Version 1.0 of The Adventures of BrainyCat is now in production. Violating every rule of what blogs look like, it looks like what I like to see on my screen.

I've added many features. Let's see... post via email, post to bookmarking sites, rewrote the rendering inside the loop, new colorscheme.

I could not have done this without subversion. It's been a little challenging at times to get my head around it's way of doing things, but I've certainly gotten to a point where I feel comfortable navigating the repo as well as my workspace. I'd been having tremendous difficulty with trying to undo changes. While reading up on tags I found the directions for undoing changes. Oops.

If I wanted to start the svn configuration over from scratch, here's what I'd do:

1. install wordpress and all the plugins and themes to the dev site
2. create repo as normal
3. import the dev site into the rep, skipping the local configuration files
4. svn mkdir path/to/tags/version-0.1
5. cd path/to/dev/docroot
6. svn copy ./ path/to/tags/version-0.1
7. cd /path/to/prod/docroot
8. svn switch path/to/tags/version-0.1
9. login as admin to prod site and activate plugins, setup options, etc
10. test instalation.

I am so bad about feature creep. If I had stuck to my original goals for the 1.0 release of BrainyCat, I'd be done by now.

Of course, I'd still be working on the layout and design right where I am now.

"You'll never find the exquisite solution to a real problem if you are busy tending little problems of your own making." - Ward Cunningham

I need to get this blog ready to claim it's corner of the blogosphere. My core bugs: the footer alignment and getting the template pages in shape. The rest can wait.

Another issue: I need to combine some of my categories. There is no way to do it in WordPress's admin panel. I'll have to manipulate the databases by hand (YAY) to move a bunch of posts into another category.

Features I want to add:

1. technorati
2. more rounded corners
3. links colors
4. gallery2
5. buttons
6. add del and techno favs to a page
7. work on better static pages - link back to my content
8. pull the div.post element into a function that's called by relevant pages as needed
9. cleanup style.css: main classes: post page comment sidebar header footer body
10. create a logo and header include. I have a crazy obsession with involving povray in the banner creation.

And I'm starting to run into situations where I may need to edit the core wordpress files. Which means that I'll have to merges with each release. I think my changes will be minor, but until you open the files... Or I could try and get on with the wordpress svn and make changes in the source, but that's both intimidating and seems sort of pointless. Why should I foist my changes onto the main depository, and get involved with all the politics and bs that ensues?

What I need to do is get each template page up to standard with the new design (read: CSS classes) that I setup doing the index.php script. And call that done.

This is what I don't enjoy about developing by myself. There's no better judgement, no experience, no guru to tell you when you're screwing the pooch.

Big things happening over on the dev site. I started the day with a total of 30 checkins to svn, and I ended the day with 114. I've got the sidebar setup, most of the bookmarking done and the 90% of the stylesheet done.

I still need to make sure the bookmarks are integrated, and that's probably going to require digging into the trunk to be able to run url_encode(the_permalink)). I may be able to skate if some kind soul has posted some docs. I need to update all the drilldown pages to reflect the new classes I installed in the style.  I'm going to let the header slide until the next release, because CSS positioning and I don't get along very well. The footer will be done in this release.

I really need to generate some scripts that will sync every table except options from the live site to the dev site.

And I need to remember to remove the static configuration file from svn before I update the live site.

I'd like to say I'm a lot more comfortable with svn now... but not really. I needed to undo some changes I'd checked in, and I had a lot of trouble trying to revert. I'll read up on that tomorrow. All in all, I only had to dig out the books once.

I've been messing around with subversion lately. I can't really say I've made great strides. I've been able to import the website into the repo. But I had a heck of a time trying to get files back out of it. It seems that if you import files, they aren't automatically added as a local workspace. In fact, I'm not even sure that svn thinks of workspaces the way I'm used to from the days I cut my teeth with perforce. I somehow got around that issue with the svn switch command, but not after I created immense problems for myself by failing to properly declare the path for the src, creating several trees that are just all wrong.

I guess I'm expecting SVN to act like p4. I was expecting to be able to copy the entire hierarchy from the depo, but only checkout the specific files I want to edit. It seems that SVN wants you to checkout to get a copy, but then it doesn't care how many open working copies there are in the wild. I hope, anyway.

Another feature that I find myself wishing I knew how to implement is the ability to map different parts of the repo to my workspace. I may just need to find a new way to work. I was expecting to be able to create a branch but map it into the trunk while working on it, then merge the branch back to the trunk after getting it stabilized. Ideally, I'd like to NOT have to change where the files live on my workstation.

