Today (so far) I have mainly been noodling with php, nothing complex just thought I’d add a more sensible contact form to my school site since the old one was ASP and I’m no longer on that shitty ‘doze server.
Not really done that much with php before apart fromt he forum stuff but so far it seems like a piece of cake.
I dunno, all this SQL and php in one week…. I’ll be after Dan’s job soon 
Most pleased to see that since migrating my website over to 1&1 and more importantly since getting the forum running on a decent server that it is getting a bit of a new lease of life.
It was horribly clunky running on an access server, and hence apart from where we *had* to use it to discuss some important issues regarding that muppet in Canada it wasn’t really getting a lot of use for anything else.
I’m not criticising Access as such, because I think it is excellent for desktop apps and I run my whole school quite happily with one big access database which works really well. It’s just not suited to running a large multi-user forum remotely. Horses for courses I guess, and as I said before, that’ll teach me to go for the ‘cheap’ option when I originally set up my hosting.
This database conversion is a right pain in the rear end..
I found a tool which claims to convert an Access database to mysql which is exactly what I need to do, so I did this locally (got mysql server running on a spare PC here), so far so good.
Ran mysqldump to get the thing into a usable format and threw this at the new DB with phpmyadmin. All good so far.
Changed the config files for the forum to look for a mysql forum and ran it, amazingly the forum looked intact. I was mildly suprised by this fact, but rather chuffed that it had all gone relatively smoothly.
Duh.
As soon as I tried to do *anything* on the forum which involved editing or posting a message it FUBARed…
Arse!
Further investigation by comparison of the backup file which phpbb generates from a clean install showed that the tables are in fact not identical, and hence I think I’m going to have to spend a few days beavering away hand-rolling the sql to make it work.
Feck.
I’ve spent all day trying to figure out a sensible way of migrating the phpbb forum from my old site over to the new provider. The phpbb bit is a piece of cake, sadly, as I went for the cheapie option of hosting an access database when I set it up first I am now paying the price..
The Access setup was fine when the post count was low and we only had a few users, but now with 50+ users and 5000 posts it is flaky at best and so I have new provider with a mysql database.
I seem to be winning finally and have found a useful tool which should do the conversion for me so I’m just off to install mysql on my PC & check it out…
Wish me luck!
Tomorrow it seems entirely likely that I’ll finally get to get on with that that BTU…
Of course, I did start at the weekend, but what with the rift in the time-space continuum caused by the less than fluffy events on the forum and Kel’s birthday yesterday I got a bit off track… oops
Anyway, I’ve just spent a very pleasant couple of hours talking shite and sharing some gnu choonz with Yak and it seems I was helpful in cheering him up some which leaves me feeling a little more at ease than I have these past couple of days.
Also, it seems (fingers crossed) that my ear infection has sorted itself out and all things considered I’m feeling pretty positive. So, on that happy note I think I’ll get an early night (bloody ell, in bed before 3am is a very early night by my standards, then I can get up bright and early (i.e. before noon) tomorrow and crack on with it.
I shall be a very happy chappy to see this lot sorted
Woke up this morning to discover that the minor ‘blip’ that happened on YakYak apparently exploded up its own arse last night. I missed all of this as it was Kel’s birthday yesterday and hence I was otherwise occupied spending time with me girly…
By the time I leapt out of bed at the crack of noon today apparently the offending thread had been deleted to ‘protect’ one of the individuals involved. Now I am not sure that I agree entirely with the concept of censorship on a public forum, but there it was, I missed it and so it shall be. I am a bit fucked off though because apparently my name was mentioned in said thread and it was deleted before I even had a chance to see what was said.
Sometimes I think that if something has to be said, accusations have been made publically then all parties concerned have the right to air their side publically too if they wish. In this case several of my close friends were involved and so in a way I am glad that it was contained, but on another level I think that deleting the info before all parties concerned had an equal chance to air their views was wrong.
C’est la vie….