Blog

Live but unlaunched

Ok, the site is now online on my web host, with everything working as it should. It is by no means done, but it’s at a point where it is functional and complete enough that I can start soliciting feedback from friends and family.

Getting the PHP and MySQL working on the host’s environment took a bit of work. It turns out that the version of MySQL they use, 4.x, does not support Views, and I had set up a few of them in my local environment. I had already checked and discovered that since the host did not support mysqli functions, I knew stored procedures were out, but no Views either? Geez, there go my efforts at creating a scalable system. Ok, maybe it’s not that bad, and it is not that big a deal to convert the View sql to PHP code, but it seemed like a step backward. Time and traffic will tell how this performs in real life.

While I was mucking around in the online version of phpMyAdmin (the MySQL administrator they provide), I noticed some options that are not present in the desktop version of MySQL administrator for version 5.x that I downloaded, such as the apparent ability to safely handle special characters in user text box inputs. Wow, freedom from fear of user hacks - without the usual massaging code - what a concept! I definitely need to experiment with this sometime.

I also took the time to implement the hit, visitor, and ad click counting routines. This task was lower in priority, but then I thought, why cheat myself? Early on, I can use all the hits I get, plus it will be fun to see the numbers climb - assuming they do, of course. I must admit I’m a bit nervous. What if I build it, and no one comes? Anyway, I am aware that my web host has site statistics, and gives me access to the raw logs, but I thought it would be interesting to compare that to data I log myself. Plus, having my own data gives me flexibility in how I can view it.

So the site is now live, but not yet “launched”. I need to put my marketing hat on now. This just gets funner and funner!