Another issue I didn't think through is that the dev site is running off the trunk. But I generated a branch for my WordPress theme. So none of the updates are showing up on the dev site. Two possible solutions present themselves immediately: Find a way to map the branch into the workspace, or do the development against the trunk. That's the way I've done things before, without involving SCM, and I don't want to keep making the same mistakes. However, for the most part WP is modular enough that nearly everything I'm doing would be in it's own node in the hierarchy, so it becomes feasible if not advisable to work in the trunk.

Remember the switch command? Yeah, I broke something with that. I was trying to figure out why I couldn't branch from the dev site. It made no sense at the time. I had /dev.site/FILES and was able to import them. I was able to goto /live.site/ and do svn update and that worked fine, voila! www.brainycat.com is up and running. But in the /dev.site/, I couldn't do ANY svn operations. Remember, I had tonsilitis, a fever, no sleep, no food for many, many, many hours prior to trying to teach myself this software by implementing it. So I deleted the files in that dir, then tried to do an svn update. But I got the tree all wrong. I tried to delete the local files and try again, working under the idea that SVN doesn't care what I have locally. Nope, not able to try a new update. So I dig around in the book for a while and I find that switch option. It worked; but now it takes forever to do any sort of updates to the repo. I'm afraid I somehow crossrefererenced everything to each other. I'm seriously contemplating blowing the entire config and starting over.

But first I'm going to eat now that I can.

I am posting this on the a.dev.brainycat.com site I got running. In order to do development on wordpress without fear of breaking something useful, I had to change the user that some of the files were hosted under, which broke the live site. That's ok. I also had to backup the db from the live site and copy it to a new db that I setup. Some of the dev work will include new tables and such, so I don't want to jeapordize the live db.

I also had a little bit of an issue with the database. Dreamhost's installer configures a random string in the /wp-config.php:$table_prefix variable. When I went through the installer, I pointed the a.dev installation at the same database, but none of the data came up. Bummer. A quick peek with phpMyAdmin and the problem was obvious. I configured the dev site with the same table prefix, and my site came up without a hitch. Damn I'm good!  I'm debating how often I need to sync the two dbs. I need to think through the logic, and if I'd be creating more problems than save time. I need to develop an offsite backup system, as well. I had another issue with passwords; when I installed to the dev site wordpress pointed me to the login and admin pword generation site. I could not get logged in, so I just reset the pword via phpMyAdmin and life was grand.

Now I really need to get on board the subversion bus and get this site into a repo, so I can push the live site.  I'll probably have some time tomorrow at work to go over the SVN commands. Firstly, I need to find the url svn url ;).

I'm really excited about this. I was recently shown what one can do with google's tracking utilities. I'll have to setup YAGA (Yet Another Google Account) and get one of the keys and whatnot.

With all these new pwords, I'm going to look for a spreadsheet app that runs under linux. M$ compatibility is nice, but everything I'd need to import I can export from M$ as a CSV.

Things are moving along nicely. At this rate, I should be able to work on some real projects within a couple of weeks. Let's see how long it takes to beat wordpress into shape.

TODO items:

1. find spreadsheet app for linux
2. determine SVN URL
3. import dev site to repo, publish to production site
4. offsite db backup

Dreamhosts info

Using subversion for web development

Turtle Book

I just really want to see what posted pix look like. I'm also sensing that I'll get email updates working before much happens with SVN. Somehow, a bottle of chardonnay became procured while returning from a venture to purchase subversion documentation. Thus, a pic:

I setup a subdomain I'm calling rtfm, at which I'll be uploading documentation packages for whatever strikes my fancy. Eventually, I could get good at LaTex and generate atomically integrated documentation from the source, but this isn't that day. So I'll just be uploading my own mirrors of whatever I need. Currently, I only have one resource uploaded. The Turtle Book will be the source of most of my traffic for the next couple of days while I learn the system.

Note to self:

• ICE 1.0
• Blandy 1.0

Are the best templates, but neither are widget aware. Which is ok, because the widget aware themes don't want to play nice with the plugins. So we're back to the part where I need to get SVN setup. Which is new for me. I've used a couple of different SCM packages, and even scripted against one of them, but this is all new software for me. Hooray. My spidey sense pictures a trip to MegaBookLifestyleStore to procure one.