Mac OS X Hints Beta Progress

[nosaj56]

What is the progress of the GeekLog 1.3.6 upgrade? I need an early Christmas present! :D

[Phil St. Romain]

Rob Griffiths would have to reply to that one. I suspect the egg has almost hatched, however.

[nosaj56]

Yep, I was kinda waiting for him to post...

[nosaj56]

C'mon Rob, I want an update!... :o

[griffman]

Sorry! Been quite busy the past (insert large number) months :-).

Here's a status report ... at present, it's nearly done ... however, I'm thinking about scrapping much of the background work I did to tweak the code base in the version I've currently built. The problem is that, with the extensive modifications I've added, it's going to be impossible for me to upgrade the site to any of the interim Geeklog releases in the future. That is, I've got so much custom code configured in this thing that everything will break if Geeklog releases any updates (and 1.37 is already in beta with a couple neat new features). Even worse, if they release a security fix, I'll have to do a file by file comparison to figure out where to plug it into my modified code. I'm not sure I've got the resources (time!) to do that, so here's the current thinking.

All the work that's been done on the themes will still be good (ie the looks are done, and they will stay done). But over the Christmas week, I'm going to try to install a fresh unedited Geeklog installation, and see how well I can get what I want relative to a look without breaking so much stock code.

Sorry for the not-too-good update, but that's where we're at. I'm also wrapping up a major project that will give me >much< more time to work on the site re-launch in the near future - there'll be an announcement on the project that's coming to a close on the hints site in the very near future.

-rob.

[nosaj56]

Interesting update... :)

[sjoshi]

Rob,
I have two questions about Geeklog.

Could do you describe the customization that
you have done to Geeklog briefly?

I understand if a lot of the customization is not
compatible with newer versions of Geeklog.
But what is your experience with compatibility
of the content that the site has accumulated?

Are their any (emerging) data format standards
for content management that you are aware of?

OK, so it is three questions. :-)

Thanks.

[griffman]

OK, so now that the book announcement is out, you can see the real reason for the delay on the beta site! As soon as we finish the last of the editing and stuff, it'll be on to the conversion full time.

As for Geeklog, the data compatability has been excellent. There are a series of upgrade scripts that tweak the database from version 1.1 to match the current structure, and they work well. After that, the data's all there and ready to use.

My customizations are to things like the What's New box (different layout), various on screen layouts like the preferences form and email form, the horizontal topic bar (Geeklog puts the topics in a block down the side), and other miscellaneous stuff. In my second pass at this, I'm going to limit my changes to the topic bar (it's a standalone piece of code called in one file) and probably the What's New box, and that's it. That will make future updates much easier...

-rob.

[sao]

griffman,

Congratulations on the book!...it was long overdue. :)

Will buy a couple of copies myself to have around the house.


Cheers...

[sjoshi]

Rob,

Congratulations on your book!

But I did not know anything about a book.
Someone please tell me more, or point me
to a link.

I need to set up a BBS for a collaborative
development environment. Some comments
on the s/w used for this forum environment
would be helpful.

How did you choose vBulletin from Jelsoft?
How do you like it?
How would you compare Geeklog with vBulletin?

Thanks.

[nosaj56]

Originally posted by sjoshi
But I did not know anything about a book.
Someone please tell me more, or point me
to a link.

Mac OS X Hints Book (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021220063319280)