edmann.com 2.0.1 alpha

I found this in the IRC channel for phpeclipse. pteague_work pointed out an name Selenium for a tool that will test websites. Since i do allot of sites i had looked at this in the past, but have not had a change to use it.

I am finishing up one big project, and am working on another... ie this blog system. It is said that you can integrate PHPUnit tests in with Selenium, so i will attempt to do just that. Making sure i document the way i did it.

Also i have a new update for the blog system that i have not pushed out live yet. It adds pagination so you can look at previous posts, and also the ability to post comments. Granted that last part i am still not sure i want to push out. I have allot more tests that i want to run just to make sure my blog system does not become a spamers best friend.

The backend is shaping up nicely but slowly. I have just added comment moderation, and the css that goes with it. I want to add post history this weekend and also category management. The latter should not be to hard to do. Famous last words. 

Also need to setup different databases to do unit tests against, just to insure that this thing is working the way i want it to.

I have to say that the new Firefox 3 Beta 2 release is awesome. I just got it installed on my machine, and i do visibly notice that things load allot faster. I use FCKeditor on the back-end of my blog, and it does not have a choppy load. It loaded just like a page would. Heck this could just be me and my machines, but it is noticeable. 

There are several improvements in the Beta 2, and i am looking forward to the final product. When you open new tabs there is no noticeable lag.  Like i said before the form items take the look of the current theme that you are using on Linux. The form fields look so much better then they do in FF2.x.

I need to go spend some time playing around with it more, but this release is awesome. Whenever i get on a persons machine the first thing i do is look for FF. If i don't find it i download it and install it on there machine. I tell them to use it and not the other browser. Most the time i am on there machine to fix something, so when i tell them to use FF they listen. If i did not know what i was doing or talking about they would not have asked me to work on there machine in the first place. I recommend FF to everyone that uses a computer. But that's just me. :-)

This is my first post to the new blog system that i am working on. There are allot of things left to do, but i now have it so that i can post to it. I need to get the comment system working, i should have that done sometime this week. And there are several items in the Admin console that i need to work on.

I had to close the comments because they have not been fully tested. It should not take me that long to get it done.

I am just happy to have this thing working. It did not take me long to write the code to port from my old b2evolution blog system that was on mysql. Now it all runs under postgresql and the framework that i have been working on for other projects.

I need to get the pingback stuff working so i can ping the syndication sites.

Now that i have the template for the site, i can integrate the gallery more into the site. I have lot's of work ahead of me on this, however i am happy at the progress that i have made in a few weekends.
Just allot of progress for this system and it's going very well.

Ok here are some docs on how to do virtual hosts. I do this allot on Unix machines, but found that windows has a little different setup.
I have learned that in the httpd.conf file you need to look for /conf/extra/httpd-xampp.conf. This is the start of the extra config files that you can include in apache. What i would recommend is that you create a new directory under extra called sites or enabled_sites. Then add a new line to the httpd.conf file as such.
Include conf/extra/sites/*.conf

After saving the file make or change into the extra/sites directory. We are going to make a new config file naming it dev1.conf. You can change the name to something that will work for you, i however will use the dev1 name in this post.

The dev1 file should contain the following code more config options can be added, but what is posted will get you started.

Note: You will need to change the DocumentRoot before you restart Apache
Note2: Also wrap your Document Root path in double quotes and don't include a trailing slash.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName dev1.edmann.com
DocumentRoot "C:\Documents and Settings\ed_mann\workspace\dev1"
ErrorLog logs/dev1-error.log
CustomLog logs/dev1-access.log common
<Directory />
Order deny,allow
Deny from none
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file in the extra directory and uncomment the NameVirtualHost *:80 line.
I like to keep my logs for each project separate. This helps trouble shoot problems... At least for me it does.
Now you need to edit your etc/hosts file. Windows has one and it is found in the following directory.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

We need to add a new host for our dev1 Virtual host. Something like the following will work: 127.0.0.1 dev1.mysite.com
or just 127.0.0.1 dev1
Create a index.php file in the directory of you new dev1 site. You can put the following content. <? php phpinfo(); ?>
Now start or restart apache and try to go to the dev1 website. You can just type in dev1 and it should take you to the index page and display the php info.
Let me know if you have any problems. Once you have one dev project working, just copy the dev1.conf file to dev2.conf change the path and restart apache. Edit your hosts file, and you should be good to go.