I built this CMS from the ground up, and I intentionally programmed it very loosely so as to create a highly customizable and easy to manipulate piece of software. Right now it is aimed to be populated with articles about Blizzard’s World of Warcraft game, but it could easily be changed to fit any topic worthy of having content.

I would not mind making this software go open source, but I would really prefer it if people asked me if they could use it. Not because I am greedy and don’t want certain people using my code. It’s actually quite the opposite. I would really enjoy it if people used my software, but I figured that if I made the source open to the public, people would just take it and I would never know about it. I am curious to see what kinds of things people would use it for.

Please contact me if you would like the source code.

I am placing a link to this CMS at the top of the blog so people can access it at any time. I don’t know if it will ever really kick off and get popular, but I will preserve the link to it so that people can always take a look. It would be interesting to see how the scripts hold together when being used on a large-scale website that has tens of thousands of articles.

I will surely be updating and adding new features when I get the chance. I tested it pretty thoroughly, but it would not surprise me if there is a bug or two to be found. It would be nice if I could write my own search functionality, but I decided to use a Google Search Bar instead. Writing a search algorithm would be a whole project of it’s own, and that wasn’t my main focus with this CMS.

So please check it out and comment to let me know what you think. And again, if you’re interested, I would be more than happy to donate my source code to anyone who would put it to use.

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3. My Journey as a Webmaster (Part Two)

To put it simply, Google Wave will be the answer to many of the problems associated with today’s emailing system. The very first email was sent in 1965, before the existence of the Internet itself. Almost 45 years have passed since that day, and almost nothing has changed in terms of how email gets handled.

In my opinion, from what I’ve seen so far, Google Wave has the potential to wipe out email altogether, shifting everyone over to a new standard of communication over the Internet. This is a very bold move for Google to make.

A two-hour demonstration of Google Wave was made at their own I/O conference over the summer in California. You can watch the conference here.

A wave consists of both conversation and media (pictures, videos, maps, etc). Most interesting of all is that a wave is actually transmitted live, meaning that you can see what a person is typing as they press the keys. This allows for a conversation over the Internet to flow much like a conversation in person. You could interrupt them as they are typing, or simply begin with your response before waiting for the full message to pull through. Instead of spending half of the time typing and the other half reading, waves will allow you to spend all of your time engaging in rich conversation.

It shall be interesting to watch as the future of email unfolds. I have always felt that change is good, and it’s even better when Google is leading the way. It would be really nice to see this new application become an Internet standard; Google is one of the few companies that has never let me down. There is a lot more to learn about Google Wave in the video linked to above, so check that out if you’re interested.

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If you’re interested in using this free software for your own website, there are a couple of things that I should point out. By default, it updates the database every 10 seconds (it is supposed to be live, after all), and this could get to be very resource demanding if you are using a shared server. To change this, edit the global.ini.php file located in the config folder, and change the time_before_today_archive_considered_outdated variable to the desired number of seconds between updates. I currently have mine set to update every five minutes, which cuts the load thirty-fold.

There is also a bug I found that seemingly occurs every time you change the activated widgets; I’ve noticed that it only happens with certain web browsers. This glitch causes your page to constantly refresh after displaying a JavaScript error. To fix this, simply truncate your piwik_user_dashboard table and the problem should be instantly solved. You will have to do this every time you decide to change the widgets.

Other than that, I haven’t run into any major issues with the software. I made my traffic stats publicly available, so click here if you want to check it out.

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