wordpress.I told him I didn’t know mysql.I haven’t heard back from him since and considering it took him a week to respond to my response to his ad…we’ll see.
But that was why I was beating my brains out finding content adders or site builders that weren’t mysql’d…There’s actually quite a lot of free stuff using flat file databasing out there.(I got the best results with a google search of flatfile+ database because mysql+ is+ evil didn’t return much that was useful)

This job of getting a good gallery for my dad’s site hasn’t been easy.
I wanted a lot and I wanted it for free. I’m spoiled like that.
I wanted file uploads. I wanted simple beauty in CSS.
I wanted a super easy user interface. I wanted my script(er, not mine, really)
to work like it could read my mind.I wanted automatic thumbnail generation.
I wanted it all.
I tested out so many scripts/applications/packages-whathaveyou.I did not want to deal with mysqyl.So that cut me into a smaller category. But there were still a lot of gallery packages to choose from in that smaller category…
I tried singapore.
I tried simplephpgallery v.this and that.
I tried minishow whatever it’s called.
Singapore needs mysql or sql but it doesn’t come right out and say so so you waste a bit of time right there.
delete!
It wasn’t until I fifnally came across

“MG2 – a FREE and easy to use PHP image gallery script”

visit their site by clicky
ohhh man it is dreamy!

visit the gallery
First: it works, no errors in the scripts.
Second: it is small so it doesn’t use a ton of discspace(but you will once you upload image files to it) so the package won’t eat up tons of room.
Third:you don’t have to do any configuration*!
I mean that is unheard of.
I had an error (I uploaded a badly named img file) so I scurried to the forum and was wondering why there weren’t any folks reporting errors or problems with the installation–??
Because there aren’t any!
This gallery package is awesomely true to it’s word.
Set up in minutes and instantly have a cooler than shit gallery on line.
whoo!
* note I did actually have to scan all the functions type files for any session_starts.I have to put a session_save_path before any session starts.
But this doesn’t mean you will have to do this,too.It’s my dad’s host, Purehost that has php set up that way.For security I guess.
Oh and also it has a walk you through it installation that starts up automatically.I have never had so much easyness and speed and functionality.
And it’s free!
I know-I already said that.

In the past few months I have had a crash course in Ajax and then had to branch out to PHP because my dad(whose website I built and maintain) wanted a blog,too.
Ajax and JQuery made it possible to put some really neat image effects on the site with LightBox and I even attempted ThickBox but apparently I’m too thick for ThickBox(haha).And since I wasn’t sure of what all it could do I researched on maybe getting it to work as a blog.But it was only good for calling HTML pages into a div or frame.And HTML pages are static.And we all want a blog to be interactive,archived and RSS-able.This meant I just had to knuckle down and get with PHP.I could’ve gone with asp but on my dad’s host asp is a mystery.They say they support it yet they seem not to as all the asp test scripts I’ve tried out just show plain text or a blank page.
The one thing that was preventing me from trying a PHP powered blog was the hand in hand way it functions with MYsql. Again the preventative was the site’s host: they want more money a month for it and we already pay enough, I think. It’s all to do with what you think your business needs in a website anyway. And if you make a lot of money it would be totally worth it to pay more for your site. But my dad’s business is really small.
His books(that’s his business) sell, and are searched for in Google but it isn’t like they sell every day.So we need to keep the overhead low. I’ve begun trying to research how to get his site to make money… in other ways but right now we don’t want any ads on his pages.
Because his business is books Google no doubt would read “books” and have ads for Amazon or even (gasp) Barnes and Noble…and given the history between my dad and those 2 businesses this would be a major conflict and a major contradicition.
I forged ahead in looking for a simple no mysql php blog and found one: simplePHPblog, just like my search’s key words. Pretty cool.
It all began very promisingly, the install went like a dream.But again the host caused problems.I had to mess with the code a lot to get it to work on the site.I mean mess.
It works to date although I get nervous and test it often.The most twitchy bit is the contact me page.I think the way they have configured it to need cookies to run makes it twitchy because sometimes people disable them or your own computer’s virus protection does something strange with them.But 7 out of 10 times the contact page works…and that’s pretty alright for now.
Of course the ideal is 10 out of 10 times 100 percent functionality and we all know how something broken on a site makes people go away…but on the other hand being interactive is really important.So it’s ok for now that the contact page is wonky.Because the comments bit for a blog and the RSS-abilty are way more important. And I have a contactme in PHP that works 100 percent that I can always put back on the site. Right now contacting my dad is super easy .His phone number and email and a few forms are all there to choose from.
I just wish he’d blog a lot more! I keep telling him to write a little every day and that the blog can be light hearted and even sometimes a little trivial.
He’s a fantastic cook for instance and I’d love it if he would post some of his recipes.
I’d love it if he didn’t treat every entry like like it had to be an example of Strunk and White.But there you go: you can build it but they may not blog it.