Technology Kills The life and times of Ben McClure

11Jun/100

CakePHP Project: WebManager

I have started work on a solution to a problem I have been searching for for quite a while. Finding nothing that satisfied me, a while back I started development on a new CakePHP project titled WebManager (DE WebManager to be precise).

The functionality will include the ability to manage the entirety of a business or individual's web presense, from domain names and to providers, datacenters, servers, and more. Manage them all in one place and interact with them in intelligent ways--get renewal reminders, login links to all services, relevant contact information displayed on related pages, and much more.

This project came about because I was tired of having to manage my various web assets in all different disconnected places--my registrar for domain names, my various hosting providers and control panels, all of my , pages, and projects around the web, and more. It was all just getting to be too much, and while there are a lot of organizational tools, none of them seemed to be designed for this specific type of management. In this, I saw a way to make something that works better for me.

The project is built with CakePHP 1.3, the Javascript framework, and the MochaUI interface to give users a full desktop-like experience on the web.

I am not sure yet what different versions I will offer, and whether this will be a locally-hosted product or (Software as a Service) hosted and provided by the Digital Empire. Only time will tell, and I should hopefully have some screenshots and more information posted soon.

12Jan/100

Apache issues resolved, sites back online

Yes, finally, with a little help from the cPanel team, I got Apache/PHP to rebuild correctly, and my sites are again working properly!

Of course, I am still working on the slowness issue. Even with page caching, Apache and suPHP thrash the CPU for several seconds the first time a large dynamic page is loaded. I'm trying to narrow this down to either server configuration or a VPS issue.

I have definitely experienced this before on an over-allocated VMware array, so it's a possibility my web server is just on a busy host box. But I'm still tuning things on the server and trying to minimize the load in every way I can, because more often than not these things are caused by configuration oversight or lack of proper tuning (and user naivety perhaps, in my case).

17Dec/080

SoundLinks.net Directory online

I have now put a Joomla-powered directory online at SoundLinks.net to provide links to all sorts of audio-related resources geared toward musicians.

The first link was just posted today by me. I will continue to post links, and am working on creating a way for users to submit their own links to the directory.

VIsit the directory at http://directory.soundlinks.net/ and let me know what you think!

20Oct/080

Site back up again after a couple days

All sites hosted on nebula.desystem.net were down for a couple of days due to a server issue when attempting to update Apache/PHP.

This has just been resolved, and all should be back online to stay.

!

17Apr/080

SingularityShift is now online

SingularityShift, a new open-source development hub I have been working on, is now open for business (figuratively speaking)!

Please bookmark the URL - http://singularityshift.com

I am managing the site and all projects that are currently there as of this time.

The main site is an open format allowing all users to contribute equally to the direction of the site.

Each project gets a full Trac development site and Subversion repository, as well as web space, email, advertising, and more.

Feel free to post your project to the and I can create the for it!