http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/Hiveminds A listing of works published by Hiveminds in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Hiveminds http://tc.eserver.org/32580.html http://tc.eserver.org/32580.html I received a copy of the Gartner report on the status of the web content management system market. I am always skeptical of such reports because they are geared towards those that work in a corporate environment. The reports are also made in a manner that allows the reporting company to remove itself from any responsibility if their information on the market climate is incorrect. Gartner did not disappoint me. But they do much to disappoint those that are putting a lot of energy and effort in to the OSS Web content management market. http://tc.eserver.org/32581.html http://tc.eserver.org/32581.html Many Open Source content management systems written in PHP want to be recognized by the business industry as being "enterprise" ready. This is not only a mark of prestige and status but places them in a position where large companies are ready to invest in the software as a platform for their projects. Drupal is now trying making its move to be enterprise ready but has a long way to go. http://tc.eserver.org/32583.html http://tc.eserver.org/32583.html A community has to be grown wild and organically or it will fail. Control comes with time and growth. The success of a community and its size may vary. The effort may not give expected results but the work still pays off in knowledge and experience. Community members will change and accept different roles and participate in different manners. Being user friendly and being willing to allow change to happen is most important. http://tc.eserver.org/32584.html http://tc.eserver.org/32584.html Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks as languages like Perl or Python do. Ruby is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and cross-platform portable language that has a syntax that is easy to understand. One of the strengths of Ruby is that it strives to be powerful but not complicated. Ruby has advantage over other OOP languages in that it can be used to code procedurally. http://tc.eserver.org/28265.html http://tc.eserver.org/28265.html In a previous tutorial you learned how to get started using the Ruby language as a web scripting language by embedding it in HTML. You need some type of database connectivity to do the cool dynamic stuff. So here is a tutorial written by Markus Jais on how to connect to a MySQL database using Ruby. I will be updating and editing this tutorial to include more windows instructions where applicable. http://tc.eserver.org/28266.html http://tc.eserver.org/28266.html If you are a CMS user or web developer then you should know what SQL injection attacks are and how to protect your web applications against them. Hackers are using more SQL based attacks, getting smarter about how to attack a website and using better tools. You have to get a good understanding of how their attacks work if you are going to choose the right software and keep your website secure. Here I will review several types of SQL injection attacks and how they occur. Then take a look at what web developers and end users can do to prevent them. http://tc.eserver.org/28279.html http://tc.eserver.org/28279.html When you are creating a web application forms and data should be held strictly seperate. In the PHP community this rule is ignored and PHP itself is being abused. Template and framework system developers have made it more commonplace. CMS developers seem to have forgotten that under no circumstances should the code used to display forms be allowed to process the data involved. Here's why not and the solution. http://tc.eserver.org/28280.html http://tc.eserver.org/28280.html Everyone agrees trackbacks do not work. But now there is something else that could take its place. Wide Area Social Networking or WASN is a phenomenon that I first noticed at dzone.com. Will WASN be the next hot trend for Web 2.0 and will spread like wild fire over the entire internet? Can it be what trackbacks tried to be? http://tc.eserver.org/28277.html http://tc.eserver.org/28277.html PHP while not the top programming language does dominate the web. It is seen as being easy to learn and can be used on any webserver. So PHP is gaining popularity by leaps. But PHP is also approaching the end of its development life cycle. The language itself is close to the point where it can no longer grow. When you look at PHP6 you can see the trend in development is turning towards cleaning up. This is a sure sign that things are close to being finished. That and the fact that all new features have been passed over. http://tc.eserver.org/28278.html http://tc.eserver.org/28278.html When someone asks me what I do for a living it usually leads to blank stares or embarassing pauses. Saying that you are a 'Web developer' does not trigger a visual response with most so they always need to follow up with a series of questions that might give them some clue as to what you really do for a profession. Even after getting some idea about what the job entails they have to know.. "Do you make money at that?". Well here's a bit of history to help you out. http://tc.eserver.org/27155.html http://tc.eserver.org/27155.html It is probably more true that open source is helping the lone coder find a niche or their own market share. There are plenty of them and more are appearing everyday. With potential clients looking for specialists in content management software like Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Typo3 and a gang of newcomers finding a niche is becoming increasingly easier. http://tc.eserver.org/27131.html http://tc.eserver.org/27131.html Last year before I discovered Drupal and a host of other Content management systems I was building websites from scratch. I spent hours in PHP and Active Server Pages coding and designing. I was quite happy doing so. But then I came upon a flaw in the business plan of the company where I worked. It seemed we were doing the same thing over and over again only with slight differences in the end result. These differences were the reason I was busy all the time but could never catch up to the work load. What we needed was a finished product that allowed us to produce addons to satisfy the individual needs of each client. http://tc.eserver.org/27130.html http://tc.eserver.org/27130.html As ridiculous as that may sound many are getting away with doing it. There are many comparisons of open source CMS software that are popping up that are total garbage. The reviewers are comparing CMS systems that are in 5 to 8 different categories and have 4 different sets of requirements. No wonder they are confused and can't make a choice. http://tc.eserver.org/27132.html http://tc.eserver.org/27132.html With hundreds of applications to choose from, content management is one of the most active sectors of open source software. While these options present a great opportunity to leverage open source software, I.T. decision makers often find themselves disoriented by the number of choices, the lack of information, and the ineffectualness of their traditional software selection processes. This Optaros white paper 'Content Management Problems and Open Source Solutions' discusses strategies for understanding and selecting an open source content management system and describes fifteen of the more prominent options in the context of the business problems they are effective in solving. http://tc.eserver.org/27127.html http://tc.eserver.org/27127.html After a week of fighting with it I have come to the conclusion that Drupal access control modules are all inadequate and are based on some weak database design. Taxonomy access and node access are flawed from the start. This type of access control where the assets are assigning their own internal security is not scalable and suffers from very high database overhead. http://tc.eserver.org/27129.html http://tc.eserver.org/27129.html The nucleus of building an online community is a popular an well run forum. When building a community using php CMS software the forum is the first thing that should be configured. Unfortunately most opensource php CMS software is lacking in the area that it should be strongest, the forum. For users a lot of time and effort goes into choosing the right software to accomplish the task of building an online community. Missing is the effort by the CMS developers to ensure that the software is up to the job.