Saturday, March 31, 2012
C4C (Coders 4 Charities), in Kansas City, is always a fun event. At points it gets to be a pressure cooker as you zone in trying to crank out some fantastic code in just a few hours, but it is always fun. A great challenge of your skill as a software developer and for a good cause. This year my team helped The United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Kansas City organization to add online job applications and a database for tracking internal training.
I keep finding that there is one key rule to pulling off a successful C4C weekend project, and that is “Keep It Simple”. Each time you want to add that one cool little feature you have to ask yourself.. Is it really necessary? and Do I have time for that? And if you are going to learn something new you should ask yourself if you’re really going to be able to learn that AND finish the project in the given time. Sometimes the less elegant code is the better code if it works.
That said… You get a great amount of freedom to build the solution the way you want. Typically, the software we build for the charities will save them a lot of money and time and make their jobs easier. You are able to build the software you know you are capable of creating from your own ideas.
I highly recommend any developers in the area to signup next year and show off your skills. I know I will!
Check it out at http://www.coders4charities.org
Support United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Kansas City http://www.ucpkc.org
Sunday, October 11, 2009
I won’t complain, because it is free… But (expletive here)…
My Particular Experience was with IIS on Windows Server 2008, but the experience should be about the same for XP, Vista, Server 2003, and 2008. The Apache configuration appears to be well documented in the Win32Install directions https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Win32Install#Install_Modules.
If you’ve installed any open-source software before some of the steps for bugzilla may already be done so I’ll outline the steps and you can skip any that you already have done.
Outline / Checklist
1) Install MySQL (All you need is the Windows Essentials and I highly recommend the MySQL GUI Tools)
2) Create a database named ‘bugzilla’(or whatever name you like)
3) Create a MySQL User Account named ‘bugzilla’ (or whatever name you like)
4) Grant ALL Privileges to the bugzilla database for the bugzilla user account.
5) Download and Install ActivePerl using the Windows .msi installer from www.activeperl.com
6) Run the commands to download all of the needed modules for BugZilla. (Commands are listed below under Perl Modules Install Commands)
7) Download the latest Stable Release (3.4.2 @ time of writing) of BugZilla from www.bugzilla.org
8) Extract those files to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BugZilla (or wherever you would like to store the web application)
9) In IIS Manager, Create a Virtual Directory that points to the BugZilla files you extracted. (In IIS 7 you can Convert the folder into an application.) (See Caveats)
10) Add the perl cgi script mapping to the Virtual directory. ( Path = *.cgi, Executable = "C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe" -xC:\inetpub\wwwroot\bugzilla -wT "%s" %s )
NOTE: Yes everything following “Executable =” needs to be in the box, including the quotes.
11) Grant Write permissions on the folder for the IIS worker process account. (typically “NT Authority\Network Service”) (See Caveats)
12) From the command prompt, run “perl checksetup.pl”, which is in the BugZilla install directory. (See Caveats)
13) If there are additional modules required to be installed, run the ppm install commands for those modules. (They will be displayed in the command line output)
You will be asked to prove a mail server hostname. If you do not have a mail server, I recommend hMailServer.
You will also be asked for an administrator email and password. (This is your default admin login)
14) Login to Bugzilla as the administrator and change the “urlbase” setting (Located under “Administration” –> “Parameters”) (See Caveats)
15) Congrats you’ve installed Bugzilla!
Caveats:
1) If BugZilla is installed on a server that is separate from you MySQL server, make sure you grant permissions for the user account from the remote server location.
2) If you have trouble installing some perl modules such as “DateTime” and “DateTime-TimeZone” and you are getting the “Can’t determine best” error. (Which is overly explanatory :/ ), Open C:\Perl\lib\ActivePerl\PPM\Package.pm and comment out the following line: push(@dunno, $p); ( Should look like #push(@dunno, $p); after you comment it out. The # sign indicates a comment.)
Save the file and re-run your ppm install commands. (Remove the # sign after you have everything installed.)
3) If you try to browse to http://localhost/Bugzilla or whatever you virtual directory is and you see nothing, try http://localhost/Bugzilla/index.cgi . If this works, then you need to add the index.cgi to the Default Document list.
4) If you have problems saving settings on bugzilla, It is probably because the NT Authority\IUSR account is being used to write to your bugzilla directory. To fix this you need to go into IIS Manager and change the CGI settings for this virtual directory and change “Impersonate User” to False.
5) If you are have browsed to http://localhost/BugZilla/index.cgi and upon logging in you see an big “Software Error:” page with the “Undef to trick_taint” error. Browse to bugzilla installation using the IP address of the server. http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/BugZilla/index.cgi
6) If you can login using the IP address, but remote users cannot logon, or you cannot logon with localhost, or you cannot logon with the server name, then you need to login as an administrator using the IP address on the local server. Go to Administration –> Parameters –> “User Authentication” and set the loginnetmask to 32. It will be 0 by default.
