08-11-2004, 07:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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PHP Developers Wanted ASAP for Two Vital Tasks
Ok gang, here's the deal: many months ago, I made a call for developers. About a dozen people responded, then I got insanely busy and didn't make the time to contact the kind people who wanted to help us out. When I finally got back to them, about six were still interested in helping us. A few projects were handed out, but unfortunately nothing has happened - people get busy, which I can certainly appreciate, but these are some super-critical projects that need to get done. Fabrizio is busy working on some larger projects for me (in addition to his clients of his own), so it's time to give this another try and see if there are any volunteer developers out there who can help our community. I might be able to scourge up some goodies to bribe you as well. ;-)
There are two modules that need developing: a contest module, and a shopping module. The contest module is the one that's more pressing, and here's why: we constantly have developers and vendors contacting us, offering us products to give away to you, our readers. The problem is that we don't have an easy way of having the prizes be given out based on certain criteria: say, for example, people that have posted in the past month. With 18,000+ registered forums users, quite often we're giving away prizes to people who haven't visited the site in months. What we'd really like to do is have the flexibility to have contests be open to everyone, people that post in a certain thread, people that have posted recently, that sort of thing. We also need a better method of tracking and creating new contests - if we had that, we could have many more contests, because our current method is manual and painful. If we can get an experienced PHP developer to help us create this contest module, we'll be able to give you all an opportunity to win many more prizes. How's that sound? :-) Any volunteers? Oh, and I should add that if this is in place relatively soon and working the way it should work, we're going to try for another January 1st giveaway bonanza! :mrgreen:
The second module we need developed is the "Shopping Mall" module - I won't go into a lot of details, but it's basically a module that will allow me to build links, XML feeds, and images into an affiliate zone. I'm often asked "How do I support your site by buying from vendor XYZ - do you have an affiliate link?". This would give me a centralized location to manage all those links and feeds from a browser-based interface. The developer helping with this project would be helping to keep Pocket PC Thoughts alive and kicking, which is something we all want. :-) Any takers?
If you're a PHP developer interested in helping with either of these projects, please contact me using the contact form. We're looking for people who can commit to a relatively rapid development cycle and can crank it out.
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08-11-2004, 07:16 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 468
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It's a shame you're not doing this in ASP.Net! My PHP skills are pretty weak...
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08-11-2004, 07:19 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Perry Reed
It's a shame you're not doing this in ASP.Net! My PHP skills are pretty weak...
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We've talked about moving to a Windows box for quite some time, bu the costs of what we'd need (Web Server 2003 + Exchange 2003 + SQL Server) would be painfully high. So, at the moment, we're Linux+PHP. My personal preference would be to move to Windows, but that's not possible at the moment (and would take an insane amount of work).
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08-11-2004, 07:26 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 468
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Yeah, I understand. Microsoft likes to talk TCO, but that upfront cost is a killer. It sure would be nice if Mono were a more complete solution.
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08-11-2004, 07:44 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 333
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You'd probably need a little more hardware for that Windows solution as well.
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08-11-2004, 07:49 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by rlobrecht
You'd probably need a little more hardware for that Windows solution as well.
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Correct - we'd need 4 GB for sure, and the odds of being able to run a Web server + Exchange + SQL Server on the same box are slim to none.
Anyway, it's more an issue of having to re-code things from PHP to ASP, and that's not a step we're willing to take right now.
I really didn't want this to turn into a Linux versus Windows thread. ;-)
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08-11-2004, 08:09 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 468
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Correct - we'd need 4 GB for sure, and the odds of being able to run a Web server + Exchange + SQL Server on the same box are slim to none.
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I thought there was a Windows Small Business Server solution that was supposed to do something along those very lines.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
I really didn't want this to turn into a Linux versus Windows thread. ;-)
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Sorry! I didn't mean to start anything like that! I like both OSs, myself. 
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08-11-2004, 08:26 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,911
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Re: PHP Developers Wanted ASAP for Two Vital Tasks
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
The problem is that we don't have an easy way of having the prizes be given out based on certain criteria: say, for example, people that have posted in the past month. With 18,000+ registered forums users, quite often we're giving away prizes to people who haven't visited the site in months.
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Yes I'm glad that you are wanting to change that. I'm ready to win a prize.
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08-11-2004, 09:16 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Perry Reed
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Correct - we'd need 4 GB for sure, and the odds of being able to run a Web server + Exchange + SQL Server on the same box are slim to none.
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I thought there was a Windows Small Business Server solution that was supposed to do something along those very lines. |
It is, but SBS has serious limitations on the number of connections, and wouldn't scale to the number of users we want. It's designed for a LAN workgroup. Standalone versions would also work on the same box, but they're not designed to -- an Active Directory domain controller is rather resource-intensive, and is required for Exchange.
--janak
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08-11-2004, 10:07 PM
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Linear Mode
