Dwarfsoft [GPA]

Semester 2 is about to begin, I have recieved my study materials and have taken a good look at the Business Computing Project (CIS3006). The provided project is building a library system that allows students and teachers to hire out books, CD’s, Videos, and related materials. During Semester 1 I did some Library software as part of another assignment, and this may be a basis for development. This will require more Database wrangling than previously, or may be more useful as a Web Application hosted off my site.

The NGDN meeting went well on Sunday and we covered a lot of business related topics about the structure and depth of our agreement. This gives us an idea of where we all stand on issues related to the business. Andrew will take this to his uncle and then we will come back with a more structured business agreement.

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My Marketing Assignment 2 is due today and after a hectic weekend I have managed to complete it ready for posting. I have also started on the Networks and Distributed Systems Report on Virtualization and VPNs. This report is interesting from th standpoint that I was only just reading up on Virtualization on Blades as an option for one of the Sites up North, one of the people I met at training was discussing this as an option for his server setup.

Virtualization provides some interesting benefits and disadvantages that I had not at first examined. I also was not aware of the many different levels of Virtualization available, from Operating Systems to Virtual Storage solutions. This has been an eye opener.

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So after all the technology work that has gone into the last few months it has come to the point where Andrew and I (and Thomas was present, though fairly mute) got together to discuss building the NGDN site on a serious level. At this point a lot of things were thrown out, and the decision came down to building the core of the site from scratch rather than using existing CMS software.

At this point we are beginning to prototype different UI Layouts, building a feature list, and structuring development of core features. The obvious first feature is the User Profile Manager, which is core to the entire site. I shouldn’t need to go into any real detail with this as everybody should be used to interacting with User Profile Manager (or a User Login Manager). The other major feature that the site will rely heavily upon is Team Management. This site is about teams working and communicating together, and as such this becomes the bigest feature to add to the site.

There is at least one technology that is not going to be abandoned, simply because it is a core piece of software for the growth and use of the site. This I will leave to divulge more about later. The other interesting Technical note though is that we are seriously looking at developing in Ruby, so this will be a steep learning curve for me as I have had the barest glimpses of Ruby in the past.

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I have been searching for Themes that can be used on the NGDN site, and as yet have not managed to find anything totally overwhelming. I have downloaded about 50 Themes that I intend to try over the next few days and weeks to see which I can use outright, or which I can use as a basis for modification. I will get Andrew and Thomas to have a look over things as I go to get their opinions. I have yet to look into SSH and FTP access for them to the server, but will look into this tonight or tomorrow.

Cheers, Chris

Last night I purchased the first lot of Domain Names for the NGDN site, and today Andrew should buy the other ones. We have come to the conclusion that out of our large list of potential domain names, two stand out more prominently than others. At this stage, due to this project being almost exclusively in development I will avoid distributing the Domain Names in question, as this will allow us to do some development on a live server reasonably free from prying eyes.

I am currently in the process of installing software to this domain in order to continue testing and building. I will also need to provide access for Andrew and Thomas to the Domain, which will mean I have to look into the ssh and ftp setups so as to avoid allowing access to existing domains.

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I have now set off in an attempt to test Ruby on Rails and Typo, a Ruby on Rails Conetent Management System. Getting Rails set up on Dreamhost was fairly straight forward, however waiting for the DNS settings for the new subdomain to kick in is taking its time.

Conetent Management Systems that we have looked at or are currently looking at include Joomla!, Typo, and Drupal. The main functionality we will require with this Content Management System is integration with some Forum Software (none of which yet seems to integrate seemlessly enough for our needs), Some kind of Wiki, and Subversion.

Currently it looks like we will need to work on integrating current technologies together, and tying their databases into one. This makes the project a whole lot more complex than it should need to be. This is one reason we are currently looking at moving away from PHP solutions and moving towards RoR solutions. Once each of the packages have been tested with some Forum and Wiki packages, it will be a matter of determining the most useful combination of software/platforms/databases. There is still a lot of time to be put into testing at this stage.

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