Author: Arné Klopper

One of the things that I’m looking for is a open source PHP/Java(IDE) application which can handle BPM(intelligent workflow) and numerous other features.

Currently most BPM products out there run on Java etc., and I’m sure that it would be a great advantage to get such a solution up and running.

I have already started working on a very dynamic workflow model, although it currently just handles workflow and no process and business intelligence and everything must still be manually included into the database.

If one could create a PHP-based application server, that reads everything from a database system that would also be a nice feature.

If anybody is interested in such a project, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Maybe we can build on already existing workflow frameworks etc. and give more intelligence etc.

I will post more about these ideas later..

I’ve anticipated to complete GOGLY for beta testing by the end of this month, but unfortunately nothing has happened with this .

So again I have to move everything up another month… aarghh…

I’ve installed Debian Linux on a machine here at home as one of the servers I have in the UK has Debian loaded.

Firstly, I downloaded a inital cd image of 180 mb and wrote the cd, and then installed the base installation.

After that installation was so easy with the apt-get install etc. commands.

I installed subversion in 2 secs almost, quite nice, BUT still learning new stuff about this linux every day……

Recently I bought myself a new laptop(“notebook”) so I can be more mobile and work wherever I find myself at.
Pre-installed with Windows XP Professional I was now looking for my office tools. Previously I primarily used Microft Outlook and Microsoft Office for my “Office Tools”.

So I decided this time as I do not want to spend money on buying these packages that I will go the Open Source.

So firstly, I searched for an alternative for Outlook and found Thunderbird(check to posts back), which was amazing.
The second thing I installed was OpenOffice 2, which I cannot get enough of. Although not all functionity work the same as in normal Mircrosoft Office, the basics are there, and I get the work done.

At the moment my notebook looks like:

• WindowsXP Pro
• Mozilla Firefox
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• WinSCP(Secure Copy for copying file to Linux machines)
• putty
• Scientilla Text Editor
• Media Monkey (For music)
• VLC Media Player (for the vids)
• Tortoise SVN(for software dev)
• Gimp

As a Windows user, and now using Linux alot I’ve had little or no experience with Symbolic Links or Hard Links, but for the last couple of months I’ve been using this extensively.

What I’m mainly using symbolic links for at the moment is keeping the source of my programs in one place(program in illustration), and then storing different version of the software package on different directories underneath that. So modules and images are underneath the specific version of the software.

I currently have a few clients using my programs, some of them are on the same version of the software and others are on other versions. By using Simbolic Links you can just create a directory(virtual host-using PHP) for that client, have their config there, and then make a simbolic link to the modules and image folder of the version the client is on.

In the illustration you can see that two customers is using the source of version 1 of the program and at the moment no-one is yet on version 2.

This also has security advantages, so the client can maybe configure his own configurations in his config, but cannot touch the module or image info.

I must say this is much better than copying the source to each customer directory seperately.

One thing that bothers me though is, this method increases access load on the files on the one location, or is it better, as the PHP engine accesses just that one part of the hard drive the whole time

Due to me not having a valid Microsoft Office license, I was looking for an alternative to Outlook to store all my email and appointments, but added to that I also wanted an application that would work with Plaxo(an address book management tool).

So there I went to Plaxo‘s site to see what mail applications support Plaxo, and there I find Mozilla Thunderbird, an Open Source project, from the creators of FireFox and the best of all FREE.

The first time I installed it, it just seemed lighter and response time was excellent. The FireFox feeling was present immediately, as the user friendly-ness combined with internet junkie shortcuts makes it very nice and makes you get what you want done in a breeze.

Everything up and running, now the next problems that arose were:
1. Getting all my old email out of outlook into Thunderbird.
2. Configuring Thunderbird to work with Plaxo

Migrating from Outlook to Thunderbird
Actually, migrating to Thunderbird was quite easy:
1. First, setup Outlook as you default email application and then go into Thunderbird(but not setting Thunderbird as you default mail application).
2. Go to Tools, Import…. , and select Outlook from the list, and voila, all you folders and mail are imported.
3. Now for the most important part 😉 , set Thunderbird as you default mail application.

Using Plaxo within Thunderbird
Actually, all you have to do here is download the Thunderbird extension from Plaxo.
Then, Tools, Extensions (same methodology used for Firefox) and select the extension file downloaded, and your set.

So far I have no complaints with Thunderbird, but still it is my first day.

Yesterday I went through my website errors and found a mysterious error.

There were mysterious requests for siteinfo.xml.

First I thought maybe there is an invalid link for the file somewhere on the forum software, but later realized it was coming from the same place.

After investigating abit further I derived that it was the A9.com Toolbar that requested this file.

On the Toolbar there is a SiteInfo dropdown menu which can be defined by this file in your sites’ directories.

If you have a A9.com toolbar you can click on the SiteInfo menu for some shortcuts to other sites.

I think there would also be other toolbars using this feature as it is an open standard.

More information:

http://blog.a9.com/blog/2005/09/20/siteinfo/

I’ve been wondering what the uptake of PHP usage is on the internet today, and quickly went to PHPs‘ site to see if they have some statistics.

They have a nice usage stats page where a nice chart show that PHP is still going up after a small dip the last couple of months. Over 21m websites that is known of…
maybe this does not include intranets and ALL websites on the internet…

Again, I’ve visited SmashMyViper.com and still their stuck on $ 5 900 .

Anybody know anything about this site.

Well, I guess there must be something going on as they have a new entry on their blog about 2 days ago about a new drill hole video.

The reason for me not posting the link to my new Forum(Experiment #1) yet is because I’m having some difficulty with phpBB.

Okay, I have two forums running that I installed, IntoShape Forum and the new Forum also running on phpBB.

These forums are one two different machines but with exactly the same configuration(I hope).

The IntoShape Forum is running very well at the moment with no problems BUT this other one is giving me endless problems.

What happens is when I start browsing the forum(new forum) – for every odd page I visit the visitor count goes one up. So I’ve checked the phpbb_sessions table and I saw different IP addresses logged(encrypted), but then found this cool tool that encrypts and resolves the IP addresses.

I then found that these IP addresses point to saix.net(through which my internet connection goes) is cache1,cache2,cache3 and cache4 . So I know it is going through the cache servers in Sotuh Africa. So could it be the IP address resolution methodology of phpBB that is shunting me around… and WHY is IntoShape Forum functioning correctly(checked it’s IP – just going through cache1).

phpBB kicks me out when logged in as admin and going to the administration panel and then sometimes it goes through.

I think the problem lies where the caching servers have set routed the addresses correctly or IP tables are abit screwed, OR maybe it is because the domain name is nearly a day old that some routers are not updated yet ….

Anyways, will keep figuring this one out…