Okay, let's try that again...

[RJM62]

...using new software, and a new domain, and even a different server, just for good measure.

I registed hangarbuddies.com a few days ago, uploaded Elgg to it, and am going to try building an aviation community there. This is another boredom project, in a way, but at least it does combine two of my loves.

Also, some of my clients have asked about online communities, so I have to learn something about them. I'm about the only living human being who doesn't have a MySpace account, a FaceBook account, or a blog, mainly because I never had the least interest in having one, nor any reason to believe anyone would want to read it if I did. But apparently they're big these days.

I'm far too stupid to build something like a community from scratch, but I know enough to be able to tweak something to make it fit better. So this time I'm going to try Elgg, and see how that works out.

Here's my new playpen: http://www.hangarbuddies.com

It's live during construction, mainly because I'm too lazy to build it locally and then move it to the Web server. There are still a lot of things left to do; but there's something to be said for the excitement of wondering whether my most recent keystroke will crash a whole domain...

-Rich

 

[RJM62]

Well, I'm still undecided how much I like Elgg. It also seems a bit heavy and makes A LOT of database queries, but the total resource use is nothing like PHPizabi.

The documentation seems kind of sketchy to me. It seems like some of the articles (all Wikis, as far as I can tell) refer to older versions of the software and reference code that no longer exists in the current version. There's not a lot of specificity regarding which advice relates to which version.

I spent the better part of the day reading Wiki articles and trying to build a plugin to substitute my own content for the essentially blank home page that comes out of the box. The gurus urge this as the "proper" way to do it, so that the content isn't wiped out by updates. That makes enough sense, but the methods that were provided as suggestions seemed awfully convoluted to me, considering that all I wanted to do was add a few paragraphs of text.

What I wound up doing in the end was winging it (no pun intended). I created a PHP include referencing the HTML for the content I wanted to add, assigned it as a string variable, and concatenated it with the content to be drawn. Seems to work okay, and it leaves the code on the default index page almost the same as it came out of the box. If an update overwrites the index page, it'll take literally seconds to add the include back in. That works for me. I'm a simple guy.

Modifying the style is a breeze because almost anything can be modified in the CSS. About the only thing I had to hard-code was the footer (to make room for an ad banner -- yeah, I'm a Capitalist).

We'll see how this one works out. These online communities seem to be becoming a big thing, so I need to acquire at least passing familiarity with them.

-Rich

 

[RJM62]

Hmmm... I applied a security patch, and now it can't find the database. Never a dull moment.

 

[RJM62]

Well, it wasn't my hacks, nor the Elgg update, that caused the problem. It was a blasted cPanel update. Within a few minutes after upcp tried to update itself (unsuccesfully), services started failing like crazy. I finally turned off my pager because all the notifications were making me bonkers.

We wound up having to re-install cPanel from scratch, which I suppose wasn't all that bad an outcome because I did have good (and redundant) backups, and the new install runs like a jet. No data was lost except (maybe) a few emails.

But I decided to completely re-create the hangarbuddies site because I learned a bit in the course of pondering the code, and I think I can do it better this time around. I was the only member, anyway; so it's not like anyone else's stuff will get lost.

If anyone is running cPanel on CentOS and wants to update to the CURRENT release, all I can say is it behoves you to have good backups. On one of my servers, the upgrade went as smooth as silk; but on the other it was a nightmare.

-Rich

 

[jesse]

If anyone is running cPanel on CentOS and wants to update to the CURRENT release, all I can say is it behoves you to have good backups. On one of my servers, the upgrade went as smooth as silk; but on the other it was a nightmare.

-Rich

Which version of CentOS? Also which Cpanel tree?

 

[RJM62]

CentOS 3.9

CURRENT tree (cPanel 11.24.0-C30944 - WHM 11.24.0)

 

[jesse]

CentOS 3.9

CURRENT tree (cPanel 11.24.0-C30944 - WHM 11.24.0)

CentOS 3.9? Seriously? Why are you running something so old?

 

[RJM62]

I really should update it, I know. I've been meaning to. The other one is running 4.7, which is still a little old; but maybe that partially explains why the update went more smoothly on the newer CentOS. But most of the server components on the 3.9 machine have been updated. It runs PHP 5, SQL 5, Apache 2.2, etc; so there's also a sense of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

What I need is to pull an all-nighter, make a good backup, do the update, and then test everything to make sure it works while I still have time to restore if necessary.

-Rich