Perl Module Install Commands:
ppm version
ppm repo add UWinnipeg http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/PPMPackages/10xx/
ppm repo add Trouchelle http://trouchelle.com/ppm10/
ppm repo list
ppm upgrade
ppm install AppConfig
ppm install TimeDate
ppm install DBI
ppm install DBD-mysql
ppm install Template-Toolkit
ppm install MailTools
ppm install GD
ppm install Chart
ppm install GDGraph
ppm install PatchReader
ppm install Net-LDAP-Express
ppm install DateTime
ppm install DateTime-TimeZone
ppm install Email-Send
ppm install Email-MIME
ppm install Email-MIME-Encodings
ppm install Email-MIME-Modifier
Friday, September 04, 2009
Simple Code to Download a file from an HTTPS Source.
Friday, May 01, 2009
C4C in Kansas City was, once again, an incredible event. There were about 8 charities and probably about 30 developers / designers. We even had our own film crew from KC VideoCore, there to document the event and record the “ninjas” at work. I had the privilege of helping the Focus North America team building an aggregate data interface for personal donation campaigns on the Focus North America Site. The experience taught me, first and foremost, that Joomla is my enemy, but even enemies can work together for good. We (the team) did manage to create a Joomla plug-in that allows Focus NA to place this view of aggregated data onto any page of the site, which was a very proud moment for me personally. I felt that I had conquered a formidable opponent in Joomla.
Joomla, however, was not without its last hurrah. 5 minutes to demo time the Joomla Virtual Appliance refused to get an IP address, making a demonstration of the the wonders we had stored within impossible to reach. Joomla may have won the battle, but I shall win the war! Stay tuned for the conclusion of this epic conflict…
In addition to the Joomla challenge, we were also able to help out a second charity, Mid America Freedom Band with their new site. This one allowed us to go back to our roots, and build the site using .NET and DotNetNuke. I must say that DotNetNuke has come a long way since I last explored it, which was very fortuitous for our team. We were able to very quickly whip together a website with all of the functionality that the Mid America Freedom Band needed.
Shout out to the team:
Lee, Becky, Ionut, James
Good times, good food, good Rock Band!
And we’ll do it all again next year.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Well if you're like me and you've learned to live with UAC and the persistent prompt to run as administrator. And if you're also like me and have a habitual compulsion to open every link in a new tab, then you may experience a blank page with "Connecting..."
Monday, December 29, 2008
Recordings from the Sharepoint Firestarter event presentations are now online. So I just want to share, for those who have not yet viewed these presentations
Sunday, December 07, 2008
A big Thank you to Lee Brandt for organizing a great event in good ole Kansas City.
For those of you who attended my jQuery presentation, Thank you to you as well.
As promised, here are the slides and the source project from the presentation.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Often I've wanted to automate something, just to avoid some clicks and survive the tedium. Never was it really worth the effort of learning some crazy scripting tool.
So 3 automation tools I recommend for the scripting junkie.... AutoIT, VBScript and for web automatiion I like Sahi
Thursday, June 12, 2008
It is hard to really get a grasp of how much control you are given in Sharepoint [...] I was able to get an amazing look at Sharepoint the many aspects of Sharepoint development and customization in a one day live meeting.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
So... To challenge myself and to make good on all those times I said, "I'd like to give back.", I joined other local developers for the C4C (Coders 4 Charities) http://coders4charities.org event last weekend.
What a Blast!!!
I can't say I was expecting the experience I had, but I can say that I'm glad I participated. I teamed up with some outstanding developers and wish I could work with these guys (and gal) everyday. Not only were there great personalities on my team, but Tim, the charity representative for Boyscout Troop 813 was inspiring. Had I known him as a younger lad I would probably have been a boyscout. The combination of a good cause, great people, and a lot of caffeine made it easy to enjoy the experience. Also I learned a lot about Sharepoint and Silverlight, which was a nice bonus. Anytime I can walk away wiser and smarter I'm all for it.
There was no shortage of food and beverages. Before you could get hungry there was something being delivered. And more soda than I drank in the last year!
After all of the work was done, (I use that term "work" loosely. It hardly feels like you're working when you having such a good time.) each team presented their final products. Every project had me wishing I had the opportunity to work on. Lots of cool stuff was created in a very short amount of time.
I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I would encourage anyone who thought they maybe, might, kinda like to give to a charity to come out next year and enjoy the fun. See you guys at .NET Sig ( http://www.dotnetsig.org ).