mja blog

Author: Melissa

  • Drupal project

    I’ve been offered an opportunity to work on a civic web site project by a joint venture group based in Melbourne. The job came up by chance and is on a tight schedule – would normally be subject to a formal tendering process. It is a basic web site, requiring strict attention to web accessibility standards and utilising the open source Drupal content management system.

    I am familiar with Drupal, having run test installations of it although I’ve never done any extensive work with it – never really had the right project. Looks like I’ll be doing some light reading – the Drupal handbook this weekend.

    Project specs include:
    Calendar – http://drupal.org/project/calendar/
    WYSIWYG editor – http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/tinymce

  • Skinning Eneticas Reseller Client Library – Part 3

    This is the final Enetica script I’m working on – having finished the register and manage scripts, I am now working on the hosting order script.

    Only 10 templates to work on:

    base
    debug
    domain_not_registered
    error
    get_contact_details    		 get_hosting_details
    get_payment_details
    thankyou_card_delayed
    thankyou_card_processed
    thankyou_cheque

    UPDATE: compared to the other two, this was a snap. Skin updated in a couple of hours.

  • Skinning Eneticas Reseller Client Library – Part 2

    Following on from Part 1 where I re-skinned the domain registration script I am now working on the domain management script, where the client updates their contact details and manages their domain name.

    There are 23 HTML templates for this script:

    au_change_pass.html
    au_domain_info.html
    au_domain_cert.html
    base.html
    contact_info.html
    dns.html
    dns_arecord.html
    dns_cname.html
    dns_mxrecord.html
    do_update_contact.html
    email_forwarding.html
    error.html    		 main_menu.html
    manage.html
    manage_au.html
    manage_gtld.html
    update_arecord.html
    update_cname.html
    update_mxrecord.html
    update_url.html
    url_forward.html
    view_nameservers.html
    whoisout.html

    UPDATE: compared to the register script this one was painless. About 5 hours to re-skin the domain management interface and no alterations/bugs to deal with in the script.

  • Ultreya

    A psychologist friend frequently advises us to ‘try something new’, to expand our view of the world and help build up self-confidence. Yesterday I experienced something new and it has given me a few things to meditate on. At the invitation of my friend Lee I accompanied her to an Anglican Ultreya.

    It was quite a pleasant afternoon – a lot of singing, a lot of listening, a bit of sharing. The first thing that struck me was the spirit of fellowship in the crowd. There were about 70 or 80 people there I suppose, and they came from many places. They didn’t all know each other, but acted like they did – there was no guardedness or aloofness so common amongst strangers.

    There was a dedication of one of the hymns to a local parishioner who had died recently, and it was touching to see his widow surrounded by friends with their hands resting on her to give comfort as they sang.

    There were a couple of witness testimonials – the one I enjoyed most was by Mary Anne from Thallon. She described her weekly meal and bible meeting at “Granny’s Cottage” as the highlight of everyone’s week. It made me realise how important it is for people to gather together.

    Nearly everyone who spoke mentioned times when they struggled with their faith, and how it is something they must constantly work on to maintain. I realised that faith isn’t a ‘club membership’ where you either have it or you don’t.

  • Sashas heart murmur

    Lately Hubby and I have been disturbed by the increased frequency in our dog Sasha’s coughing and wheezing. We believe it is being brought on by her heart murmur. I’ve been doing some reading and it seems there may be drugs that can help her, so she’s going back to the vet (we recently took her there to get treatment for UTI).

    An explanation of what a heart murmur is and how it contributes to the coughing, from VeterinaryPetcare.com:

    The earliest sign of a leaking mitral valve is a heart murmur. This is produced when some of the blood goes backward through the leaking valve into the left atrium. Many dogs develop a murmur from the mitral valve as early as six years of age. This problem is especially common in small breeds of dogs. A heart murmur does not mean that heart failure is imminent. But as time goes on, the leak becomes more severe and more and more blood flows backwards. This results in reduced pumping efficiency and, eventually, congestive heart failure. From the time a murmur develops, it may be a few months to several years until heart failure occurs.

    When the heart is not properly pumping blood, the blood moves more slowly through the lungs. This results in small amounts of fluid leaking out of the capillaries into the air passageways. This fluid collection produces the earliest signs of heart failure: gagging as if trying to clear the throat, a chronic, hacking cough, and lack of stamina.

    There is another article on the Bay Area King Charles Cavalier Spaniel site which goes into controlling the condition with medication:

    In Dr. Ross’s experience, the time to begin medication is when the resting heart rate is consistently more than 100 beats per minute. The normal canine resting heart rate is 80 to 100 beats per minute.

    I timed Sassy’s heartbeat – it is 140+ beats per minute while she’s at rest. I don’t know if it’s possible anyway, but I think surgery would be too risky for her (there’s a good chance she wouldn’t wake up from the anaesthetic), so I hope there is some medication that can help.

  • Skinning Eneticas Reseller Client Library – Part 1

    This is a project I’m undertaking for my web design business. The reseller client code from Enetica incorporates an interface with their RWI with a suite of Perl scripts based on OpenSRS. The HTML is a bit messy and non-standards compliant, so I’m tidying it up to incorporate XHTML and a stylesheet.

    There are three sets of scripts in the suite that I intend to use – the domain registration, the domain management, and the hosting order.

    PART ONE: Domain registration templates

    asnau_elig
    bad_company_name
    bad_trademark_name
    base
    billing
    billing_contact
    bulk_renew
    comau_claim
    comau_elig
    delitem
    details
    error
    extras
    generic_order    		 get_renewal_payment
    get_transfer_details
    lookupresults
    main_menu
    more_details
    orgau_elig
    orgasnau_claim
    prerenew
    renew_transfer
    results
    tech_contact
    verify_order
    verify_renew

    27 template files referenced in the register.cgi script. That’s an improvement on the 60 odd template files that are still included in the download. At one stage they seem to have had domain registration and domain manage in one script, but they have now split it into two without tidying up the obsolete template files. At least, that’s what I think has happened. I wont go deleting any of the template files just yet.

    One of the problems I’ve encountered in the register.cgi script is a couple of issues with the ‘domain extras’ – url forwarding, email forwarding, email forwarding with spam/virus filtering and dns hosting. Firstly the programming doesn’t provide for anything but free url forwarding, so it is a problem if you intend to charge for the service. Secondly the script allows a multiple number of domains to be registered, but doesn’t tally all the extras per domain correctly. Thirdly there is no notification to reseller of domain extras ordered other than dns hosting.

    UPDATE: To address the issues I removed the multiple domain ordering options (although I left the shopping cart functionality there just in case). In the config I created a value for the url forwarding cost and replaced the email forwarding array with a single value (since WWD is only offering one email forwarding package, it removed a few complications). I changed the extras template to offer these as checkbox rather than radio options. The code is not elegant but it seems to be working the way I want now, and the new skin looks good.

    I notice that the extras options do not write to Enetica’s ordering system, you must still create this manually in the RWI – but at least the options show up on the email notifications now. I estimate spending about 20 hours on this, hopefully my next step of re-skinning the domain management interface will be easier.