3 Nov 2008

Brand new blogging software

Filed under: My software by Hari
Posted at 14:54:33 IST (last updated: 3 Nov 2008 @ 16:18:28 IST)
Currently this blog is powered by my own blogging system which I've been working on for the last several weeks (yes, even the smilies are my own). What a feeling of exhilaration it is to go live with it! :-D

At the moment, I'm over the moon. I've done most of the hard work in porting over my old b2evolution blog to the new one and even updated the internal links (which was a long-drawn tedious process), but there's still some work left: mainly testing and fine-tuning. Until then I'm not going to release the blog software in public (yes, I am going to release it under the GPL soon).

I have to thank Drew for all his help in getting SQLite 3 to work with PHP to make this dream come true. I also thank all my blogging friends for being patient with me during this period of inactivity over the last couple of months.

Please be sure to update your RSS feed URLs for this blog as the old one will not work any longer.

Also if you've recently linked any of my old articles, please update the URL to match the new one if it is convenient.

Tip: All new permalinks have the format:
http://harishankar.org/blog/entry.php/link-to-article
rather than the earlier format
http://harishankar.org/blog/YYYY/MM/DD/link-to-article.

47 comment(s)

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  1. I think I'll wait until you get all the bugs out before I start harassing you about it. :-P

    Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 14:58:43 IST #
  2. Thanks RT. First comment on my blogging system!

    Yes, that's precisely the reason I'm not releasing the code in public. I want to make sure there are no critical bugs or obvious flaws in the code.

    Also there are a couple of features I want to add to the blog (like a simple search form) before I make the code public.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 15:03:00 IST #
  3. Congratulations!

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 17:36:34 IST #
  4. Thanks, Dominic.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 17:58:54 IST #
  5. This looks good! Congrats on getting it up and running.

    Comment by Ray (visitor) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 18:37:25 IST #
  6. Thanks, Ray. Yes - some parts of the blogging system gave me more trouble than others - for example, the commenting system. But I think it was worth it! 8-)

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 3 Nov 2008 @ 22:25:38 IST #
  7. No problem with the help Hari. If anyone's interested in getting SQLite3 working with PDO on Slackware, I have the packages available and now the knowledge. :)

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 00:24:27 IST #
  8. Wait a minute... where's Mr. Green?

    Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 05:48:45 IST #
  9. Drew, it was indeed a learning experience, I guess. :)

    RT, Mr. Green has not yet been created. I didn't create that icon yet. He's easy enough to create though. I'll just have to change the colour of Mr. Grin :biggrin:

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 07:41:48 IST #
  10. Hari: Following on from the comments over on my blog, I get permissions errors when trying to view your favicon, but also your smilies: All I see is the alt text, and an attempt to view the image directly gets me "Forbidden
    You don't have permission to access /images/smilies/smile.gif on this server."

    Not sure why, as it seems other people are having no problems, but I'm definitely not liked by your server :(

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 16:20:18 IST #
  11. Dominic, I'm able to see all smilies as well as the favicon myself. I wonder if anybody else has any problem with this. Awaiting responses. :-/

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 17:55:14 IST #
  12. I don't have any problems but if I do right click any of the smilies I get a permissions issue.

    And for the record there isn't anything wrong with the server ;)

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 20:38:43 IST #
  13. After browsing around, I have to say using SQLite as the backend seems to be faster in load times, which I expected. Maybe once you release your new blogware, I might experiment with it and maybe convert myself. I've been trying to find reasons to dump MySQL and either go with PostgreSQL or SQLite. Textpattern only supports PostgreSQL in development stages and has no support for SQLite.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 20:59:32 IST #
  14. If you're logged in as the blog owner, then the permissions error probably wouldn't raise its head. Can you use another computer or browser that you know you're not logged in on? That's been the problem for me in the past...

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 4 Nov 2008 @ 22:06:11 IST #
  15. Drew, yes - I haven't used a lot of code and whatever SQL queries I've used have been simple. That should be why the blog runs fairly fast, I guess. Also take a look at the category and date archive pages and let me know what you think of the presentation. :)

    I don't get any permission issue myself, whether logged in or otherwise. Dominic, I don't think it's related to my blog software, as PHP has no effect on the Apache folder permission, which seems to be the problem here.

    Maybe because the same folder is pointing to both images.literaryforums.org as well as hari.literaryforums.org/images is causing the problem (?) Drew should be most likely to answer this.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 07:28:52 IST #
  16. Strange, on my personal laptop now, I don't get a 403 denied error for the images.

    But yeah, it's not a blog, php or login issue, when you get a 403 permission denied error, it's usually a filesystem permissions error on most occasions.

    As for the images.literaryforums.org and the subdirectory, that shouldn't matter either since images.literaryforums.org is just a virtual host that links to the same directory hari.literaryforums.org/images, both are literally the same. :)

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 07:49:03 IST #
  17. Also, I figured SQLite would be faster since it's more like a flat type filesystem database engine. It doesn't required extra processing from the daemon or service running, etc. It's just straight read/write to the hard drive as if you were creating files directly or copying directly to the system.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 07:50:37 IST #
  18. Cool!.. Congrats Hari

    Comment by logesh tamilselvan (visitor) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 15:44:53 IST #
  19. I'd agree it's almost certainly not your blogging software that's the problem. But it seems not to be a file permissions thing either: I just tried to view your site in IE (yuck) and the smilies were viewable without the slightest problem.

    From Firefox, I still get "Forbidden" errors and absolutely no images will show: Not the "trees and river" at the top, not the smilies, not the favicon.. all get the apache "You don't have permission"

    This is very strange...

