Lately, I’ve been interested in the benefits of having a dedicated source control server.

My goals for the project:
1. Have a dedicated server to store source and other files I’m working on that could benefit from source control and a secondary backup.
2. Have the server accessible through the Internet so that friends who I am working with can access our projects.
3. The server should be as low power usage as possible.
4. Attempt to make the server as secure as possible. Probably only have one port directed to it (either the http webdav or svnserve protocols on a custom port). I might also consider having ssh directed as well so I can use something like NoMachine NX Remote Access.

Last weekend I ordered an “MSI Wind PC” computer to take on that role. This computer is sold as a barebones unit that doesn’t come with RAM or a hard disk. For about $220 total, I was able to get an ATOM based computer with a 750GB Western Digital hard drive and 1GB of ram. The main benefit of this setup should be the low power usage which I estimate to be around 25 – 35 watts. Checking an online energy cost calculator it said the device should cost around $40 a year to power (24hr a day), which isn’t bad!

This week I’ve been learning more about Subversion. I have installed a basic install of Ubuntu desktop in a Sun Virtual Box virtual machine and went through (this great Ubuntu document) to get up and running.

I also Installed The Eclipse PDT IDE (PHP) and the Subeclipse SVN add-on

Using the basic Webdav setup, I easily linked Eclipse with the repository in my virtual machine. Here is a tip with the virtual machine: Setup your network adapter as a “Bridged Adapter.” What will happen is that the VM will talk with your router directly and get its own IP address completely separate from your host OS. This way, it’s east for your host OS to talk with the VM through the network.

As I mentioned in the previous post I had my custom CMS site reasonably functional. From that time as I worked with the director, I found out that they were using a CMS system already. No point in trying to reinvent the wheel as it’s said. It’s called Sohoadmin and it works pretty well all things considered. I would not call it that user friendly, but seeing as I am doing volunteer work I don’t want to spend 2-3 months creating my own thing that I would also then have to provide technical support to in the future.

It’s been an interesting process so far getting them where they need to be. The person who they were working with before isn’t very motivated to help them and it was showing (he hosts the server too). I wanted to get Sohoadmin upgraded to the newest version, but when he tried to do that it did not work correctly resulting in me sticking some band aids on the site to get it somewhat functional again.

Now we are to the point that we bought our own hosting and are in the process of getting the .org name transfered to us. We have the site completely functional with the .net name, but seeing as the .org has been advertised so much it’s best that we use that instead.

Eventually I foresee this organization I am volunteering at being able to be in control of their own web presence. It should save them a lot of time and heart ache by cutting out the middle man.

I recently started working on my CMS site again. I want to get it completed just for the fun of it. Right now I have the article functionality about half way there. Next up would be the image gallery functionality. Onward!

Over the past week or two I’ve been researching ways to develop server-side web based applications as fast as possible (time is money, haha). I am in the initial stages of starting a little side business with a friend and one of our possible clients is looking for a large system to handle online ordering of their products. If you know anything about developing and programming a complex system, it takes a lot of planning as well as a good deal of time to actually create it. My “developer ideals” won’t allow my to create something of poor quality, so I’ve been reluctant to take on large things in the past. I’ve been pushing myself more lately to produce results the results I strive for with more speed. Well more like I’ve been trying to learn new methods and techniques where I can keep my quality level high, but just get things done faster.

While I’ve programmed in PHP before, I know that I would need to create a large amount of generic functionality to handle an ordering system. This would include the front end where the customer places orders as well as the back end where the company processes the order, allows for product creation/update/deleting and whatever else.

I’m not really going to do much with that order system right now, because it is only a possibility for us. What I need to do is find a tool that provides the best method of implementing server-side web based applications. My requirements at this time are free, reliable output, ease of use, and speed of implementation.

I’ve looked at Visual Web Developer 2005 Express with MySQL. The problem as I mentioned in a previous post is that to use the .net 2.0 pre-made functionality I have to use an unproven user made library. Not something I want to do.

Over the past two days I was researching Ruby On Rails. It looks interesting and should have a good deal of support in the future, but at least to me doesn’t seem like it would be something I would want to use to code a client’s application. At least not until I learn a lot more about it.

A few minutes ago I found Symfony. It’s a framework based on PHP5 and is said to be of “clean design and code readability.” So now I will be looking into that. If it’s true this might be what I am looking for. If not I may just get started on designing/creating my own generic framework.

I started playing around with Visual Web Developer Express 2005 (VWD). I had originally planned on using VWD with MySQL. The problem is that to use the new stuff in ASP.NET 2.0 like the pre-made authentication you have to use Microsoft’s own SQL server, or try to get some convoluted method of making MySQL work as the provider. I’m sure that I could eventually get it working, but in the end it would not provide me the free easy to use fast development solution I was looking for in asp.net and MySQL. I had a plan to develop a dynamic small business website with user authentication, but I see now that it probably won’t be with VWD Express and MySQL. If I have to reinvent the wheel for everything I’d rather just use PHP and MySQL.

That being said, I still plan on messing around with VWD and Microsoft’s SQL Express.

I might be doing some research about Ruby On Rails to see if that would better meet my needs.

Using VWD and MySQL link