Half a present

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Ricold
Wise Old Dwarf
Posts: 632
Joined: Sat Jun 05, 2004 3:23 pm
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Half a present

#1 Post by Ricold »

I was rather hoping to get this finished by Christmas, however it's not going to happen, so I'm posting this up now, and then you can enjoy watching me work.
Ricold wrote:In other news, these stats came from me attempting to make another project work. I still have a fair bit of effort to put in, but there is a project in the works for the site that I think you'll all be rather pleased with when I work out how to pull it off.... Sadly I'm currently doing the stupid thing of dealing with looks over content. Once I have the new thing looking like it should, I have a small bucket full of content to put up, then I'll release it. So there may be a christmas present for you all.
I dropped this hint over in WT a few weeks back.

Several things have happened over the last six or so months. I took over hosting from Eldacar, and in the process things went wrong. So I patched the site up, and started to move on. But there was a part of the site which is important, but generally overlooked. Along side the site theme, it went missing when I had to patch together the forums again. For a long time, I wondered what to do. I had the files, but the new server won't run 5 year old software, and who can blame it. The software we were using also won't patch across the years of ignoring it I had failed to do, so I couldn't dump the old database on new software. Without some means of getting a server to actually run the files, I can't extract the data, not in any meaningful way anyway. Also, some years ago I took a FULL backup, and got it running on my local server. I don't recall ever removing it (I never clean up systems after myself at the best of times), but a search showed I didn't have that version running. I started investigating new options, a means to start it again from scratch. I managed to use the wayback machine to get a visual copy, and I have the master image files already. This gave me a start for making it look right. I tried installing several pieces of software, trying to get something that I could make look right... Which is when I posted the quote above.

Shortly after this, I had two breakthroughs. With a lot of beating and installing some old versions of the server software on my personal server, I managed to get the old software to run. This gave me access to the data, but only on my personal machine. That's not any good for the internet (My local server believes itself to be a real server, but I lied to it, It's actually a program within a program that runs on my desktop. It has never given out content to the internet that I am awake of, and would not be safe to do so), but it allows me to view the data we had in a useful way. The second breakthrough was realising that if I was about to give up on the old software because it won't take the old database and start fresh, why not start again with the same piece of software? It's not as though I don't have 5-6 years of usage experience.

While the software has had some huge updates, the structures behind it are actually all rather similar, so only moderate editing is required to get the old data to work with the new software when copy/pasting it across, then the new database can save it how it likes. If you want an idea of how much is "moderate", imagine trying to copy the source of a forum post across to something that doesn't like BB code, like Facebook. All of the text is fine, as it's just text, but links and images all break, as do quotes and formatting. It's rather uninteresting, but break it and you can do damage when you're working on the back ends of these systems.

As a result, each page is taking around 3-4 minutes each, and with somewhere around 300 of the things, that represents upwards of 15 hours of continuous work. At this point in time I'm under half way done. (Hence "half a present").

I realise I still haven't actually told you what this system is/was, although I expect the brighter of you will have worked it out by now or just ready the huge link text. Just before I do, I'm going to note that while I'm only half way though the job, the rest of the data is all there, and just waiting for me to copy it across.

Thus I present:

The Library

(Note that that link links through to the library map. The home page is a little blank as I can't get announcements to post on it like they used to)

I'll return to posting old stuff back into it in January with luck.

In other thoughts, seasons greetings from myself and I'm fairly certain the rest of the staff. I'm going to spend the next 3 weeks celebrating the Solstice (I'm a pagan), Christmas (my family are Christians), New Year, Perihelion (The point the earth is closest to the sun in it's orbit, 2nd Jan this year) then my birthday (4th Jan).
Ricold, Not site owner any more, largely absent. PM me if you want me. PM Prince of Spires if you need the head Loremaster.
SpellArcher
Green Istari
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Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:26 am
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Re: Half a present

#2 Post by SpellArcher »

=D>
Ricold wrote:I'm fairly certain the rest of the staff.
Happy Christmas all!
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John Rainbow
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Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:47 am
Location: PA, USA

Re: Half a present

#3 Post by John Rainbow »

Its good to see the old forum skin back! =D>
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Prince of Spires
Auctor Aeternitatum
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Re: Half a present

#4 Post by Prince of Spires »

=D> indeed :)

Ricold, I wouldn't know what to do without you :) Thank you for all the work you put into Ulthuan.net

Rod
For Nagarythe: Come to the dark side.
PS: Bring cookies!

Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91

Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
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Noble Korhedron
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Re: Half a present

#5 Post by Noble Korhedron »

Will the old Portal page return, or is it gone for good?
Regards,

NK.

http://www.druchii.net/index.php
http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php
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Shannar, Sealord
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Re: Half a present

#6 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

Noble Korhedron wrote:Will the old Portal page return, or is it gone for good?
I would guess it's gone. At least until all the details of the elf server/potential forum sharing.
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