http://dts-uk.co.uk/gift.php

Campaign Launch

Just managed to launch a new campaign for work - check out Cabbie-Oke! Compare this to the very sad little site I built for DMT and I'm not sure whether to get deeply depressed or appreciate my agency team more. :-)

Done as I'm gonna do

Well, I have a website and all the documentation. What I don't have is ANY working interactive functionality and I've completely run out of time. :-(

One of the problems I ran into on the Forum (phpBB) plugin I wanted to use was the permission settings on the UTS student server, it wouldn't let me write to a group of files (in the phpBB folder) that I needed to in order to get the thing to work. Alastair kindly set me up an account on another server which DID have the right permissions but, Murphy's Law, the connection spent the entire weekend timing out (grr).

I'd have to echo Lisa's sentiments on this, I've learnt a lot and even though this site is a big fat fail (feel like I should put a # there - too much time on Twitter) in my eyes, I'm looking forward to developing these skills on slightly more realistic projects in the near future.

So enough with the ramble, here's my final submission...

Proof I have learnt something!

I've just managed to upload all my images for Digital Graphics and the Still Image to the server, complete with hyperlinks and central CSS file.

I didn't slice the images though as they were coming through misaligned on the screen and my brain power's too low to fix it today.

I may also need to play with the image size to allow for screen resolutions but this fits my screen (with all toolbars turned off).

It's a relatively simple set of images in terms of Photoshop tools used but it's exactly what I was after. Click here and let me know what you think!

Exhaustion

I knew from the word go that the site I'd outlined was probably going to be more than I could handle. I would feel a lot better if SOMETHING worked though!

I'm taking a break from problem solving (aka bashing my head against a brick wall) and have just completed my site documentation for it, as is, in all its broken glory. Between this, my other unit's assignment and two Christmas campaigns due to launch on Tuesday (public holiday in Melbourne, guess where my web team's based), I'm whacked.

Stepping back and looking a little more objectively though, I know my knowledge of site coding has increased dramatically from the beginning of the semester and I'm actually pretty confident coding in both HTML and CSS now. It's only when I run into PHP that it all falls down in a broken heap. Even Javascript likes me better than PHP! The date stamp in my Macro Micro Analysis and the Google Analytics applications are both behaving beautifully!

So, I've learnt a lot (yay), but my site doesn't work (boo). At least this means I won't be getting every man and his dog asking me to help out with their site as Bec's enjoying at the moment...

Today's Challenge - Permissions

I've decided to look into at least trying plug-ins for the three major applications I'm looking at:

The RSS Reader
A Forum
A Polling application

I figure if I get each of them started, I can pull together just one almighty list of issues (adding on to that from my subscription form) and then start working through them, rather than cop any more new surprises. Warning, Alistair, you may get a marathon email in the next few days.

I'm also going on the premise that I'm doing this subject to learn about this stuff, and making loads of mistakes and then working out how to fix them is an awesome way of learning. I reckon I'm going to need some help on the working out bit though.

So, the latest challenge is installing phpBB - my chosen Forum plug in. My system meets most of the application's requirements, it's only when I get to the bottom of the 'Requirements' page that things get a tad tricky:

Required - In order to function correctly phpBB needs to be able to access or write to certain files or directories. If you see “Not Found” you need to create the relevant file or directory. If you see “Unwritable” you need to change the permissions on the file or directory to allow phpBB to write to it.

I'm getting the 'Unwritable' flag so need to work out about the permissions. Now given the amount of fun we had back at the beginning of the semester just getting the access etc set up, I'm a little nervous about whether I'm even vaguely able (or allowed!) to to this.

RSS Reader

I'm finally getting into the build for my RSS Reader and, once again, I think PHP is going to be my downfall. I was doing fine until I got to this para:

Now, besure to add the get_rss_feed function call to the feedList’s onchange event and you are good to go. With a catch, of course. This will only work when accessed locally via the “file://” protocol. IN order to use this online, you’ll need to circumvent the browser security sandbox and use a middleware proxy to grab the XML and make it local. Here’s the PHP:

HUH!?!?!?!?!?!?

The PHP script is then laid out below but I'm stuffed if I know where it's meant to go in the page or anything.

The basic 'select a feed' dropdown is coming up perfectly, it's just that none of the news is then coming through.

One other little challenge I've run into - I hadn't realised how few of the surf sites (for both news and blogs) incorporate an RSS feed so the list of options is looking a little sad. Although WotNews is a godsend as it can output RSS feeds based on keyword queries.

Reference
Udell, C. (2008) http://visualrinse.com/2008/09/24/how-to-build-a-simple-rss-reader-with-jquery/ viewed 24-Oct-09