Website troubles

So I have the software installed, the database installed and working. I have chosen a theme for the website I have even put up a holding page.

I think there is about 198 pages of information to now reinstall, which is going to take weeks and weeks to do.

Then there is the navigation system and all the pictures to sort out.

The plane and simple truth is that the Dirk Maggs website is not going to be back up and working fully for sometime.

Bum

Website Nav

I have had a series of website since the very early days of the WWW. I had thought that I had solved for my websites the problem of navigating around the sites even if you come to the site via another page and not the front door.

Since I move the main Dirk Maggs website to a databased one, I have found that I don't like the way it allows me to set up the sites navigation system. This could be me in not understanding how the programme works or it could be that the programme just doesn't offer what I want or what I want is just not possible with a database driven website.

You might shout read the manual, well yes I would if there was one and that it covered what I need to know, may be what I want to do is so straight forward that it appears obvious to one and all, except me

More head scratching is needed I thinks.

The Dirk Maggs website did get edited yesterday so it is a step nearer to be back to where it was before the changeover.

Updates 2

As I have said before on here I am now in the process of moving the Dirk Maggs productions website from hand coded into a database driven cms.

I did not realise just how many pages there are in the site, as it goes I will end up having to edit every single page on the site as the layouts from the hand coded site and the cms site are different.

I hope that by spring 2010 the job will be done.

Updates

I have continued to convert the old Dirk Maggs producer website to the new database powered one, progress has been slow as there is so much stuff to move.

I have nearly got all the basic productions by years moved across, with only the years 2006 and 2003 to go, which I think is not bad going as each production page has to be moved by hand.

The next task after that is to make each page look right, as some how or other some of the layouts gets broken in the process of being transferred.

After that task which will I think take weeks I have to restore all the pictures to each page, and I have no idea just how long that will take.

But when it is all done it should make it easy to update the Dirk Maggs pages and also to enhance the content.

Backup & Why I use them

So start of new year, well a couple of days now into the new year and the USB HD that is about 18 months old has well, how do I put this died, it started with a noise like a machine gun when starting up, the noise would then go away and all was well, until the day that I when to look at the root directory where I keep such files as my current book, yes that one on Dirk Maggs, that has now been stuck in edit hell since June 2008.

When I looked at the root directory what was there was one item and not the several thousand that I have come to expect.


But for some strange reason when looking at the drive in Thumbs plus and Pisca all my pictures where there!, so I copied them to another HD.

It was at this stage that a sale at PC World caught my eye and so the end result is that I have a new cheap computer that some how or other seems to run Vista, with only 1G of memory!

I have since found out that if I put a fast 4G USB key in it will use it as memory and boost the speed of the machine, this I have done.

Reinstalling stuff from backups is fun, so I have all my data but a lot of programmes that do not run very well on vista, so most of my time has been spent looking for free ware versions of the old programs that I used to use.

I mean, some of the software I use goes back to 2002!

So the good news is I have all my projects data and I mostly have software that can do the job the old software that no longer runs on Vista.

But my Dirk Maggs book is still stuck in edit hell!

Wikis & Books

Wikis & Books

As you may or may not know I have more than one wiki that I am playing with. One is the new James Follett Wiki (JFW) the other far older wiki is called DMP and has over the years been restarted on more than one occasion, mainly due to errors on my part that resulted in me destroying the database and all the backups! (don't ask)

At one stage the DMP had been about 1000 pages in size at this time its around 600, but then I have not worked on it for some time, in fact it is one of those projects that I only seem to work on when I remember that I have got such a project!

The size that I think DMP will get to is at this time 2000 to 2500 pages as the subject of the DMP is Dirk Maggs the radio director that I have spoken about many times here before. In fact I have also spoken about the DMP here many times normally when all was going well and not so well.

Now DMP is a project that for the reasons I have given above will not be updated on its software or the database that drivers it, as I have lost too much too often.

The DMP is again like the JFA a closed wiki very closed in fact I have at this time no intention of allowing anyone access to it even Dirk Maggs, not because there is anything in it that is libeler's but because I used it to create the main Dirk Maggs site, and also because it is the main data-bank for Dirk Maggs. I have used once so far to write a book on all of Dirk's works form 1988 to 2006 it cam e to a 300 page A4 book!

Yes I can tell you I was surprised at how long it was. I reckon that Dirk will be active in radio for at least another 5 to 7 years before he decides to go and do something else, so at the rate of productions that he does a year I think the book could end up at a 1000 pages! how mad is that.

The book is not for sale as it break every copyright law there is, eg there are photo's that I just don't know who owns the copyright to, there are articles that I do not have permission to use. But and this is the big but as this book is based on the website and the DMP from early 2006 the idea was to have a paper record just in case the website or the DMP vanish, which if my passed experience is anything to go by could happen at any moment. So I have a paper copy and the file that made it is stored else where in more than one location.

I also think that the book would not sell very many copies as it is too specialist, just how many folks want to know which actor started in a radio show that has never been heard since it was first broadcast back in 1989?