D-Blog
King Geek (or is it Geek King?)

As the title says I have just made the mistake of taking the junction to hell.. or at least PHP hell.

I am now slowly piecing together bits for a eco themed site project.

The site will (eventually) have a forum, blog (to the standard of wordpress), a custom made catelogue type system for items and possibly more (once all thats done).

Now its easy enough to install a forum (im opting for MYBB as its the best/most advanced which is free/open source) a blog and then write your own custom script.

But making them

a) look the same and blend well austetically.

b) use the same user system

c) JUST WORK!

is alot harder

At first i was planning to make the whole system completely custom made, and it soon became aparent to build a forum to the kind of spec like what is required just wouldnt be possible or feasable on my own.

So now i have the Mybb forum installed and im going to try and make everything else work on top of that.

I would like to use a wordpress blog and have it merge into it all, but that seems darn near impossible with out me recoding the whole thing (and then making it so i couldnt upate it easily when there is new wordpress updates.

But unfortunatle it looks like this is exactly what i will have to do… or just create own blog, and “borrow” some snippets for the layout and design etc from word press.

 Wish me luck!

Okay so i brought a new domain about a week ago, XDnet.co.uk.

So the name “Dansgalaxy” has been bugging me a little for a while name as its a bit too personal for business, which is why Dansgalaxy is now my Personal domain and XDnet.co.uk will take over as the main business one.

Because of the new domain its also given me a boost to get the hosting site finished, I have my plans set up and im working on the order system and customising the online help.

Hopefully once im done (yes i am… im making my own billing system - I just like to make it myself :)) it *should* do the usual collect info, direct to payment (paypal), direct back on sucessful payment automatically set up the account with the users details (which of course were checked using Ajax when they enterded them initially to check that the username wasnt taken etc they get a nice looking welcome email. telling them its all set up and welcome to “Personal UK Web Hosting From XDnet.co.uk” and how to contact support etc if there are any issues.

And of course the whole user area will be created with the account so they can view invoices etc…

… I can see this having to wait a little while as i have so much on at the moment.

So thats one of the things im focusing on at the moment… as well as only having 2 weeks left of school … but thats not as important of couse. [Note: this is sarcasum, i do take my education seriously, no matter what people think ]

Well im signing off on this post.

Bye X

Okay so heres some info and details about all the projects/sites/scripts im currently working on, and if anyone feels they could help or give any advice for some or feedback please feel free

 Obviously the first one i mention has to be one of the biggest -

CALM Charity’s Website:

Now while you might not notice at first how much is in this site as theres alot which isnt blatantly obvious, and for those of you who are reading this and dont have a medium-high knowledge of how PHP works, you might not get why some it has taken so long.

 I have been working on this site now since about May last year, since then (and long before) its had quite a few designs, the originals where UNBEARABLE to look at, but the final design which i have ended up with was originally created by Nick at SmarterWeb design, who came up with a initial design, which has been worked on, with the help of a friend, Dan (whymdesign.co.uk) who helped fix up alot of the CSS issues and bugs to get the design looking a little neater and much more cross browser compatible.

So i have ended up with this in my opinion (feel free to tell me yours either via the contact form on the calm site of the comment box below) a very nice design which suits the purpose well, as far as i can tell is completely cross browser compatible.

 The site is i would like to think a CMS, or at least it will be! The site has a full login system with user “ranks” or privleges levels:- Admin, Committee, Families, Users, Banned.

My aims for this site is to build a flexible CMS (or CALM CMS) which:

• Is easily modularised, so can be easily extended
• Themes can be easily created, and edited.
• Full file managment system - with rename, edit, permission changer, delete and upload features.
• Full user accounts and user managment system.
• Maintenace tools, such as Database back up, database optimisation and repair features

As well as the above the CALM CMS will have control settings to control as much of the website as possible through the administration panel.

 So far i have achieved alot of the above, such as the User system, maintenace tools and a large amount of the file management system; as well as other parts.

On top of the above i am also developing a SHOP system for this site and will expand this to so it can be easily controled through the administration panel, where as at the moment it must be dont through direct PMA control.

 I hope to be able to continue with this to be able to create a very advance CMS which will enable the Charity and hopefully other small charities in the future to be able to provide a good looking, and easy to control website to provide their families, and the general public which much more infomation much more easily without paying someone or having someone within the charity with advanced knowledge in web development.

 I will finish this very long post here, but there is much more i have to say and will eventually get round to making some nice little tutorials for some of the many aspects and scripts used within the site.