Kit Peters

Unless otherwise noted, all code posted in this journal is copyright Inksome, LLC, and licensed under the GNU GPL v2. All text, including descriptions of system implementations, is licensed under the GNU GPL v2.

I've got a copy of IS running in a virtual machine on my desktop. When I have time, this means I have a copy of the site I can screw around with to my heart's content and not mess anything up on the real site.

things to remember:

grant SELECT, INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES on `livejournal`.* to `lj`@`localhost` identified by 'somepassword';

if you're screwing around with DNS, make sure it's consistent in /home/lj/etc/ljconfig.pl (I had the devil's own time getting www.inksome.dev set up in my home DNS)

don't muck around with VirtualHosts in Apache, they will only cause you grief. (He says after he gets a VirtualHost configuration working)

restart apache after every change, because apparently everything gets loaded into memory. bleah.

Sorry, folks, nothing is fixed yet. I've got a copy of the site running in a VM on my machine at home, though, so I can tinker with the site without bringing the live version down. I <3 virtualization. :)

I must admit that development on the Inksome refactor has slowed a bit as I've been dealing with other stuffs. One of the big things I'm dealing with is insufficient funds in my life, so here's my idea:

You can fund the development of Inksome. No matter how much or how little you can give, you can help. And my contract with you is for every $30.00 I get in donations (Donate Here) I will spend one hour of dedicated development time on Inksome. I'll continue to work on IS in my spare time, of course, but this way you get to guarantee that some time goes into the project. You'll also get your name on a "Friends of Inksome" page that I'll be adding to the new site.

So, please, give what you can. With your help, I know we can make Inksome THE place for fandom for years to come.

ETA: Some users have raised a concern that by doing this, I'm asking all of you to pay me for my time over and above what we bring in with paid accounts. And I suppose that's true, in a sense, but here's my thinking on this: I would like to keep the money from paid accounts in the bank in order to ensure that our hosting costs are met. That way we "keep our lights on" while I (and anyone who's helping me) am redeveloping the site. The money from the donation link would allow me to spend more time on the development and less time looking for paid work. :)

Are any of you still out there?

Would it be OK to have a little thingy at the bottom to say "powered by app-engine-patch"? app-engine-patch is the software I'm using to speed up IS development.

You don't have to be an experienced developer. You don't have to be any kind of developer at all. If you want to help, and are willing to learn to program, we'd love your help. No matter who you are.

Inksome is a place for fandom. And fandom is made up of all kinds of folks - men, women, transmen, transwomen, non-gendered people, genderqueer people, gay, straight, bi, asexual... the list goes on. And it's been my experience that just about anyone can learn to program - it's not some mystical discipline reserved for the elite and brainy.

DW has a diversity statement. I invite you to read the whole thing, but there's a particular portion I'd like to quote:

We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, size, nationality, sexual orientation, ability level, religion, culture, subculture, and political opinion.
....
We think accessibility for people with disabilities is a priority, not an afterthought. We think neurodiversity is a feature, not a bug. We believe in being inclusive, welcoming, and supportive of anyone who comes to us with good faith and the desire to build a community.

We at Inksome agree with that statement 100%. If you come to us "with good faith and the desire to build a community", we welcome you.

Now, the next question is "what if I don't know how to program?" That's easy - we'll help you learn. To start with, since we're doing the refactor in Python and Django, go through the Python Tutorial and the Django Tutorial.

You can also come into #inksome on FreeNode. I'll be on there as much as I can, and as we attract other knowledgeable folks, I'll ask them to be there too. We won't look down on you for asking "newbie" questions. We want you to help, and we want you to feel welcome, so we're going to do our best to make that happen.

I've made a slight detour in progress. I had written Models for comments, posts, journals, users, moodpics, and userpics, but then I decided I'd go and get Django set up before I wrote any more code so that we could take advantage of anything that had already been developed for Django. This will also allow us to attract more developers who are already familiar with Django or are wanting to learn Django. So that took time away from actual writing code, which is a pity - I was hoping to create a basic test journal today. :)

Anyways, since I think it's important to provide references here, I'm working off of this tutorial which makes use of Django 1.0.x (I'll be using 1.0.3, but I wish I could use 1.1) and GAE Django Helper.

Very little. :) But I'm getting there. I built a VM (virtual machine) for development in VirtualBox last night, and I'm going to install Python and Google's Python development server on it. That gives me a place to get started from.

I've also set up a project page on SourceForge for the development. When I've got a web page put up there, you'll be able to see the project status as we're working on it.

Next question to my mind is that since we're completely recoding the site, what features will be supported, and what features are getting thrown under the bus? Answer is that I haven't decided yet. Gotta have commenting, of course, and custom friends lists, and I'm probably going to have to support S2, but further than that, I don't know. When it comes time, maybe I'll make a post asking what features I should support. Oh, and I know I need to maintain compatibility with the published XMLRPC and "flat" interfaces so that LJ clients still work.

