I could go one of two routes with this post. I could make it really short, making it sound like it was a very long, uneventful day. For the most part, that would be true, but I thought I would post a few things to see what the world has to say about them. Let\’s start with Joe\’s comments since it\’s the first thing on my mind.
Begin Topic 1:
Ok, so let\’s talk technically. The extension was written by someone else. It was designed to work with FTP and WebDAV, but FTP was buggy with me because of our passive mode restrictions, so I said it was time to give WebDAV a whirl. I had been hearing about it for some time now, and thought it would be an interesting trial.
For those of you who don\’t know, WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP protocol that adds support for file transfers. Apache has module you can easily install to make it work, and I have to admit, it\’s pretty cool. There are clients out there (much like FTP clients) that you can use to connect to it that way. So far I have it pretty restrictive on my account, mainly because it poses a security risk. If you want to try it Joe, let me know, we\’ll get it going on your account.
The toolbar uses webdav to store it\’s XML XBEL document. If you want learn more about what XBEL is, I suggest Googling it. From there, I use oxwaf\’s amazing xml parsing abilities to turn the XML into a nice page using XSL and some formatting.
I should note some things on the backend as well while I\’m at it. There\’s some trickyness to how I got all the authentication to work. Upon getting an account here, a folder is setup for your account. That folder is given password protection using .htaccess and mod_mysql. Mod_mysql allows me to tie the oxwaf user system to apache http auth so that I can protect the webDav shares. Ok, I feel that didn\’t make any sense what so-ever, so to help out a little, I\’m going to diagram the process with words:
1) User Creates Account In Oxwaf
2) Server Creates a read-only folder, blank write-access bookmark file, and a read only .htaccess file for that folder.
3) User installs bookmarks extension and uploads first set of bookmarks.
4) Webdav authenticates based on .htaccess and oxwaf at the same time, webDav uploads the file to the server.
5) Bookmarks are served up and downloaded using Oxwaf.
Ok, hope that answers a few questions for ya Joe. There are still a few bugs in it that I hope to resolve at some point. I think most of the security stuff has been taken care of, but if you find something, please let me know.
So Topic 1 is finished.
Topic 2: Some cool software I\’ve installed.
I recently installed what is now Microsoft\’s Virtual PC 2004. Very cool program and definently worth the price if you need to run more than one operating system at the same time on the same machine. So far, I\’ve been able to boot into the linux installer and get it going. My Fedora Core CD is a little bad, so the install failed, but I\’m sure it will work as soon as I get a work CD. I hope to get you all some screen shots at some point. It\’s really cool seeing linux in a window on a windows box.
I hope this means I can do webdev work on my local box from windows. I prefer to work in windows over linux so to test I would need a properly configured linux box. Of course, a properly configured linux box would either have to be my laptop or this box. I don\’t know, it just didn\’t seem possible til I got VPC. Very cool though, I\’ll have to let you know how it works in the end.
Topic 2 was short and sweet, let\’s jump to the last topic for tonight.
Topic 3: Money.
I\’m curious to hear from the people who have blogs on my site how much per month they would be willing to pay to continue the service. No, I\’m not asking you to pay (not yet) nor do I think I would ever require you to pay. It\’s just that JR has been having some cash flow issues (no we aren\’t going under, it\’s just sometimes bills are due before we get paid for work.) I think hosting fees could definently help with the burden but again, I love you all that when it comes to blogs, I often find it more worth while to be hosting them myself and reading them here, than letting you go off somewhere else and get your blog hosted for free.
Just curious as to what you all would have to say on the topic, any comments on the subject would be nice.
End Topic 3. End Todays Post.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Personally, I would love to donate at least 20 dollars a month to JR Corps to keep things going on your end. But that's also because I have a blog and I also owe you a lot anyway.
20 a month might be a little excessive, especially from a guy that does so much for me at MSA already. Still curious to hear what others have to say though.
I think that $10 a month would be fairly reasonable. It's something that almost everybody can afford, and it isn't terribly expensive. I don't know what your bills are like for webhosting and bandwidth, but that's at least $60 a month (assuming that that list of blogs over there are all hosted on your servers and you wouldn't make Amber pay anything), and I would assume $60 would help take out a decent chunk; but, again, I don't know how much you're paying in the first place.
Or, you could set it up as a donation type thing, where we can give you as much as we'd like every month. That way, though, you get moochers that wouldn't donate, but it allows for more flexibility on the part of the bloggers who may not always have a job/$10 to spare at the end of the month.
Wow, you guys are not at all saying what I would have expected… I was expecting to hear stuff like "I can't afford to pay it" or "if you charged money for it, I would probably switch to godaddy's 2.99 service or the free stuff at diaryland."
So the question then becomes, would 5 dollars a month be fair? Would you want it to be optional? Would you want it to be cululative, so that if you choose not to pay it one month, you could in fact pay it the next? I have always said I don't want to charge people for hosting their sites, and I still believe I don't really need to, it would just help with the bills.
Keep the comments coming, I really want to know what to do about it.