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 17:59:39 IST #
  20. Yeah, I just realized that at work I'm still on firefox 2.0.15 or the like and got the error for the images and my personal laptop uses firefox 3 which didn't have any problems.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 19:05:01 IST #
  21. Thanks Logesh.

    Dominic, it is extremely strange and probably worthy of further investigation - if only I could reproduce the problem at my end. I'm having no problems with either IE or Firefox in Windows or Iceweasel in Linux. :oops:

    Drew, that's also very strange. Don't know what could have caused such behaviour.

    My only vague hint might be that this could be related to a faulty proxy server? Dominic, are you behind a proxy?

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 5 Nov 2008 @ 19:08:13 IST #
  22. Not behind a proxy. Have tried connecting via two different ISPs and same results.

    All browsers other than Firefox work fine - IE7, Google Chrome, Konqueror, no problem. Firefox 3.0.3 though..

    But it's an Apache error message, not a Firefox problem. So my best guess is that it's something in Apache's configuration where it deals differently with different browser/OS combinations: Is anyone else using Firefox 3 with Vista?

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 00:42:40 IST #
  23. Strange, now it's suddenly working on my work computer.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 04:09:35 IST #
  24. Dominic, I'm using Firefox 3.0.3 in Vista and experiencing no issues.

    Drew, strange indeed. Really I haven't a clue where to look for a solution to this. I hope it resolves itself for Dominic as it did for you.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 10:24:42 IST #
  25. Hari,

    Hopefully clears up. I checked the error logs and didn't see any of the smiley gif's come across through the apache logs as errors, so it's definitely not apache producing the error results from I can tell.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 11:39:42 IST #
  26. Sadly, still not working for me :(

    Took a few screenshots of the issue, might help:
    http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/media/hari1.jpg
    http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/media/hari2.jpg
    http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/media/hari3.jpg

    The catchpa image is the only one that's rendering for me in Firefox. This has to be the weirdest error I've encountered on the web yet!

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 16:27:47 IST #
  27. Those screenshots are weird. You say it works with other browsers? :-/

    Pretty strange is all I can say. In Windows, I can view the site OK in both Firefox and IE 7 as well. Nobody else has reported any errors so far.

    I'm still 99% sure that it's something to do with a folder permission but in which case it would affect all browsers equally.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 16:43:03 IST #
  28. Well, can't be a permissions issue since no one else is having this issue and all you're images and directories for a second check by myself on the server have world readable access.

    And the 403 errors don't seem to be showing up in the apache logs for hari.literaryforums.org either.. very strange!

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 6 Nov 2008 @ 22:47:22 IST #
  29. You need a favicon by the way :-)

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 12 Nov 2008 @ 14:13:13 IST #
  30. The favicon has been in place since the beginning. Are you not able to view it? (Might be related to the images not showing problem)

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 12 Nov 2008 @ 19:25:38 IST #
  31. I'm not seeing the favicon at all - neither on the FF address bar or the tab bar.

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 13 Nov 2008 @ 14:07:47 IST #
  32. I cannot see it in Windows, but in Iceweasel it appears correctly.

    No idea why.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 13 Nov 2008 @ 14:13:32 IST #
  33. Yeah, I'm not seeing it either. Trying to load it directly in browser gives error. Permissions look okay on server. Very strange. I'm on FF.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 13 Nov 2008 @ 20:43:35 IST #
  34. Hari,

    Sorry but I went poking some more. The only logical thing that I could think of was an .htaccess file that would be causing the trouble, which I did look and noticed you had this in your global .htaccess file:

    RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp|zip)$ - [F,NC]

    Looks like you put that there to prevent hot linking, which is good but I took out the F in [F,NC] which was the cause and I've seen before. Not sure why it does it for some browsers and not others.

    But the favicon is now working for me, I'd expect the rest to not have troubles an longer as well.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 13 Nov 2008 @ 20:52:03 IST #
  35. I can see it now!

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 14 Nov 2008 @ 13:52:35 IST #
  36. Everything looks good, Hari. Nice work.

    Comment by Tim (visitor) on 14 Nov 2008 @ 18:16:36 IST #
  37. Thanks a lot for your help now, Drew. Yes, I think most likely you've got to the root of the issue.

    Ray, yes - I myself knew there was some problem with the image file access, but couldn't put my finger on it.

    Tim, thanks a lot!

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 15 Nov 2008 @ 08:48:49 IST #
  38. Just to confirm, I can see the images now just fine! Woohoo!

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 18 Nov 2008 @ 01:34:13 IST #
  39. Thanks for confirming it works now, Dominic.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 19 Nov 2008 @ 09:13:25 IST #
  40. great work Hari..

    You're challenging blogger and wordpress
    But I prefer the earlier permalink format than entry.php one

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 20 Nov 2008 @ 20:23:26 IST #
  41. it is not remembering my name and details?

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 20 Nov 2008 @ 20:26:19 IST #
  42. Wow! Looks good, Hari, congratulations! :biggrin:

    Comment by titanium (visitor) on 28 Nov 2008 @ 09:16:31 IST #
  43. Thanks, Titanium. :)

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 29 Nov 2008 @ 13:16:25 IST #
  44. no reply to my comment? :-( :mad: :-/

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 1 Dec 2008 @ 13:57:57 IST #
  45. Shrinidhi, I've fixed the issue. Does it work for you now?

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 1 Dec 2008 @ 14:26:36 IST #
  46. :-) yes yes...

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 2 Dec 2008 @ 11:58:23 IST #
  47. Thanks for confirming, Shrinidhi. I had added the code for storing the fields as cookies and now it should remember your ID for 7 days or until you clear your cookies.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 2 Dec 2008 @ 12:10:21 IST #

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