Rather than Ruby On Rails, I'm thinking Google App Engine and Python.

I've updated the Paypal prices.

I haven't posted in forever, I know. Real Life™ has got in the way.

Here's the important bit: We are way short on money. If we don't get any more paid accounts, then IS goes dark in roughly two months' time, because I don't have the money right now to support IS out of my personal funds. I also don't have a lot of time to work on IS (but more on that in a minute) so I'm cutting prices.

New paid account pricing:

$3 for one month of paid time
$15 for 6 months of paid time
$25 for 1 year of paid time

I'm eliminating the 3 month deal entirely. You want 3 months, you pay $9.00.

Next, time. At the moment, I have some extra time on my hands. So I think I'm going to redo IS in Ruby On Rails, because it sounds like a fun time, and I can use it for resume fodder (IS doesn't pay my bills at all). This precludes us from going on the DW code eventually, but I don't see DW rolling out a sitewide conversion tool anytime soon.

Dedicated (colo) server may or may not go up - it's sitting in my living room ready to go, but I don't have the money to pay for rack space and IS's current dedicated server.

Finally, even though they're our competition, I will let all of you know that Dreamwidth have made IS available as an import source. This means you can import your journal from IS to DW if you have a DW account.

I was told one year ago by chucks86 on AIM that by now all the popular apps (e.g. Java, Firefox, Flash, and the respective plugins) would have 64-bit native versions. Is that the case?

(Posted 27 June 2008).

I think it's time for Inksome to look into moving away from a rented server to a colocated server. To this end, I have purchased this server from eBay. Stats behind the cut for when the eBay link disApparates.

I'll be doing a burn-in test on the server when it gets here, and it will be a little while before I have the time to get all the necessary changes made (like renting out space in a colo facility), so Yet Another Switcheroo will be a few months in the offing as of yet. But it's our very own server. I'm excited!

( server stats )

Your Feedback Loop request, with the confirmation code XXX,
has been approved.

This should become effective within 24 hours.

For more information on this request, please visit our website at
http://postmaster-us.info.aol.com.

Thank You,
AOL Postmaster.

Requested IP(s):
209.20.86.97

So now maybe mail to AOL will start going through. :)

As soon as I get her set up, mysticshell will be helping to handle paid account stuffs. With the metric assload of new signups (thanks, everybody!) I need the help. I also just fiddled the reverse DNS for Inksome's mail server (ridiculously easy. Slicehost rocks!) so that hopefully the big ISP's besides Gmail will stop rejecting our mail outright. I also just sent out a thing to AOL asking them to whitelist us. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed here. :)

Since we just had lina_inverse join, I thought I'd look through the DB and see if we had any usernames resembling Fujisawa or Damaramu. I am shocked, dismayed, and saddened to find that we have none. Come on! Where are my El-Hazard otaku? Where are my Dragon Half fen? *cries*

But I know more of you read this journal than popefelix, and after all, it's my site. :)

If you haven't seen it yet, go see Repo! if the road show is coming anywhere near you. It's an awesome flick, and afterward you can meet Darren Bousman and Terrance Zbunich, director and writer/co-creator/narrator, respectively. staff_jamie and I just got back from seeing it. staff_jamie even went up to Terrance Zbunich and said "Please press your Zydrate gun against my anatomy." ;)

And a big hello to the girls from Nebraska who came down to KC for the show. I told them to check us out. :)

And here's some of the table structure I'm using:

ALTER TABLE user ENGINE=InnoDB;

 CREATE TABLE `transaction_history` (
  `txn_id` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `txn_time` timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP on update CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`txn_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

CREATE TABLE `payment_history` (
  `userid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `txn_id` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`txn_id`),
  KEY `payment_history_fk_user_userid` (`userid`),
  CONSTRAINT `payment_history_fk_transaction_history_txn_id` FOREIGN KEY (`txn_id`) REFERENCES `transaction_history` (`txn_id`) ON DELETE CASCADE,
  CONSTRAINT `payment_history_fk_user_userid` FOREIGN KEY (`userid`) REFERENCES `user` (`userid`) ON DELETE CASCADE
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

So mysticshell and olukemi are starting an RP that's going to be a guinea pig for some of the special roleplaying features Inksome is offering.

One of those features is a block of reserved usernames, prefixed with something for your roleplay, like "xx_foo", for example. And so to reserve those usernames, I need to block them off from everyday access, which I do in ljconfig.pl. Easy peasy. But then the question becomes how do I allow mysticshell and olukemi to create the journals for their RP?

Answer: I've created a couple tables for "special" invite codes. I'll generate some invites and then populate the tables accordingly.

So far, all I've done is the table structure.

( table structure behind the cut )